Ottawa star volume2 issue10

For all the latest news visit Ottawa Star.com

Ottawa Star

For Canada & World News visit Ottawa Star.com

The Voice of New Canadians www.OttawaStar.com • April 1, 2015 • Volume 2, Issue 10

Light years ahead Tech turbo charges extreme high school science fairs

By Tamsyn Burgmann, The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER—Janice Pang was in Grade 8 when she designed an experiment exposing ravenous immune cells—called macrophages, for the uninitiated—to bacterial components to test their appetite.

In Grade 9, the teen elegantly demonstrated the contribution of white blood cells to inflammation in Type 2 diabetes.

Now in Grade 11, Pang is showing for the first time that two particular microsized molecules may be used to identify the disease at an earlier stage.

Continued on page 10

Few of the fifty young women from Ottawa high schools who participated in a 12-week app development program called Technovation Story on Page 8. Photo: Diana Cianciusi

By land or by sea Huddled masses of Africa, Asia, Middle East use 4 routes to European Union

By Shawn Pogatchnik, The Associated Press

DUBLIN—Most migrants who live illegally in the European Union fly to the 28-nation bloc on valid visas and simply overstay their welcome. But for the poorest and most desperate travellers of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the journey often takes months by sea or land, with payments to trafficking gangs.

Frontex, the EU agency that helps member nations detect migrants on the bloc’s frontiers, documents the flow of illegal immigration on principal smuggling routes. These keep evolving in response to every government initiative.

Ewa Moncure, spokeswoman for the Warsaw-based agency, compares efforts to quell immigration on any particular route to “squeezing a balloon.’’

“You tighten a law in one country, another route swells up elsewhere,’’ she says.

Continued on page 15

Federal politicians accuse each other of race baiting ‘dog whistle politics’

By Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

O

TTAWA—Is Canadian politics going to the dogs?

Politicians seem to think so, judging by the sudden zeal with which they’re accusing each other of practising “dogwhistle politics.’’

The term, widely used in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, popped up here last week amid the furor over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s insistence that it’s “offensive’’ for Muslim women to wear the face-covering niqab while taking the oath of citizenship.

Continued on page 10

Of sandwiches, phone calls and stamps

A look at the solar plane attempting first round the world trip And pioneers behind it

By Aya Batrawy, The Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Two Swiss pioneers are attempting to fly around the world in a solar-powered airplane without a drop of fossil fuel.

Here’s a look at the plane and the pioneers behind it: Continued on page 15

Senate bristles under microscope

By Jennifer Ditchburn, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA—Single phone calls, sandwiches eaten during committee meetings, postage stamps—the smallest details have come up for review in the auditor general’s study of Senate expenses.

Senators of all political persuasions have been taken aback by the strength of the microscope trained on their office, travel and living expenses, as well as claims submitted by staff.

And it hasn’t just been the types of questions that have ruffled feathers, but Continued on page 9

n Community

2

n Opinion

6

n Canada

9

n World

13

Community

PAGE 2 • www.OttawaStar.com

Abdulla Hamam (left) and Haya Al-Hafez rehearse for My Fair Lady.

The cast of My Fair Lady. Photos: Kate Tenenhouse

Balmour Productions, an Ottawabased Arabic theatre company, puts a cultural twist on a theatrical classic

By Kate Tenenhouse

B

almour Productions, an Ottawa-based Arabic theatre company, performed My Fair Lady (sayedaty al jameelah) to a full house at Carleton University’s Kailash Mital Theatre on March 14, with a few twists and changes to the original script.

More than 400 audience members roared and cheered with amusement.

“It went fantastic… Everyone was laughing non-stop,” said writer and director Islam Balbaa. “I was acting and I would hear the crowd roar and clap and it just felt so good. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

Balbaa’s version is a comedy, not a musical and was performed in Arabic, focusing on the theme of unity. Balbaa’s adaptation takes place in an integrated

Arabic world, in which all Arab countries are united as one.

“There is no difference whether you are Egyptian or Syrian or Palestinian.

We want to show that, we can all be in one world without going through stereotypes or differences. That’s what I want to portray in the play,” he said.

“It’s basically the same plot, we just changed the script a bit to make it a little more funny and we adopted it to our culture and to our language,” Omer Abdallah, head of marketing, explained. “It’s a barbaric lady that is going to be transformed into a well-spoken glamorous lady.”

Balbaa also said the play illustrates the theme of overcoming adversity.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. It’s what your character is… You

can become something if you have your mind set to it,” he said.

In this adaptation, the king wants his son, Jamal (the ‘Professor Higgins’ character), to get married, but Jamal does not want to settle down. He escapes from his wedding and hides in a rundown part of town. This is where he meets Iftekar (the ‘Eliza’ character) and the story progresses from there.

Balbaa said this was a project he had wanted to develop for a long time.

“I’ve always had it in my mind…It was my grandpa’s favourite play. We would always watch it together. I thought, this could work as an actual play here in Ottawa,” he said.

Drawing inspiration from the original English version as well as an Egyptian adaptation, Balbaa created his own modern, comedic version.

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015 “We’re trying to put modern into classical theatre and make it something interesting for everyone,” he said.

The cast came together in November, rehearsing every Saturday and Sunday to bring the script to life.

“We are a family, really,” Balbaa said. “Everyone helps everyone. Everyone is there to make the show a success and that’s what really matters.”

“Even if I wasn’t the main role, just working with these guys is amazing,” said Abdulla Hamam, who plays Jamal.

“Perfection is there, but also fun. You have to have fun in the process and they really excel at doing both,” he said.

Haya Al-Hafez, who plays the role of ‘Princess,’ agrees. “It’s a really nice atmosphere because everyone is joking with everyone else,” she said. “We have a lot of humorous people around, so you’re always laughing.”

Balbaa said the performance was everything he could’ve hoped for, and more.

“I was very emotional,” he said.

“Every single emotion was coming out of my heart and it felt so good…It was more than I expected.”

“I’m proud of everyone who helped out, the cast and crew, and not to have an ego, I’m also proud of myself. We’ve worked really hard on this and the results were showing and everyone loved it,” he said.

Looking ahead, Balbaa said the future is full of possibilities.

“What is next, that’s a tough question because we really don’t know yet.

Maybe we’ll start touring the play or we’ll do an English play,” he said. “You never know.”

York Professor Gives Lecture on RMB Internationalization

By Stephen Koster

Members of the Carleton University Department of Economics, from undergraduates to professors, along with other intrigued academics, met in a classroom Thursday, Mar. 5 for a lecture by York University professor Gregory Chin on the rise of the renminbi.

Abbreviated to RMB, the renminbi is the official currency of the People’s Republic of China. Renminbi translates literally to “People’s currency.”

Seated in a small but cozy room of Carleton’s Loeb building, professor Chin enthusiastically described the renminbi’s rise to the world’s fifth most-used currency for international payments—a jump from 13th position a year earlier.

Some experts believe the RMB has leveled out, while others believe it is nearing its maximum potential; however, others, like professor Chin, theorize that the

RMB, along with the growing Chinese economy that powers it, is only beginning to rise. According to Chin, the RMB has, in recent years, made “significant strides.”

Professor Chin introduced the concept that currencies, like living entities, have life cycles. He referred to the American dollar as a “mature currency,” while the RMB belongs to a younger group, and as such, what the RMB lacks in history it makes up in energy and confidence.

But in order to move to a leading international currency the RMB needs international support.

Several times professor Chin posed questions making the rounds of scholarly research. One, most concerning Americans, is, “Will the RMB replace the dollar as the supreme world currency?”

Unsurprisingly, Americans are “lukewarm” to the idea of the internationalization of the RMB, as China’s

rapid growth is prompting many to wonder who will hold economic and political dominance in the future.

During the following Q & A, Chin contrasted the RMB with the potential of the Japanese yen, and the beliefs of some economists during the ‘90s that the yen would overtake the dollar, just as some predict the RBM will.

Many potential investors wonder, based on the example of the yen, “Why [they] should expect anything different from China?”

According to Chin, the true way to tell how the RMB will perform is to watch it progress. He is optimistic the RMB will continue to internationalize. He sees an effort in the Chinese government to liberalize the RMB, meaning the lessening of government restrictions to allow more involvement with private entities, allowing international interest to develop.

Professor Gregory Chin.

Photo by Stephen Koster

Chin mentioned that after bailing out European nations early this decade, China also has economic favours to pull, if needed in the international spread of its currency, since the country “helped stabilize the euro.”

Chin’s thoughtful and unhurried thoughts on China’s currency gained him praise from his colleagues, whose kind but pressing questions received thoughtful answers, without condescension.

Professor Gregory Chin is working on a new book on the subject of the internationalization of the renminbi.

Community

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

www.OttawaStar.com • PAGE 3

Mahshid Farhoudi Ottawa artist brings identity and culture to canvas

By Kate Tenenhouse

Iranian-Canadian artist Mahshid Farhoudi said she sees herself as more of a storyteller.

“I believe a good work of art is one that brings up questions rather than answers. I’m not necessarily giving an answer or sending a message, but it is a story.”

Farhoudi’s stories stem from themes of identity and draw on her personal struggles, experiences and interactions.

“I really believe everyone always searches for identity,” said the Ottawa resident. “That’s where I like to go, to celebrate who I am. Not to be afraid of saying: I’m a mom, I’m an artist, I’m a teacher, I’m this or that. I have a voice.”

Some of Farhoudi’s work is currently on display as part of the Her Stories exhibit at the Fritzi Gallery, on the second floor of the Great Canadian Theatre Company on Wellington West.

The exhibit showcases the work of eight female Canadian artists in celebration of International Women’s Day. Farhoudi said this theme is important because “the positioning of women has changed, or at least is being recognized.

We’re still trying to make it recognizable.”

“That was one of the things that I always fought for. Women where I come from are fourth-level citizens,” she added.

