Okay, we are going to get started. Hello everyone, thank you very much for joining us for today's CNCF webinar, Building Edge as a Service. My name is Jerry Fallon and I will be moderating today's webinar. And we would like to welcome our presenter today, Dr. Bin Ni, excuse me, CTO at WangSue Science and Technology and CD Networks. Just a few housekeeping items before we get started. During the webinar you are not able to talk as an attendee. There's a Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. So please feel free to drop your questions in there and we'll get to as many as we can at the end. This is an official webinar of the CNCF and as such is subject to the CNCF Code of Conduct. So please do not add anything to the chat or questions that are in violation of the Code of Conduct. Please be respectful of your fellow participants and presenters. Please also note that the recording and slides will be posted later today to the CNCF webinar page at cncf.io slash webinars. And with that, I will hand it over to Dr. Ni to kick off today's presentation. Okay. Thanks for the introduction of Gary. Hello everyone. And first of all, no matter where you're located in the world, I hope you and your family are staying safe and sound. My name is Bin Ni. I'm in charge of the research and development of CD Networks. From its name, for some of you to guess that we are a CDN company, AKA Content Delivery Networks. So if you're not familiar with CDN, I will give a very brief intro this presentation. But for now, you just need to keep in mind that it has a lot to do with the edge. So although edge computing has been relatively new, it has been in the heart for a few years, but a CDN is a business that has been dealing with it for more than 20 years. And in the last few years, we have been working on a lab. We provide edge computing as a service to application developers in a way similar to cloud computing. Yeah, so we had a lot of thinking we made up during this process. So for example, how to make this platform flexible and powerful in the meantime, not overly complicated and hopefully easy for us to maintain and for the customers, for the users to use. And what changes the application developers need to do on their application to take full advantage of the edge computing platform. So today I'm going to share some of those ideas of us. Okay, so since we are talking about edge computing, we first need to answer this fundamental question. So what is the edge, okay? Because today when you are doing edge computing, you may get a different answer from each of them. So they have definitely different definitions of the edge. So here I listed a few places that someone can deploy their applications listed from the distance to the end user. I think the main benefit when people talk about edge computing is the latency to the end user and also the bandwidth. So here, these five locations, the first one is just the central data center. Okay, so in old days, you just put all your applications in that one data center. Usually no people would call it the edge. Actually, it is the opposite of the edge. So the second one, the cloud data centers, what I mean is the conventional cloud. It's like AWS, sure. So they usually have 10 or 20 data centers all over the world. So if you want your app to have a good coverage of the end users, the developer may probably replicate their application logics in multiple data centers all over the world to try to minimize latency to the end user. And the latency is usually in the order of 100 millisecond. And the third one is CDN data centers. I will show you a picture, give you more idea of how the CDN data centers the distribution looks like. But usually CDN data center usually tries to cover every country usually has at least one or more pops in the most populous countries and all the major data, all the major ISPs on the order of a global CDN company usually has at least 100 pops all over the world. To have a good coverage. And the latency is usually at the order of the 10th of milliseconds. And the fourth one I listed here is a mobile carrier, MEC. They call multiple access center. Mobile, usually it means that you just put your application developer just put application servers very close to the mobile, the cell phone towers. So as you can imagine, there are probably thousands of them in one country. And globally, there can be either millions of them. Of course, it provides a, even reduce the latency of the CDN centers. But the problem is that both the benefit and the problem is that there are just too many of them. And even Verizon today, they only provide this kind of service in a few U.S. So it's because there are so many of them. So it becomes very difficult to manage the huge number of pops. So it will be even very difficult to cover even one country. So maybe this is the start of this technology. So at least now they can only cover a few cities within the U.S. And the last block I listed here is the end user devices. For example, your mobile phone or a security camera in people's house or business. So in a lot of edge computing, in a lot of edge computing, people are calling those devices as the edge. And of course, that is really the edge in some in strict sense. Because that is the end user. The latency will be, you can't beat the latency if you define that to be the edge. So each of those definitions, obviously from left to right, you will get smaller and smaller latency to the end users. But in the meantime, you will have a higher complexity. It becomes more and more difficult to manage. And in the meantime, the resources are lower on the right-hand side. Usually the end user devices will have a very limited computing power and storage compared to servers in data center and the mobile MEC compared to regular data centers. They usually have a limited space and power. So these are the possible locations people can define their edge. And from our point of view, we need to have a very good trade-off and we believe that the CDN data center should be the way to go. And I will, because of the reason I just introduced, we believe this CDN, the distribution of CDN data center provides a very good balance between the latency and what people want from the edge computing and also from the complexity from the manageability point of view. And this page gives you, hopefully can give you some more idea about how the CDN edge look like. So each of this red dot represents a CDN, one or more CDN pops. So after this is the CDN networks, CDN network, edge network. So as I just mentioned, the CDN network is built trying to reach all the most populous areas in the world. And the selection of the pops also depends on the network connectivity of the region and also the population. And you probably noticed that we have a pretty dense distribution in China. It's because the different ISPs in China has pretty poor connectivity. So we had to build a pop in every major cities. So that's why we end up with, I think, around 500, 600 pops in China. And the rest of the world, because BGP can be widely used and connectivity between different ISPs are better. So we don't need that many number of pops, for example, to cover US. And I think most of the CDNs have about 20 to 30 pops to cover the US. And a global CDN company usually at least 100 or 200 pops. And CDN networks, we have about 1000 pops all over the world. And this page hopefully can give you some brief idea about how CDN works. So the goal is to accelerate the content of a website. So on the far right hand side is the origin server set up by the CDN customer or a web developer. They can put their website and their download maybe a web page or some download website for their apps, pictures, images. They just set up a web server for that purpose and put the content on that server. But if it's just one server, it will be very difficult to serve the end users from all over the world. Because usually, even if we put it into a data center with the best connectivity, they will always be a part of the world. That will be difficult to reach that data center. But how CDN can help with the widely distributed Edge network I just showed you in the previous page, the CDN servers can simply on the origin server. And so the content will be replicated to all those servers I just showed you all over the world. So whenever a end user, no matter where they come from, the end user will be directed by our GSLB to the closest edge pop to that user. So the latency will be very small and the user, because the content is cached very close to the end user. So the end user will be able to get the content very, very quickly. The user experience can be improved a lot. Yeah, this GSLB actually, I wanna mention is that this GSLB also plays a very important role in the CDN. And in the Edge computing platform I'm going to describe because although we have a widely distributed network, but if we can't really direct the end user to the closest server, that network is basically useless. So how this GSLB works is that the GSLB is basically a smart DNS system. So the website for CDN, they usually expose their service through a host name. So when the end user's browser or the client trying to reach that website, it needs to go through the DNS revolution process to get the IP address of that host name. So those, we would ask the CDN to update the DNS record. So that DNS record will be C named to an edge host name provided by our GSLB, which is an authoritative DNS platform. So it will based on, so every DNS request will eventually go to our GSLB and the GSLB DNS server would analyze the people's IP address and based on geo-mapping and our own probing result and smartly find the closest edge server that will provide the end user the best possible experience. And in the meantime, in the past, in all the states, the CDN servers only provides the storage, the caching to the end users. But in recent years, the CDN companies are adding more and more functionality to the edge servers. So to expand its capability to do just caching. So for example, a lot of business logics can be implemented in the CDN edge servers. For example, some user access control algorithms can be easily implemented on the CDN edge servers. So the client does not nearly, the origin servers does not have to do all those algorithms. So the pressure on the origin servers can be greatly reduced. And here are some data regarding the performance of the CDN edges. So this data comes from a company