Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

HALIFAX – A lot has changed in Nova Scotia since the Progressive Conservatives won a dominant electoral majority in the 2021 election with a targeted focus on health care.

And while the health system is still struggling — more than 145,114 people are waiting for a family doctor — the affordability crisis has moved up the list of priorities for voters to compete with health care for the top issue ahead of the Nov. 26 election.

“People’s ability to afford groceries and a place to live — that supersedes just about anything,” Jeffrey MacLeod, a Mount Saint Vincent University political science professor, said in a recent interview.

Robert Huish, a political scientist at Dalhousie University, agrees. “Nova Scotia has traditionally been a place where cost of living was below that of other parts of the country. Now we have rents that rival Toronto and exceed Montreal,” he said.

Tim Houston and the Progressive Conservatives remain atop the polls at the midway point in the provincial election — a recent survey by Abacus Data put the Tories at 45 per cent support, with the NDP and Liberals fighting for second spot at 26 per cent and 25 per cent support respectively.

But if the Liberals and NDP want to catch up, and if the Tories want to maintain their majority or expand it, then they all must reckon with the affordability crisis, MacLeod and Huish say.

“If the opposition parties can effectively make the case that this government, the Houston government, has created many of the problems that exist within income inequality and the housing crisis because of its lack of foresight, then that will be bad news” for the Tories, MacLeod said.

“That could really change the result on election day, and it could cost them their government if they’re not careful.”

The Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia says, as of Oct. 30, there were 1,335 people actively experiencing homelessness in the Halifax area — a sharp rise from the 417 people on the list when Houston became premier. As well, there are about 7,020 households on Nova Scotia’s wait-list for public housing, and half of them are seniors.

An August report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says a living wage in Halifax has risen to $28.30 per hour. The organization describes a living wage as the take-home pay that a person needs to cover rent, clothing, shelter, transportation, health care and basic household expenses. The minimum wage in Nova Scotia is $15.20 per hour.

“The fact that (the cost of) rents have exploded so much coming out of the pandemic, it has left a lot of people in really precarious spots,” Huish said, explaining that Nova Scotia is dealing with a shortage of affordable housing and a rental apartment vacancy rate of about one per cent.

This means on the campaign trail, “affordability is going to be a huge thing.”

MacLeod said over the past three-and-a-half years, the Progressive Conservative government set ambitious targets for population growth while housing, infrastructure and access to health care haven’t kept pace. In October 2021, Houston’s government announced a plan to double the province’s population to two million people by 2060.

Earlier this week, Liberal Leader Zach Churchill jumped on the Tories’ immigration record, saying the party’s policies are preventing the government from being able to offer proper housing and other services. Churchill said that in the most recent fiscal year, the Tories welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the Immigration Department’s limit by more than 4,000.

Churchill said immigration has to be done “in a responsible way.”

In response, Houston told reporters his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.”

Churchill’s party is promising to create a rent bank — modelled off a similar program in British Columbia — that would offer renters a no-interest load if they fall behind on their bills. If elected to govern, the party would also cut the harmonized sales tax by two percentage points — one point more than the Tories would — and remove all the HST on groceries that aren’t already taxed, like snack foods and rotisserie chickens.

Claudia Chender’s NDP, meanwhile, has issued a slew of housing- and affordability-related promises, including to impose a rent-control system, ban fixed-term rent leases and slash the province’s rent cap in half to 2.5 per cent. Chender is also promising to prioritize the use of prefabricated housing to expand public housing stock and increase loans to help with down payments on homes.

In trying to tackle the housing crisis, the governing Tories have “overly relied” on the private sector to build homes, which has led to the creation of new units that many middle-income or low-income people can’t afford, MacLeod said.

Asked earlier this week whether he planned to do more to help low-income Nova Scotians struggling with the cost of living, Houston listed a number of previously announced measures. These include his government’s home heating rebate, indexing of social assistance rates to inflation, and a one-point HST cut.

The Tory platform, released on Friday, includes a promise to cap electricity rate increases so that they don’t exceed the national average.

MacLeod said “proven” measures to lift people out of poverty and ensure they can afford a place to live would include raising income assistance and wages so that people can afford their housing, groceries and other necessities.

“Tax cuts don’t address that,” he said.

The Tory leader has also announced plans to raise minimum wage to $16.50 an hour by next year if he is re-elected.

“We know there are certain things government can do. They can’t do everything,” Houston said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.