Growing up in Tehran, Iran, Farhoudi loved to draw from a young age.

By the time she was 13, she knew she wanted to be an artist.

“I felt a certain peace and comfort and empowerment having the control over what I wanted to say. It was a medium where I could speak,” she said.

Farhoudi came to Ottawa alone when she was 16 and continued to pursue her passion for art.

Although she proudly says she was a Canterbury kid, the transition was not easy for Farhoudi because she didn’t speak any English when she came. Despite the language barrier, Farhoudi did not give up on her art.

“It becomes part of who you are.

You breathe it. You live it. And if I don’t do it, I’m very cranky.”

Silence, one of Farhoudi’s paintings hanging in the Fritzi Gallery, encompasses the theme of what it means to be a woman in Canada today; it is a fusion of her culture and female Canadian identity.

“She is not sitting in traditional clothing…her body is exposed. The design of

Mahshid Farhoudi with her work Gaze (left) and Silence. Photo: Kate Tenenhouse

the Persian carpet is behind her, she is gazing outwards,” said Farhoudi, describing the painting which is a portrait of her sister. “There is a bottle of wine. This is forbidden, but this is something that kind of represents the West. She is sitting in silence, always carrying what is behind her—the Persian designs —with her.”

The painting is also a representation of a first generation Canadian.

“As immigrants, or as new Canadians, you are forever living that nomadic culture where you don’t necessary belong here, you don’t ever really belong back where you came from either, but the positive part of it is that you become a person

that can make a home anywhere,” she said. “We become people of the world rather than people of a specific place.”

With pieces like Silence, Farhoudi said she wants to create beauty.

“If my work has something to say, I’d like to say it in the most beautiful way I possibly can. That’s what we need the most in this world.”

“I really believe in creating things that make people feel good. It’s about being intimate with the soul. And we are all souls.”

To learn more about Mahshid Farhoudi, visit her website: http://www.mahshidfarhoudi.com.

To find out more about Her Stories go to: http:// www.gctc.ca/your-visit/lorraine-fritzi-gallery

PAGE 4 • www.OttawaStar.com

Community

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

Four Ottawa Employers Receive Excellence Awards in Immigrant Employment

By Staff Reporter

H

ire Immigrants Ottawa (HIO) and the Employer Council of Champions (ECC) presented four Employer Excellence Awards today at the 2015 Employer Council of Champions Summit.

Each year, the Summit attracts over 100 senior executives and HR professionals from business, government, not-forprofit sectors and civic leaders to exchange ideas about the importance of integrating immigrants into Ottawa’s labour force. It is also used as an occasion to recognize local employers for their outstanding work in immigrants’ employment.

“The Employer Excellence Awards recognize Ottawa employers that have implemented innovative policies and practices around the recruiting, retaining and integrating skilled immigrants into their organizations,” said Gaye Moffet, Founder, GEM Healthcare Services, and Co-Chair, Employer Council of Champions. “The four award winners today provide concrete examples of the actions and policies employers can undertake to create diverse and inclusive workplaces, and we thank them for sharing their success stories.”

The theme of this year’s Summit was Skills to Jobs: Ottawa’s Human Capital Requirements in the Knowledge Economy. Keynote speaker, Don Drummond, former senior vice president and chief economist of TD Financial Group, spoke about the importance of effectively integrating newcomers

The award winners are: The Business Development Bank of Canada The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) works with local agencies and bridging programs to access pools of experienced international talent. It helps these new Canadians prepare for rewarding careers in the Canadian banking industry, and also acKeynote speaker Don Drummond at the 2015 Employer tively recruits from this talent Council of Champions Summit. Photo: HIO pool to build the diversity of its own team. Since 2010, BDC into the province’s labour force and sohas hired 28 new Canadians via partnercial fabric, both from an employer/busiships with bridging programs across Onness perspective, and well as from a widtario, including here in Ottawa. er social and public policy perspective.

“Skilled newcomers are crucial to Epocal Ontario’s future prosperity. Our govEpocal brings world-class healthcare ernment is working with employers technology to market, and it relies on a and newcomers to build a highly skilled world-class team that hails from around the workforce that will deliver economic globe to do it. Epocal recognizes international academic, professional and work experigrowth and drive local economies,” said ence qualifications at face value, and on par Michael Chan, Minister of Citizenship, with Canadian credentials. In this multiculImmigration and International Trade. tural workplace, a standardized recruitment “The challenges of integrating immigrants into the workplace are comand onboarding process is complemented plex and multifaceted,” said Frank by an informal buddy system—current staff Bilodeau, Vice President, Scotiabank, will take new hires with the same cultural experiences under wing to help them become Ottawa and West Quebec and ECC Coconfident and productive members of EpChair. “This requires us as employers to ocal’s open-door culture. be innovative in our talent management strategies, to make investments in training, collaborate with initiatives like Hire Ottawa Catholic School Board Immigrant Ottawa, as well as share best At the Ottawa Catholic School practices.”

Board, 62 per cent of its English as a

Second Language (ESL) instructors are immigrants to Canada who represent a diversity of faiths and cultures. Every attempt is made to provide applicants with fair interview practices, recognize their credentials, and create a welcoming workplace environment that is respectful and supportive of individual cultural and religious beliefs.

Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre At the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre, almost 50 per cent of its client base represents immigrant populations, a notably higher percentage than elsewhere in Ottawa. PQCHC proactively recruits staff and volunteers that are representative of its client base by working with local immigrant agencies. As a result, about 39 per cent of its staff, and 67 per cent of its volunteers, are representative of the diverse population it serves.

About Hire Immigrants Ottawa Hire Immigrants Ottawa (HIO) is an initiative that brings together employers, immigrant agencies and stakeholders to enhance employers’ ability to access the talents of skilled immigrants in the Ottawa area. The initiative was launched in 2006 in response to a growing need to identify and address barriers faced by employers in the hiring and integration of skilled immigrants into the labour force. HIO is funded by the Government of Ontario and the Government of Canada.

#WhyOttawa is the place to be

By Ryan Gibson

The nickname “The City That Fun Forgot” has often been thrown around when outsiders, even locals, refer to the Nation’s Capital.

It’s a term so ubiquitous, a documentary film was even produced on the topic.

Now, a powerful presentation called #WhyOttawa bestows upon the city a new label: “The best place to work, play and grow.”

According to Bruce Lazenby, former tech executive and now CEO of Invest Ottawa, the goal was to create a tool where, “every person in Ottawa can tell our great story, so we are all singing from the same song sheet.”

Lazenby and his team spent nearly two years assembling all the pieces for the project, scouring research papers, websites, government statistics and even blogs to find every shred of evidence that Ottawa is, in fact, the preferred place to be. More than

65 facts have been married with rich visuals to create the final product, which members of the public can access and download.

The facts highlighted in the #WhyOttawa presentation range from education to economy to sustainability. Some are as follows: Ottawa has the country’s most educated workforce; Ottawa was voted most sustainable city in Canada; Ottawa has the second highest concentration of scientists and engineers in North America, Ottawa sees 2084 hours of sunshine a year; Ottawa is the least expensive city in Canada; and Ottawa is home to the country’s most educated workforce.

Lazenby said he has presented aspects of the presentation to international business leaders in countries such as China, India and Brazil, with the goal to showcase the tremendous benefits of doing business in Ottawa.

Now, he wants to arm Ottawa’s business community with the same knowledge as they compete for customers and employees.

“Cities across the globe are in a race to recruit the best talent and the best companies to their regions,” said Lazenby, “This makes the case for why Ottawa is a prime location for top talent.”

It’s a message that resonates with local business leaders like Tobi Lutke. The newly crowned CEO of the Year has grown his e-commerce company Shopify from modest beginnings to a Billion Dollar company, all in the backyard of the Parliament Buildings. Lutke said he has no plans to move the company’s head office from where it all began and praises Invest Ottawa’s new initiative.

“This presentation highlights the reasons why Ottawa is a wonderful place to build great companies,” said Lutke.

One of the project’s biggest supporters is Ottawa’s Mayor, Jim Watson. Watson, who is co-chair of Invest Ottawa’s Board of Directors, said he participated in the evolution of the #WhyOttawa messaging.

Invest Ottawa CEO Bruce Lazenby.

Photo: Invest Ottawa

“This presentation clearly explains why Ottawa is the best place in the country.”

For his part, Lazenby is challenging each person in Ottawa to share it just once over social media, highlighting one thing that surprised them about their own city.

“Every time I give that presentation I ask the crowd if they learned something they didn’t know about Ottawa – The hands always go up.”

For more information visit http://investottawa.ca/why-ottawa/

Community

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

www.OttawaStar.com • PAGE 5

Ottawa Versefest 2015 Opens

By Stephen Koster

P

Newly crowned world champion of slam poetry Ikenna Onyegbula. Photo by Stephen Koster

oets and poetry readers arrived at the Knox Presbyterian Church on Tuesday March 24 for the opening night of Versefest, an Ottawa-born poetry festival in its fifth year.

To a packed house in the small but acoustically satisfying venue located on Lisgar St., with echoes of a next-door choir practice, poets recited a mixture of spoken word, traditional, and musical poems in both English and French.

In the comforting, inclusive, if eccentric atmosphere known to those who frequent poetry circles, audience members enjoyed snacks and drinks, while browsing the featured poets’ books in the back of the room.

The 7 p.m. show featured the newly crowned world champion of slam poetry, Ikenna Onyegbula, also known by his poet alias, OpenSecret. Onyegbula is an Ottawa-based poet and arts educator, whose set featured the likes of poems that

won the 2014 World Poetry Slam in Paris.

Born in Nigeria, Onyegbula is a major participant and advocate of the Canadian slam poetry scene, and seemed relieved to be performing at an event that had no competitive edge, restarting one poem after momentarily forgetting the words, with the casualness of a seasoned performer.