called Citrix. They are basically a third-party performance monitor company or the company and the cloud services. Here, I'm showing the median latency of all the major CDN networks in US and Indonesia. China. So as you can see, this column, the latency for CDN networks, for CDNs are usually around 20 in the US. And in the US, you can see that this is a very, the numbers are really tightly packed. So we are located at number 17, but the difference between the number one is very small. It's just three milliseconds. So, yeah, the idea is that it's all around 20 milliseconds. And in China, the number is even smaller. The reasons I mentioned, we have to build, the CDN companies have to build a lot more paths in China. And so because of that, the latency in China is even smaller. It's usually around 12, 13 days a second. By the way, I see that CDN networks is the only major CDN company that doing well in both countries. Oh, yeah. And Quantil is a sister company for CDN networks. So this gives you some idea about the performance of the CDN edge networks. Let's see how we can use it. Yeah, so this page gives you another comparison between the conventional cloud, meaning AWS Azure Google Cloud versus the CDN POPs. The first one is the number of POPs, number of POPs globally. As I mentioned, the conventional cloud usually have 10 or 20 data centers all over the world. And CDN has over at the order of 1,000 POPs. 100 times more than your conventional cloud. However, as a result, the size of the POP is much smaller. The cloud would have easily have millions of CPU cores in each data center. CDN usually a few thousands. So of course, you cannot get both, right? You cannot have 100 times more POPs, but you have the same number of POPs. You have to sacrifice something. And the total bandwidth, the CDN should be also a few orders of 10,000. It's not per POP. It's the collectively combined bandwidth of all the POPs. So CDN is usually at the tens of terabips. So some of our customers can actually fully use more than 10 TBPS, some of their peak time. And cloud, the bandwidth can provide it to each user. It's usually capped at a few hundred GBPS. Yeah, it also depends on the connectivity of the end users. Okay, the latency as I just showed, the CDN latency is around an order of 10 milliseconds. And the cloud is usually around 100 minutes. The single, another thing I want to mention is that I want to emphasize this POP availability. And for conventional cloud, of course, they have to have a very, very high availability for each of their data centers. And there is usually an infinite number of nice. Point nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. But for CDN, since we have a larger number of POPs, as you can imagine, it's very difficult to maintain, to guarantee high availability of each POP. Usually it's around, I will say 95%. And each path can be shut down with any notice at any time, maybe because of a power outage or maybe because of network maintenance or hardware failures. So because we have thousands of paths, it's almost impossible to guarantee the single path availability. But overall, the CDN network can still achieve a very high availability because of the GSLB I just mentioned. Imagine if one path goes down, the GSLB will be able to sense it immediately and stop directing end users to that path and directing those requests to some other nearby paths because we have so many paths all over the world. End user will hardly feel the difference. And the services provided by cloud and CDN is also very different. On cloud, they have a whole lot of services. CDN usually also provides caching. And it can also provide security and also dynamic acceleration. But compared to cloud, it will be very limited. And that is not the goal of CDN. So the CDN has a large number of paths, much smaller latency. And there's no guarantee of the availability of each path. But overall, it can still achieve very high availability. So how can we utilize this existing CDN to provide edge computing service? So there are some basic thoughts we have. So the first one is that the edge computing should not be cloud computing with lots of paths. So as I mentioned in the previous page, the cloud computing, they provide a lot of different services, including database, virtual machine, VMs, containers, all sorts of different services. All sorts of different services you limit. But for edge computing, it's technically impossible for us to make sure each of our paths can provide all those services. So the first one I want to mention is that edge computing should not be cloud computing with lots of paths. They have to be, each path has to be simple and easy to maintain. So the second one is that the high availability should be achieved through GSOD collectively using all the edge paths. So we shouldn't, or the application should not rely on high availability of each path. And the third one is that each path may go down at any time. So this is something that application designer need to keep in mind. And we believe that this shouldn't be a problem at all. So I want to talk a little bit more about the stateless. So what I'm saying here is that the module running on the edge should be stateless. This does not mean that the application, the entire application has to be stateless. We understand that each application will definitely need to save some states about the business. So we are just saying that the application needs to divide into different models. Only the module running on the edge should be stateless. So the state can still be stored on a conventional cloud or even stored in the end-users device. So some people may say that my application, for some reason, my application really need to have state on the edge. So what should we do? So my answer is that that is fine. But you have to be aware of the consequences. So it sounds scary. But what are exactly the consequences? The consequence is basically that because you need to have those persistent data on the edge, that means if that edge goes down, so some of the end-users will be seriously affected. Because those states are not stored on the other edges. So we cannot use a simply redirect that those users requested to another edge to quickly recover the service for those users. So maybe it will take some time to rebuild those states on the edge. So the service resumption won't be seamless. And also another case is that if the user is moved, so if the logic on the edge is stateless, so when the user moved from one region to a different region, now the service can be seamlessly switched from one of our edge pop to another edge pop quickly. But if you have to have state on the edge, that means this kind of a handoff will be very difficult or impossible. This is another trade-off. We suggest that the app developers can divide their application into different modules and run the stateless part on the edge. How to call for the edge? So that's another critical question. So in our implementation, because we believe that Kubernetes has been very widely used nowadays by a lot of application developers, and it's very convenient to manage and to develop. So we decide that we will just leverage Kubernetes. So in our implementation, we are deploying the Kubernetes on every edge pop but managed by a central console. So the customer or the app developers, what they do is they build the pods in their own Kubernetes. They can test in their own environment. When everything is done, they just upload the YAML file on the console. Our system would distribute the pods to every pop, all over the world. And then in time, they should expose the service through a domain name, such that the GSLB will be able to route the end users to the fastest pop for the end users. So this is our view of how an edge service should look like. So this is another picture showing that what we believe how an edge as a service platform should look like. So you can see it's very, very similar to the previous picture of the CDN. So basically, the application should also have a central server, for example, to save the state for data. And also probably also run the stateful part of the logic. And the application should run the stateless part on the edge servers, what we call edge application servers. And between the edge servers would still communicate with a central server, the bandwidth, compared to the edge bandwidth, should be much smaller. It's pretty similar to the CDN case. And the end users would be able to reach the closest edge server through the GSLB. So the client can send or receive a large amount of data between the edge servers. But the edge servers should not define in a way that the application should be designed in a way that the traffic between the edge server and the central server should be minimized. To be minimized in a way such that it's the central data center handle does not need to be very small. If the cloud data center can support 100 gbps, 100 gbps is fine as long as the central data center and the central server can handle it. But here, I usually go above 10-terra bps. So here is what the application should do to take full advantage of any edge computing platform. I have already mentioned most of them. So first, we expect that the application should be modularized. So the high bandwidth and latency sensitive and relatively low computation in a stateless part should be deployed on the edge computing platform. Then high bandwidth, latency sensitive. I will show a few examples later. And the low bandwidth latency, insensitive high computation stateful part should be deployed on the conventional cloud. So edge computing is not supposed to take over the conventional cloud computing. They definitely need to work with each other. And some other parts of the app, for example, the UI and the low computation part and also the stateful part can be stored on the device, such as the mobile phone. And since we have this large number of POPs, and we believe that for different POPs to communicate and discover each other, we can create a central service, some kind of a directory service for each POP to register themselves and discover each other, synchronize data directly. So now I'm trying to show a few applications and also non-applications for ECP. ECP is not supposed to do anything, to do everything. I also want to give some examples of non-application. OK, the first possible very good example is cloud gaming or edge gaming, if we use edge computing. So the module partition