A Canadian woman whose husband is stuck in Bolivia due to the COVID-19 travel shutdown is appealing to Ottawa to bring her husband back to her.
However, Ottawa is not planning any additional repatriation flights.
In February, Hugo Rolando Barrientos Cardozo, who is a Canadian permanent resident, left the home he shares with Megan Radford in Orleans, Ont., to tie up loose ends in Bolivia.
The plan was for her to join him in April, so they could fly back together and bring both of his dogs with them. After four years of marriage, they would finally be settled as a couple and ready to start a family.
Radford says the couple recently moved into a new home near Ottawa where they are hoping to start a family. (Destiny Dawn Photography)
In an instant, Barrientos Cardozo was stranded a continent away.
“I can’t sugar-coat it, it’s the worst. It’s really, really hard,” Radford said from her parents’ home in Brookside, N.S., earlier this week.
The couple is solid, she said, but “it’s just whether or not our mental health is going to be able to stay strong through it.”
Radford spoke for her husband, who declined an interview.
It’s been a long haul for the couple and other Canadians who remain separated from loved ones.
In a statement from Global Affairs Canada, a spokesperson said the final few remaining flights had concluded, and there are no plans for repatriation flights after July.
In the last few months, Ottawa returned nearly 57,000 Canadians on about 700 flights from 109 countries.
In May, Rob Oliphant, the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, said the job was nearly 90 per cent done, but completing the “last part of the marathon is always the toughest.”
‘Their job isn’t finished yet’
Radford has called Global Affairs’ emergency helpline, and asked her member of Parliament, Marie-France Lalonde, for help to bring her husband home.
The air travel lockdown by Bolivia has created significant challenges to return Barrientos Cardozo, Lalonde said in a written statement.
Global Affairs would not comment directly on this case, but said it is aware of Canadian citizens and permanent residents in Bolivia who want to come home, but cannot because there are no flights.
There are nearly 6,700 Canadians registered in Bolivia, though the department said registration is not an indication of a wish to stay or leave.
Radford has temporarily moved back home with her parents. The couple stays connected through daily video calls. (Elizabeth Chiu/CBC)
Radford notes that while Britain and the U.S. have had repatriation flights to Bolivia, Canada has not.
“I think their job isn’t finished yet,” she said. “There’s so many of us still waiting and saying, ‘Well, what about us?'”
The situation is urgent because Bolivia, which is ruled by an interim government and is one of Latin America’s poorest countries, is suffering under the added strain of COVID-19.
It’s so desperate that the country has imposed a strict curfew.
“They’re having to gather bodies off of the street because people don’t know where to put their dead, or they kind of just die in the streets because they can’t get into the hospitals,” Radford said.
The anxiety grows for the couple with each passing month. In October, Barrientos Cardozo’s passport will expire, adding another complication. Bolivian government offices closed in March.
Painful wait
Waiting for him alone at home for months has been a strain. In June, she moved back in with her parents and siblings because of it.
After facing the challenges of Canada’s immigration system to get her husband permanent residency status, this uncertainty is worse, she said.
The couple, who are Christians, are relying on their faith to get through this separation. But while they’re both healthy, that could change in a heartbeat with COVID-19.
“Rolo and I have been apart most of our relationship, but this is different. There’s a life-threatening disease involved,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard to even sleep because I’m wondering if he gets sick, what’s going to happen.”
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