His website cites Langston Hughes, the American poet and writer, and Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter, as his major influences, as well as a particular interest in Austrian composer Ludwig von Beethoven, to which one of Onyegbula’s more prominent pieces both features as subject, and is dedicated to.

The first set of the evening also featured the work of Nicole Brossard, recipient of two Governor General’s Awards; George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement winner, Daphne Marlatt; and Bluesfest alumni, Mehdi Hamdad.

A particularly memorable moment came from El Jones, a Halifax poet featured in the evening’s second set, who re-

cited a raunchy and fiery poem dedicated to female reproductive systems and the troubles they face. The poem once aired on national television, a surprising fact due to its use of words generally frowned upon by network censors.

“The night was an incredible success. The poets that we brought in tonight were just incredible, powerhouses, award-winners, so many decorated, incredibly impressive people sharing a really huge variety of different works,” said Versefest Festival Administrator, Avonlea Fotheringham, of the festival’s kickoff.

“I think there was really something for everyone tonight, I think that there was something to appeal to any kind of poetry interest, and I think that it’s a great microcosm for the rest of the festival.”

The Versefest festival runs annually in March. This year’s festival ran from Tuesday, March 24 to Monday, March 30th and featured its largest lineup so far, sixty-three poetry acts in all.

Carleton University opens dialogue about Islam

By Zoe Chong

Photo: Carleton Muslim Students’

Carleton University kicked off its annual Islam Awareness Week on Mar. 16, aiming to educate and create an open dialogue about Islam.

The Carleton Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), the largest club on campus, filled the atrium with posters and activities connected to this year’s theme of “mercy.”

“We’re here to share what we believe is one of the main cores of Islam, which is the concept of mercy to mankind,” said Amr Daouk, coordinator of the week-long event.

Daouk said every Islam Awareness Week aims to “dispel any misconceptions people might have and to engage in open dialogue – to have people learn about Islam from Muslims.”

As part of this goal, the MSA also hosted a panel discussion on Muslim narratives in the media and society. Panelist Aliaa Dakroury, a social communication professor at Saint Paul University, discussed the current debate surrounding women who wear the niqab and hijab.

This issue was thrown into the spotlight a few weeks ago when the Conservative government appealed a Federal Court ruling allowing a woman to wear a niqab while reciting the citizenship oath.

Dakroury said the hijab and niqab are falsely viewed as signs of oppression and that women are being victims to Muslim patriarchal laws. These interpretations are part of the neo-colonial fantasies about women.

“Muslim women in Canada are highly-educated and are consistent in the

Association

labour force, so we can’t simply say that they don’t have a choice and are being forced into wearing a hijab or niqab,” Dakroury said. “You are denying Muslim women the right to make a rational and personal choice about her body and how she can be viewed.”

She said this issue is part of a gendered Islamophobia that exists in society.

“The problem is people want to know about Islam but not about Muslims,” said Chelby Daigle, editor-inchief of Muslim Link, a Muslim community paper in Ottawa and a panellist at the event.

Daigle emphasized that Islam is the ideal while Muslims are the reality and people often mix up the two. She said she wants to see the media reporting on stories about regular Muslims in media rather than having the focus on their religion and the negative connotations often associated with it.

“The biggest misconceptions of Islam are that it’s a very violent religion and it doesn’t allow for mercy or caring for one another. We’re here to show that Islam actually teaches us to do the complete opposite of those things,” Daouk said.

Moojan Haidari, a Carleton student who attended the event, said the entire

week was a great way to raise awareness about Islam, a religion she did not know much about.

“There are so many misconceptions about Islam because all we know about it is from the news, which is often negative. This week has definitely helped to dispel some of those misconceptions on campus,” she said.

Daouk said the theme of “mercy” is about more than just his religion.

“What we wanted to do, more than just educate people, was to spread that concept of mercy—to be merciful and dispel any hate people might have to one another.

Opinion

PAGE 6 • www.OttawaStar.com

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

Travelling – the ultimate joy!

Editorial

Aftermath of Germanwings – can we legislate away tragedies?

I

n the immediate aftermath of the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, the sheer horror of the act remains nearly incomprehensible. It is difficult to imagine the suffering of the families and friends of the flight’s 150 passengers who perished when co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane into a rocky, remote slope in the French Alps. Details emerged from the flight’s “black box” indicated that the flight captain was locked out of the cockpit, frantically trying to get back in, as his copilot began his deliberate descent to crash.

The natural reaction to this tragic act of destruction is to start apportioning blame and plunge emotively into stricter legislative and regulatory measures in order to eradicate any future such actions taking place. However, while Mr. Lubitz was said to have “mental illness issues,” he was repeatedly able to pass the annual medical check-ups and found fit to fly per all health & safety measures implemented by the airline and regulators. In short, he was tested regularly and found to be of sound mental and physical nature – capable of the job to which he was entrusted.

The situation with the closest parallels to this crash took place in 1999, when EgyptAir flight 990, flying from New York to Cairo, disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean—with evidence indicating that the plane’s pilot had deliberately flown the plane into the sea. Following the incident, a reporting piece by William Langewiesche contained the following astute observation: “One of the world’s really important divides lies between nations that react well to accidents and nations that do not. This is as true for a confined and technical event like the crash of a single flight as it is for political or military disasters. The first requirement is a matter of national will, and never a sure thing: it is the intention to get the story right, wherever the blame may lie. The second requirement follows immediately upon the first, and is probably easier to achieve: it is the need for people in the aftermath to maintain even tempers and open minds.”

In a surprise announcement outside the House of Commons, Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt issued emergency directives, decreeing that effective immediately all Canadian airlines carrying passengers would be required to have two crew members in the cockpit at all time.

Around the time of her announcement, questions abounded about the practice of the locking of aircraft cabins with only one person inside. It is ironic to note that the locked cabin system came into place as a safety response to the threat of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. Never again, it was argued would terrorists be able to storm into the pilots’ cabin and use the aircraft as a flying bomb. However, it was this very practice which had the unintended consequence of allowing the pilot, Mr. Lubitz, to carry out this horrific act by letting him lock out his co-pilot. In short, it is very tempting, after every major sort of disaster, to think that “if only we had Different Rule X, or Different Piece of Equipment Y, then none of this would have happened.” There is a grave fallacy with such thinking – because in the end no system or policy is ever going to be foolproof and the effectiveness of its impact is going to rest on the judgment and trustworthiness of those very people using it.

International flight safety standards are some of the strongest ever developed, a policy mandated by the lives at stake. However, as a recent piece in the Atlantic stated: “Precisely because you have to allow override measures in case of emergency, you necessarily will leave a system vulnerable to abuse by someone in a position of trust. This is an insoluble dilemma.

In short, this is a terrible episode, all the worse-seeming because it was intentional. But even as we absorb its horror and extend deep sympathies, it is worth resisting the temptation to think that some new regulation or device can offer perfect protection against calculated malice. Unfortunately, none can.”

Editorial by Sid Arya

Ottawa Star

900 Greenbank Road, Suite 518, Ottawa ON K2J 4P6 • 613.627.3869 Every effort is made by the Ottawa Star to ensure that information published is accurate. The Ottawa Star reserves the right to report unsolicited material being sent through to the publication. Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication is strictly prohibited without prior consent of the publisher.

By Sangeetha Arya

“T

ravel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” ~Seneca I am writing this after returning from a short and sweet, whirlwind of a trip to India. There are few things more pleasant for me than rediscovering my roots and visiting friends and family. It helps me relive beautiful moments, renew relationships and friendships, and come back home to Ottawa fully recharged and rejuvenated.

It also offers new opportunity to see where you came from with a new perspective. I am reminded of Proust’s beautiful line about how the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes.

Although travel trips should be fun, often they have the unintended consequence of being very stressful and not being a holiday at all. It can get very stressful when you have to live in and out of suitcases whilst staying with a host of relatives.

Here are some tips that I have abided by to make my trips fun and relaxing.

Planning is very important and vital. Before your visit, plan and decide how much socializing you are prepared to do and who you can reasonably meet up with and let them know your schedule. Take a more relaxed and leisurely

Publisher: Chandrakanth Arya Chief Editor: Sangeetha Arya Editor: Ellen O’Connor

Production: Benoit Deneault Joey Sabourin Editorial Contact Editor@OttawaStar.com

approach to family visits and do not jampack it with too many events. Remember you cannot please everyone all the time.

Set up a “base camp.” What I mean by this is base yourselves in one place and let everyone come to you. Try to arrange a single get-together where you have many of your family and friends come to one place. This can help you avoid running around all over the place and feeling tires and exhausted.

Don’t overdo it. Reduce your holiday stress by not overdoing it or being over stressed. Pace yourself well. Long before the family gatherings actually happen, decide on some limits and stick to them.

Manage your expectations. Do not place too many unrealistic expectations on your family or friends because when they are not met it may break your heart. Remember, time changes people and relationships change over time. Also be prepared for the fact that just as your life has moved on, their lives have gone on without you.

Although this can sometimes make you feel like an outsider, you have to brace yourself to accept the reality and let go.

Be a good listener. Be patient and listen to what they have to say. You may want to talk to them about how great your life is and how successful you have been, but for a moment, just pause and lend them your ears. After all, all they need from you is your acknowledgement that they matter.

You will be surprised at what a difference that can make to your relationships!

Finally, I would like to say do not worry about what can go wrong but think about what can go right and enjoy the ride.

Sales info@ottawastar.com Distribution COMET 2000 Printed by: Winchester Print & Stationery www.winchesterprint.com

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

Opinion

www.OttawaStar.com • PAGE 7

Baloney Meter: Tories say niqab ban needed to prove citizenship applicant’s ID

By Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

O

TTAWA—“I think for the citizenship ceremony, someone needs to identify themselves. We need to know who they are.’’ -Conservative MP Costas Menegakis, parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship and immigration.