can be that the process, for a gaming application, there is a lot of control signals between the console and the server. So those processes, those controls, 3D rendering, basically the UI, 3D rendering and video compression can be deployed on the ECP, the edge computing platform. And each player's programs and those data and those data and also analyze the user's data can be deployed on the conventional cloud. Those are considered the state for data. The volume of high computation requires a lot of storage in the CPU. So those can be deployed on conventional cloud. And those logics are not really sensitive. It does not affect the user's experience. And on the device, we need to do video decompression to display the videos and also send the control signals to the edge servers. So a significant part can be deployed on edge computing, which does not require state. The edge servers can reach the conventional cloud to get the state for data. It does not really need to save it locally. This is mobile gaming. And in the multiplayer case, we only support players in the same geographic region. But it depends. But for most games, especially those latency sensitive games, it does not make sense to support multiple players in very different regions across the Earth. Because the latency is still always determined by the speed of light in our mother nature. If that latency is too high, it does not really make sense. But for edge computing, the pops can easily find the pops close with the players in the nearby geographic regions and still be supported. Another typical example, we believe, is the artificial intelligence intelligence. For example, Google Lens or the Apple Street. And from those applications, you usually just take an image, take a picture, or you record a video. And you send those multimedia files to some cloud server to analyze to run some AI algorithms and then return results. And we believe that this part, this first part, can be a very suitable application for edge computing. And especially if the application is latency sensitive. For example, in the case of Siri, when you say something to your phone, you would expect it to respond to you in a very short time. You don't want to wait for 10 seconds for Siri to answer your question. And that part is AI inferencing. And in most cases, the computation requirement for AI inferencing should be very suitable to be deployed to edge servers. But the AI models need to be continuously updated. So the machine learning algorithm and updating the neural network can still be deployed on central cloud because of the large amount of computing resources. And on the device, of course, we can collect an image, record audio, display the results. It should still be deployed on the end user's device. Another good example should be augmented reality, AR.  So the first part, so receive, the mobile device will take a video and live stream it to the edge server. So the edge server will receive those video and does some AI inferencing and generate and superimpose the 3D object to the video and compress the video, send it back to the device. So that part is, again, requires a lot of data exchange and requires low latency, but the computation is not very high and it's completely stateless. So it's another very good example to be deployed to ECP. Again, the machine learning part updating the neural network can still be done on conventional cloud and taking the video, display the result, it will be done on the end device. So the last one is what I call a non-application. So when people are talking about edge computing, a lot of them are talking about IoT. Here I just want to say that an IoT application does not automatically mean that ECP, the edge computing, should be used. For example, if we need to analyze the real-time data of 1,000 sensors in a factory, because we believe that the edge computing is designed for geographically distributed applications. So if it's just a whole lot of sensors in one factory, it's still geographically concentrated. It does not really benefit from edge computing. So the conventional infrastructure should still be used, the conventional cloud, either in data center or on premises, should be still a better solution for this kind of application. But IoT does not automatically mean ECP. OK, this is the last page I have. And thank you for your attention. I'm ready for some Q&A. Thank you very much, Dr. Ne, for a wonderful presentation. We have about 12 minutes for questions. So if anybody has any questions, please feel free to drop them into the Q&A box. And we will get to as many as we can before the hour ends. OK, we have a question here. What was the reason that China has more POPs compared to other continents? Oh, it's because the ISPs in China, they usually have worse interconnectivity between them. For example, China Mobile and China Telecom, for some reason, they don't want their customers, or they don't want their networks to have very good appearing between them. They only appear at a few designated places. And the bandwidth is usually pretty limited. So if we set up a server, for example, in China Telecom, in general, we cannot use it to serve and use it in China Mobile because the connectivity is very bad. For that reason, we have to set up a POP in each one of those ISPs. And even for some ISPs, across different, the connectivity across different province sometimes is also very bad within the same ISP. I believe that they are doing that on purpose for some commercial reasons. They believe that they are maximizing their benefit. So we have to make sure that we really set up a POP in at least in every province. China has 30 provinces and each province has some provinces that have a few very popular cities. So that means we, so all over the country, we probably need to set up POPs in at least 100 cities. And each city has at least three or four major ISPs. So you multiply 100 by three or four. So that's easily amounts to 300, 400 POPs. But versus in the US, the connectivity between different ISPs are pretty good. BGPs, so a lot of use. And the purine bandwidth is usually pretty decent. So we don't need to set up a POP in each data center. In each ISP, we just need to make sure the POPs are geographically well distributed to cover the populace regions. Usually 20 to 30 is good enough to cover US. Excellent. Do we have any other questions at all? I see another one. OK, it's a comment. And if there's no other questions, I want to talk a little bit more about the cloud versus CDN. And here I listed some of the major differences. And I want to mention that we have a lot of CDN customers who are using AWS, for example, AWS S3 as their origin. And use our CDN to distribute the content they stored on S3. So why they end users to build directly to S3 to fetch the content? I think that's a very good example of the difference between cloud and CDN. Because S3 does not offer the low latency the customer expected. S3 probably is only located in a very small number of data centers, usually probably just one data center. So it's very difficult for us to solve the world to reach to that one S3 data center to get the content and the connectivity from different places of the world to that data center may not be all good. Some areas may even be able to reach that data center. So this is how CDN can be helpful. And even S3 will not be able to support tens of TVVS. But CDN, we easily support that. So we believe that today's application, although most of today's application are deployed on those central cloud services, but when the application evolves, when they have more widely geographically distributed end users, and when the demand for bandwidth and latency increases, the conventional cloud will not be able to meet the requirement of those applications. So those applications will definitely have to move to the edge. It should benefit a lot from moving to the edge to support those bandwidth and the latency requirements. But to be honest, but today, I don't think any application would really require 10 GBPS of total bandwidth. So probably that's the reason that we don't see really a boom of edge computing. We believe, eventually, that they would come. And so today, I think it's more like a chicken egg problem. Because app developers, they probably don't know that there's such a platform that can support tens of TVVS of total bandwidth. So no one probably would even think about to design an app that requires that much bandwidth. Basically, their imagination is limited by the capability of the conventional cloud. So I think that's why we want to share our ideas through this platform. To let more people know that more app developers know that such kind of a platform actually exists. So we believe that once this message is out, more developers would be more brave, would be brave enough to design more apps that can take advantage of the large bandwidth and a small latency provided by the edge networks. We have another question here. 10 BPS is shared among all users. Perhaps per user can still be limited. What could be a reasonable bandwidth for a developer to target? 10 BPS, if you feel 10 BPS is not big enough, I would say that. Because first of all, not all users will connect it to a server. We'll use the service simultaneous. So actually, 10 BPS is probably the maximum collective bandwidth we have seen in our CDN business. And in that application, they also have millions of users downloading at the same time. And the bandwidth of each connection mostly still depends on the connectivity of the end user. But based on our measurement, it can easily reach more than 10 meg BPS. Do we have anyone else with a question? And anyone at all? We're not having any other questions. Dr. Ni, since we don't have any questions coming in, Dr. Ni, do you have any closing words for today's webinar? As I said, I hope that people can help to pass this message to more developers so we can, as a community, we can make this Edge Access Service a reality. More and more people will be aware of it and take advantage of it so we can build more powerful apps to serve the end users. Excellent. Well said. Well, that just about does it for today's CNCF webinar. I would like to thank Dr. Ben Ni for a wonderful presentation and for taking time out of his day to join us. I'd like to thank all the attendees for taking time out of their day as well for attending today's webinar. Everyone take care and stay safe. And we will see you at the next CNCF webinar.


