Alberta man accused in sex assaults and kidnappings fit to stand trial after stroke

IQALUIT, Nunavut – Mounties in Nunavut have made an arrest in the murder of a 15-year-old girl almost 40 years ago.

Mary Ann Birmingham was found dead in Frobisher Bay in what was then the Northwest Territories in May of 1986. Frobisher Bay later became Iqaluit and is now the capital of Nunavut.

Police said Thursday an indictment was signed a week ago and on Tuesday, Jopey Atsiqtaq was arrested in Ottawa.

He appeared in court Wednesday on a charge of second-degree murder and has been remanded in custody. RCMP have said Birmingham was “brutally murdered” in her home while her family was out of town.

Police say she 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.'”

Since the family didn’t have a telephone, Sevigny went door-to-door to ask her neighbours for help. It felt like hours had passed when first responders showed up at the house, she said.

After police arrived, Sevigny went to her grandmother’s house. In the months and years since, she said she has felt the immediate after-effects of post-traumatic stress.

“I was hearing voices, I was paranoid,” she said. “I thought I was going to be killed next. I was crying in corners.”

Birmingham’s mother, Sarah, also spoke to the panel.

She said she was in Montreal at the time to support her three-year-old adoptive son, who was receiving treatment for leukemia.

While there, she was told that a social worker wanted to see her.

“It was then I would be told (of the death),” she told commissioners in Inuktitut. “I couldn’t cry. Mary Ann was so important to me and I couldn’t accept that she was gone.”

Birmingham remembered Mary Ann as being a welcoming and friendly girl.

“We used to dress her up as a hunter and pretend she was going out hunting when she was little,” she said.

“We used to play with her, and she enjoyed it in the days when everybody was fine.”

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. 26, 2024.

— By Aaron Sousa in Edmonton

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

RED DEER, Alta. – Alberta municipal leaders are calling for the provincial government to reverse its ban on vote counting machines, saying it’s more costly and time-consuming to count by hand.

However, Premier Danielle Smith told reporters at the Alberta Municipalities convention in Red Deer on Thursday that electronic tabulators have failed to produce faster results and confidence in them.

“We’re going to go back to doing things the old-fashioned way, and we’ll see how it works,” said Smith.

The premier said the province has asked municipalities for a tally of the costs so it can help cover them, and estimated about 30 municipalities use tabulators.

Last year, members of Smith’s United Conservative Party voted overwhelmingly to ban ballot-counting machines in provincial elections, citing security concerns.

But a Thursday resolution from the City of St. Albert calling for the government to change course passed in an 85.8 per cent vote.

“We’re not always going to agree with the municipalities,” said Smith, adding they are creatures of the provincial government.

“As a provincial government, we have heard that people want to go back to paper ballots,” she said.

St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron told The Canadian Press she’s not hearing any demands from residents concerned about vote tabulators.

“I think (United Conservatives) feel like they have to honour a couple of (party resolutions) just to keep their base happy, and they chose this one because it doesn’t hurt them — but it does hurt us,” she said.

The prohibition came as part of a bill passed in the spring that will also allow political parties to run on municipal ballots in Edmonton and Calgary, and give Smith’s cabinet the power to repeal some municipal bylaws and fire councillors if it deems it to be “in the public interest.”

Edmonton has estimated it will cost $2.6 million to revert to hand-counting, a cost Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said will need to be paid by municipal property owners.

“That is not fair to them,” he said.

Sohi said the city has used electronic tabulators for two decades with no problems.

Red Deer has estimated it will cost more than three times the amount of past elections to hire extra staff.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said it appears it could cost at least $1.3 million to implement the province’s new rules for the next municipal election in 2025.

“There is a lot of mythology out there around tabulators, but the actual science tells you that they are more reliable, more certain, and predictable than doing hand counts,” Gondek told reporters.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said if the province wants to force hand-counting, it should pay for it.

Nenshi said it will also take much longer to actually get the results on election night.

“(Smith’s) listening to conspiracy theorists from the U.S. who think that somehow vote tabulators can be hacked,” he said. “Here’s the thing: the vote tabulators are not connected to a network — all they do is count.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index closed above 24,000 for the first time Thursday as strength in base metals and other sectors outweighed losses in energy, while U.S. markets also rose and the S&P 500 notched another record as well.

“Another day, another record,” said Angelo Kourkafas, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones.

“The path of least resistance continues to be higher.”

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 127.95 points at 24,033.83.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 260.36 points at 42,175.11. The S&P 500 index was up 23.11 points at 5,745.37, while the Nasdaq composite was up 108.09 points at 18,190.29.

Markets continue to be optimistic about an economic soft landing, said Kourkafas, after the U.S. Federal Reserve last week announced an outsized cut to its key interest rate following months of speculation about when it would start easing policy.

Economic data Thursday added to the story that the U.S. economy remains resilient despite higher rates, said Kourkafas.

The U.S. economy grew at a three-per-cent annual rate in the second quarter, one report said, picking up from the first quarter of the year. Another report showed fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week.

The data shows “the economy remains on strong footing while the Fed is pivoting now in a decisive way towards an easier policy,” said Kourkafas.

The Fed’s decisive move gave investors more reason to believe that a soft landing is still the “base case scenario,” he said, “and likely reduces the downside risks for a recession by having the Fed moving too late or falling behind the curve.”

North of the border, the TSX usually gets a boost from Wall St. strength, said Kourkafas, but on Thursday the index also reflected some optimism of its own as the Bank of Canada has already cut rates three times to address weakening in the economy.

“The Bank of Canada likely now will be emboldened by the Fed,” he said.

“They didn’t want to move too far ahead of the Fed, and now that the Fed moved in a bigger-than-expected way, that provides more room for the Bank of Canada to cut as aggressively as needed to support the economy, given that inflation is within the target range.”

The TSX has also been benefiting from strength in materials after China’s central bank announced several measures meant to support the company’s economy, said Kourkafas.

However, energy stocks dragged on the Canadian index as oil prices fell Thursday following a report that Saudi Arabia was preparing to abandon its unofficial US$100-per-barrel price target for crude as it prepares to increase its output.

The Canadian dollar traded for 74.22 cents US compared with 74.28 cents US on Wednesday.

The November crude oil contract was down US$2.02 at US$67.67 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down seven cents at US$2.75 per mmBTU.

The December gold contract was up US$10.20 at US$2,694.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was up 15 cents at US$4.64 a pound.

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.