Debate has been raging on Parliament Hill over the niqab worn by some Muslim women ever since Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared last month that it’s “offensive’’ to cover one’s face while taking the oath of Canadian citizenship.

Since Jason Kenney, then immigration minister, first issued a policy directive on the subject in December 2011, the government has variously argued that banning face covering garments during citizenship ceremonies is necessary to ensure wouldbe citizens actually recite the oath and to reflect the Canadian values of openness, transparency and gender equality at the moment they join the Canadian family.

A new justification arose second week of March amid opposition charges that the government is deliberately stoking prejudice against Muslims to advance its anti-terrorist agenda: the niqab ban is simply about verifying the identity of those who would be Canadian citizens.

That argument was advanced by Conservative MP Costas Menegakis, parliamentary secretary to the citizenship and immigration minister, and echoed by at least one cabinet minister, International Development Minister Christian Paradis.

But they seemed oblivious to the fact that prospective citizens are required to provide multiple proofs of their identity - including removal of face coverings, in private, in front of a citizenship official -

before they get to the final, ceremonial step in the process: taking the oath. And they’re required to provide one more proof after the ceremony—their signature on a certificate affirming that they’ve taken the oath.

Spoiler Alert: The Canadian Press Baloney Meter project is a dispassionate examination of political statements culminating in a ranking of accuracy on a scale of “no baloney’’ to “full of baloney’’ (complete methodology below).

This one earns a rating of “full of baloney’’—given all other proofs of identity required in the citizenship process, compelling people to show their faces while reciting the oath does appear—in the words of the Federal Court judge who struck down the niqab ban—to be “superfluous.’’

THE FACTS The current controversy was triggered by a Feb. 6 ruling—which the government has vowed to appeal—by Justice Keith Boswell in the case of Zunera Ishaq. Ishaq challenged Kenney’s policy directive that she must remove her niqab while reciting the oath of citizenship at a public ceremony.

Until that point, she had willingly complied with all the other requirements of the citizenship process.

Among other things, citizenship candidates are required to provide pertinent immigration documents; proof of language proficiency; education records; copies of the biographical pages (which include name, photo, address, date of birth) of all passports and travel documents; two official photos in which “full facial features’’ are visible; and two pieces of personal identification, at least one of which must have a photo.

The RCMP and CSIS run checks on all applicants to ensure there are no

criminal or security reasons to preclude citizenship.

Before taking the citizenship test, Ishaq had agreed to remove her niqab so that her identity could be verified - in accordance with the government’s citizenship policy manual, which stipulates that the verification at this stage should be done in private by a female official.

But she balked at removing her veil— which she considered a religious obligation—at the mandatory, public oath-taking ceremony.

THE EXPERTS In the court case, federal government lawyers made a number of arguments— none of which related to the need to verify one’s identity. For that matter, none echoed Harper’s insistence that the niqab should be banned during citizenship ceremonies because it is contrary to Canadian values and “rooted in a culture that is anti-women.’’

They argued that Kenney’s policy directive is not mandatory but just a non-binding guideline that citizenship judges are free to ignore. And they maintained the policy was created due to concerns that some citizenship candidates were not actually reciting the oath and, therefore, that their mouths needed to be visible during the ceremony.

Justice Boswell concluded, however, that the wording of the directive in the citizenship ceremony policy manual left no discretion to citizenship judges, stipulating that candidates are “required’’ to remove face coverings and that the citizenship certificate is NOT to be presented’’ if a candidate refuses.

Boswell noted that the regulations require oath takers to subsequently sign a certificate certifying that the oath has been taken, counter-signed by the official who adminis-

tered the oath. Given that, he concluded that requiring a person to be seen to be taking the verbal oath does appear to be superfluous.’’

Furthermore, he said it would make it impossible not just for a niqab-wearing woman to obtain citizenship but also for a mute person or a silent monk.’’

I agree with the applicant (Ishaq) that it is the candidate’s signature beneath this written oath or affirmation of citizenship, rather than visual confirmation of the candidate saying the oath, that is the only proof needed that a candidate has sworn or affirmed the oath of citizenship,’’ Boswell concluded.

THE VERDICT Whatever the merits of the government’s arguments about Canadian values and gender equality, the contention that face coverings must be banned in order to verify identity does not hold up, given the multiple other ways in which citizenship applicants must prove their identity.

For these reasons, the statement by Menegakis is “full of baloney.’’

METHODOLOGY The Baloney Meter is a project of The Canadian Press that examines the level of accuracy in statements made by politicians. Each claim is researched and assigned a rating on the following scale: No baloney—the statement is completely accurate.

A little baloney—the statement is mostly accurate but more information is required.

Some baloney—the statement is partly accurate but important details are missing.

A lot of baloney—the statement is mostly inaccurate but contains elements of truth.

Full of baloney—the statement is completely inaccurate.

Scholars says low carbon economy within reach

By Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

D

ozens of Canada’s top scholars are urging a sweeping remake of how the country produces and uses its energy in a necessary effort to wean itself off fossil fuels.

But don’t worry, they say. This will hardly hurt at all.

“The main theme of this is to create a positive vision of the future,’’ said University of Lethbridge Prof. Bryson Brown.

“A 30-year time frame for getting really low with our carbon emissions is not as dramatic a transformation as some people may fear.’’

Brown is one of 59 scientists, economists, engineers, sociologists, architects and philosophers from all 10 provinces who collaborated on a report released Wednesday.

It was developed to inform public debate

for December’s climate meeting in Paris and proposed ambitious targets.

Canada needs a price on carbon, the report suggests. Emissions should be cut by up to 28 per cent over 2005 levels by 2025 and by 80 per cent by 2050. By 2035, Canada’s entire electricity grid should be completely low-carbon. The good news, the scholars write, is that we’re most of the way there.

“This is not a big step,’’ said James Byrne, a University of Lethbridge climatologist.

More than 75 per cent of Canada’s electricity grid is already low-carbon, he said.

All that it would take to go the rest of the way is better transmission capacity between adjoining provinces and some backstopping by renewable sources such as wind or solar.

“It doesn’t have to be a national transmission grid,’’ he said. “We really do not have to build the C.P.R. across the country.’’

The report brims with other proposals.

Minimize energy use in building designs.

Electrify public vehicles such as transit buses.

Link major cities with high-speed rail. Upgrade fuel standards. Encourage car-sharing.

“It’s going to cost us about one per cent of GDP,’’ said Byrne. “But it’s going to save us four or five times that in health and environmental costs.’’

Many of the ideas already exist elsewhere in Canada or the world. Applying them nationwide, said Byrne, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to more than cover growth areas such as Alberta’s oilsands.

“If Alberta was to jump on board with renewable development in the south, it would create tremendous economic diversification. And that greenhouse-gas reduction would probably cover our carbon footprint from the oilsands.’’

Low-carbon policies should be enacted as soon as possible, the report urges. Countries around the world are reducing their carbon dependence, from Europe to China to the United States. And it’ll happen sooner than anybody thinks, Byrne said.

“We are actually going to decarbonize awfully quickly.’’

And, said Brown, it’s not something to fear.

“Energy systems become part of the background and we take how they work for granted and it’s hard to imagine changing them. But, historically, there have been massive changes in energy use and how energy is produced.

“Part of the idea here is to show that it’s not beyond us to make these kinds of changes. It’s the kind of thing that has happened.’’

Community

PAGE 8 • www.OttawaStar.com

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

Geek is chic: App-development program inspires young women to take up tech

By Ellen O’Connor

T

echnovation1: Three members from Team 5Kind work with their mentor to develop a business plan for their app that connects the community to local charities. Photo: Diana Cianciusi Group Shot: Mentors, students and Technovation coordinators as well as some city councillors at Carleton University during Technovation’s first session.

Photographer Chris Roussakis.

When you hear the words “programmer,” “computer science” or “tech industry” what image do you conjure up?

A man hunched over a computer as the screen furiously fills with complex codes and binary numbers? Or maybe a geeky middle-aged guy, still living in his parents’ basement, yelling into a headset as he moves between three laptop screens?

Now what if, instead, the image that came to mind was a diverse workplace of innovation and creativity, of working together in all facets to solve a problem, and most importantly, an image that puts women in the forefront of the technology industry.

An international program called Technovation is working to make this image a reality by educating girls and women on how to use technology to solve real world problems, and in turn, encourage them to pursue a future career in the maledominated STEM fields—and it’s happening for the first time right here in Ottawa.

“The idea of the program is to encourage and inspire girls to pursue technology careers and technology degrees as the numbers of women in technology are pretty low,” said Jennifer Francis, regional ambassador of Technovation Ottawa and board member of the Ottawa chapter of Women Powering Technology, the non-profit organization that brought Technovation to the nation’s capital.

According to Francis, 45 per cent of female high school graduates have the prerequisites to pursue post-secondary studies in science and math, but women make up only 23 per cent of engineering grads and 30 per cent of computer science grads.

Furthermore, in the workforce they hold less than 25 per cent of the STEM jobs.

“If you can increase the pipeline and get more women in to technology, it will become more friendly to women and the issues later on will start to disappear,” said Francis.

The 12-week program kicked off mid-

Mentors, students and Technovation coordinators as well as some city councillors at Carleton University during Technovation’s first session.

Photographer Chris Roussakis.

January with ten teams of five girls from high schools around Ottawa. From the beginning of February until the submission deadline of April 16, the teams must each identify a problem facing the community, create an app to solve it, code the app, build a company, launch the app and then pitch their business plan to experts in the field.

“I have to admit, I signed up for this program on a whim; I’m not a student who was interested in app design since birth and has been programming ever since. I just liked the idea of being able to come up with and create something that could help our community,” said 17-year-old Doris Feng, a student at Merivale High School and member of the team Women With Ambition.

Feng and her team are designing an app aimed a connecting high school students to volunteer opportunities in the city so students can complete their required 40 hours and event planners can reach out to students more efficiently.

