Ontario education minister to schools ahead of Oct. 7: keep ‘biases’ out of classroom

WINNIPEG – The Manitoba government posted a deficit in the last fiscal year of $1.97 billion, documents released Friday show. It is the largest in the province’s history outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The final numbers for the 2023-24 fiscal year, which ended in March, confirm projections from an earlier quarterly budget update and point to a number of factors.

A drought reduced water levels at Crown-owned Manitoba Hydro, turning an expected profit into a loss. New public sector collective agreements covering teachers, civil servants, nurses and others, with retroactive raises, drove up expenses. And the NDP government’s decision to temporarily suspend the provincial fuel tax in January led to $104 million in lower-than-budgeted revenue at the pumps.

There was also a one-time, half-billion-dollar cost associated with a lawsuit settlement over federal payments to kids in child welfare. The class-action lawsuit was launched over a policy, enacted by a former NDP government, that clawed back the payments. The lawsuit was settled by the current NDP government this year, but the cost was attributed to last year’s budget, which was introduced by the Progressive Conservatives before they were defeated in the October 2023 election.

Booking such a cost in a previous year, when a payout begins to appear likely, is in line with standard accounting practices, the government said. The auditor general’s office confirmed the practice is normal.

Manitoba has run deficits in every year but two since 2009, and the government remains committed to balancing the budget by 2027, Finance Minister Adrien Sala said.

“We know that in order to deliver on that balanced-budget commitment, we have to do hard work of controlling expenses,” Sala said Friday.

“We’ll be making those decisions as we move into the following fiscal year, but that’s a lot of hard work that we have to do.”

Premier Wab Kinew has also talked about looking for areas in which the province can tighten its belt, but has said no decisions have been made yet.

The province is expecting somewhat easier fiscal times this year and a lower deficit of $796 million.

It’s forecasting a profit at Manitoba Hydro instead of last year’s $172-million loss. And Manitoba’s share of equalization payments from the federal government, which are aimed at helping less-wealthy provinces, is jumping sharply from last year by 24 per cent, or $840 million.

The NDP government has also put on hold plans for some of the new schools promised by the former Tory government. Sala accused the Tories of making the commitments without having funding in place, while the Tories have said the funding was accounted for.

On the tax side, the government will forgo more fuel revenue this fiscal year. The NDP recently announced a second extension of the fuel-tax holiday through to the end of December. The tax normally brings in $340 million annually.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2024

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RANKIN INLET, Nunavut – The Nunavut RCMP says a man recently charged in the killing of a 15-year-old girl about four decades ago had served time for two other murders when he was arrested this week at a halfway house in Ottawa.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. George Henrie says Jopey Atsiqtaq was out on parole and living at the halfway house after serving a sentence for killing two other people in Iqaluit in the 1980s.

“He did his 25-year life sentence, was released from the prison system, and he was residing at a halfway house with various conditions,”Henrie said in a phone interview Friday.

He was arrested Tuesday at the house and appeared in court in Iqaluit the next day on a charge of second-degree murder in the killing of Mary Ann Birmingham.

RCMP have said Birmingham was brutally murdered in her home in Frobisher Bay, in what was then the Northwest Territories, in May of 1986 while her family was out of town. Frobisher Bay later became Iqaluit and is now the capital of Nunavut.

Henrie said the two other murders Atsiqtaq has already been found guilty of would’ve taken place in the Frobisher Bay area in that same decade.

He added that in April 1990 a judge found in a preliminary hearing that there wasn’t enough evidence for Atsiqtaq to face trial in Birmingham’s murder.

“I can’t say whether he was known to the victim or not,” Henrie said about Birmingham.

“In 1986, Iqaluit was a smaller community back then. In Nunavut communities, it’s very common to know everybody.”

Investigators have said Birmingham was found by her sister, Barbara Sevigny, who had just returned from visiting her brother in Montreal. The front door to the house was locked, and she had to pry open a window with a makeup compact.

In 2018, Sevigny shared further details to panel members with the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

“When I turned to the living room, I saw her body on the couch,” she told commissioners at the time.

“And then I’m saying, ‘Mary Ann?’ I’m calling her (name) out. I wanted her to wake up, but my mind’s telling me, ‘But there’s a pool of blood, she cannot wake up.'”

RCMP said Atsiqtaq was remanded into custody and is scheduled to be back in court Oct. 29.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2024.

— By Fakiha Baig in Edmonton

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

VANCOUVER – The BC Prosecution Service says it has approved a charge against a Vancouver police officer over a collision with a pedestrian in 2023.

The service says Sgt. William Briscoe faces a charge under the Motor Vehicle Act of “driving without reasonable consideration for other persons using the highway,” after the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. filed a report into the crash.

The Independent Investigations Office said last October that it was investigating after a woman was injured in a collision involving a Vancouver Police Department vehicle that was on its way to call in the evening hours of Sept. 29, 2023.

The office said at the time that the woman declined treatment from emergency responders on the scene, but the police department reported to the office that her injury may constitute “serious harm” under the provincial Police Act.

The police watchdog’s report said there were reasonable grounds to believe the officer may have committed an offence in relation to use of his police vehicle, and it forwarded its report to the prosecution service for consideration of charges.

The prosecution service says in a statement issued Friday that the charge against Briscoe was signed off on by an experienced Crown counsel who has no connection with the officer.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2024.

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