Avoid non-essential travel to Maui, Canada says as wildfires rage

VICTORIA – The result of British Columbia’s election will come down to the wire on Monday when absentee ballots are counted after a tally of mail-in votes failed to resolve a handful of undecided races.

The provincewide count of late mail-ins is continuing, but the tally of those votes has been completed in the closest races without any shift in the party standings.

Prospects for an NDP government increased on Saturday after the party widened leads in some close races thanks to mail-in ballots and cut back B.C. Conservative margins in others.

The closest undecided riding in the province is Surrey-Guildford, where the NDP has cut the Conservative lead to 12 votes.

With an estimated 226 absentee and special votes still to be counted, Surrey-Guildford could provide David Eby’s NDP with the narrowest of majorities if the lead there flips on Monday.

Elections BC says the tally of more than 22,000 absentee and special votes will be updated hourly on its website from 9 a.m. Monday.

The NDP is elected or leading in 46 seats and John Rustad’s Conservatives in 45, both short of a 47-seat majority, while the Greens could hold the balance of power with two seats.

Recounts are also underway in two ridings where the New Democrats held slim leads after the initial count in the still-undecided Oct. 19 vote.

Elections BC says the results of recounts in Juan de Fuca-Malahat on Vancouver Island and Surrey City Centre that began at 1 p.m. Sunday will be posted online when they are complete.

The Surrey result was expected Sunday, with the Juan de Fuca-Malahat result slated for Monday.

The recounts were triggered because margins of victory after the initial tally were below 100 votes. Counting of mail-in ballots on Saturday widened the NDP lead in Juan de Fuca-Malahat to 106 votes, while the party now leads by 178 in Surrey City Centre.

The provincewide count of mail-in votes was scheduled to finish Sunday.

Meanwhile, Chief Clarence Louie, Tribal Chair of the Syilx Okanagan Nation, issued a statement on Sunday calling for the B.C. Conservative candidate in Juan de Fuca-Malahat to be removed from the party over comments about Indigenous people.

On Friday, the Vancouver Sun published a recording in which a person it identifies as Marina Sapozhnikov calls First Nations people “savages.” The newspaper says the comments came during an election-night conversation with a journalism student.

Louie called the reported comments “abhorrent and racist.”

“These ignorant and hateful comments, which constitute a form of hate speech, have no place in our society. We call on B.C. Conservative Leader, John Rustad, to immediately take a clear and strong stand against hate and racism by removing her from his political party,” Louie said.

Rustad has issued a statement saying he was “appalled and deeply saddened” by the comments and the party is “taking this matter seriously.”

While the makeup of the 93-riding legislature could finally become clear on Monday, judicial recounts could still take place after that if the margin in a riding is less than 1/500th of all votes cast.

In another close race that will come down to absentee ballots, the Conservatives hold a 72-vote lead in Kelowna Centre, where there are an estimated 228 votes left to count.

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

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

OTTAWA – Whole Foods Market is joining the growing list of brands whose frozen waffles have been recalled in Canada this week because of possible listeria contamination.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the newest recall spans the Amazon-owned grocer’s organic homestyle and blueberry waffles sold under the 365 Whole Foods Market label.

The agency says the waffles recalled by Horizon Distributors Ltd. were sold in British Columbia, but may have also made their way to other provinces and territories.

It adds there have been no reported illnesses associated with the waffles, but the agency is conducting a food safety investigation, which it says may lead to the recall of other products.

Dozens of frozen waffles from brands like Compliments, Great Value, Duncan Hines and No Name were recalled earlier in the week over similar listeria concerns.

Food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may not look or smell spoiled but can cause vomiting, nausea, persistent fever, muscle aches, severe headache and neck stiffness.

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

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

TORONTO – Heather Thompson would love to work.

The 26-year-old dreams of going back to university to study politics and environmental science, and ultimately pursue a career to “try and make things better” in society.

“I’m not the person I want to be yet and I want to be able to achieve certain goals and be a well-rounded, well developed person. But I’m prevented from doing that because I live in legislated poverty,” they said.