The teams gather every Wednesday night at the headquarters of either Shopify or IBM, corporate sponsors of the program, to work through the Technovation curriculum. Masters degree students from Carleton University teach the units, which cover topics such as market research, usercentred design, entrepreneurship, effective presentations and pitch coaching.

“My views of working in the technology sector have changed, since it feels like something anyone can be a part of, whereas it was a distant idea before,” said Feng.

“I came in with the notion that we would be coding during the first week, but it turns out much of the development takes place off screen, with many hours dedicated to brainstorming, surveying users, drawing a paper prototype, and mulling over the ideas with team members.”

Each team has two or three assigned mentors whom are successful women from various positions in the technology industry. They provide guidance and leadership throughout the different stages of the project to help the students overcome obstacles, keep them on track with their app and set them up for success.

“You might think that the area the students need most guidance in is with the technical skills needed to code the

Three members from Team 5Kind work with their mentor to develop a business plan for their app that connects the community to local charities. Photo: Diana Cianciusi

app, but that is not the case,” said mentor Diana Cianciusi, legal counsel with IBM Analytics. “While not everyone on the team has taken computer science in school, the program is structured so that anyone can participate, it’s not necessary to have coding skills.”

Cianciusi added that not every mentor is a software developer, but rather come from diverse industry backgrounds.

“At IBM, we’ve found that diversity of thought drives greater innovation. It’s that broad cross section of perspectives and skill sets that contribute to a well rounded experience that really mirrors what happens in a technology company.”

After the apps are submitted midApril, an Ottawa regional contest will be held to determine the local winner and the top 10 teams globally will go to California to pitch their app to judges from leading tech companies. The top team wins $10,000 and a chance to develop their app.

Last year, over 45 countries and 1,500 girls participated in Technovation and 362 apps were created. The winning app called Health in a Drop was designed by a team in Moldova and helps people find clean drinking water in an area where 80 per cent lack access. The winning app of 2013, an attendance check-in app for schools, was developed by a New Yorkbased team and is now currently in use.

Although the program is just over halfway done, it has already helped to build the knowledge—and self-confidence—of the participants as well as shape some career paths.

“The emphasis on empowering women to step into the technology sector was something that drew my attention— there are so many opportunities in this line of work, but it is a very male-dominated field,” said 16-year-old Adrianna Chang, a student at Merivale High School who hopes to study computer science.

“I think that it’s amazing that this program is available and that we women can display our range of talents and abilities.

It has been an incredible experience so far, and has definitely encouraged me to pursue a career in the technology sector.”

Michelle Yin, a 17-year-old student from Longfields-Davidson Heights Secondary School and team member of 5Kind plans to study Food Science and Nutrition next year at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and said she is now definitely considering a career that combines Food Science and Technology.

“Being involved with a career in technology can land you a really good job, and it’s highly in demand,” said Yin. “I may not have an impressive background in technology, but working in technology doesn’t actually require that; it’s quite open and flexible. That’s what I like.”

Canada

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

www.OttawaStar.com • PAGE 9

Of sandwiches, phone calls and stamps Senate bristles under microscope Continued from page 1

also the level of access accorded to auditor general Michael Ferguson’s staff - some 40 auditors in any given month, his office said.

They’ve been able to delve into the emails of senators, and has cell-phone records.

For example, the auditor general’s office has been cross-referencing daily expense claims with activities, to verify if the upper chamber really needed to pay for a lunch or whether one was served in a meeting or on a plane trip.

The angst has been building steadily in the Senate as the final report draws closer.

Some have decided to fork over the cash before the report comes out $185,677 was reimbursed to the public purse by unnamed individuals in the 201314 fiscal year alone, not including monies returned by embattled senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Mac Harb.

Many senators complain bitterly that the auditor general’s office has not shown a good understanding of what constitutes Senate business, and the daily work they do.

Several spoke to The Canadian Press on condition of anonymity—in many cases senators were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement when the audit began.

One senator complained about a perceived inequality built into the process: senators interviewed early in the process could hypothetically be treated more harshly than those scrutinized later, as the auditor general’s staff become educated in the rules and rhythms of the upper chamber. “(The auditors) didn’t have the first clue about parliamentary business and public life in general,’’ said one Liberal senator. “They are bean counters, and they work in a very narrow environment.’’

Said a Conservative: “They look for a job description—well, a senator’s job description is public service. I don’t know what I will be doing tomorrow, it depends on what issue the public is engaged in, who comes through my door, who asks for advice.’’

Conservative Sen. Scott Tannas offered a small window into the tension last month, when Ferguson appeared before a Senate committee on a completely unrelated topic.

“I’m curious if you could ... tell us about the thought process that brought you to feel that you, and we, would be comfortable with your presence here,’’ Tannas said as an awkward silence settled into the room.

A major source of anxiety is over the type of travel that senators do on a weekly basis. How much time do they spend in their Parliament Hill office and why? What does normal travel look like in their home provinces?

An update of the travel policy was instituted in the summer of 2012, with an appendix noting that “speaking engagements or attendance at fundraising events other than those organized by the Senate’’ did not qualify for travel funding.

But what of the political events they might have attended prior to that guideline being introduced?

Sen. David Tkachuk, the former Conservative chairman of the all-important internal economy, budgets and administration committee, noted in an

RCMP interview for the Wallin case that “if a senator was invited to an event as a senator, then that becomes Senate business.’’

Fellow committee member Sen. George Furey, a Liberal, said that “when a Senate event and a personal event are

planned on the same day, it is a grey area for submission of an expense claim.’’

All of this confusion will also be hashed out in the upcoming trial of Sen. Mike Duffy, which involves several charges linked directly to his travel and living expenses.

Massage Therapy is for Everyone Young or old, we all benefit from the healing power of touch.

We typically have same-day appointment availability.

Special 10% OFF* Our Services: · · · · · · · · ·

Relaxation Massage Therapy Hot Stone Massage Craniosacral Therapy Prenatal Massage Therapy Bowen Therapy Reiki Massage Thai Massage Indian Massage Reflexology

Reserve for your appointment at AlignYourBody.com or call 613 Covered by most Health Insurance Companies

*This offer is valid at Barrhaven branch. New clients only.

ma s s ag e t h era p y

3780 Fallowfield Rd, near Fallowfield and Greenbank intersection in Barrhaven/Ottawa

825 6060

PAGE 10 • www.OttawaStar.com

Canada

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

Federal politicians accuse each other of race baiting ‘dog whistle politics’ Continued from page 1

“Fear is dangerous thing,’’ Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau opined in a speech in which he accused Harper of deliberately fuelling prejudice against Muslims as part of his tough-on-terrorism agenda.

“Once stoked, whether by a judge from the bench or a prime minister with a dog whistle, there is no way to predict where it will end.’’

Defence Minister Jason Kenney shot back via Twitter, calling Trudeau’s remarks “particularly odious given that his Ontario Liberal friends ran a dog- whistle campaign against Muslim schools in 2007’’—an obscure reference to an ill-fated provincial Conservative campaign promise to extend public funding to schools of all religious faiths.

Dog whistle is a term that hasn’t been used much in Canadian politics until now but it is bound to be heard more frequently as politicians count down to the October federal election and ratchet up their rhetoric.

WHAT IS DOGWHISTLE POLITICS? Like a real dog whistle which produces sound at a high frequency that can be heard by canines but not by humans, dog-whistle politics refers to the use of code words that go unheard or unremarked by most people but which convey a particular—usually nasty, racially tinged—message to a target audience.

WHERE DID IT COME FROM? The term “dog-whistle politics’’ reportedly originated in Australia in the mid-1990s when Prime Minister John Howard—incidentally, one of Harper’s political mentors—was accused of using words like “un-Australian’’ and “illegals’’ in a veiled pitch for support from racist, white Australians.

Howard’s campaign manager was Lynton Crosby, often described as the “master of dog-whistle politics.’’ Crosby introduced Britain to his brand of politics in 2005, creating election messaging for the Conservative party that focused on hot button issues like immigration and crime under the slogan, “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’’ Among the messages: “It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration.’’

Crosby went on to become U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s chief political strategist.

HOW IS IT USED? Likely no country has employed dog-whistle politics longer or with more gusto than the United States. Indeed, in a book published last year - Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class—law professor Ian Haney Lopez traced the practice back to the 1960s, long before the term was coined in Australia.

Fear is dangerous thing,’’ Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau opined in a speech in which he accused Harper of deliberately fuelling prejudice against Muslims as part of his tough-onterrorism agenda. Photo: Wikipedia

It started, he wrote, with Barry Goldwater’s failed presidential bid in 1964, when the Republican ran on a platform of “states rights’’—an innocuous sounding phrase, which in the context of the racial tensions at the time, was meant to be read as support for states resisting federal orders to integrate their schools.

It continued, according to Haney Lopez, in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign, when the former actor told stories about “Cadillac-driving ‘welfare

Light years ahead Tech turbo charges extreme high school science fairs Continued from page 1

The 17-year-old is doing work at a master’s level of education while in attendance at Pinetree Secondary School in Coquitlam, B.C., and she’s not the only high school student whose science smarts surpass expectations.

Pang is one of 12 Canadian students selected to showcase her research in May at the world’s most prestigious science fair, among an array of high-calibre projects that leapfrog pencils-andPetri-dish learning.

Revolutions in education, spurred by technology and business needs, have coupled with swift and easy access to near limitless information over the Internet, say educators. Development of what’s possible has accelerated not only for professionals, but young adults who perhaps haven’t yet decided what they want to be when they grow up.

“The Internet has been a big help.

You can just punch in whatever you want, right? Search on Google Scholar,’’ said Pang, adding she believes age doesn’t really factor into what someone can accomplish.

“Well, I began when I was 13. You’ve just got to try, and not give up.’’

