Excellent, thank you. That was a really exciting talk. I've been saying for years, the arctica eslendica is coming. And now it's nice to see some beta. OK, so I'm going to talk to you today about the low latitude perspective on this pretty much same topic. So a couple of years ago, I started sort of, I actually started looking into what we have in terms of paleo data that can address Atlantic multi-decadal climate variability. And really, the literature seemed to be asking one question. And that is what's up here, and is there a concentration of variants at multi-decadal bands in the climate of the Atlantic region that extends above the expected red noise background? And extends back through time. So we have here the classic sea surface temperature anomalies in the northern hemisphere in the Atlantic, detrended. And the question is, what is happening back here? And so the paper that came out of this actually published last year. And essentially in that, I do a detailed review of what we know. I sum it up in this single slide. Essentially, it seems like the consensus is that there has been significant multi-decadal variability back to the 1700s. But prior to the 1700s, different people say different things. Some people say it doesn't exist. Some people say it's intermittent. Some people say it's persistent. And in large part, it seems to me that the reason for all of these different answers is that we're looking at different proxies that are actually responding to different variables. So we're actually looking at apples and oranges. In many cases, it's a single record that people are making their statements about. And so those local signals may or may not capture the hemispheric-wide northern Atlantic sea surface temperature changes. And so my recommendation for the future after doing this whole review was essentially we need to be sure of what we are reconstructing. So rather than trying to use somewhat tele-connected variables, say tree rings to reconstruct ocean temperature, which while there is a response, there can be also many other variables that impact those tree rings, and those trees are not living in the ocean. So I'll respect to Edna. But then in fact, we should be using each variable for what it's best at. So tree rings for looking at terrestrial temperatures and droughts and marine proxies for looking at, say, sea surface temperatures. And then we can actually reconstruct variables that we can begin to tease out what's going on. OK, so that's my little soapbox. So I actually did a tropical reconstruction. I tend to be a low-latitude kind of gal. And as we've seen, a similar map. This is from Amy Clement's recent paper. Ah, I keep messing this up, where we have two centers of action, the high latitudes and the low latitudes. There seems to probably, I think, be some different dynamics going on in these two different regions. So I think it's interesting to get the higher latitude perspective from records like the Arctic Islandica. And then we have similarly high resolution, annual resolution proxies in the Caribbean and the tropical Atlantic to get the low-latitude perspective. And the low-latitudes, sea surface temperatures are important in part because of their connection to hurricane intensities and our frequencies and precipitation anomalies in other areas. So let's look at what I found when I tried to reconstruct all the variables that we had. OK, so I basically said, OK, we have to have some data selection criteria. So ocean temperature selective sensitive paleoproxies that's carbonate strontium calcium, magnesium oxygen 18, which is, of course, the dual signal. And then there have been some recent papers connecting coral growth with sea surface temperature. It's more of a local connection. So you have to do a local calibration bit of ad hoc. I personally prefer the chemistry because that's determined by the thermodynamics of crystallization. But the growth rate records calibrate well. So another important point of trying to reconstruct multi-decadal and decadal scale variabilities, you certainly have to have high resolution, well-dated proxies. And so that does limit us from sediment cores in most cases. So I made a requirement of less than five years per sample. I expanded it from one year per sample just because that helped me get more data. And I think that if you have a network of proxies, you can get away with a little bit lower resolution and still get reasonable certainty in your decadal variability. So the other thing was actually I made a limit of a location of south of 22 degrees north. And that's essentially based on this record of the sea surface temperature, which from Goldenberg et al. 2001. And you can see that this is the first DOF of global sea surface temperature after removing the trend and ENSO. And you get this pattern. And there's clearly this demarcation between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and the tropical Atlantic. There are several proxy records from up in here, but it's not highly correlated to the AMO index or multi-decadal sea surface temperature variability that we're trying to target. So I did not use those records specifically. So unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of data. So that was the first thing I learned from this and a take-home message is that I was able to get four sites, six records, done. And so that makes this less certain. The more data we can get, the more we can reduce our signal to noise ratios. And with payload data, you've always got quite a bit of uncertainty. So the one thing I did that was somewhat unique was that I used calibrations from the original publication or a species-specific calibration. So this is basically taking the paleoclimate theory of how do these proxies work and applying them rather than just fitting variance to a target, which is often done, but I think it can mess up some of your signal to noise ratios. So each record is an independent source of data, even though some of them come from the same site. And hopefully, the different noise, the different biases will average out. Ideally, more data would help that. So I created a target calibration. So I took all of the four sites I had. And instrumental sea surface temperatures averaged them up and got the green curve there. And it compares fairly well in terms of decadal variability. Certainly, there's some higher frequency stuff going on, higher amplitude. But you expect that when you're only dealing with four sites rather than a large regional average. So comparing my compilation of all of the records, that's the purple line with the air bars in light purple. And then that compared to my target. And it gave me a standard area of reconstruction of 0.34 degrees. Propagated that into the full reconstruction. Just want to point out that back here, we're down to one site. I no longer trust it. This is sort of back to 1360 has the full reconstruction. And so we see a centennial scale variability. That's obviously going to have a big effect on any time series analysis. So I actually sort of assessed that and pulled it out. So the in gray is the time series analysis of that first principal component of the data, that white curve that we saw just a minute ago. And you can see how that really does contain that centennial variability in the spectrum. So we subtract that first principal component and repeat the analysis. Of course, your centennial scale variability goes away. But our multi-decale scale variability remains. Interestingly, we have also variability at 35 and 16 years. I kind of think those are harmonics. But that I haven't done a lot of work on it. So I try to make that go away. I try to make that peak go away. One way I can do that is alter the noise floor and try to see if that's a spurious peak. Can't make it go away. Another thing I do is I actually cut the time series. Before 1850, we have the instrumental record, which has that very strong sort of 60-year apparent oscillation, whether it really is a whole other ball of wax. And so I cut that out to see if that was influencing the record, the strong 60-year period. And I got the gray line here. So you can see that that approximately 60-year period is pretty robust throughout the record. So that's sort of an interesting result. We've got this nice reconstruction of the tropical Atlantic Caribbean region back through 1360. And it seems to have a robust approximately 60-year sort of band of increased variance. I tried various iterations. So you can see the little dashed bars there are when I left different proxies out. So I would pretty much only trust this data as far as that darker purple sort of airbar band. Within that, I'm fairly sure we got it right. But anything finer than that, I would say there's still too much uncertainty. So comparing it with other AMO reconstructions is interesting. Remember, mine is simply a tropical. So to some extent, I don't expect it to perfectly match anything that has been tuned to the basin as a whole. However, the complete lack of correlation is rather disturbing. The gray bar here is a record from Gray et al. based on tree rings from North America, Scandinavia, and the Mediterranean. This is often cited as the AMO record from Paleo, which I find rather interesting. This one is from Mann et al. 2009. And he pulled that out from a spatial reconstruction based on a lot of multiple proxies. But in the text, he also notes that it probably has some admixture of PDO in it. So there's probably Pacific influence in it. The thing to note is they all pretty much agree on the multi-decadal pattern during the instrumental record. And then they have pretty much no relationship after that. So I would actually conclude from that is that we really are not there yet. We're still working on it in terms of what the history of sea surface temperatures in this region really are. Another thing that I've been working on is the Pages 2K project. And here, a group of us, we're working with high-resolution proxies. We actually did reconstructions for particular grid boxes and the tropics, each of these here. So I'll focus on the West Atlantic. Note that we used proxies from areas that are not strongly impacted by multi-decadal variability in the Atlantic. So to some extent, there's an issue there in the comparison. We used a composite plus scale methodology and we similarly did a leaf one-out iteration. All of those iterations are graphed here. The orange to red color indicates how well the data validated from our calibration interval, or separate from our calibration interval. And so you can see it actually didn't, it calibrated okay, but then it didn't validate very well. So we don't have a heck of a lot of confidence in this middle part and I would say we have not that much confidence in this one either. It just happened to be made up of a single data site that did validate well. So I still would like to see multiple records coming in before I trust it. So the take home message is when I put our reconstruction from the larger work that I did with the large Pages2K group, we have similarly lack of correlation. So we're still working on it. I wanted to highlight a project led by Casey Sanger and Mike Evans still related to the Pages2K project where they're trying to get at high latitude perspective. And let's see, what do I wanna say about this? I don't wanna go too fast. But basically they have lower resolution proxies, but similarly they extend over the last 2000 years and they're trying to use proxy surrogate reconstruction. So using information from climate models, essentially trying to match the model state to the paleo data, finding a best fit and then using that to help inform the interpretation of the paleo data. And the aspect of this that I think is really interesting is really this trying to merge or to utilize the physics in a climate model to help interpret and deal with the uncertainty in the paleo records. So this is actually the Pages2K trans-regional projects. You can look it up online. You can actually contact Casey and try to join. It's sort of a, they're trying to be a community-wide effort and then the other thing that I think is really exciting is the high-latitude bivalve records that we just saw a talk on. One last slide, I wanted to plug a meeting that I'm organizing along with several colleagues on trying to connect modern and paleo observations and modeling and work on Atlantic Merdionnel overturning circulation, so one of the potential drivers of this sea surface temperature anomaly. So we'll be meeting in May in Boulder and you can go online. It's a US Clivar Pages sponsored meeting and yeah, the registration will open up at the end of this month, so go look at that. So in summary, we need data from the high-latitudes and it's coming. I've reconstructed what we've got from the low-latitudes and it seems to show a persistent multi-decadal signal in the tropics, at least back to 1360. The, a clear history of the North Atlantic multi-decadal variability is still out there and hopefully getting closer, but I would argue that we're not there yet.