Thompson is one of 600,000 working-age Canadians with disabilities that the federal government said it would help lift out of poverty with the Canada Disability Benefit, which takes effect next July. The program is meant as a top-up to existing provincial and territorial income supports.

“We had huge expectations and we had all this hope, like finally we can escape poverty,” Thompson said.

But after last spring’s federal budget revealed that the maximum people will receive per month is $200, the hopes of people like Thompson were dashed. Now, advocates are asking the federal government to reconsider the amount in the months before the benefit rolls out.

Thompson, who uses they/them pronouns, has worked at Tim Horton’s, Staples and a call centre, but said their physical and mental disabilities — including osteoarthritis, which “heavily impacts” their mobility, along with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder — have forced them to leave.

They look for jobs, but many require the ability to lift or stand for long periods, which they can’t do. So Thompson lives on $1,449 a month from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and shares a house with three roommates in Kingston, Ont., along with Thompson’s 12-year-old emotional support cat, Captain Kirk.

Thompson went to university in 2017, but their mental health issues flared and they had to leave after a semester. Seven years later, they’re still trying to pay that student loan back.

When Bill C-22, which mandated the creation of a Canada Disability Benefit, was passed into law last year, Thompson was “so excited.”

A news release issued by the federal government on June 22, 2023 called the legislation “groundbreaking,” saying the disability benefit would “supplement existing federal and provincial/territorial disability supports, and will help lift working-age persons with disabilities out of poverty.”

It said the benefit would be part of the government’s “disability inclusion action plan” that would “address longstanding inequities that have led to the financial insecurity and exclusion” experienced by people with disabilities.

The government simply hasn’t lived up to its promise, said Amanda MacKenzie, national director of external affairs for March of Dimes Canada, one of the organizations that supported the creation of the benefit.

Now that a public consultation period on the benefit ended last month, she is hoping the government will reconsider and increase the benefit amount in its next budget.

”These are people that are living well under the $30,000 a year mark, for the most part,” MacKenzie said.

“These are the people that you hear about all the time that are saying, ‘I can only have two or one meal a day. I can only afford to take my medication every other day … I can’t support my kids. I can’t help my family. I can’t do anything because you know, I can barely pay my rent,'” she said.

March of Dimes Canada and many people with disabilities all participated in early government consultations about how the federal benefit could be effective in topping up provincial disability support programs to provide a livable income.

”Who were they listening to?” asked Thomas Cheesman, a 43-year-old in Grande Prairie, Alta., receiving provincial disability benefits due to a rare disorder that causes his bones to break down.

“Not one single disabled person would say that this is an adequate program,” he said.

Cheesman was born with Hajdu-Cheney Syndrome and knew he wouldn’t be able to work as long as most people, but managed to work as a chef until he was 39.

At that point, his physical symptoms became so debilitating he had to stop.

“It was just too dangerous between either taking medications to handle pain and being distracted from that, or not being able to function because of the pain,” he said.

Cheesman and his wife, who works as a supervisor at Costco, have three children. Before the Canada Disability Benefit became law, he “did a lot of math” and calculated it would need to total almost $1,000 a month for his family “to have a life outside of poverty.”

In an emailed response to The Canadian Press, the office of Kamal Khera, minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities, said it was making a $6.1-billion investment “to improve the financial security of over 600,000 persons with disabilities.”

“This is a historic initial investment … and is intended to supplement, not replace, existing provincial and territorial income support measures,” said Khera’s press secretary, Waleed Saleem.

“We also aspire to see the combined amount of federal and provincial or territorial income supports for persons with disabilities grow to the level of Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), to fundamentally address the rates of poverty experienced by persons with disabilities.”

That would mean people with disabilities would get a total monthly income equal to what low-income seniors get from the federal government.

MacKenzie said the lack of adequate financial support for people with disabilities is “not OK,” noting that the money they spend goes back into the economy.

“We tell people with disabilities that what they deserve and what we can afford to give them in society is an existence. It’s not a life,” she said.

For Thompson, that’s “a really hard pill for me to swallow.”

”A lot of people don’t see us as human. They see us as a drain on society,” they said.

”We’re worth investing in.”

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

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