Five students from B.C. and seven from Ontario will compete on Team Canada at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair from May 10 to 15 in Pittsburgh, Pa. Other projects by Canadian students include a disposable device that tests for HIV in 60 minutes, a system that reduces front impacts for bicycles, and a method for curbing the transmission of disease in airplanes.

Each of the students was selected for the team by Youth Science Canada after participating in a science fair at the national level.

“There is a distinct change in the quality and the focus of the work,’’ said Patti Leigh, a teacher who founded the Science Fair Foundation B.C. in 1983.

Momentum has ramped up in terms of the level of projects produced, in tandem with the shift in prominence given to certain subjects, she said. Thirty years ago, the focus was on life sciences and biology, whereas technology and health sciences are now at the fore.

Duncan Stothers, 17, said he would definitely like to think he’s helping push the boundaries of what’s possible.

The Vancouver teen, who attends St. George’s School, made the team based on his invention—a modified bike frame that’s up to 90 per cent safer in a front collision. His design tweaks technology hardly altered over the past 100 years.

“Some researchers push the boundaries in medicine, which helps the engineers live longer. And then the engineers might

queens’ and ‘strapping young bucks’ buying T-bone steaks with food stamps’’— veiled insinuations that lazy blacks were abusing social welfare programs.

More recently, the use of President Barack Obama’s middle name—Hussein—and demands to see his birth certificate have been deplored as dog whistles aimed at planting the notion that he is not really an American but a foreign-born Muslim and possible terrorist sympathizer.

create a safer automobile, which might help the biologists live more safely,’’ he said.

“All these fields feed off each other, and I think that’s what creates the accelerating rate at which we’re learning things.

“But, the more the boundaries are pushed, the more questions come up as well.’’

Education Prof. Don Krug said the evolution of science fairs can be partially attributed to students’ access to new content.

Wireless communication has also influenced how students learn, he said.

They’re much less interested in working alone, and even collaborating with just their teacher has gone by the wayside.

“They’re collaborating with other people who are out there that they can contact and ask questions,’’ said the University of British Columbia professor in the department of curriculum and pedagogy.

“It might be their peers, but it might be other people they find in a chat room or online in some type of a forum that has specific information on what they’re looking for. “(It’s) the idea that we are smarter together than we are by ourselves.’’

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

Canada

www.OttawaStar.com • PAGE 11

Quebec to go it alone after Supreme Court orders end to gun registry data

By Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press

O

TTAWA—Quebec will forge ahead with its own gun registry after losing out in a Supreme Court decision that could have future political consequences in the province.

The high court ruled March 27 that the federal government has the right to order the destruction of gun-registry data that Quebec has coveted for years.

The issue sparked rare consensus among Quebec political parties as well as in broad swaths of the province - a unity that was reflected in the three Supreme Court justices from Quebec all being part of the dissenting minority.

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcomed the 5-4 ruling, it remains to be seen what impact it might have on his Conservatives’ goal of winning more seats in Quebec in this year’s federal election.

“The decision to destroy the data is not acceptable in terms of managing public funds or in terms of co-operative federalism,’’ said Quebec Public Security Minister Lise Theriault.

“There will be a Quebec registry. We will proceed step by step so we respect the ability of Quebecers to pay. We are convinced that the use of such a tool on a daily basis is necessary to facilitate investigations and police interventions and to comply with court orders prohibiting the possession of weapons.’’

She estimated the cost of creating a registry at $30 million—a figure she acknowledged could fluctuate depending on its scope.

The Supreme Court ruled that destroying the data was a lawful exercise of Parliament’s legislative power to make criminal law under the Constitution, firmly upholding the notion the government is free to enact policies it deems appropriate as long as it operates within the law.

“In our view, the decision to dismantle the long-gun registry and destroy the data that it contains is a policy choice that Parliament was constitutionally entitled to make,’’ wrote Thomas Cromwell and Andromache Karakastanis for the majority, a group that included Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

Speaking near Quebec City, where he was making an unrelated announcement, Harper reiterated his long-held view the gun registry was obsolete.

“Yes, we have abolished one registry,’’ he said in Saint-Apollinaire. “But what we have in Canada already is permitting. In other words, we have registration of all gun owners, already. We have registration of all handguns, already. We have registration of all restricted weapons, already.

“Our view—and I think it’s been borne out by the facts—is that we simply don’t need another very expensive and not effective registry.

“What we have needed are severe, strong and more effective penalties for people who commit criminal acts using guns, and that’s what we’ve done.’’

A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said in an email “the data will be deleted in the very near future.’’

The Liberal government created the gun registry in 1998 in response to the murder of 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole polytechnique in 1989. They were targeted by a gunman because of their gender.

The Harper government abolished the registry for long guns in 2011 as part of a long-standing campaign promise—a

controversial political move that also emphasized Canada’s rural-urban divide.

Liberal MP Stephane Dion, the party’s intergovernmental affairs critic, chastised the Conservatives for not allowing Quebec to keep the data.

“From a political perspective, I would agree that it’s very bad federalism to not cooperate with the province in giving the data,’’ he said. “It would not have been difficult for the Conservative government to do so.’’

Francoise Boivin, the New Democrats’ justice critic, said it showed Harper and the Conservatives were not serious when they promised Quebec “a new kind of federalism’’ in 2006.

Wendy Cukier founded the Coalition for Gun Control after the 1989 Montreal massacre and became a leading firearms registration crusader.

Standing in the vast marble foyer of the Supreme Court, Cukier said she was “terribly disappointed’’ that a “punitive’’ government policy had cleared its last legal hurdle.

“The Supreme Court has made it clear that the decision to destroy the data is a political decision,’’ she said.

“You can track a package you’re sending from here to anywhere in the world, and yet we will not have information on who owns guns in the province of Quebec.’’

PAGE 12 • www.OttawaStar.com

Canada

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

CRTC unveils proposal to make TV service contracts more consumer friendly the content that meets their needs and tools to navigate a dynamic marketplace,’’ Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said.

“They are now in the driver’s seat.’’

The CRTC received more than 13,000 submissions from individuals, interest groups and industry players since it launched a wide-ranging consultation process called Let’s Talk TV in 2013.

From the get-go, the commission made clear its decisions would move regulation in a more consumer-friendly direction, away from favouring the commercial marketplace.

It should come as no surprise, said John Lawford of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, given statements made

by Blais when he was named by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to head up the regulatory body in June 2012.

“When he was first appointed, he did a number of interviews and quite clearly said ‘I’m here to do consumer stuff’,’’ said Lawford. It’s a welcome change for consumer advocacy groups like OpenMedia, which have been encouraging a change in direction since the days when former CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein declared in a public hearing that

“citizen comments and concerns are out of scope’’ with the regulator’s mandate.

“There’s definitely been a cultural change,’’ said OpenMedia campaign coordinator Josh Tabish. “That being said, they still have a long way to go to improve things.’’

The TV code proposal follows on other recent CRTC directives that prohibited 30-day cancellation policies and required cable and satellite services to offer individual channel selection on top of a trimmeddown, lower-cost basic TV service.

The regulator also announced a dramatic overhaul of what some critics had complained were protectionist rules governing the amount of Canadian television programming.

The CRTC said last month it was eliminating the 55-per-cent daytime quota for Canadian programs that local TV stations must broadcast, but maintaining rules requiring that broadcasters spend to produce Canadian content.

Here are five things you need to know about the CRTC’s decision on March 19 to require service providers to offer socalled “skinny basic’’ TV packages: —The basic service, coming into effect a year from now, must include local

channels in each market, education and legislature channels and at least four U.S.based network channels. Consumers will then be able to supplement this with either individual channels through a pick-andpay model, or small, “reasonably-priced,’’ bundled channel packages —The trimmed-down service will cost a maximum of $25 a month, but could be reduced further by service providers. That doesn’t include taxes or the cost of a set-top box needed to receive the TV signals.

—The cost of basic TV used to be regulated, with prices averaging between $18 and $19 a month, until prices were fully deregulated in 1999.

—It’s not known how much consumers will save. Some critics warn that TV services could actually cost more, on average, if consumers have to pay higher prices for individual channels.

Service providers also won’t have to offer a choice of either a la carte channels or bundles until Dec. 2016.

—CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais acknowledges that many people will likely lose their jobs as a result of the changes as TV channels that are currently struggling to stay afloat go off the air.

Canada finally fills 2013 Syrian refugee promise

refugees from 3,300 applicants had arrived in Canada by the middle of March, despite the fast-tracking of applications, according to information tabled in the House of Commons this week in response to a question by the NDP. So to meet the 2013 promise, the government raised its own share of the burden and have resettled 435 people.

“Citizenship and Immigration Canada continues to work diligently to resettle some of the world’s most at-risk people, but local conditions, security concerns and logistical challenges that are outside of CIC’s control can contribute to processing challenges that can vary throughout the commitment,’’ spokesperson Remi Lariviere said in a statement.

“CIC maintains flexibility within the refugee resettlement levels to meet our goals.’’

The breakdown for the new commitment will fluctuate, he said.

“We are committed to fulfilling our commitment of resettling an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next three years and we are well on track to do this,’’ he said, though declined to provided details of claims processed or accepted to date.

Since 2009, more than 20,000 Iraqi refugees have also been resettled in Canada, which the government says is the largest resettlement program in more than 25 years. A further 3,000 have been promised resettlement by the end of this year.

The humanitarian crisis in the refugee camps in Iraq and in Syria is exacer-

bating the conflict there, said Dr. Saren Azer, a B.C. physician involved in aid work in Syria.

“The disillusionment, the resentment that is within the refugee population has led to intense engagement and emotional involvement in the situation,’’ he said in Ottawa on Wednesday.

“There is a great deal of disillusionment. They feel forgotten, they feel they have not received the necessary attention from the international community.’’