I previously alluded to the fact that right-wing politicians and pundits are absolutely responsible for the mass shooting that took place at Club Q in Colorado Springs because for months now they have been screaming at the top of their lungs about the danger that LGBTQ plus people poses to children and others and now to see violence being taken up against this community for them to react in the way that they're reacting. It's predictable, yes, but it's still so disturbing and they really have a lot of nerve. Let's look at Bobo first and foremost so she tweeted this out as a lawmaker from the state of Colorado where this tragedy took place. The news out of Colorado Springs is absolutely awful. This morning the victims and their families are in my prayers. This lawless violence needs to end and end quickly. Now some of the victims who died are trans. Lauren Boebert, let me remind you, has used her position of power and influence to demonize trans people ruthlessly and spread lies about this community. Let's look at a couple of examples of what she's tweeted. Quote, trans women, also known as men, will be forced to sign up for the draft.  She also tweeted out, the so-called Equality Act forces girls to share locker rooms with boys, destroys girl sports, takes children away from their parents, and forces doctors to perform taxpayer-funded abortions. She shared a picture of Dr. Rachel Levine, who is the assistant health secretary, who happens to be a trans woman, saying, welcome to woke medicine America because I guess that if you're trans then you practice woke medicine, I don't even know what that means. She also shared a clip of her appearance on Fox News claiming the American people deserve to know if the Biden regime is paying for the mutilation of children who are gender confused. Now since she focuses on trans people so much, you would think that she knows that trans people aren't being mutilated, specifically trans children aren't being mutilated. She knows what she's saying is not truthful. She knows that what she's doing is stoking hatred and hysteria about this community, but yet she has the audacity to claim that she's praying for the victims.   If you actually felt any sympathy whatsoever, then right now you'd be introspective and think maybe I'm at least partially culpable for the disgusting rhetoric that I've been using against this community that's already under attack. Now I think that representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really had the best response to Bobo here saying, you have played a major role in elevating anti-LGBT plus hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies while spending your time in Congress blocking even the most common sense gun safety laws. You don't get to thoughts and prayers your way out of this. Look inward and change. And AOC is exactly correct here. For someone who has spent months demonizing this community to pretend as if you feel bad for them when your rhetoric has led to this, I mean the nerve. You have the audacity to make that tweet, Lauren Bubbert.  But she's not alone. So we're going to get to some of the responses from the right. But first let's see what they've been saying with regard to LGBTQ plus people. Just give you a little bit of a taste of the lies and hysteria they've been spreading for the past couple of months. So let's say you're interested in sexualizing children and unfortunately some people are. What would you do? You might have a drag queen story hour. If you don't see that as teetering on the edge of losing civilization, then you and I just disagree.  Libs of TikTok, one of the most informative accounts on Twitter. And because it is so informative, it keeps getting banned.  Drag queen story time. Don't want them in preschool teaching them to twerk. Why would any parent allow their child to be sexualized by an adult man with a fetish for kids? A sort of pedophilic predatory farm system that the groomers have set up. They want to sexualize children. This is all designed to put a wedge between parents and their children. It's up to all of us to fight back against that tooth and nail. It's happened to us. I mean, honestly, what has happened to us? Throw them in prison and whenever they get out, if they do get out, put them on the sex offender registry for life. A reckoning is coming. If anyone here is more like Hitler, most like Hitler, one could argue, it's these people abusing children. Stopping it is not a gentle or a painless process. The farther along the cancer is, the more aggressive you have to be in fighting. People should push back against this. And of course, people should arm themselves with the literature and the people in their own words who have advocated for this deeply disturbing sexualization of children. Yeah. People should definitely arm themselves. I agree with that. So ask yourself this, when you see that rhetoric and those lies, just get a small taste of it. Is it really that surprising that some deranged lunatic might be worked into a frenzy and actually take up arms against this community? No. Of course, it's not surprising. It's predictable. Many of us predicted that this would happen. There's been nonstop harassment against LGBTQ plus people, queer spaces for months now as a result of hate mongers like Chaya Rychik of Libs of TikTok and Matt Walsh. So it's not shocking to see that all of that hate has led to this. And it's not like demonizing queer people is a new thing for the right.  And so if we tell you that they're a danger to children and somebody takes up violence against queer people to protect children, then perhaps maybe that's justified. That's not what they're saying, but that's the subtext. But of course, in response to this tragedy, they're not taking responsibility. In fact, they're apoplectic that anyone would dare blame them. Can you believe that? So let's see what they said here. Matt Walsh tweeted out, leftists are using a mass shooting to try and blackmail us into accepting the castration and sexualization of children, again, lying in the suite. These people are just beyond evil. I have never felt more motivated to oppose everything they stand for with every fiber of my being. Despicable scumbags. Candice Owen tweeted, I just want to make sure I'm correct in understanding that the left is using the tragedy in Colorado to make the argument that unless conservatives get on board with experimenting on children's genitals with puberty blockers, then nightclub shootings will continue to happen. And Shapiro writes, the quest by the democratic leadership and media to link a horrifically evil shooting at a Colorado gay club to anyone who doesn't support a progressive social agenda is ongoing and terrible for the country. It's a cynical game, only one side plays and it's trash. So with the straight face, they're denying culpability. They're honestly saying, who? Me? You think I'm responsible? I mean, why would I be responsible? I've only been lying and demonizing this community for months, claiming that children's hospitals are mutilating the genitalia of kids. But I mean, like, why would you think I'm responsible for all of this hate after I've whipped people up into a frenzy?  And in that compilation that we watched, they mentioned the libs of TikTok. And of course, Chaya Reitschik, the owner of this account, is also denying culpability. But you can draw a direct line between what she tweets about and things that happen in the real world. So for example, a data analyst pointed out that hospitals don't generally get a ton of engagement on Twitter. That all changes, however, when right-wing propagandist libs of TikTok tweets about them, resulting in a deluge of mostly hostile replies and mentions. Here's what that looks like in graph form, and you see the activity. They add unsurprisingly the same thing happens when libs of TikTok tweets about a school or a school district. The school or districts previously obscured Twitter account gets swarmed by libs of TikTok's followers. And the same is true with Matt Walsh, when he specifically targets hospitals. So they mentioned hospitals here, but let's talk about Boston Children's Hospital. So that was the first target when it comes to children's hospitals by these right-wing propagandists. Now, they claim that because Boston Children's Hospital provides gender-affirming care to trans youth, they were mutilating the genitals and castrating children at this hospital. So these lies, of course, whipped people up into a frenzy, which led to Boston Children's Hospital getting a bomb threat. And the bomb threats have not stopped. Within the last week, Boston Children's Hospital had to be evacuated three different times due to constant bomb threats. So correlation does equal causation. And again, just hours after the anti-LGBTQ-plus shooting in Colorado, libs of TikTok was already fear mongering about a different organization from the same state where the shooting took place, claiming that there was a drag show that was supposedly endangering children. So I need you to understand that these people know exactly what they're doing. They know the effect that they have in the real world when they spread these lies. And they are lies. They know that they're lying. Just last week, Matt Walsh was fact-checked on Joe Rogan's podcast, Spreading Lies About Trans Children.  But if you think that knowing that the blood is on their hands, and they do know this by the way, but if you think that knowing that the blood is on their hands is going to lead to them re-evaluating their life choices and being a little bit introspective and perhaps reining in the lies, no, because again, this is what they wanted.   They've made that abundantly clear.  They don't care how it happens, right? If they can whip up some lunatic into a frenzy and they do a mass shooting, that's a win for them. If they can deny gender-affirming care to trans youth, knowing that that increases suicidal ideation and these trans kids end up killing themselves, that's a win for them.  These are genocidal maniacs and people need to understand that. It's not a coincidence that hate crimes have increased. It's not a coincidence that queer spaces have been attacked and harassed and infiltrated by homophobes and transphobes. This is all happening because these propagandists are inciting this hatred. These people, libs of TikTok, Matt Walsh, Candice Owens, they know exactly what they're doing.  They're going to only continue because this is validation that what they're doing works, right? So what we have to do is push back fiercely.


