Syed was an employee at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Power Station. He and his family lived in Estevan and his children went to school here, and they moved to Regina for the start of the 2020-21 school year. He would carpool to Estevan for work at Boundary Dam, and returned to Regina during his days off. His co-workers at Boundary Dam created a GoFundMe campaign for him in early April after he was hospitalized. It had an early goal of $5,000, but the support easily surpassed that amount, and the campaign continued. After his death, it shifted from a fundraiser to support his medical costs to one that would assist his wife and their three young children.
The days of balanced budgets in Canada are a distant memory. No government is going to try to work its way towards balance in the midst of a global pandemic and a massive economic recession. During times like this, they need to show support for those who lost their job for reasons that have nothing to do with performance or ability, and they need to shell out money for businesses, money for programs to stimulate the economy and money for the health care system that is fighting the pandemic. Granted, a lot of programs that the government introduced last year, and are continuing this year, were rushed and resulted in money going to people who didn’t need it, but there’s a lot of people who needed that assistance.
In a commentary, Brent Jacobs, a professional engineer, said: “This amount of carbon mitigation not only has the equivalent emissions impact of taking approximately 865,000 cars off the road for a year, but it also underscores the value and large-scale impact of being tenacious in application-based learning and advancements. “I have the privilege of being part of the team at the International CCS Knowledge Centre … where we work to advance the use of large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a means of greatly reducing global greenhouse gasses. What is particularly unique about this work is that we do this by sharing our experience and acquired knowledge from progressing along the learning curve. It’s our aim to ensure that others have assurance of expertise; a strong and reliable basis of know how before they start,” said Jacobs.
You have to wonder how much time he spent travelling the province, and what he remembers from his time here. After all, that was 30 years ago, and a lot has happened to him since. You wonder if people who encountered him randomly during those six weeks remember him. Regardless, it’s a remarkable tidbit about one of the great innovators of our time. It turns out that Mr. Musk shares something with many of us: an affinity for carbon capture technology. Earlier this year, Musk announced he would spend $100 million US on a contest for researchers to create projects on carbon capture.
Elon Musk is no stranger to Saskatchewan. Back in 1989, Musk spent six weeks working on a cousin’s farm near tiny Waldeck, just outside of Swift Current. You have to wonder how much time he . . .