70,000 grey seals are still being blamed by the Canadian Government for the fail of the cod fish’s recovery in the Atlantic Ocean. However, Dr. Tony Charles, a specialist of the local environment, says that the shift to more sustainable fishing and the improvement of the marine ecosystem can be as important for the recovery, as the decrease of cod fish 25 years ago. He also says that the impact of the culling of seals can be unpredictable, because the marine ecosystem is complicated.
In the report published in 2014, the Department of Fishery and Ocean Canada has written that the number of grey seals in the Atlantic Ocean “must be immediately reduced.” They plan to do this by authorizing more hunting licenses for seal hunters. However, the statistics released this March have revealed that only 1,145 grey seals were hunted last year in Canada.
Deepak Sharma, the founder of univfax (left) with the marketing director, Jassmeet Singh (right) at Dalhousie university.
It was a cold, freezing night in January. Deepak Sharma and Jassmeet Singh just landed at Halifax Stanfield International Airport in the end of a long journey from New Delhi. The flight was delayed for hours because of a snowstorm. The amount of snow they faced that night was the largest they had ever seen; they realized their picker had already left the airport.
“We had to pay $70 for a taxi to get to the Downtown,” says Singh. “$70 back there at home, means $3,500 in Indian Rupees.”
After two years, Sharma and Singh, both Dalhousie University students, still remember that devastating first night in Halifax. That’s why they recently started univfax, a website which provides incoming international students with the local accommodation/traffic/job information and a connection to international students who live in Halifax, so they can prepare for their life in Halifax in advance.
(*This is the rate of international students among the entire population of university students in Halifax. Source: HALIFAX INDEX 2016 by Halifax Partnership)
Today, the city says it has 6,000 international students in universities from all over the world.This means that international students take up more than 1% of the city’s population. Since 2005, the number of international students in Halifax has doubled over ten years.
In Saint Mary’s University (SMU), more than one in four students are non-Canadians. The revenue generated by international students is crucial to universities, as they pay differential fees, which often cost as equal to their annual tuition fees. For example, in 2012, the tuition fees paid by international students to SMU had already taken up to 41% of the total student fees in the same year.
However, Sharma says that many of them still have trouble finding adequate housing or struggle with buying groceries. Although each university has an international centre in place to help students, he and Singh say that the sharing of information within the international student community is invaluable.
Since 2009, the economic organization Halifax Partnership, which is run by the government, has launched the Connector Program – which has helped more than one hundred graduating international students, helping them to network with the local job market.
Timeline-What happened to the international students and universities in Halifax [2011-2016]
Denise DeLong, the project manager of the Connector Program, says the city would rather focus on supporting their settlement after the graduation, because keeping young talent in the city is another big challenge for the local economy.
“I’m sure there are challenges when they start their lives in Halifax,” says DeLong, who has years of experience supporting immigrants and international students. “I always tell them to get out of campus, talk to people and have meaningful times.”
Sharma and Singh, however, say that there is a serious need for international students to secure their basic accommodation and transportation before they really get used to the city.
“They need to have everything done before they come here,” says Singh. “We just don’t want them to suffer the thing which we had suffered.”
Nova Scotia is widely known for tourism with lighthouse and lobster, blueberry–but now the province is also known for the highest rate in child pornography charges in Canada.
It turns out, in 2014, Nova Scotia had the highest rate in child pornography charges in Canada. In the same year, the data also showed that Nova Scotia was in the top three, for highest rates of charges against both youths and adults, in relation to child pornography in Canada.
Fig.1 Provincial ranking: adults charged with child pornography in 2014
According to the latest data released by Statistics Canada, Nova Scotia had the highest rate of adults charged with child pornography, in 2014. For youth charged in the same category, the province had the second-highest rate (following Québec). Also in 2014, the rate of youth charged for child pornography had nearly tripled from the previous year, now sitting at its highest in the past five years.
Fig.2 Provincial ranking: youth charged with child pornography in 2014
Youths charged with child pornography, in Nova Scotia, almost triples the amount of adults charged for the same offence. It’s also more than triple, in comparison to any other province in Canada, except Québec.
A possible aspect to see recent change in child pornography is that many of those have gone online.
In 2014, 10 Nova Scotians were charged with child pornography, as a result of Operation Snapshot III – the nationwide investigation conducted by RCMP that targets child pornography incidents online. According to RCMP reports released in 2014, at least 17 of 38 cases regarding child pornography have involved online activity.
When it comes to incidents involving youth, child pornography is in direct relation to cyber bullying. In 2013, 17-year-old Nova Scotian Rehtaeh Persons committed suicide, after she was sexually assaulted at a party and the photograph, which captured her assault, went online. As a result, one teenager was charged with two counts of distributing child pornography.
Following Persons’ death, several other cases took place, both in Canada and the U.S.; Nova Scotia became the first province which applied the Cyber Safety Act, in 2013.
Roger Merrick, director of Cyberscan, the provincial organization which launched the cyberbully/cyberporn investigation following the act, says though there are no apparent differences between adult cases and youth cases in cyberporn targeting children, the number of Nova Scotians who come to Cyberscan asking for help had dramatically increased over the past couple of years.
“I think it’s because we got the word out when the Cyber Safety Act came out to play,” he said. “People are now aware that we have the ability to reach out for help, and to have these things stopped.”
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the act in 2015, Cyberscan is now focusing on education and raising awareness about the issue. However, Merrick says that Nova Scotians would still need the law’s protection. He says even a civil law, like the Cyber Safety Act, would play an important role by letting them set a formal agreement to get people to stop harassment.
“We have seen the very harmfully sex that cyberbullying causes”, said Merrick. “And, people should not be subjected to it.”