Hi everyone. I'm Jackie Gifford and I am the editor-in-chief of Travel and Leisure. Thank you for joining me today. We're going to be talking about how three different destinations are coping during the COVID-19 pandemic. Joining me are three key stakeholders. We have Graham Davis, the president of Baja Mar, Kenroy Herbert, the chairman of the Anguilla Tourist Board, and Helen Hill, the CEO of Explore Charleston. We have Graham Davis, the president of Baja Mar. Graham, how are you? We're excellent, Jackie. Thank you very much for the invitation. Can you just set the scene for us? How is Baja Mar coping right now? How are you doing? How is your team doing? Well, this has been an unprecedented time for us here in the Bahamas. We closed our doors March 25th of 2020 and we knew we had to make significant changes to how we were operating and how we were taking care of our associates and being ready to reopen again as we've done on December 17th. It's very important that we take care of our associates first. Since the time that we have closed, we've been paying our associates to stay home, be safe for nine months. We've spent over 70 million dollars in X-Grosha payments and medical benefits and paying our associates that we're working to stay on throughout these times. We've been working closely with the government of the Bahamas who have done an exceptional job at keeping the country safe. 350,000 people in the Bahamas throughout the archipelago with lockdowns, with important testing to ensure that we create a safest environment. We're very pleased that we were able to reopen our doors but we knew that we had to change the landscape on how we do business each and every day as we reopen on December 17th along with the health visa program that the Bahamian government has put into place for guests to test five days prior to arrival with the health visa and which includes insurance in case something should happen to Medevac, our guests out. We also put in additional protocols to test our guests upon arrival at the resort which is really unprecedented for most resorts or businesses around the globe. We're testing every guest we've done over now 20,000 tests since we've opened December 17th and I can tell you that we've had a positivity rate of 0.001 or 1 tenth of 1 percent so it's been very successful. We've been testing our associates on a weekly basis as well and we are the first resort, one of the first probably hotels in the world that is offering rapid antigen tests or PCR tests to actually go back home so we're creating an environment that is as seamless and as easy as possible for our guests to enjoy an exceptional experience at Bahamar. I think what you've done has really been ahead of the curve when it comes to testing so everyone's been reacting to the news that now going forward Americans or anybody entering the United States from international flight has to test before going back and I think you are going to be in a key in a good position to be able to provide that service to your guests so I guess to your point not every resort was doing this you're now you were doing it already. The one thing too I want to point out to viewers is you actually are also doing a phased opening so talk to me a little bit about that. Well we wanted to ensure that we open safely and successfully as well so it was important to build that consumer confidence as quickly as we could and that was to open our grand hyatt first we did that when we opened the project to begin with we opened in a phased manner to ensure that we had all of our protocols in place that were worked out thoroughly ahead of time and to execute on it flawlessly which we've done and so we felt that once we're comfortable that the grand hyatt can open with our casino all of our shops and many of our restaurants and all of our other amenities that we could successfully ensure that the protocols were being maintained flawlessly that our sanitization program was in place that the service levels were exceptional in every way we then can start looking at opening up our other properties and we're expecting to open those in March in less than 50 we're now 51 days away from from opening up we hope the SLS and our Rosewood Bahamar as well so this is the thoughtful and certainly the safest way to open successfully you mentioned to the idea of being outdoors and that's one advantage that the Bahamas has is so much of the culture there and the lifestyles outdoors are you creating new outdoor experiences for guests in light of the the pandemic well we certainly are offering our experiences whether it be our excursions out on boats to the nearby islands obviously they're small and and luxury and and intimate in those ways that it's safe we're offering some great experiences of course for al fresco dining we have more patio space out there our pool areas we have seven pools for hide alone and so that we've created some great physical distancing around the pool areas we have touchless many touchless technology available we don't have room keys here at the property we we were ahead of the curve in that as well that we have wristbands that every guest has that has an RFID chip embedded and in those rubberized wristbands that they can wear in the pool the beach that opens your room key your room door touchless and you can also charge you don't have to sign checks you don't have to touch any pens or or anything it's just a touch of the wrist to a tablet and you're paying for all your your food and beverage and experiences as well qr codes are are easily accessible at all of our outlets we have qr codes we for our app that you can download and have everything available booking excursions and golf can all be done right from your own phone so a touchless technology has been in the forefront of our minds since prior to covet and we're continuing to evolve through covet as well thank you thank you grand davis president bahama are for joining me today i'm jackie gifford editor-in-chief of travel leisure and we're continuing on with the evolution of travel how destinations are adapting to a new era with me now is kenray herbert the chairman of the anguilla tourist board hi kenray how are you hi jackie i'm doing well how are you doing well i'm doing i'm doing pretty great i have to say so uh full disclosure i am in anguilla i'm i am here and we're staying socially distanced it's been fascinating to be on the ground in a new destination and i want to talk to you about some of the protocols that you've put in place here so why did it open a little bit later than other caribbean destinations well you know we wanted to get it right we also wanted to ensure that once we open it was sustainable you know unlike some of our other neighbors who reopened and then closed you know that created uncertainty and frustration for both travel advisors and clients so we learned from the experiences and we came up with our own template for reopening so after two weeks in in in quarantine our staying place vacation as we say if they're still test negative they can enjoy our island as we do enjoying the freedom afforded by our local with numbers kenray tell me how you you and the government came up with the testing system you did so to be clear to everyone visitors have to take an rt pcr test and that's by the way includes children not all destinations are doing that three to five days before they come in and then on arrival wait in your facility in your hotel your villa wherever it is until you get cleared and get those negative results so tell me a little bit about that because it is one of the more robust testing systems out there yes so our health professionals led by our cmo the chief medical officer you know the confidant with regional kapa paho and international wh o and public health uk agencies and determined the best practices and most effective protocols for anguilla so studies reveal that the tree testing protocols sequential testing had a predictive value rate of 97 percent and identifying the virus