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SURREY, B.C. – British Columbia politicians are celebrating connecting more people with family doctors, but it comes as emergency room physicians at Surrey Memorial Hospital say conditions there continue to crumble.

A letter sent to the president of Fraser Health Authority Dr. Victoria Lee, and published online, warns that deteriorating conditions in the department are “unequivocally leading to substandard care” and creating an “increasingly toxic work environment.”

The letter calls for “new leadership,” saying wait times in the ER often exceed 12 hours and the rate of patients who leave the department without being seen has tripled to 8.4 per cent since 2020-2021.

Premier David Eby and Health Minister Adrian Dix were in Surrey, where a new hospital is being built, to announce that more than 248,000 people have been connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner since a provincial registry was launched in July 2023.

Eby says the province is working on addressing health-care pressures by building the second hospital in Surrey and connecting more people with family doctors to reduce the need for them to go to the emergency room.

A statement from Fraser Health says it understands the seriousness of the concerns and it will be responding directly to the physicians “to address them comprehensively.”

“While we have more work to do, we are pleased to report that in addition to the thousands of staff already working at the hospital, since July 2023 we posted 575 net new positions for the Surrey Memorial Hospital and Surrey communities,” the statement says.

The letter from the doctors says that since 2021, staffing has increased eight per cent, while patient volumes have jumped 30 per cent.

The letter says doctors have tried dozens of times to declare a “Code Orange” when they believe the department is pushed beyond a safe level, but 24 of those 25 requests have been denied, making doctors reluctant to call for help.

“The combination of long shifts, overwhelming patient volumes, high acuity, inadequate support, compensation disparities and the invalidation of our lived experiences has contributed to significant burnout among our staff,” the letter says.

“Physicians are facing exhaustion, anxiety and an overall decline in their mental health, which ultimately compromises patient care.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON – While Canada cannot escape the gravitational pull of an increasingly unstable United States, a new report is charting a path forward to ensure Canadian interests become more important to our closest neighbour.

“The world does need more of Canada. The United States does. Our other allies do,” said the report by Public Policy Forum, a non-profit group that brings together experts to advise on significant policy issues.

“But it is up to us to make it happen.”

The report, which will be released publicly Wednesday, suggests Canada should deepen co-operation with America in key sectors now.

Canadian officials and business groups have been pounding the pavement across the U.S. to connect with Democrats and Republicans about bilateral interests, making sure Canada is prepared for any outcome of the November election.

Top of mind for Canadians shaking hands with their American counterparts is the looming review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2026. Both presidential candidates are selling protectionist policies that could cause uncertainty for Canadian trade.

While the U.S. is Canada’s largest trade partner, the report notes that Canada is a “dwindling economy” in comparison and states like California, Texas and New York have economies the same size or bigger.

Others have warned the relationship between the two countries shifted from being strategic to transactional as Canada became less critical compared with other places in the world.

“We can’t coast,” said Edward Greenspon, one of the report’s co-authors. “Our allies need us and we have to fight for relevance in a world that is much more pressurized.”

The Public Policy Forum and the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto partnered last year to explore how Canada could manage the risks.

The report found the situation is not dire. If Ottawa can align its national interests with those of its close partners, especially the U.S., there are opportunities that play to Canada’s strengths.

“We need to put ourselves on the agenda early, regardless of who wins the presidency and who controls Congress,” the report noted.

It suggested instead of putting “all our eggs” in the basket of the trilateral trade agreement, Canada should focus on four high-impact sectors: Arctic security, critical minerals, energy and the environment and technologies, like artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

The report suggests those sectors should be “continentalized,” requiring production and investment across both sides of the international border. Greenspon said it will get “sticks in the ground now” in areas that really matter domestically and abroad.

Arctic security is of increasing importance for Americans pushing back on Russian and Chinese activities in the North.

The report said increasing Arctic investment would demonstrate to Washington that Canada isn’t shirking responsibilities and would bring the country closer to its NATO target of spending two per cent of gross domestic product on defence.

After days of public pressure from U.S. politicians at this year’s NATO leaders’ summit in Washington, D.C., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada expects to hit that target for the first time in 2032.

The Public Policy report also points to Canada’s vast resources of critical minerals, which are needed for the green and digital economies. The U.S. is an eager market and other allies are looking to get away from China as their source for the materials.

“Where 20th-century geopolitics featured battles over access to crude oil, the 21st century might well be defined by a struggle over critical minerals,” the report noted.

Canada could also matter more for America’s electricity grid and environmental goals, whether through small modular nuclear reactors, uranium, natural gas or with experiences around carbon capture.

The U.S. will need to expand electricity transmission by roughly 60 per cent by 2030 and may need to triple it by 2050, according to research from Princeton University.

The report said Canada and the U.S. should work together to set standards for next-generation technology and create agreements to encourage companies build supply chains and procurement together across the border.

The first thing Ottawa has to do is be clear with Canadians that the situation globally poses challenges but also brings opportunity, Greenspon said.

“There’s always bumps in the road but we need to lay down as much pavement as we can and we have a lot of material with which to do that,” he said. “We have a lot going for us.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.

NEW YORK – A Sikh independence activist is suing India for its alleged role in what’s described in court documents as two co-ordinated attacks, including one that resulted in the death of a temple leader in British Columbia.

Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, with the group Sikhs for Justice, says the civil lawsuit in the U.S. district court for southern New York is aimed at holding the Indian government accountable for alleged involvement in the shooting death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., last year and a plot on Pannun soon after.

The allegations have not been proven in court, and the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C., has not responded to a request for comment.

Nijjar was gunned down outside of a Sikh gurdwara where he was president on June 18, 2023, and four Indian nationals have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy in the killing.

U.S. authorities then announced last November that Indian national Nikhil Gupta was charged after an alleged murder-for-hire plot against Pannun in New York was foiled.

In the latest lawsuit filed by Pannun, the New York-based lawyer says gunmen in B.C. shot Nijjar 34 times “at point blank range before fleeing,” and a video of Nijjar’s “bloody body” was sent to Gupta “as a message to move forward” with the murder plot against Pannun.

“They were successful in killing Mr. Nijjar,” says Matthew Borden, Pannun’s lawyer, in a video call. “And the same thing would have happened to Mr. Pannun but for the fact that the person that Mr. Gupta tried to hire was an undercover U.S. agent.”

The court documents also says Gupta instructed the undercover agents to “put everyone down” if Pannun was not alone at the time of the planned attack.

Gupta has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Pannun and Nijjar are prominent figures in the overseas Sikh independence movement seeking a separate state within India called Khalistan.

The movement has organized a number of non-binding referendums in overseas Sikh communities, including those in Metro Vancouver, calling for the creation of an independent Sikh homeland in India.

The Nijjar killing set off a diplomatic row between Canada and India after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament in 2023 that credible intelligence linked the murder to India’s government.

India, which considers many involved in the Khalistani movement terrorists, extremists and militant separatists, has denied involvement in the Nijjar and Pannun cases.

India says it has set up a high-level inquiry into the Pannun case after being notified by U.S. authorities.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit the United States over the weekend for a Leaders’ Summit between the U.S., India, Japan and Australia.

Pannun says the goal of a civil lawsuit against India on top the current criminal case against Gupta is meant to send a message from overseas Sikh activist groups.

“This is about rule of law, in which no individual and no government — including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government — is above the law,” Pannun says. “Holding Modi’s government … accountable before the U.S. court will establish the principle of rule of law.”

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.