The opposition parties are calling for Canada to increase its humanitarian efforts in connection with the announcement this week of an expansion of the current military campaign in Iraq to Syria. Thus far, the government has not announced any new aid packages in connection with the extended mission.

Defence Minister Jason Kenney said Wednesday, however, the government is exploring options.

According to UN figures, Canada is currently the fifth largest country donor in Iraq, having contributed over $64.7 million in humanitarian aid. Canada has also contributed over $700 million to relief efforts within Syria, making it the sixth largest country donor, according to UN figures.

At a pledging conference in Kuwait next week, the United Nations will be asking for $8.4 billion from global donors to help alleviate the affects of five years of civil war in Syria which have left over 200,000 people dead and sent millions fleeing the country.

By Terry Pedwell, The Canadian Press

O

TTAWA—Canada’s broadcast regulator issued its final thrust March 26 in a series of moves aimed at positioning consumers “in the driver’s seat,’’ ahead of the country’s broadcasters, offering up a draft code that would require cable and satellite companies to make customer contracts easier to understand.

Broadcast service providers would also have to more clearly spell out fees and policies surrounding early contract cancellations and adding or removing individual channels under the code.

In issuing the proposed code, the CRTC also said it expects closed captioning services for Canadians with disabilities, already available through regular television programming, to be included free of charge when those programs are broadcast online and on mobile devices.

And it said described video - a talkover service for visually impaired viewers must be expanded, with a requirement that all programs aired between 7 and 11 p.m. include the service by September 2019.

“Canadians will have access to compelling television content, the freedom to choose

By Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press

O

TTAWA—The wars in Syria and Iraq are pushing asylum claims to their highest global levels in 22 years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Thursday.

Syrians made 150,000 applications for refugee status to 44 countries in 2014, making them the largest group that year, and Iraqis accounted for 68,700, the UNHCR said in its global trends report.

The situation mirrors that facing the globe after the Balkan wars of the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of people sought refuge, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.

“Our response has to be just as generous now as it was then - providing access to asylum, resettlement opportunities and other forms of protection for the people fleeing these terrible conflicts,’’ he said in a statement.

Syrians and Iraqis actively making refugee claims are on top of the hundreds of thousands of refugees from those two countries the UN has been seeking to resettle around the world for the last several years.

As of the middle of this month, Canada had only just met its a 2013 commitment to resettle 1,300 refugees from Syria—1306 are now in the country—and officials say work is now underway on fulfilling the next pledge to resettle 10,000 over three years.

Who will be responsible for bringing most of those refugees to Canada is unclear.

When the government made the announcement of the new pledge in January, it suggested that 60 per cent would be brought to Canada by private groups and they would resettle the rest, but since then they have not committed to hard figures.

Given that there was no consultation with the private sector prior to the announcement, the government really isn’t in a position to know how much demand will come from private groups, said Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

“What they’re thinking is well, they’ll see, if private sponsors do a large portion of it, well, great, the government doesn’t have to do very much,’’ she said.

The goal for the 2013 pledge had been a similar 60/40 split, but it didn’t work out as planned.

Only 871 privately sponsored Syrian

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

World

www.OttawaStar.com • PAGE 13

European Union looks to step up migrant deportation to counter ‘vain promise’ of good life

By Lorne Cook, The Associated Press

B

RUSSELS—The European Union is looking to step up the deportation of migrants as part of a drive to counter the impression that asylum-seekers will enjoy a good life once they make it to Europe.

An internal EU document on action to deal with the migrant influx, obtained by The Associated Press, urges member countries to “take action to curb the level of expectation’’ of wouldbe asylum seekers.

“The swift return of migrants could serve as an example to counter the vain promise that migrants will see an immediate improvement in their lives,’’ said the EU presidency text, obtained ahead

of a two-day summit of EU leaders held starting March 19.

More than 276,000 migrants entered the EU illegally last year, many fleeing poverty or conflict. Strife-torn Libya is the main jumping off point for people headed to Europe, and governments are increasingly concerned that extremists are also making the Mediterranean crossing hidden in refugee boats.

Also on the summit agenda was the EU’s action to support the U.N. mediation process in Libya to encourage the formation of a government of national unity and bring some measures of stability there.

The subject of enforced migrant returns has been highly controversial in Europe. In 2009, refugee groups pro-

tested against joint flights organized by Britain and France to send migrants back to Afghanistan.

But European border agencies have been widely criticized for failing to cope with the migrant influx, and the EU has begun to look at options abroad like sending immigration officials to embassies to pre-screen people in the countries they leave or transit.

The new measures are yet more evidence of the EU’s desire to shift the onus for illegal immigration more onto countries in Africa, notably Libya’s neighbours.

The document said that “more efforts are needed with regard to certain transit countries’’, including Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia. No details were pro-

vided about how the EU return policy might now be enforced.

Italy, which has borne the brunt of the migrant wave, urged its EU partners last week to set up migrant reception centres in northern Africa as efforts to beef up the Frontex borders agency falter. A test phase has already been planned for Niger, and Tunisia said this week that it was willing to discuss the EU plan.

The number of asylum applications in the EU has more than doubled since 2006 to almost 450,000 in 2013, according to the most recent official EU figures. Just over a third of those applications were accepted for humanitarian reasons or because they faced persecution in their home countries.

Aspirations of new literates in small town India push regional language newspaper boom

By Nirmala George, The Associated Press

N

EW DELHI—Rewatiraman Shukla, a young office worker living in a slum on New Delhi’s outskirts, can’t remember a time when his family did not have a newspaper delivered to their home.

Even when home was a single room in a congested tenement without indoor plumbing. Even when his father was working long hours as the single breadwinner to provide the bare necessities.

The newspaper was what Shukla’s father believed would open the world of opportunity for his three children.

And now, families like his are firing the exceptional growth of regional newspapers in India.

At a time when scores of American newspapers have downsized or shifted to online editions, the Indian newspaper industry is booming. Media analysts say the regional language newspapers are expected to clock double-digit figures in the coming decade as millions of new literates choose newspapers as their primary source of information.

“Newspapers, especially in the regional languages, are a fast-growing space in India right now. We are bang in the middle of it, so we are very excited,’’ said Pradeep Dwivedi of Dainik Bhaskar, or Daily Sun, the most popular Hindi newspaper in the country, with about 3.57 million copies sold each day.

Democratic India has had a long history of print news; the first newspaper was founded more than 230 years ago. The government’s Registrar of

Newspapers in India lists more than 82,000 newspapers. Nearly 33,000 of these are in Hindi, the language spoken by 41 per cent of India’s 1.2 billion people. Thousands of others are in India’s many regional languages, and many of those also have circulations in the millions. Readership is even greater, as a single copy of a newspaper is often shared by numerous readers.

Overall, regional newspapers will grow 12 to 14 per cent annually for the next several years, according to estimates by consulting firm KPMG India.

Media experts said the newspaper boom in the smaller towns is driven by its young and aspirational population.

The enormous push for education over the past five decades has bumped up literacy rates, which grew from 65 per cent to 74 per cent in a decade ending in 2011. But there’s a long way to go, with the government predicting universal literacy will be achieved only in 2060.

In the West, the Internet has cut deeply into newspaper circulation and advertising revenue, but in India, it hasn’t happened yet. Though Internet access is rising rapidly in India, about 80 per cent of the country still lacks it. Indian newspapers, which can be delivered for less than 120 rupees ($2) a month, are much more accessible.

The plethora of television news channels in regional languages has surprisingly only increased newspaper readership, said P.N. Vasanti, director of the Center for Media Studies in New Delhi. “We call it the ‘appetizer effect.’

In a study of media habits of people, we found that the more that people watched television news, the more they were turning to the newspapers to check the facts,’’ she said. “In India, the credibility of newspapers and the written word is way beyond that of the television news channels.’’

With the Indian economy picking up pace, advertising revenues are up. Up until now, the English language newspapers used to command a large chunk of the advertising budgets of merchandisers. But, those were confined mostly to India’s largest cities.

Now, advertisers have discovered the vast spread of the vernacular print media and its ability to reach customers in thriving medium-sized towns. Driven by growing readership, and the increasing economic clout of a vernacularspeaking middle class, makers of fastmoving consumer goods are looking at smaller towns and rural India as potential boom markets, said Dwivedi.

“The real growth for the regional newspaper is in the smaller towns, where new literates are coming to the fore and where people still lead a slower-paced life, giving them enough time to peruse the day’s paper,’’ said Dwivedi.

Newspaper coverage too has changed with colour supplements and extra pages on food, fashion and jetsetting lifestyles, catering to people with disposable incomes and a burgeoning young population.

As rapid urbanization erodes traditional familial networks, newspapers

serve other purposes too. The age-old role of the matchmaker to find a spouse for a young man or woman for a customary arranged marriage is now served by the classified advertisements in the local newspaper.

In a country where caste origins play a big role in determining marriage alliances, people see the regional newspaper as a convenient way of reaching out to their community members. On any given weekend, classified matrimonial ads running into several pages in many vernacular newspapers remain a real revenue-spinner.

Rewatiraman’s father, Ved Prakash Shukla, has been subscribing to a Hindi newspaper for 15 years for his children’s sake, even when tight finances made it something of a luxury.

“It was tough. My wife would scold me, saying, ‘Why are you wasting money on a paper when we don’t have money to buy food?’’’ Shukla said one recent morning as he sat on the stairs outside his tiny home with his paper and morning cup of tea.

“But I saw the newspaper as an investment in my children’s future. In my job as a chauffeur, I saw how the children of the rich speak English and know all about what’s happening in the world.’’

Shukla’s investment appears to be paying off. Rewatiraman was recently promoted and has begun climbing the corporate ladder with some success.

“All those years of reading the paper.

It’s been worth it,’’ Rewatiraman said.