and persons so this is what we adopted so visitors are required to submit a negative pcr test three to five days prior to arrival upon arrival they are required to take another pcr test and on day 10 or day 14 um of their stay in place they're required to take another test before um accident the quarantine period and once that is negative they can enjoy our lead anguilla has to offer what prompted you as well to create the bubble concept of approved vendors and what walk people through that and also how these vendors were chosen so that you know it's clear i want to make clear to people the word quarantine gets thrown out a lot right now which i think uses guests and people who are about to travel because they think that they actually cannot leave their hotel room and that is not the case here so your stay in place concept yes you stay you stay in place but it's actually a whole system of approved vendors so you're not literally staying in one place so the tourism bubble concept was designed to allow visitors particularly those who are spending less than 14 days on island to experience our tourism product in a safe manner that protects both themselves and our local residents so in collaboration with our stakeholders we put in place a system of guided movements that allows properties to safely offer the assured time stay guests access to a variety of approved amenities services and activities while they stay in place the properties would submit the proposed activities and respective protocols which were then inspected and approved by our health officials so also advanced reservations are required for all activities with transportation provided by certified ground transportation operators so this means that visitors to anguilla can indulge in their favorite you know past times anguilla has been through a lot i was here just after hurricane irma when the island basically had to rebuild there were a lot of closures and and you know the island has been through events like this before but but in on another level there's COVID so tell me how does a destination just rebuild how does it do do situations from the past give you experience for the future and dealing with the pandemic so we shifted from a tourism economy to a construction economy after hurricane irma but this is not the case with with this pandemic when we close our borders in march you know there was no one here i think this was probably the first time in our history where we had zero arrivals to anguilla and also for an extended period i think it was uh what about nine to ten months and i must say our government extended the necessary social safety net in terms of unemployment assistance as the tourism sector is by far our largest source of employment here on anguilla one of the ways you've gotten creative too is by coming up with a long-term residency program could you could you explain a little bit about that i know other destinations have done something similar where you know basically remote work visas this is a big trend that we're seeing in the industry so the remote the the working from anguilla situation working remotely from anguilla has has has had a tremendous response anguilla represents an extremely attractive option for those who are already working remotely and likely continue to continue to do so for foreseeable future our local with status excellent communication services and exceptional quality of life all huge incentives that are attracting professionals seeking a less stressful environment and the change of scenery for themselves and your families you know we expect the numbers to eat to grow even further we are making an outreach to spread the word about the benefits and advantages of working remotely from anguilla thank you so much again Henry Herbert the chairman of the anguilla tourist board thank you for joining thank you jackie hi everyone i'm jackie gifford editor-in-chief of travel leisure and we're continuing on with the evolution of travel how destinations are adapting to a new era and with me today is helen hill the CEO of explore charleston hi helen how are you it's so good to see you it's great to see you too i want to dive right in and to say that charleston is a city that is big on food and celebration so how have your restaurants your small businesses been affected by the pandemic and how are they adapting well jackie as you know you know dining is so much more than you know what we put in our mouth you know it's the sights and the sounds and the amazing smells and you know i don't think i've ever been more proud of our small businesses you know we always hear that like small business is the backbone of america but we felt it in a different way you know our restaurateurs have done things like gourmet meals to go and you know taken a parking lot and turned it into like a magical you know dining room so they've just been so innovative in every possible way um and it's really let us know what their employees mean to them that they're working so hard to keep them the other thing you know about food and just again celebration in charleston it's it's it's a city that has grown over the years you've increased your airlift and because of all these things right because of these amazing small businesses but i i suspect and i i see this happening to other destinations you've also really become a huge drive from right now because people are wanting to just hop in their cars and do something that's close by so has your visitor profile changed a little bit since the began absolutely we've been really fortunate that we've been able to stay mostly open and it's been really fun to welcome um our visitors from our neighboring states at our newly renovated visitor center um that we've just opened during the pandemic um we've it's been so much fun to talk to folks from north carolina that say like oh i haven't been here in four or five years and charleston looks wonderful so it has been really fun for us how do you explain what all your hotel partners have done to keep people safe whether it's you know extra sanitation measures put in place you know wearing masks and gloves and restaurants how does that how do you explain that to people in a way that also doesn't feel off-putting i think that's the real challenge right now for tourism professionals is that when you when you walk people through they want to know that they're going to be safe but they also don't want it to feel as if it's a completely different radically different experience that they know well one of the things we found out is that the average citizen doesn't know already the advanced protocols that hotels and restaurants go through to keep visitors safe on a regular basis it's it's also interesting from a hospitality perspective something that we used to keep in the background in terms of making sure the space was so visually beautiful when they walked in the door now having someone wipe down the door before you come in is is a sign of we're caring for you too right to have someone right there so really it's been you know making sure that our members are doing a good job educating visitors when they arrive about knowing they have to wear a mask helping them understand through the social media channels what they can expect and really how to act the culture too of charleston it's a it's a place that is about outdoor living it's a pedestrian city as well so are there new attractions or things like you said you mentioned earlier a restaurant owner turning a parking lot into a dining space have been able to change and adapt this past year and are you thinking of even opening new outdoor attractions in the future well you know one thing we've learned Jackie is i think we took our outdoor living for granted i mean charleston we've always been an indoor outdoor you know whether it's on our piazza and our beautiful historic gardens taken a stroll along the beach you know i don't think that we ever thought about that as an outdoor activity which the world is looking for to be outside and we have several new things that we're looking to promote we've got the international african-american museum coming online that has a great it's right on the beautiful charleston harbour with the indoor outdoor experience we've got our beautiful new cypress gardens and if you've never been to and in a cypress gardens that is a magical magical experience and then we've got the lowline coming which is a 1.7 mile linear park that will open in the next couple of years which was an old railroad track so just a lot of those kind of things helping people get outside i think outdoor living is going to be something that we embrace also you have beaches nearby that are part of the destination so do you see people combining maybe a little bit of time in downtown with a visit to the beach to get a greater a greater experience in the outdoors oh absolutely and it's really been fun to see the experience of back to our neighboring states folks that haven't had a chance to be in charleston maybe in in the last several years you know being able to bike across the beautiful copper river bridge you know on a bicycle and ride to the beach i mean just some wonderful things that perhaps people as a visitor didn't think about before i feel it as a new yorker our arts and culture is really what keeps many of many of our cities thriving and those those artists those events those things have been so hard hit and museum you know museum struggled during this time so what what is a way forward for some of these businesses how do we keep them going and how do we keep and how do we keep visitors engaged from afar what's been fun to see is to see the innovation at our beautiful gill yard auditorium to see the performers that have done things even for children virtually to to bring music into their home everything from learning about jazz it just has been magic to see that happening again it's probably not the exact same experience that you have in person but it's a way to keep it alive until we can be together again thank you hell and hell the CEO of explore charles and thank you for joining me


