Chiefs gather to vote on landmark $47.8B child welfare reform agreement with Canada

HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says that in the coming days it will start building a 500-metre-long berm to protect a low-lying land link between the province and New Brunswick.

The Chignecto Isthmus is increasingly prone to flooding and other climate change-related damage, and the total cost to upgrade the land link is estimated to be $650 million.

New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have gone to court to get the federal government to pay for all of the project, while Ottawa says costs should be shared.

The Nova Scotia premier says that in the interim, his province will build the lengthy four-metre-high soil barrier along the LaPlanche River for $2 million to act as backup for the existing “aging and eroding” dike.

Houston says in a statement that this work needs to be done now in order to protect people living and working in Amherst, N.S., from extreme weather.

Climate researchers have forecast that one severe tidal storm moving up the Bay of Fundy is capable of overcoming dikes, flooding communities, disconnecting the province from the rest of Canada, and stopping ground or rail transport of goods and services.

“While we put contingency plans in place like this berm, we need the federal government to acknowledge the national importance of the Chignecto Isthmus and take the climate change threats we face seriously,” Houston said in a statement.

“I am again calling on Liberal MPs to show leadership on this crucial issue, fully fund the project and do what is right for Nova Scotians.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2024.

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FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leader has been noticeably more absent on the campaign trail compared to his two main opponents — and has made significantly fewer election promises.

Since the Sept. 19 election call, there have been at least 10 days on which Tory Leader Blaine Higgs has had no public events. Higgs, who is vying for a third term as premier, was also absent from the second leaders debate, held Oct. 9.

“Maybe that’s to keep you guessing,” he said with a laugh at a news conference last week when asked about his availability, or lack thereof.

On Saturday, the Tories released their platform with no fanfare and no advance notice. It is two pages long and contains 11 promises, including a two per cent cut to the harmonized sales tax, at a cost of $450 million a year. It also promises to continue to “respect parents” — a reference to a 2023 policy change requiring teachers to ask parents before using the preferred pronouns of trans students under 16.

The lack of detail is the point, it seems. “Our Progressive Conservative New Brunswick team will not try to buy your vote with 100 promises,” Higgs said on Page 2 of the platform, which doesn’t include a total cost for the 11 promises.

New Brunswick’s Progressive Conservatives are conducting a “super quiet” campaign, says J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. It goes against the norm of how parties have traditionally campaigned in provincial or federal elections, he said.

“It does fit with the fact that they aren’t announcing much, and it fits with (Higgs’s) attitude that, campaign promises can get governments into trouble because it ties them to expenses that can have an effect on the provincial purse,” Lewis said.

Higgs, however, maintains that his schedule is rather charged — just not when the media are around.

“We’re not making announcements every day,” the Tory leader said last week. “We’re visiting in communities. We’re talking to people. We’re visiting different ridings with their candidates, and we’re out there …. being seen for the people who are going to support us.”

“But rest assured, these are full days. And if you have any doubt, ask my wife.”

Still, Lewis says Higgs’s schedule is “very different” from what Canadians are used to.

“You could see a leader taking maybe a day off a week, but it when it becomes multiple days off … I think it’s very, very different than what we’re used to.”

The Liberals and Greens, meanwhile, have chosen a contrasting approach, with events on almost every day of the campaign.

Liberal Leader Susan Holt’s campaign said she has so far taken off two days, including Thanksgiving Monday. Her election platform, at 30 pages, contains roughly 100 promises, including to build 30 community care clinics across the province and remove the provincial sales tax on electricity bills for residential customers. The Liberals costed platform is about $1.2 billion in new spending over the term of a majority mandate.

In an interview Tuesday, Holt said Higgs has been “absent” this election.

“We’ve been told he’s been hidden by his campaign team. They don’t want him out at all for fear that he’ll say something else that offends and disrespects New Brunswickers.”

The Green Party campaign said Leader David Coon took off Thanksgiving Sunday. His party’s platform contains more than 100 promises, including to invest $380 million annually to fix the primary health-care system, and implement a guaranteed livable income. The promises would add $2.9 to $4 billion to the province’s expenditures over a majority-mandate term.

Higgs, Coon said, is being kept away from the campaign trail by “handlers” out of fear he will speak too much and say things that will make him unelectable.

“All he’s offering is to keep doing the same thing he’s done for the last six years …. He’s travelling around in an empty bus, blowing diesel fumes into the atmosphere, achieving nothing.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2024.

— With files from Michael MacDonald in Halifax.

TORONTO – An expert panel of doctors and researchers say Canada needs to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and take action before the next health emergency strikes.

One of the six experts, Dr. Fahad Razak, says most scientists believe it’s “only a matter of time” before another global health crisis hits.

The panel’s report, called “The Time to Act is Now,” says disease surveillance, hospitalization data and research findings need to be communicated much more effectively between the provinces, the territories and the federal government.

Razak, an internal medicine specialist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, says it’s critical to share evolving health information much more quickly with the public to build trust and combat the spread of disinformation.

The report says Canada also needs to address inequities among people who are hardest hit during emergencies, including people who are racialized, Indigenous communities, people who are homeless and residents of long-term care homes.

It says more investment in research on how to better prioritize and support these groups, including addressing underlying health needs, is necessary.

Canada also needs to create a single, permanent scientific advisory group — something that’s been done in the U.K.— instead of trying to pull together that expertise in the middle of an epidemic, said Razak, who was the scientific director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

“There’s only so much that you can do in the middle of a crisis. People are desperate, infrastructure does not work as well when there’s a crisis,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

“A lot of what we saw globally when we compared (pandemic) responses suggests that the preparedness is the critical part.”

The report said the “absence of pre-existing emergency protocols for science advice in Canada caused significant delays” and better co-ordination was needed “within and across all levels of government.”

Having scientific advisory groups federally and provincially communicating separately “resulted in multiple streams of advice,” said the report, which was released on Friday.

The report by the independent panel of experts was requested by Health Canada.

Razak said there were some aspects of Canada’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic to be proud of, including using wastewater surveillance to detect how much of the virus was present in communities.

“We were one of the pioneering countries and we certainly advanced it at scale beyond what many other countries were able to achieve,” he said.

But some provinces, including Ontario, have now made significant cuts to their wastewater surveillance programs, leaving many communities with “almost no data,” Razak said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.

Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.

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