We are ready to resume our first day of our plenary session. So if you may take your seats, please, because we are having a very interesting debate from now on. It's the debate on better regulation foresight and the European Commission's work program for 2022. And it's a great pleasure to have with us the Vice President of the European Commission for Interinstitutional Relations and foresight, Mr. Marosz Seshkovic. So thank you very much for being here, Vice President. It's a great honor again, and I'm really happy to welcome you in the Committee of the Regents. Thank you for having accepted our invitation to exchange views on better regulation, one the legislative working program of the European Commission in 2022, and on the upcoming second foresight report. The European Committee of the Regents and myself are your committed partners. When it comes to taking into account the territorial impact of EU legislation and evaluate a new legislation is needed. The quality of the EU legislation is better when local and regional authorities share with the Commission their experience and knowledge on the ground based always on subsidiarity. Therefore we would expect and very much appreciate if this territorial dimension will be duly taken into account in the European Commission's 2021 State of the Union. I'm sure you would agree with me that an effective cooperation with local and regional authorities allows the European Union to improve its policy cycle. Policy design and preparation, adoption, implementation, evaluation and revision. With the same objective we wish to make the process more territorially sensitive. Since 2020 the COR resolution on the Commission's work program reflects contributions received by regional parliaments with legislative power. They are strong engines often too neglected. Their proximity to citizens and their legitimacy in democratic terms would significantly improve the quality and the density of the European democracy. For instance, yesterday presidents of regional parliaments and regions endorsed a declaration that initiated an alliance of regions of European democracy. The purpose of this alliance is to use the strength and the diversity of regions with and without legislative powers to create a strong critical mass that can make a better impact on the EU legislative process. Finally, Vice President Sefciowicz, we look forward to receive the second report on the foresight. Seeking strategic autonomy at European level may affect different regions in Europe and very differently. So the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that only coordinated European action can be successful. The Committee of Regents will explore the option of acting as a hub for existing foresight activities at local and regional level in order to ensure that their contributions can be fed into the European processes. This is how we view the collaboration with you and this is how we believe is the way we need to move forward. So dear Vice President, good friend Maros, welcome, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, dear President, dear Apostolos, dear members, it's always a pleasure to address the Committee of Regents and once again I would like to thank you for your kind invitation because indeed it's very timely and I will go through the topics as you suggested, Mr. President. And also I would like to inform you that today we adopted the communication on the long-term vision of the rural areas in Europe which I think is also very important contributions to the deliberations and discussions which you will have in the future because of course in these times we will see how the rural development, how that rebalancing of the life in the cities and the outskirts or outside of the cities especially after this very unpleasant lockdowns and common experience is becoming more and more important and it's kind of reversing that global trend of urbanization which we have seen over the last decades. But coming back to the topics as you proposed them, I want first and foremost thank the Committee for the great cooperation for the fact that we are getting from you the direct input from the local, city, regional authorities level and then you make sure that your voices are heard and for us it's very essential. If it comes to the better regulation I'm sure that you are very aware that we adopted communication on better regulation already at the end of April and what of course was our goal here is to make sure that our legislation is better targeted, that is effective, that it's more easy to comply with and that we develop further our techniques to avoid unnecessary regulatory burdens and because of that we've been focusing in the communication on the three main aspects. The first one was to improve the outreach because all stakeholders should plan active part in the policy making process and here I'm referring again to local, regional, national authorities but also to social partners, businesses, academia and the general public. And I know that in the past we heard the criticism that even though our consultation mechanism was considered as the best in the world by the OECD that for many stakeholders it was rather complex, rather difficult to navigate through and on some of the flagship projects we've been coming back to you three or four times to get your opinion. So we changed that, we I believe simplified, we made the Have Your Safe Portal our major consultation platform more user friendly and we are now introducing a single call for evidence through clearer questionnaires and I hope that it would also increase the interest in consultations, it would make them faster, simpler and of course it would very much rely upon regional authorities to be active in this respect because you would be the first hand experience and first hand contributors into how this potential legislation or policy making would affect the lives of the people on the ground in your regions. I also count very much on the committee of regions Reg Hub 2.0 network because extremely useful, they're very good partners and they help us not only in disseminating these new calls at local, regional and national level but also they they contribute and tackling some parts of the unnecessary European bureaucracies extremely welcome. Second, I think very important element has to do with transparency, again when I come back to the consultation process often we heard the complaint that we contributed to the public consultations, we sent you our input but we never heard from you again and I know that this is very discouraging, this is not good practice and therefore we will be publishing factual summaries of the consultations with participants so everyone could see what was taken on board, how we work with the contributions which been sent to the European Commission and how we use it as evidence in preparing our proposals. On third, I think a very important element which we focused on was the reduction of costs which inevitably come with legislation so that they remain reasonable, they remain proportionate and to achieve this we put into effect one-in-one-out approach but we adjusted it to the European conditions because by our approach what we mean is to offset burdens emanating from new legislative proposals by reducing equivalent existing burdens in the same policy area and here I would like to underline that it does not mean a mechanical withdrawing of the old piece of legislation for every new proposal, I think we have to be smarter than this, we have to look at the burdens at the cost and how can we offset it in the same sector preferably within the same year, at the same time we will make absolutely sure because that was one of the messages we got from all stakeholders that we would never allow these efforts to lower our world-leading economic, social and environmental standards and we want to use this tool to make sure that new legislation is easy to comply with, is efficient and fit for the future and therefore once again I would like to thank the Committee of Regents and your representatives in the fit for future platform because they're doing great work and we very much need their support and their insights in our daily work in our legislative efforts. Here once again I I'm referring to Reg Hub 2.0 because on top of the usual asks we added one very special and very important ones, you I'm sure noticed that President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is now traveling around the member states and presenting together with the heads of states and government the recovery and resilience plans which we manage to conclude and which we are now launching and putting into the implementation phase and you know that through these plans we want to invest in European economy 750 billion euros which is massive investment it's the European moment it's a European Marshall plan for for the 21st century and when speaking about the 21st century if you want to achieve our goals in green and digital transition if you want to be more resilient what we need is infrastructure for 21st century and we all know that any infrastructure project in Europe is faced with a lot of obstacles very demanding permitting procedures lots of difficulties on all levels of governance and therefore I asked and I'm very glad that Reg Hub took this challenge to identify the bottlenecks why it takes us so long to approve the infrastructure projects which we know we need for the modernization of our economies and and I'm very glad that Reg Hub is working on it and very much looking forward to the findings which I hope we will be then able to put into the into the practice overall coming back to the fit for future platform there is very strong mandate for topics of particular importance for local and regional authorities be it annual work program be it cross border health care public procurement air quality all of these issues being suggested by the the committee of regions and we very much appreciate that as well as fact that three of the platforms will be now led by the committee's representatives the the next element which we've been very much focused on preparing the better regulation communication was how to embed the foresight into our political and legislative work as you know foresight is new modern anticipatory technique of the governance we need to learn from the past crisis is to anticipate better what might be around the corner or over the horizon and we want to use these techniques to factor in also our obligation that every proposal which we put on the table would have to respect the UN sustainable development goals it has to be digital by default and it has to respect the rule which we all collectively adopted do no significant harm and I believe that foresight techniques in particular would help us to do that in a better way we would need foresight also because we know that the world will not be less complex I think we have more disruptive future ahead of us and therefore we need this EU wide network of experts academia to make sure that our legislation would be future proof that in our next steps we would be guided by the by the science and by a scenario planning which would allow us to choose the future we want from us and