This season the Sheldon Clark Cardinals have led you to drop out of district competition as new head coach Chester McCoy is looking to rebuild the football program EKB's Chris Hackins traveled to INAS as we go in the huddle. In the huddle is brought to you by A Plus Rentals and by Rental Pro. After finishing last season at three and eight, Sheldon Clark is now under the direction of Chester McCoy who is hoping to lead the Cardinals back to success. These guys are working hard trying to bring this program back to where it was. It just fell on some hard times. I want to bring excitement back, I want to bring that community feel back to the football program. I want everybody behind it and I want Friday night to be a time of excitement and fun. This year I say we'll have a better team, we'll be working harder, we'll be better in the weight room, we'll be better on the field. I think we'll have a good year this year. We just got a great group of guys. We have a few returning kids coming back but we're going to play as a team as a whole. I don't know if we're going to have any one or two standout kids. We're going to have some fun, we're going to play fast, we're going to play furious and we're going to get after people. Win, lose or draw, my goal is for these guys to play hard from start to finish. My expectations is come out, have fun, win or loss, we're still winners in our hearts. Go Cardinals. Reporting in INAS for EKB Sports, I'm Chris Hackins. Here's a peek at Sheldon Cardscans where the Cardinals travel to Painesville to kick off the season tomorrow night. We will see the Cards in action when they face Prestonsburg next Friday night, which will be our EKB game of the week, and the Cardinals' first home game will be against...


Mr Speaker, I rise in lending my support to the bill, where we will collect 2.5% levy for health and security, and that is in keeping with the theme of the Prime Minister's budget for 2023-2024. And as I articulated earlier, promises made and promises kept. Mr Speaker, I lend support to the bill and to add to the contributions made by my colleagues, and specifically to the contributions made by the Honourable Prime Minister, member of Cass Street East, on the area of security. And when we speak of security, Mr Speaker, many times we only speak of the police, and we do not broaden it to include the protective services, all these areas contribute to security of the country. And when we speak of security of the country, Mr Speaker, I speak to the role of the police, the fire service, borderline correctional facility, probation and parole, and we are in the process of establishing the youth justice unit. Mr Speaker, the police, they have agreed to look at rebranding the police. They are developing the strategic plan and setting their agenda on how they will operate and deal with the issue of security. This is the best time, Mr Speaker, to give the support that is needed to improve health and security in the country. And when we look at, for example, the operations of the police, there are quite a bit of support that are out there to give support to the police. But many agencies are willing to give you support if you are making a contribution. And if, Mr Speaker, we say, well, we have nothing and we are expecting other agencies to assist us, they may not be forthcoming. Therefore, Mr Speaker, I see this levy as an effort by the Government of St. Lucia to march and support any support that we are likely to get from outside. Because before people offer you support, they want to know what are you doing on your own to support yourself. And you cannot just wait and wait for support outside and expect things to happen. And with that, Mr Speaker, the law enforcement officers will get opportunities for exposure and training at the regional and international level so that they can improve on their skills and abilities. Mr Speaker, I can share with my Cabinet colleagues, as I have always said, that many times we speak of people, we speak about people, but we must learn to speak with them. And it's when you visit the site where these persons operate, you get a better understanding of the issues that affect them. And I have reported in this house that I have visited mostly all the police stations, all the fire stations, bodily, probation and parole. And when you see the conditions, you see the need to invest a lot heavier in these departments. And Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister has invested heavily and is planning to invest a lot more in equipment and infrastructure. And Mr Speaker, the records are clear that between the St. Lucia Labour Party and the United Workers Party, just check the records as you travel throughout the country. And you will see which government has built most of the police stations, fire stations in this country. And it is all, well, Babolo started and we finish it, that's the police station. But mostly all the police stations and all the fire stations, including Borale Correctional Facility, all these were built by the Labour Party government. And that is heavy investment, Mr Speaker. Then this government came in and there was no custody suit, Mr Speaker, deputy speaker. And government now is planning to build a custody suit. It's building it. So all the heavy weight is left for this government to do. The heavy investment is left for this government to do. And then we are hearing the member on the other side is saying it is not the right time. He should have told us which time is the right time. Money do not fall from the sky. And you heard what the people in St. Lucia said. They are willing to contribute for health and national security. They want to ensure that the funds go for the purpose. And this government without a levy has invested so much in health and national security. The hospital OKEU was built by the St. Lucia Labour Party. The records are there, Mr Speaker and deputy speaker. Deputy speaker, when we look at the situation with immigration, Mr Speaker, they are complaining about the environment in which they work. And that has created a big scandal in the whole country. Now this government has to find a new location. We have to invest money in that new location to ensure that the workers get a decent place for them to work. Deputy speaker. The passport issue, Mr Speaker, a lot of talk. But when the mafia is addressed, you had nothing on the other side. Everything is about scandals, scandals, scandals. Yes. And the pipe that was choked, it took about two weeks to unjoke it, where over thousands of passports that were clogged in the pipeline was cleared within a week. Deputy speaker. Deputy speaker, this government is going to invest heavily in borderline. And the prime minister spoke about it earlier. The borderline correctional facility, deputy speaker, has been in existence for almost 20 years, exposed to the sea blasts from the Atlantic Ocean. And all the metal is rusty. The condition is like a forgotten institution. And this government in this budget has allocated approximately $7 million to fence borderline. Without a levy, how will government raise all that money to improve the situation for security, Mr Deputy Speaker? Technology is the way to go. We are talking about crime and in discipline and everything. We cannot deal with the situation in the old-fashioned way, deputy speaker. We have to use technology to address a lot of the challenges we have. And technology comes with a cost. Deputy speaker, we have a situation at borderline where we have mentally ill and the present institution did not cater for that category of illness. Borderline is for persons who are unremanned or convicted. But the mental state of the individual is not factored in. And they cannot go to the wellness centers because the wellness center was not designed as a correctional facility. So now we have to look for that midway facility that will cater for mentally ill inmates. And the deputy speaker that comes with a cost and that is where the levy will assist government in creating that environment. And that government does not get sued for not giving adequate care and treatment to inmates. Deputy speaker, we also speak of persons who have served their time at borderline and they are released. Some of these persons, deputy speaker, they cannot fit into the society. They have been out for too long. And that is why we have a high percentage of recidivism.  