PAGE 14 • www.OttawaStar.com

World

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

Rally Against Terrorism Challenges Lawmakers to Remember Their Roots

By Brandon Rushton

O

ver 100 passionate Arab and Syrian Canadians joined together beside the Ottawa Human Rights Monument on a cold March 28 evening to take a stand against furthering Canada’s military mission against ISIS in the Middle East.

A year ago, Canada joined the United States in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (the terrorist group known as ISIS) by providing military training and CF-18’s to Middle-Eastern military groups—an intervention that much of the Arab and Syrian Canadian community believe is only hurting the cause.

The rally was spearheaded by the Arab Canadian Alliance Against Terrorism, a recently-formed group that is made up of “a collection of local Arab Canadian organizations such as the Syrian Arab Federation of Canada, the Syrian Canadian Club, the Council of Lebanese Canadian Organizations, and more,” according to member Nael Hajjar.

The Alliance also has the support of several local churches and mosques.

It was formed to unite efforts and raise awareness among the Canadian public of the threat religious and ethnic minorities face in the Middle East in light of the rise of ISIS. Many supporters spoke on behalf of the Alliance in hopes of raising aware-

Nael Hajjar and Father Fadi Atallah of Saint Paul Syriac Catholic Church Photo: Brandon Rushton

ness and providing a voice for their cause. Speakers included Mounir Louis, President of the Arab-Syrian Federation of Canada, who organized the rally and was responsible for forming the Alliance, concerned Arab-Canadian Christopher Assad, and Elias Aboud, an invitee of the Syrian-Canadian Club.

With the one-year mark of Canada’s first incursion into the Middle East against ISIS approaching, Prime Minister Stephan Harper seems determined to further the mission and possibly even expand into Syria. Because of this, Aboud

Members of the Arab Canadian Alliance Against Terrorism spearheaded a rally held on March 28.

Photo: Brandon Rushton

made sure to not ruffle any feathers before explaining his argument.

“I’m not here to speak against the Canadian government, I’m not here to place blame on them. I’m here to propose that we, as a country, change our course because it is not too late,” said Aboud.

Instead of continuing the military mission, the Alliance believes that Canada should turn its focus towards humanitarianism. Aboud went on to explain that, “It is not our job to send our men and women to the front lines. We must shed this mask of aggression and remember our identity

as a peacekeeping nation—send humanitarian aid to those who have been fighting extremist groups; send humanitarian aid to the civilians who do not have food, shelter, or clothing; and let us help the people who truly deserve it.”

According to the group, Canada’s military efforts only prove that we, as a nation, can be intimidated and that, rather than protecting Canada, it makes the country a target. “Maybe it’s time for Canadians to take a stand and maybe other nations will follow Canada in a humanitarian, a peaceful way,” said Aboud.

World

Ottawa Star • April 1, 2015

By land or by sea Huddled masses of Africa, Asia, Middle East use 4 routes to European Union Continued from page 1

Here are the main four smuggling routes listed in order of popularity in 2014 as recorded by Frontex. Each lists the total number of migrants detected in destination EU countries last year, the change from 2013, and the top three nationalities of migrants.

CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN: By boat to Italy.

Most sail from the anarchic coast of Libya to Italy’s southernmost islands or fellow EU member Malta. More than 170,000 reached Italian soil on this route in 2014, quadruple the previous year and a record annual figure for any country in EU history.

Numbers have surged since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who had enforced a bilateral agreement with Italy. The overcrowded boats sometimes capsize; an estimated 3,500 drowned last year. Syrians, Eritreans and sub-Saharan Africans are the most common travellers.

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN: By boat or land from Turkey to EU members Greece, Bulgaria or Cyprus.

Numbers are soaring because of Turkey’s hosting of more than 1 million refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan; its policy of making air travel from Africa easy; and, above all, its intimate proximity to the eastern islands of Greece.

While land border controls have been toughened, it’s proved harder to stop migrants from completing trips to Greek islands just minutes from the Turkish coast using smuggler-supplied rigid inflatable boats. More than 50,000 used this route last year, double the 2013 figure, led by Syrians, Afghans and Somalis.

WESTERN BALKANS: From Greece to Hungary via Macedonia and Serbia.

This is the fastest-growing smuggling route, and increasingly the seamless second

half of the Eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey.

Once reaching Greece, asylumseekers cannot easily reach other EU states except through the former Yugoslav nations of Macedonia and Serbia.

Neighboring Hungary has become the preferred EU opening for travel by road or rail to immigrant favourites Germany and France. Many walk the entire Macedonian section because locals refuse to drive the migrants, citing harsh anti-smuggling laws.

Alongside the Greek influx, the Balkans themselves generate heavy illegal immigration to the EU, particularly from Kosovo.

More than 43,000 were recorded arriving in Hungary in 2014 using this route, double the previous year. Kosovars, Afghans and Syrians led the way.

WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN: By boat from Morocco or Algeria to Spain, or by land to Spanish outposts in North Africa.

Once a top route for people-smugglers, but Spain’s tightened border security and bad economy have limited growth of migrant numbers.

Relatively few attempt to breach security barriers to Melilla and Ceuta, Spain’s enclaves on the Moroccan coast.

www.OttawaStar.com • PAGE 15 Instead, migrants use private boats and public ferries from Algeria and Morocco to reach Spain’s Balearic Islands and mainland. Just to reach the North African coast, many Africans must walk for weeks along the Atlantic coast or through the Sahara Desert.

Spanish border guards recorded 7,840 used this route last year, barely 1,000 more than in 2013, led by migrants from Cameroon, Algeria and Mali.

OTHERS “Eastern Borders’’ is Frontex’s umbrella term for dozens of potential routes along the EU’s 6,000-kilometre (3,600-mile) frontier with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. The EU side - chiefly Finland, the three Baltic states and Poland - employ firm border checks that keep illegal immigration relatively static, including 1,270 migrants recorded in 2014, half coming from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Georgia.

The Western Africa route, involving boatloads of Africans arriving in Spain’s Canary Islands, was Europe’s busiest route a decade ago. Tougher enforcement means migration has slowed to a trickle, with only 275 arrivals in 2014 —less than 1 per cent of the levels recorded in 2008.

A look at the solar plane attempting first round the world trip and pioneers behind it Continued from page 1

HOW IS THE PLANE FLYING ONLY ON SOLAR POWER? Described by its creators as “an airborne laboratory,’’ the single-seat Solar Impulse 2 has 17,248 ultra-efficient solar cells that transfer solar energy to four electrical motors that power the plane’s propellers. The cells also recharge four lithium polymer batteries to power the plane at night. At around 2,300 kilograms (5,070 pounds), the carbon-fiber Si2 weighs about 2,300 kilograms (5,070 pounds), about as much as a minivan or mid-sized truck. An empty Boeing 747, which has about the same wing span, weighs some 180,000 kilograms (400,000 pounds).

HOW FAST WILL IT FLY AND AT WHAT HEIGHTS? The plane’s ideal flight speed is about 25 knots, or 45 kph (28 mph), though that can double during the day when sun’s rays are strongest. The plane will reach an altitude of around 28,000 feet (8,500 metres) during the day and at night dip to around 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) when flying over oceans. During landing and takeoff, the plane is guided by runners and bicyclists who help steady it.

WHO ARE THE SWISS PIONEERS BEHIND THIS AIRCRAFT? Psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, 57, is the son of undersea explorer Jacques Piccard and a grandson of balloonist Auguste Piccard. In 1999, he became the first person to circumnavigate the globe non-stop in a hot air balloon. Andre Borschberg, 62, is both an investor and an entrepreneur. He is CEO and co-founder of Solar Impulse, which he started in 2003 with Piccard. The two men will trade off piloting during layovers.

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES THEY FACE ON THIS JOURNEY? Piccard and Borschberg will have to make it across Asia before the start of the monsoon season. Their physical and mental endurance will be tested as they fly over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Those legs of the trip mean five days and five nights of flying alone. Borschberg has been practicing yoga and Piccard self-hypnosis to prepare for the long solo flights. They aim to rest a maximum of 20 minutes straight, repeating the naps 12 times over a 24-hour period. Goggles worn over the pilot’s eyes will flash lights to wake him up. Neither pilot will be able to stand in the cockpit while flying,

though its seat reclines for stretching and its cushion can be removed for access to a toilet. There is no running water onboard. Armbands placed underneath their suits will buzz if the plane isn’t flying level. The small cockpit is not pressurized, so they will be able to feel the changes in temperature outside, which will range from -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit) to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

WHERE WILL THE PLANE MAKE ITS LAYOVERS AND WHY? As it travels some 35,000 kilometres (21,700 miles) around the world, the Si2 will stop in 12 cities. The actual flight days are just 25, but the course of the journey is roughly five months because organizers plan public events for governments, schools and universities along the way. After reaching Ahmedabad, India, the team heads to another Indian city, then Myanmar and to Chongqing and Nanjing in China. After crossing the Pacific and landing in Hawaii, they plan to fly across the U.S., with stopovers in Phoenix and New York City. After crossing the Atlantic, the team says they either will stop in southern Europe or Morocco before finishing where the journey started in Abu Dhabi.

WHAT DO ORGANIZERS HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH? The project, which began in 2002 and is estimated to cost more than $100 million, is aimed at highlighting the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation. Piccard and Borschberg encourage people to discuss the project online using (hashtag)FutureIsClean to send a “strong message for clean technologies.’’ They hope to mobilize politicians, governments, celebrities and private citizens ahead of the Conference on Climate Change of the United Nations, which will define the new Kyoto protocol in December 2015 in Paris.

HOW CAN I FOLLOW THEIR JOURNEY? Those curious can track the aircraft on Solar Impulse’s website, which provides live information about the plane’s battery status, energy consumption, location and flight path, as well as how much the pilot has slept and how much food and water he has left. A video feed shows the plane’s Monacobased control room and footage from the cockpit.

Online: Solar Impulse: www.solarimpulse.com