the future which we need to build today the last point on this particular area which I would like to to mention is one very noble tasks I think we've got as a foresight community and this is actually implementation or work on the social summit conclusions in portal I'm sure that you noted that the leaders are calling upon us to go beyond GDP I think that they based this call on the fact that we've been working with on resilience dashboards where we used the existing data for every single member states and we looked what it means from the point of view of resilience how resilient is our healthcare how resilient are our digital networks how resilient we are from the or visa with the climate change where we are placing ourselves our member states an EU as such on this global map of competitors who are of course represented by major economic and political powers and and that lets of course the leaders to think about the need to develop hopefully in the future alternative to the to the GDP which would reflect better the economies of 21st century the well-being index and what we would see is as a healthy growth of our economies of course it would entail for Europe to preserve and further develop our freedom to act meaning our open strategic autonomy we have seen how vulnerable we could be in certain sectors how health materials or medicines production over the last year and therefore we'll be working very hard on making sure that Europe is the master of her own destiny and that we clearly would have the autonomy to act by putting the adequate stress on open strategic autonomy and my final final point on the commission war program of course it would be very much focused in the next year on the implementation of the next generation EU on restarting our economy on making sure that we will put into the place the new financial perspective and that we will do our utmost to turn the crisis into opportunity using for modernizing economy and for emerging from the crisis stronger I very much look forward to your resolution which you are going to discuss and vote on this afternoon and I can assure you that definitely use it to inform state of the union address which will be presented by the president of the commission in September and you know that this is programmatic speech which leads to the commission work program so once again thank you very much for all the contribution including your resolution on the commission work program and I very much look for our discussion for your questions and for our future cooperation thank you very much thank you very much vice president Sefkovic I would like to give the floor now to mr. Geblevic from the EPP for two minutes please thank you very much dear vice president Sefkovic on behalf of the EPP group I would like to welcome you to our plenary session and thank you for this very insightful intervention your presence today and also your words for example about rick hub initiative is approved of the european commission's readiness to take into account the regional and local perspective in the EU foresight thinking and development to do so the commission can make use of the resources of existing foresight capacity in many our regions and cities in addition the COR can contribute with the information gathered from many networks and consultation activities the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic fought us that only coordinated european action can includes that includes sub-national needs and contributions can be successful therefore the strategic autonomy of the european union as main force of the next foresight report must be built together with regions and cities tapping into rich source of the smart specializations strategies developed by many regions today will allow us to address EU strategic dependencies efficiently this is the key to achieve the ambitious twin digital and green transformation in europe vice president concluding the pandemic also triggered wider awareness of our dependency in pharmaceutical products from other countries the EU must address shortages and enhance strategies autonomy by bringing back the production of certain medicines critical substances including vaccines and protective equipment to europe thank you very much thank you the floor now for two minutes to mr armao from the epp thank you president thank you vice president sefkovich thank you for the opportunity to the european region thank you to the group that gives us the key issues of crucial importance for the numbers touched by its intervention with the agenda of the best of the best regulation la commission europea intende rafforzar ulteriormente i principi di subsidiarità e proporzionalità e dare seguito ai lavori della task force per la subsidiarità ed e la proporzionalità puramente la commissione si è impegnata a praticare la subsidiarità attiva con un impiego sistematico della griglia di valutazione della subsidiarità tuttavia occorre sottolineare come il tema della migliore regolamentazione per garantir una visione completa possibile della capacità di realizzazione comunitaria di rispondere con una saggezza della nostra comunità deve darsi da fare attivamente perché amministrazioni persone imprese possono contribuire alla formazione della decisione europea a telescopo fra gli strumenti messi in campo della commissione le consultazioni rappresentano un modo efficace come rappresentano elementi di innovazione i ab de la subsidiarità del comitato delle regioni che sono stati istituiti e all'invito fatto dalla task force per la subsidiarità si tratta di creare un sistema basato sul costante dialogo multidivello tra regioni enti locali stati e commissione europea per questo più che mai il pipi è auspica che le autonomie regionali e locali offrono il proprio tangibile contributo alle consultazioni della commissione europea tra gli obiettivi declinati al pipi è quello di creare un nuovo spirito comunitario in grado di protegere e rinnovare la nostra europea e bene è proprio attraverso il confronto multidivello proprio attraverso il più significativo coinvolgimento del comitato europeo delle regioni che si riesce a invernare i principi di subsidiarità e di coesione che sono alla base della nostra istituzione grazie grazie mille the floor to mr ruion for two minutes please thank you very much mr vice president it's a bit frustrating not to have you in front of us but I think it will be for soon to meet face to face for meetings here at the committee of the regions mr commissioner you are the european commissioner who holds the record of longevity in your functions but also one of those who have always been the most faithful to the committee of the regions and I sincerely want to thank you especially that you are present in our interlocutor on the issues as varied as the convention on the future of Europe the best to differentiate the subsidiarity the institutional relations or the brexit in the name of the socialist group I have three observations to share with you my first remark is not to be too stressed to conclude the work of the conference here in May 2022 the french experience of the citizen convention for the climate is speaking it was constituted in october 2019 but the legislative translation of our proposals is still in court citizen consultations are not being done by a finger snap it is an urgent request to prepare a reflection on the emanant device of this conference that must last beyond May 2022 like that of a permanent mechanism of citizen consultations in the image of those existing in the Belgian regions and such a mechanism could by the way be driven to the reform that you have proposed ends in the title of the best second remark my group also wishes that the convention beyond the only institutional questions and offers political reforms at the bottom if we had to choose that a reform theme to propose would be that of the black box of the European semester it must be deeply reformed to become more transparent more democratic more territorialized and more durable also it would be necessary to verify that the proposals made in the four European semesters are of added value European in particular in the implementation of the goals of sustainable development third observation jac de l'or the biological father of our institution who gave his name to our building said that we do not fall in love with the domestic market then what to say about the impact analysis this said the impact analysis may not be sexy but they are not less than a condition so that what is known for the quality of the legislation european that is why the translations you shoulder your support rather than completing the work of the commission by territorialized proposals can you expect us to return to the elevator to be fully associated in terms of prospects there is indeed a lot to know how to do at the level of the regions and municipalities on this subject and I am sure that our secretary general our secretary general would be willing to mobilize our team of experts on this theme thank you very much for your attention and above all thank you in advance of your course thank you very much miss reyes now for two minutes please from the p.s. group as well thank you very much president thank you very much thank you very much vice president I would also like to focus on your suggestions on the theme complex press better legislation we would especially like to focus on two things in your lecture from the 29th of april greetings first of all for your self-reliance that is checked consistently with all legislative proposals how do these proposals go to the implementation of the goals of the united nations for sustainable development but we would wish that the EU commission jumps over their shadows and takes such a test not only for legislation proposals but also for the overordained political processes such as the european semester and also with the existing reforms of the stability and growth practice we need a better footprint of sustainability in all political fields of the european union in this sense we would also hope that the debate about the return in the european political on other indicators than the proto inland product will be announced it would be exactly now the appropriate moment where we have a little time to concept the next generation of the EU promotion program from 2027 for sure that is also a topic for the conference of the future european second i would like to welcome your view of a simplification of public consultations through implementation of a single probe on the improved portal your opinion counts but please forget about so much simplification but not the diversity of speech with simply in English, for example, you do not come very far with me in Saarland and finally a third word to your proposed one-in-one-out approach with which you want to try to compare the burdens for the citizens and citizens and companies in some legislative proposals through a language saving as compared to the other proposals in the same political field or even in other political areas were introduced, our group welcomes it expressly that they have taken very extensive experience from the originally intended application of the rasemair principle with which Germany has taken