About 43% of these persons go back. What is missing is what we call the halfway house. We need an environment where the people make a transition from borderline into the society. And we are in discussion now with the visiting justice to see whether we can get that facility. They have already started identifying a place where we can do some retrofitting and refurbishment. So these people spend about three to six months in that area where they begin to reintegrate into the society and find work for them. And sometimes when they stay at borderline when they go back, they don't. Most of their families and friends have disappeared. They feel lost. So they feel more comforted if they go back into the prison. So we have to create that transition for the inmates. And as has been indicated Deputy Speaker, we are trying to convert or ensure that the borderline correctional facility is a correctional facility. It's not a prison. We have to do rehabilitation so that when these people live there, they are better citizens. They will conduct themselves better and they will not engage in activities that are contrary to the law. Deputy Speaker, we are looking at the fire service. The fire service played a critical role during borderline. I'm doing COVID. Encouraging people up and down. The ambulances were busy every day and every night. And this department saved many lives for us. And now they are asking for the headquarters. The Prime Minister has allocated some money to start the feasibility study to get new headquarters for the fire service. All these are areas where we need money to provide the services that are needed. The police is asking for the new police headquarters. This comes with a price. Everything that the government has to do, we have to get the money. And we have a responsibility to convince the people out there that they need quality care, health care, and they need maximum security for them to live in a safe and conducive environment for them to become productive citizens. I know many people well the opposition has completely disappeared now. But 50% wasn't there. The other 50% just left. But we have a responsibility, Deputy Speaker, to educate the people in St. Lucia and to let them know that this government is committed to their safety, to their security so that they can continue to be productive citizens in this country. Deputy Speaker, what is of greatest importance at this point is to build a network among the protective services so that they can provide maximum safety, protection, and security for the St. Lucia citizens. Our visitors, everybody must feel safe in our environment. And therefore, Mr. Speaker, we see the collaboration among all the protective services working together, developing a plan so that together we can move forward. Upon assumption of the position for home affairs, when I met the organizations representing the different protective services as Minister with Responsibility for Labour, the report that came to me was that they were wrong. They felt wronged among the protective services. They said the police are rank number one, fire rank number two, and bodily rank number three. And therefore there was always this tension among them as to who is more important, what category of officers are more important than others. But over time, having worked together, Deputy Speaker, we have noticed the collaboration among them and seeing all of them as of equal importance playing different roles in national security protection for the people. For this reason, Deputy Speaker, Prime Minister commissioned to prepare benchmark qualification for persons in the protective services. And the reason for this is because they were treating the protective services like ordinary public servers. And because of the nature of their work, you cannot equate them with regular public servers because a lot of them were promoted based on certification and not so much on skills, knowledge and abilities. And if you have to engage in protective services in security skills, knowledge and ability is critical in carrying out your duties. Not whether you have a master's, yes that is important, but the emphasis has to be on how well you can carry out your duties. And Deputy Speaker, I want to report and I have mentioned to the Prime Minister and Cabinet of Ministers that the report is in for the protective services it captured police, fire and bodily in terms of the benchmark qualification for these officers and what would be necessary for the women where they fall within the rounds. And when you have to do promotion what is it you have to look for in an officer and not so much competing with public servants that say they have a master's in this that and the other so they move from this grade to but for these officers you have to look at it differently based on the nature of the work. Deputy Speaker, we need to strengthen the leadership in these organizations end up being bottleneck bottleneck in the sense that you find only one or two persons at the top you need a broader group for strengthening leadership we need to base secondary leadership it's like when the top leader is there you don't know where are the others how many, you know you should have a pool of persons who can do the job almost of equal level Deputy Speaker so these are the areas we are looking at building the capacity of the protective services and changing the whole landscape and Deputy Speaker we are also comparing what we do in St. Lucia and what's happening in other countries in the Caribbean in the UK in the US in France we have to compare and raise the back for the women back for our protective services and law enforcement and for this reason Deputy Speaker that way we will play a critical role in ensuring that the government can meet the expectation of the officers Deputy Speaker some of the lady has said she said I certainly see she said we need security she said we need to express the message what will we do the way women with disabilities who believenie must answer that she may fall a hit and Deputy Speaker when you sit in the cabinet and you see the report of vehicles seeking medical assistance it will cost this country . . . . . . and the elderly affairs for his energy and his drive and I know deputy speaker we will achieve and very confident that we are going to get health and security under control and that is why the prime minister is investing heavily in this area for this financial. One of the critical areas deputy speaker in looking at health and security for this year which the prime minister has put as the main area of focus is for us deputy speaker to look at mainstreaming health and security across all government programs The department must factor in areas of health and security in all the plans and when they get support they must secure support for both health and security in the funding and that will help boost the contribution that goes directly to health we cannot say that's ministry of health that's not my business I don't have anything to do with that no health and security is the business for every department of government every agency every NGO everybody in the society must focus on health and security at least give it priority for this year and that is how we are going to raise the revenue we need not just the levy but other areas to give it the support that it is and with that mr speaker I am confident that during the financial year 23 to 24 we are going to see a significant dent made in that area a significant push and one of the things I am very pleased about Mr Deputy Speaker is the fact that St. Jude the St. Lucian population is waiting with better breath on what will happen with St. Jude and those on the other side that have reduced their attendance to zero are hoping that nothing happens nothing happens that is where they want to give us a pass or a fail grade and strategically the prime minister and his team is on course the sale is up in the air and there is no turning back there is no turning back and this is why the levy will come to give us the additional revenue and support to achieve that objective and I am very confident with the drive from the minister of health the support from the prime minister and the broader support from the cabinet of ministers we are not going to focus on the detractors they are trying to find all kinds of story they have tried to drag me in so many things but I am so focused I don't see them on either side Mr Deputy Speaker I keep going back to the project I go back to the manifesto and I say this is what we promise the people and let us remain focused on that and that is what the people will use to judge us by what we promise and what we deliver and I am telling you Mr of health talk about comforted that I am part of a government called the Deputy Speaker you must first go in labor so now we are in labor we are getting ready we are pushing we are pushing and that baby will be born and when that baby is born that baby will be healthy strong good and ready to go Mr. Speaker I applaud the prime minister for his vision for his stewardship is very full and at this hour of the night we are still discussing health and security for the people of St. Lucia it tells us that we are serious about the work that we have to do Mr. Speaker and with this I give my 110% to this bill and let us go ahead and serve the people and deliver what we promise them