very extensive experience, but not that yet it seems to us that it is still unclear how the respective costs and burdens should be calculated with the evaluation of various costs and conditions, the other will also be calculated the non-cost of non-treatment costs of non-Europe, although this is especially an important aspect for social and environmental aspects. The approach to storming a law for every proposed new law is in addition to no fact protected or scientifically funded concept, so the appeal to you and thank you very much. Thank you the floor now to miss Landergren from the Renew Europe group. We have now arrived at a further intolerance. As liberals, we have gone from word to word of action. We therefore have a resolution on the capital's role in reducing the burden on the HBTQI persons in Alde, on Alde congress, a few weeks ago. We have further built on the experiences of dialogues with not as similar communities and regional politicians and took inspiration from the European Parliament that called the EU to a zone of freedom for HBTQI persons LGBTIQ freedom zone. Who do they love? I have a dream that European cities stand up for freedom. I pray for the Commission to present a system that makes it possible for cities and communities to simply declare their place as a freedom zone for HBTQI persons in the work program for 2022. In the ownership of communities with responsibility for the surveillance of the regional committee, and one of the regional committee's three representatives for the platform, Fit for Future, I emphasize that the Union builds on teams that know the citizens, companies and public authorities. Teams that are transparent, open, easy to follow, teams that make our lives easier, better and safer to live. In the summer, as a representative for the platform, Fit for Future, I will put forward my thoughts on the directive on the border crossing, health and hospital care, with specific suggestions on how the law can be made smarter. I want patients to be able to seek care for doctors abroad. I want the care staff to be able to cooperate with their colleagues abroad. I want to see more digital tools to make the transition of tasks, records and images possible. I want it to work better for border regions that want to include stable partnerships and offer border crossing health and hospital services to the citizens on both sides of the border. I want the citizens to have better knowledge of this possibility. The citizens have the right to know how their Europe serves them and protects their health, both inside and outside of national borders. Thank you for your attention, Vice-President Sefkovic. I look forward to continuing the work together with you in the platform Fit for Future. Thank you. The floor now to Mr. Ortil from the ECR Group, please. We have to recognize this and realize it, because otherwise, this is the end of our everyday life, a meeting with friends, we will return to various types of lockdowns. And in front of us is really, despite everything, a long way to a certain level of normality, we have to say it so that we do not get rid of such an impression that everything is beyond us. I think that the good cooperation and the engagement of the European institutions, the power of our country, the power of the government in terms of supply and distribution of these vaccines is a good practice. I think that we have to wish that little space in the propositions about the European health system is dedicated to the role of the government in the protection of health. We are not only in the field of medical production, but also in other areas. We know how the issue of these vaccines has been exposed to us for a long time. We have to say that the next priority should be to continue to increase the scientific research and finally to run the economic autonomy in Europe, not only in the field of medical production, but also in other areas. We know how this issue of the lack of a pandemic will continue. Of course, I would like to say that the priority of the devices, that is, that the priority will be to impress the new financial perspective. There is really a lot of resources. In Poland, we have 37% of the country's budget for the protection of the climate. There is a 30% policy, so there is a great chance for the protection of the climate and for the entrepreneurs. Of course, I think that we have to set up a road line, but I would like to pay attention to the European Commission at the end of its work on the new industrial solution for the problems that the airports have. I think that developing mobility and multimodality in Europe must be a non-stop priority for the European Commission. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Mr. Ivan Yuk, please, from the EA Group. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the best decision-making law is made as close as possible to the citizens or together with them the best. In fact, the local authorities can make sure that they have a dialogue with their residents every day. The program of the national community policy of the European Union is trying to level the difference between countries or regions, but the rich are getting richer and richer, while the poor are still left behind. From our experience, it turns out that more and more the differences in the regions, especially between the metropolitan areas and the urban areas, are getting deeper and deeper. There are demographic problems, economic problems, lack of elementary infrastructure and decreasing the number of public services. Therefore, it is worth noting that the opinion of the member of our group, Mr. Stenson, in the agenda of the urban areas, found the knowledge of the Committee of the Regions, then encouraged the agenda dedicated exclusively to the urban areas. The starting debate about the future of Europe has only emphasized that the problems of deepening the disproportionate development of the majority of European countries, as well as the level of development of fictions. In Poland, the national budget for rural areas and rural areas indicates more than 10% of the expenses, while the national budget for rural areas indicates more than 10% of the expenses, depending on the region. This is 4% to 8% of all rural areas, given the financial perspective. When 38% of the population of Poland lives in the urban areas, it is 93% of the territory of the country. Local authorities participate in consultations on the regional development strategy, but the financial table is already created by the regional government in the office. The attempt to solve the problem was a mandatory allocation of the resources available to the regions. In Poland, it is about 40%. Proportional to the number of city residents and urban areas, with a particular consideration of the provincial areas. The main criterion should be the height of income of the residents, i.e. declared in the petitions, in addition to the number of residents in the urban areas. The competition was also necessary. The objective of the perspective could be determined on what the money is already with the residents. In this way, Europe would be closer to its citizens, and the support of the participants of practically all willing residents, speed up the creation of the European Community and dialogues. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Now from the Greens Party. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Thank you very much, Mr. Seskowicz. Thank you very much for your contribution. It is important to look forward and to come forward in Europe. And as a representative of local authorities, it is of course about the kind of local authorities that are involved in this process. And I'm just experiencing how the Regional Hub as a construction site in the Fit for Future platform, also in a regional area of my country, Schleswig-Holstein, has provided an important contribution to the participation evaluation and basically brings the whole project forward. The approval process, you have already said very clearly, should not be dismantled, but be shorter and more efficient. If we see what we have to do in 10 years to really achieve the Green Deal, then I think it will be clear how important this area is to be able to act too quickly. I will mention a few more points that are very important to the Green Group. And that is once the focus on the implementation of the next-generation instrument in the EU. It is important, above all, the active participation of the municipalities and regions. The Commission and the European Parliament have to make sure that the means are also used according to the requirements and that we are at least able to implement the 37% for climate investment. I think the national programs for implementation will allow a whole series of questions. And in this context, it is also important to extend the current extraordinary flexibility of the rule of state participation within the framework of the investment initiative plus until the end of 2022. That is important for the situation in the countries, in the regions, to be able to act efficiently. The situation of the municipalities and regions and the impact on the pandemic must also be taken into account how it is in place when it is about the process of stability and factor factor and the European Economic Governance. Public investment, which is the last clear point, basically the sustainable measures to ensure and improve the living conditions of the next generation are possible and will not be treated as normal. Thank you very much. We have four more remaining interventions. One minute each. Mr Kaki, from the EPP, for one minute. Thank you. But they are not enough. In my view, the European Union citizens are still little involved or perhaps little informed. If the better regulation wants to strengthen the principle of subsidiarity as fully respected, it will be important to insist on actions that reverse the trend of all European countries. It is a pleasure to record that the citizens will put a lot of trust in the local and regional but what does this mean? What does this mean? The European Union needs to be concerned. The distance from the sea is still a lot but I am certain that it will stimulate you, us and the Commission to work with greater commitment. Thank you. Because the regional experience of its members, most appreciated by the citizens of the European Union has an important value for the future of Europe. Thank you. Mr Czerstowski, for one minute from the ECR. Ladies and gentlemen, I represent the largest mountain regions, Silesia, and I think that I would like to briefly share some problems that concern us and I think that it should be an example of the fact that the establishment of a better law on the Commission, on the European Union and on the direction of this law on the side of the Trunk regions must be uniform. We are now in the process of transformation of the mountain region, which will take place in Węgla. We are preparing the transformation plan and we are talking with the government, with the members, with the residents. We have been doing this dialogue for a very long time and now there is a bit of information that one city or the whole sub-region may not be able to finance the Union on the basis that the transformation is due to the fact that the body over the regional or local concessions is not the right transformation. There shouldn't be such a place that we are building trust of our residents to the European Union through dialogue. And here this dialogue is missing at this moment. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Mr. Bereni from the EPP for one minute. Thank you very much for the floor. I will speak in Slovak. Mr. President Mili Marosz, I am happy that Mr. President agreed that the future legal regulation should follow the principle of unity and should not be complicated in order for the policy of sustainability to strengthen the renewal and green transformation. We need regulations that do not burden people under some local or regional self-care. My second point, I welcome the initiative of the European Commission to discuss with representatives of the European Parliament about the future of the year. We are probably the closest to the common problem of every day. And after the third crisis connected with the arrival of the pandemic, the coronavirus again proved that the regions are playing an unimaginable role in dealing with serious things. And therefore we emphasize that the health and health care is a social infrastructure and an emergency help. Even now, the European Commission can help with the regulation. Thank you. And finally, last but not least, Mr. Burboli, for one minute from the EPP. Thank you. Dear Vice President, dear colleagues, I would like to address you an important subject that is closely related to EU policies, mostly in this year. Currently in Romania, we are facing a serious problem regarding the cohabitation with the large carnivores because the number of damaged caused by wild animals. This issue has started years ago about which we have a field petition to the European Parliament and also elaborated a COR opinion on the subject of coexistence with the large carnivores. Now the number of bear population has increased significantly 8% per year with 10 times higher number than the optimal relative to the forest area. We are facing more attacks and encounters than years before between victims in serious health conditions. It is an urgent situation and quick measures need to be taken. We need an urgent investigation on this matter. That is why I asked the Commission to analyze the situation of the carnivores in Romania and the implementation of the Habitas directive, given that articles 14 and 16 state very clearly that the human life and health are primordial. I also propose for the DJ environment to include the work program for 2022, the external meeting of the large carnivores platform to be organized in my country, Hargita County in Romania. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, Vice President Sefcovic, you have the floor for your reaction. Thank you very much, dear Mr. President and also all the honorable members of the Committee of Regions for your wide-reaching comments, suggestions and also questions and I will do my best to respond to you in an allocated time. I will start with the comments on the importance of the foresight and interconnection with RigHUB 2.0. First and foremost, I really would like to appreciate the fact that the Committee of Regions set up its own foresight capacities. I know that the Committee of Regions, the Secretary General, Mr. Bliszkowski are paying a lot of attention to these modern governance techniques and Committee of Regions is a very important part of this ESPAS network which is inter-institutional setup where all EU institutions are discussing the foresight topics and how we can use them in better policymaking and in better future oriented legislative work. I also would like to inform you that under the General Affairs Council of the EU, we formed the EU Wide Network with 37 Ministers for the future and it would be of course extremely welcome if we can link up with the foresight capacities on regional level as it was suggested by Mr. Berejny but also by other speakers because indeed we need to have very direct contributions how certain legislation is impacting the Regions but also how you see the Regions from the perspective of future term planning. Together with Mr. Armour and Mr. Ruyon, there was a question about the open strategic autonomy and indeed I think that latest assessment of what we did well where we didn't really manage so well when the crisis was published by the Commission a couple of days ago and one lesson was very clear if it comes to pharmaceutical products, if it comes to health issues we have to be much stronger than we have been in the past and therefore we started the work on Health Union. We will invest much more in biomedicine high level research and this new agency with the name of HERA and we see that production especially of vaccines across the Europe is being increased. We are actually the global major manufacturer and distributor of the vaccines clearly and without any dispute we are number one exporter of the vaccines to the whole world developed or developing and I agree with you that vaccination is the only key to COVID free future and there we also would need your help to accelerate the pace of vaccination especially in the countries or in the regions where the pace is slower currently the latest figures I have at our disposal is that we have 430 million doses delivered to the member states 350 million people who got already the first dose and we have almost 40% of our population who are fully vaccinated. So I think that we are on track as an EU to be at 70% level by the end of summer but we know that the numbers are quite differentiated and different if it comes to different regions and different member states and therefore I think outreach from your side highlighting the importance of this not only for health but also for the economic perspective and for the young people to come back to the normal life young people like to live I think is absolutely crucial and therefore I agree with Mr. Ortil and also with with other speakers who have been referring to these very important issues. Several of you touched upon that open strategic autonomy indeed we did our homework you would probably recall that my first foresight report was about resilience and now we are working on open strategic autonomy and we did very thorough analysis of 5200 products which we are importing to the EU we discovered that in more than 100 we are quite dependent and I think that in 6 we are very very dependent so the number doesn't seem to be so high but at the same time they are all in critical sectors and therefore we need to learn the lesson and to make sure that you will not kind of limit our freedom to act and we have to be strategically autonomous in the crucial areas of businesses and we are working very hard to achieve it as we demonstrated on vaccine productions medicament production or the field which I know quite well the batteries production and electro mobility. I also would like to appreciate all those positive encouragement in the field of conference on future of Europe. Here I think again we had a very good start now we have I think 18,000 people debating on the digital platform which was especially established for the communication among the citizens. I would just advise you have a look at it because it's a unique platform where we use artificial intelligence for interpretation and translation so Estonians can debate with Portuguese Slovakians debate with sweets in their own languages and I believe that this would be a very good communication tool also in the future let's say for even more fine-tuned consultations with the stakeholders. But what we feel right now is that we are kind of plateauing on this level of participation and we see that the dominant participants are coming from the global levels bubble and therefore you could help us a lot to bring the European debates to your region any event when you discuss the current or future policy please put it under the umbrella label of the conference of future of Europe. The principles are very simple. We just need you to send us the summary of the discussion and it would be I'm sure very welcome contributions when we will be making sure that we are working on the base from this which we are starting to really shape together the future of Europe for our citizens living in your regions. Help us to get the word out, help us to be them to be more involved. Then there was a lot of words on recovery and resilience plans and the need for the regions to be more included into the process. I totally agree with you. That's one of the key messages the president and all us commissioners are delivering when talking to the national authorities now we have more and more plans approved we have now the money to finance this refinancing as you know we had a very successful issuance of bonds I think it's more than 35 billion euros right now we got the sale for excellent conditions so we are really equipping Europe with very important financial tool but we need to demonstrate that we can spend this money efficiently. They go to the project which are needed which can kickstart our economies and for that of course we need the support of the regions and therefore we are calling on all member states to have inclusive debates for the local authorities to be part of these discussions because we need public support for these transformational changes we want to finance by this instrument and I see that I am also exceeding my time here so my last word would be to thank all of you who are participating in our future platform thank you for the work and looking forward to our future cooperation thank you very much the Apostles Thank you very much Maros it is again a great pleasure to have you here today with us I think we had a very interesting and fruitful discussion with our members here and I want to thank you Vice President Sef Szovic because you have been a real friend of the Committee of Regions and the supporter of our efforts here so thank you again and we are looking forward in continuing this strong collaboration together in the near future and have a safe continuation of your week let's hope that the pandemic will finally end and we will be able to meet in person as well thank you very much ok dear colleagues


Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby spoke Thursday night and provided an update on what action SECDEF will take in response to personnel challenges in the nuclear force. First, following the meeting last week that Secretary Hagel convened with senior leaders of our strategic deterrence enterprise, those leaders have now begun work on an action plan to identify any systemic personnel problems in the nuclear force and the steps necessary to fix those problems. The Sefford is being co-chaired by the joint staff and the staff of the Undersecretary for Policy. Secretary Hagel has asked that its work be completed and its recommendations presented to him within 60 days. SECDEF has also requested an independent review which retired Air Force General Larry Welch and retired Admiral John Harvey have agreed to lead. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Tony Rosa.


Hello, so you found a study in a news article, and it's perfect for your essay. Should you just quote it as a source within a source? That's not a great idea, because no matter what news article you found it in, it is in effect secondhand information. Like any retelling, details get left out and the complete findings truncated. Let's start with a national post article called, Long COVID is Real. The article references a UK study which found that, as many as 25% of Long Hall COVID patients feel better after vaccinations. There is a hyperlink to this information. But the link takes us to a second news article, this one from the CBC. So now we know that the national post article was actually thirdhand information, a new story of a new story of a study. Moreover, the CBC article mentions that the UK study is a pre-print, not yet peer reviewed or published. Are we as confident in the information knowing this? And yet the national post article presents this information as if it were published fact. Clicking on this link brings up the actual study. So going to the source is an essential part of your research. As we just saw, new sources can leave out important details of a study. They can also oversimplify things by omitting qualifications to findings or taking them out of context. You need to be the judge. But how do you find the entire study? Not all news articles link to the full text. A BBC article called, When the best way to take notes is by hand, mentions a study by Pam Mueller. Clicking on the link. Takes us to the original article. Although the abstract and references are provided, the actual article isn't. The easiest way of finding the full text is to copy and paste the title of the article into the Laurier Library catalog. The library owns the article, and you can read it by clicking on the link. But what if you can't find it that way? You can request it from other libraries. The online form is on the library home page under the services tab. You will receive the study by email, but allow one to two weeks for it to get to you. Okay, so now you know how to get a study once you find its title, but sometimes even the title is not provided. When this happens, you need to use your online detective skills. This CTV news story about long COVID discusses a review article by a group of researchers. To find it, I copied and pasted the lead researcher's name as well as a journal title into Google. The first item in my results list turned out to be the right article. Clicking on the PDF brought up the full text. But what if that strategy didn't work? Because by googling a researcher's name, you can find a list of his or her publications. In this case, the lead researcher has a Google Scholar profile. By clicking on the year of publication, his most recent articles appear at the top. This researcher has a distinctive name, so it was easy to find. Adding the researcher's university or institution is a useful strategy when the name is more common. Clicking and pasting keywords from the study or its findings can also help. And keep in mind that Laurier librarians are always ready to help if you need it.


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In this module, we shall cover public switch telephone networks which form the basis onto which modern next generation networks are laid. Specifically, we shall cover the structure of PSTNs, the services which they offer, and the resultant architecture which offers these services. And we'd also just look at the market which exists as of today starting from the onset of PSTNs. First of all, we look at PSTNs from the components part of view. Broadly categorizing, PSTNs can be defined as comprising the switching elements and the transmission systems. The switching elements you can call them as exchanges are pivotal to the operation of commercial many users to many users PSTNs. And in order to deliver the voice specifically, the transmission systems are integrated along with these exchanges. Let's just look at the PSTNs from an end-to-end structure specifically from the telephony part of view. If we start from the left-hand side, we notice that from the telephone we have a local loop which is the analog transmission line. It could be copper cable either in the form of twisted pair or coaxial cable as well. But mostly it is the twisted pair which is used. That is connected to the end office. This end office could in turn connect to the toll office which is the local exchange either through a digital means or through analog means. Now the toll trunking is the end point or the intermediate point where the transactions are determined on to which the money is charged. That is, it's a billing system. From the toll office, then the switching systems or switching offices are connected to. And you can see from the diagram that the increase in the width of these lines actually shows that the requirement of bandwidth increases as the traffic from individual telephones is aggregated. Now these intermediate switching offices are the exchanges which connect to other exchanges. There is a requirement for very high bandwidth and that is why sometimes fiber optic cable is used and it is being widely used today but back in old days it was also being used. And then you can see the reverse of everything that we've just seen. So it is a symmetric system. That is, if voice is transmitted in analog from the left hand side, it is terminated on to the right hand side in the analog form. And if it's a digital, purely digital system, then the digital call is received on the receiving side. The basic rationale behind the whole infrastructure for PSTNs was to reduce the number of wires. As you can see in A, it's a full mesh. And then you see a star, but when we move from full mesh to star, we do reduce the number of wires, but there is a consequence that the length of each wire becomes uncontrollably or unwieldy. That is why we need to have a hierarchical structure as shown to you in C here. You can see that it is a hierarchical kind of arrangement in which we have local exchanges, we could have regional exchanges and then we could have country level exchanges as well. So this is the biggest rationale on the basis of which the PSTNs are realized. Now if you look at the typical internet connectivity, how the data is delivered from the computer to the ISP and from the ISP server back to the computer, we can see that some additional hardware is incorporated in PSTNs. Let's start from the left hand side once again. We have a computer through which is connected to a modem and this modem is connected to the analog line. Depending upon the availability of the communication medium which is available such as the twisted pair, the modem is geared to that technology. Now the modem is usually connected to the toll office or we say the network side or we can say the exchange through some kind of intermediate transition or what we call as the Kodak. Because sometimes the modem may not be speaking the same language that the toll office may be able to understand. So we need some kind of encoding decoding activity. Here in the toll offices we see again it's a network of exchanges. All these exchanges are connected to one another. Now if you want to communicate something from the computer to the ISP, we would move on to the figure and we'll see that the Kodak that we used on the modem side also needs a sister Kodak here on the ISP side. So we see that the decoding is done here on the top right section where we have the decoding done and it is then sent on to the server of the ISP. Likewise when something is sent back to the computer from the ISP it follows the same procedure. On the right hand side of the figure you can also appreciate that there are different ways through which these servers could be connected to computers because depending on the local network and local infrastructure these ISPs could be connected to a computer which is transmitting through the modem either through specific digital lines as you see for ISP 2 or if the ISP 1 doesn't have the digital line it has to use the modems. So this particular data connectivity is a norm that we have witnessed and we have sometimes experienced it as well. Now coming on to the overall market which exists starting from the early 20th century there has been a consistent rise but we see an exponential growth from 1970s but this growth actually came to a stall somewhere between 2002 to 2005 and that owes to the emergence of mobile communications as an alternate to fixed landline telephones and we have seen that there is a decline from this point onwards. For instance in Pakistan the majority of the users of internet and data networks including the voice as well are mostly comprising the wireless mobile users.


Okay, welcome back to Senate Education 344 on January 14th Friday afternoon. Senator Hooker question kick us off. You're muted Senator. Sorry. Before we go on. Could I give some suggested witnesses for the waiting study? I'd like to hear more from people from Winooski that we heard from and people from the coalition for Vermont student equity. We heard, you know, we voted the report out, I voted for it, knowing that we were going to have more of a discussion in committee. So I'll have some names. Maybe I can give them to Daphne and you can absolutely see about having them. Thanks. Yeah. Anybody that you would like, I've already asked Daphne to reach out to the Winooski. Excuse me, school district in Burlington, but you are the other group that you mentioned. The coalition you said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'll let a couple of names from the Winooski people who, you know, had testified before. Yeah, great. If you wouldn't mind just email those to Daphne and just copy me. But yes, anybody you want. All right, thanks. Great. Yeah, thanks. So, Mr. Demeray, Ms. St. James, good to see both of you. And I've already welcomed Mr. Leonard to the committee. We are returning to some of the issues that we talked about yesterday and I'm going to ask Mr. Demeray to tee this up. And we have a new attorney that just entered the room. I see her. She's sneaking around the corner. There she goes. She's more than welcome to join us since this is the education committee. It looks like she's midway through. She's involved in education, I'm sure. She is. She's got firsthand experience of first grade right now. Great. That's great. Great. Mr. Demeray, the floor is yours. Okay. So good afternoon for the record, Jim Demeray of this console. So yesterday we were speaking about the aspects of your bill that deal with anti-discrimination. And one of the areas that we were talking about was the area of the ability of churches and religious organizations to not have to comply with anti-discrimination labor laws for certain categories of employees called ministerial employees. And the question I think we had was the interaction of that principle, which comes out of the Guadalupe case, that principle against the Vermont exception in labor law in 17 BSA 495 sub-e and how those two things work together. And what the history of that Vermont law is. So I've asked Damien to come in because he's the expert on labor law. And I have had posted from yesterday you've got the bill and for today you've got that section of labor law. I asked Daphne to post. So if Damien wants to pull that down or reference to it, it's there for you. So with that, I'll just turn it over to Damien. Great. Thank you, Jim. So for the record, Damien Leonard, legislative council. So would it be helpful for the committee if I pulled up the section of labor law that Jim was referring to and shared it on the screen? I'm trying to adjust to how every committee works and some committees like it when I share my screen and others don't. But let me pull that up for you if that's okay, Mr. Chair. Yes. Okay. Okay. So if we look at this here, this is subsection 21, VSA subsection 495 E. And what it says is that the provisions of the section prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity shall not prohibit or prevent any religious or denominational institution or organization. Or any nonprofit organization or educational organization that's operated, supervised or controlled by or in connection with a religious organization from giving preference to persons of the same religion or denomination or from taking any action with respect to matters of employment that is calculated by the organization to promote the religious principles for which it is established or maintained. So this language was enacted in 1992 in Vermont.  In the addition of the words and gender identity were added in the mid-2000s when we added protections against discrimination on the basis of gender identity. But this, to some extent, this predates the two cases at the Supreme Court, which have extended the ministerial exemption clearly to essentially preventing the anti-discrimination laws from being applied against a religious leader. So there really, this comes out of a different period and background than the case history, which we dealt with and discussed last year. I looked back today at what legislative history we have on this in the state house. And there may be more on the archives, but unfortunately with COVID, we can't get the crates of documents from the archives on short notice anymore. But there was no discussion of this in the floor votes in either the Senate or the house. The discussion that's recorded in our journals from that time really focused more on the issue of whether it was appropriate to extend protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation generally, rather than the issue of whether to add this carve out for religious organizations. This was added in committee in the Senate, or at least it, this is what passed the initial, in the initial bill that came out of the Senate. And it passed without any floor discussion that's, that was recorded. And didn't get addressed in the house in terms of the recorded comments in the journal there. So it seems that this was probably a carve out in order to address concerns that were raised by religious organizations at the time that the bill was brought forward. And it stayed in our laws since then with the only real amendment to it in the last 30 years being the addition of the words and gender identity when we extended anti-discrimination protections on that basis. Does anyone have questions about that? Yeah, Senator Persley. Thanks for the history. I guess my question is, is there any case law, any testing of this provision whatsoever? Not that I'm aware of. So the the case law that's come out in recent years has been at the federal level. And it's been on the issue of the ministerial exemption, which actually is broader than, than this exemption. So the ministerial exemption essentially provides that. At least with respect to a religious leader. I understand. The ministerial exemption in like Guadalupe case. But what I found interesting with this provision in Vermont statutes, which I don't know if it's been tested at all. And just to confirm again on the history, was it the original, the just original version, did it say the provisions of the section and then didn't have sexual orientation or gender identity, or as originally written.  Yeah. As, as originally written, it was added specifically with reference to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And gender identity was a, I believe a 2007 edition. Does it strike you as strange that they would say. Sexual orientation and then say.   About preference of persons of the same religion. So it's kind of like saying. Because above it said you can't discriminate on sexual orientation.  So it seems weird to me to say, because you can't discriminate.  You can't discriminate on religious preference. I don't see the connection between. So what this is essentially saying is that the prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Basically don't operate to prevent a religious organization either from saying. The first argument is saying we're going to give preference to someone who is either a member of our religion, or what's often discussed in these cases is. Are they in good standing with our religion? So for example. The, some of the language that. I came across in a second circuit case from a Catholic school was that the. The individual in order to be hired, their employment contract basically said that they would, you know, that they were in line with the teachings from Rome, meaning that not only are you a practicing Catholic, but you're in line with the doctrine as it comes out of the Vatican. Not necessarily, you know, and not practicing something different from that. And the same. Could go for. Other instances where within a particular broad religion. You may have narrower teachings that are only followed by some members of that religion. Or you may have. Instances where, for example, say you're, you're. Broadly Baptist, but are you a Southern Baptist or another. Another subset of Baptist. Within that. And so that, that's one of the things there with the preference. And that's the same religion or denomination. The other piece here, and I think this gets more closely at what you're talking about is taking action with respect to matters of employment. To promote the religious principles for which it's established or maintained. And that essentially is saying. If you're opposed to, in this case.  And you have someone who.  You could deny them employment. Because that's contrary to your religious principles. Right. Yeah, it was weird that they talked about the same religion, but I think the way you explained it. To somebody could say, well, I'm a Catholic, but they would say, well, you're not practicing Catholic. If you're in a same sex marriage at the time. Yeah, and then it makes a little more sense that way. But I, and as far as the second clause there about all they have to do is calculate by the organization. That it's not promoting their principles. It seems very broad and basically. Any religious organization could easily calculate this.  Yes. And so, yeah, they could argue that they're simply giving preference to someone who maintains their core religious beliefs or who is a member of the same religion. And it, you know, one thing that I don't know, because I was. I think I was 12 years older than almost as young as Astrid when this was adopted. Not quite that young. I think I was 12. But the one, one thing is that this may also have been taken from similar language at the federal level. That was put into some of the or proposed or put into some of the federal statutes that were being adopted at the time. To protect religious preference for, for example. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I'm a member of the same religion and not being accused of religious discrimination. Right. One more point and then I'll stop chair. Yeah. So why not any of the other. Protections above. You know, so this provision mentions those two, which I could get at our kind of. Top button issues for some religious organizations. But. But is it. The right to discriminate on those two items mentioned. Yeah, this is the.  And doesn't extend it to age or disability or race. Although what we've seen with the federal. Precedent and the precedent in the second circuit. Is that the ministerial extension effectively does extend it to that as long as the person qualifies. As a minister or other faith leader. So. Thank you. What if back center person's question about case law. Well, what if we were to make a change to this? What I mean, what, what sorts of what if we were to say, all right, well, enough's enough. You know, you can't discriminate.  If you're a matter. What religious institution you might be a part of. So. I think that the challenge with that is that the. The ministerial exemption is grounded in the first amendment of our US constitution. And because the federal law and federal constitution are supreme. That essentially you can argue that. Yes, state law might say this, but state law cannot supersede the federal constitution. And so the federal constitution prohibits. The, the, the supreme court and the circuits have all. Basically. Come out to varying degrees to say that the, the first amendment of the federal constitution prohibits us from getting entangled in issues of religious leadership. And so if a religion chooses to dismiss someone from a leadership position or a position where they're. You know, teaching or ministering the faith. That it is not our place to interfere in that because that. That gets into issues of religious entanglement where we're essentially telling a religion. Who they can have as a leader or a minister within their, within their faith. And that's not the place of, of the government in the United States. And so what we're going to do is we're going to, you know, we're going to be the issue here is even if we take this off the books, the ministerial exemption will still kick in. If there's the argument that the individual is a. A minister for want of a better word, although that term. As the courts have repeatedly. Mentioned that term. You know, applies in many of the Christian faiths, where the term may be different. And where, you know, different faiths recognize different forms of ministry based on the, the teachings of their faith. And so what you essentially have to do is look at the function of the individual, but for many teachers. Or, you know, principles at a religious school. And the, their job may include things like praying with their students, taking their students to religious worship. Organizing religious practices at the school. So, in those senses, if you look at the function of their job.  On the other hand, you may find that people who are not involved in religious teaching at that school. Let's say, you know, someone who does maintenance on school property or has a purely administrative position and doesn't. Carry out anything that's strictly religious, then perhaps there you could argue, no, the ministerial exception doesn't apply. So in that case. In that case, the protection that you'd look to is this protection under 495 E. And there you could extend it and you could at least provide. You know, the, or you could eliminate this and then extend protections under all of our anti discrimination provisions to those individuals, but it would just be limited to that subset. Center person. Well, I think if we're going to this bill is going to move forward, I would propose that we strike this from the statute because I think it's just offensive on its base. And it's even though the Supreme Court has a decision, it's similar to you. The issue that we have old covenants in Vermont, you can do some title searches on old homes that says that the home cannot be sold to Jewish people or people of color. Those are on unenforceable covenants, but since they're repugnant, they, they often when they're discovered get stricken from the title because people don't want to just have that on their title, even though they're completely unenforceable. So it'd be similar to here. We don't need it in there because of the Supreme Court decision. So I would prefer that the statute just not have it in there. They can because of the Supreme Court, they can discriminate against everybody on race, age, disability, whatever they want, if they could make this ministerial argument. So I just would rather that be the case that they make the argument on the Supreme Court and not, not have something in the statute that would support such discrimination. Senator ocher. I totally agree. And I think Senator did was also saying yes, as do I. Okay. Great. We'll have Jim. The same James work on that. Do either of you have a comment before we, we move on. Jim or Beth. No, Jim. Okay. Do we have other questions for Mr. Leonard while he's here? I don't see. I just want to ask. Floating around in my head. I just can't. I'd like to know how you differentiate between what is a core value of a school and what is not when you have a, an institution that's grounded in a religion and core values. How do you separate that from, you know, anything that goes on at the school, whether it's sports or, or, you know, the way you handle money. How is that separated? In law. In a court case, basically. Well, in a court case, I mean, how do you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is one of the. This is one of the things that keeps legal scholars publishing on this issue. Because there's a lot of argument going back and forth. So the original case on this, this issue, Hosanna Tabor, set out a sort of four guidelines that the court should look to, which included the title. Of the individual. The training that they'd received. And whether they held themselves out as in a, being in a ministerial role. And then finally, whether their duties reflected a role in conveying their religion's message. And mission and carrying out its mission. The, the more recent case, the, the Our Lady of Guadalupe school case. That one really. It said, you know, those, those other three can be helpful, but what we really are concerned about is this function. And. That, so what you really have to look at in these cases is. It becomes a case by case assessment by the church where they're looking at. Is the role that the person had integral and conveying the religion's message. And carrying out its mission. And this has become a, like I said, a subject of argument among legal scholars as to how far. The, the part of that decision that looked at the carrying out of the churches or the religion's mission. Extends to things. That aren't related to actually conveying its message or its teachings. And so, you know, I think there are questions about does a. And this is, this is something where the cases that I've seen at the Supreme court and in the second circuit. Haven't dealt with issues of, for example, does this apply to. For example, a coach that leads the students in prayer before games. You know, does that count as. You know, sufficiently ministerial. And then. I mean, if I'm an administrative assistant in an office, like somebody would say doing God's work by supporting. Right, supporting the mission of the religious organization. And that, that's been sort of the, you know, the sort of the maximum. Yeah. Possible extent. But at least at this point in the second circuit and. In the Supreme court, we go into a case that extends it to the point of saying, you know, this. The. The administrator or the accountant. Or someone who is doing something that is a. A core function for that organization to continue its existence, but not necessarily related to the teachings of the faith. We don't have a case that actually extends it that far. The cases all deal with someone who. Is involved in teaching. When it comes to the schools here. So a principle that. Leads students and prayers and organizes religious events. Teachers. And the three cases all happen to deal with Catholic schools. So teachers that lead the students in prayer, take the children to mass, teach the catechism, but also happen to teach other subjects at the school. And in all of those cases, they found that. You know, the, because they're involved in sort of the core of the church. So they were. The sort of teachers of the church's. Catechism and its faith and to be teaching consistent with the church's teachings. That they were ministers within the ministerial exemption. So it. At this point, I think it's, it's safe to say that if the individual is involved in teaching the faith, it's not necessarily covered by the ministerial exemption. I think it's an open question for now. If someone is, is involved in another arguably. Core function to that organization's mission. But they're not teaching the faith. I think that that. It hasn't been clearly decided, but I'd say that that is much less. At least in my reading of the cases here that that's a much more of a, you know, more of an ambiguous argument for the ministerial exemption. And I think there's a strong argument there that the ministerial exemption. Wouldn't apply. But I also don't have a court case where. We have a panel of, of appeals court judges or the Supreme court coming down and, and making. You know, sort of a. Decision on that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Right. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Demeray. Any additional questions? I don't see any other questions that we had for Mr. Leonard on my. In my notes, but I don't know. No. I sent a person to me that the title. Title of the document I have posted. That's the wrong title number. So I'm going to crack that for Daphne. But beyond that, no. And if you would make these. Any other questions, I don't know. Any other questions that we had about yesterday and today. And we'll take a look at a fresh draft next week. Mr. Leonard, any final comments? I think we're, we're okay. All right. Well, thanks for joining us. Very much appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great weekend. Actually, why are you here? Would you be somebody that we would talk to about as it relates to businesses about a public taking. That's something. No, I don't do taking's law. I don't know who covers taking's law within our office. I see Mr. DeMarie may know. Well, I spoke to. David Hall. Okay. About this. And. So he's the best person probably to have been. I will have Daphne have. David Hall. And then. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. The only other. Excuse me. Issue that we had on our agenda was to get an update from. I put my name there, but I don't know. Senator Hooker. Did it come up this morning in committee? Antigen rapid tests and whether or not. We would be able to. Loosen up or any update on the. So what I'm looking for the. Accessing them. I have to say, I was remiss and I'm not reminding. Senator Lyons to ask that question of Dr. Levine, but we got into other discussions. Okay. So I'm not sure what the.  Thank you. Didn't seem as if. I mean, I, I haven't seen anything that would suggest that it's a problem right now. And. You know, schools will have the antigen tests at the schools, kids who test positive under the new paradigm would be sent home with antigen tests. And I'm assuming it's because we have. A sufficient supply to accommodate. And we'll find more to be more about this. Well, when. Secretary French and Dr. Levine come in next week, but I, and I'll reach out also, but the idea. And I think that would be enough to send home. Or the ideal, if you will.  And there'd be also enough for schools. So. Everybody can get tested and it sounds like we might be moving in that direction. Okay. Good. Anything else committee. Okay. Did you have a final comment? Nope. Okay. All right. Well, thanks everybody. Clearly. A lot of work to do ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everybody. And look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, unless you want to just give me a call to check in over the weekend on something or zoom. I'll be around and just hanging out and love to hear from any of you. Great. Thank you.