B.C. hospitals pivot to paper amid CrowdStrike global technology outage

MONTREAL – Quebec’s largest nurses union has reached a deal with the provincial government more than a year and a half after their collective agreement expired in March 2023.

Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé, known as the FIQ, announced Thursday evening that two-thirds of union members had voted to adopt a new collective agreement recommended by a conciliator.

The details of the deal were not disclosed, but a major sticking point had been the government’s push for nurses to be more flexible in moving between health-care facilities to address staffing needs.

The union rejected a deal in principle in April over concerns about transfers between health centres, but president Julie Bouchard says those requirements will now be better defined.

However, Bouchard is not declaring victory and says the union will continue to fight to improve difficult working conditions, which include mandatory overtime and staff shortages.

The union has 80,000 members, including the majority of Quebec nurses, and the new collective agreement covers the period from 2023 to 2028.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

HALIFAX – With a crowded field of 16 candidates vying to be Halifax’s next mayor, candidates have not always found it easy to stand out. But one thing sets Andrew Goodsell apart and makes him uniquely positioned to comment on a central campaign issue: he is living rough in a tent in the city’s south end.

Goodsell, who is 38, moved to Halifax from eastern Ontario about a decade ago. Having experienced homelessness at different periods of his life, Goodsell says he is running in Saturday’s election to offer voters an alternative to the career politicians who typically get elected.

“I was like ‘Well, I’m not voting for these guys that are running right now. We don’t need more of the same. We need something different,’ so I picked up my phone and called city hall,” Goodsell said in an interview at a picnic table Wednesday.

He said the process to be registered as a candidate was straightforward: all he had to do was gather at least five nomination signatures and pay a $200 fee. He appointed himself as his own official campaign agent and provided as his address an office of the province’s Department of Community Services.

Not surprisingly, Goodsell’s election platform focuses largely on housing. His No. 1 pledge is to create what he calls “dignified public housing” to make sure Haligonians have a place to call their own in a city where the cost of living has shot up and homeless encampments have proliferated.

One of the leading contenders for the mayor’s job, former Liberal MP Andy Fillmore, has said he would stop the expansion of encampments and remove tents appearing in non-designated areas within 24 hours. Goodsell, who said he has been ordered out of non-designated areas with little notice, said more support needs to be in place.

“It’s clear when you look at the costs, (it costs) more than twice as much to keep someone homeless as it does to house that individual,” Goodsell said. His other campaign pledges include prioritizing affordable transit and imposing stricter conditions on developers.

There are many signs of Goodsell in downtown Halifax, whether it be a tent he sometimes pitches near the old Halifax Memorial Library, a table where he can be seen folding origami or his “Andrew Goodsell for Mayor” slogan written in chalk on sidewalks, enclosed in a heart. Voters also have a good chance of bumping into him with his black Belgian shepherd Dusty in tow.

Goodsell’s campaign includes weekly meet-ups outside the former library on Sundays. He has also printed a few hundred flyers to hand out, but as a candidate on a significantly tighter budget — he says he lives on income assistance that provides about $400 a month — Goodsell has relied largely on social media to spread his message.

Polling puts Goodsell far behind Fillmore and current city councillors Waye Mason and Pam Lovelace in the race to be Halifax Regional Municipality mayor, but with about one per cent support he is still in the top half of the field.

Jeff Karabanow, a social work professor at Dalhousie University, said Goodsell’s candidacy helps break the myth that unhoused people don’t participate in civil society.

“Here’s an individual who’s deeply engaged in the politics of the day …. It demonstrates the diversity of folks who are unhoused these days,” Karabanow said in an interview.

Tamara Stein, a housing advocate who works with unhoused people in Halifax, echoed Karabanow, saying Goodsell brings an important perspective to the campaign.

“Nobody knows better what’s going on than somebody who lives it,” she said. “If you’re running for something and fighting for something you believe in, then it shouldn’t matter what your stature is.”

As election day approaches, Goodsell said he hopes his campaign has inspired people.

“If I’m able to run and do this with zero support … hopefully I’m inspiring someone out there that’s got the capabilities more so than me to actually reach out to people,” he said.

He describes himself as simply “two feet and a heartbeat,” using sidewalk chalk to spread the word. “The amount of people I’ve been able to reach out to is a clear example that, if you are willing to put in the effort in, you’ll get the people behind you.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

FREDERICTON – The past two years have not been easy for New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs, but he has proven resilient.

Faced with a mutiny from within his own party over his leadership style, he fought back and survived an attempt to oust him as leader. When cabinet ministers publicly dissented from caucus, he replaced them.

The Tory leader has had public spats since 2022 with at least 12 caucus members, who have chosen not to run in this election. But he’s resurfaced from that turbulence with a full slate of 49 candidates to present to the public — and polls have said the election is close.

He has taken his party decidedly more to the right, especially on social issues. Among his thin list of campaign promises — there are only 11 — is a pledge to reject all new applications for supervised drug-injection sites; to force severely addicted people into treatment; and to “respect parents.” It’s that last election theme that has caused him the most controversy.

His decision in 2023 to require teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred first names and pronouns of transgender children under 16 caused an outcry across the country, but it remains popular in New Brunswick. Boasting six balanced budgets and a promise to cut taxes, Higgs is also running on the traditionally conservative theme of “family.”

And the Tory leader doesn’t seem to care what naysayers think.

J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, said Higgs has been “a bit of a lone wolf.”

The 70-year-old was hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1977. He retired from Irving in 2010 as director of logistics and distribution, and was elected that year, during which he started serving as finance minister with the Progressive Conservative government of David Alward.

Higgs was elected Tory leader in 2016 and has been premier since 2018.

The Progressive Conservative camp did not return a request for an interview with Higgs or any of his candidates.

Lewis described Higgs as a politician who “isn’t very scripted,” someone who “thinks out loud and those thoughts can get him into some political trouble.” And for the last couple of years, the premier has had his share of trouble.

Aside from the internal caucus disputes, he’s been in a running conflict with Indigenous leaders. They have accused him and his party of being insensitive to their concerns, including regarding the government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into the systemic racism faced by First Nations. As well, the six chiefs of the Wolastoqey Nation are suing the province over title and treaty rights.

One of the party’s promises is to “defend landownership,” explaining in the platform that “the provincial government is being sued to assert Aboriginal title over the entire province …. we will defend landowners in court.”

Then there is the province’s francophone population, who mistrust the Progressive Conservatives. Francophones came out strongly against the Higgs government’s ill-fated attempt to reform bilingual instruction in anglophone schools. And Higgs’s decision to give to the public safety portfolio to Kris Austin — a formerly staunch critic of official bilingualism — didn’t help relations.

In the 2020 election, the Tories lost their sole seat in the northern French-speaking region, delineating a stark divide on the electoral map with a majority blue, Progressive Conservative south, and a largely red Liberal north.

When asked about his government’s relations with the francophone minority, Higgs deflected: “I would say 42 per cent of our infrastructure (spending) has been placed in francophone ridings,” he told a recent news conference.

And like the tumultuous past couple of years, the Tories’ road to Monday’s election has not been without controversy. On Sept. 19, the day he launched his campaign, he made an off-colour joke about the death of a Liberal voter. Later, Sherry Wilson, the outgoing minister responsible for women’s equality, and candidate for Albert-Riverview, suggested that the trauma suffered by Indigenous Peoples in the residential school system was similar to the frustration parents feel by not being told when their child is questioning their gender identity.

If the Progressive Conservatives are re-elected, Lewis said, it can be seen as an endorsement of Higgs’s policies and the direction he is taking his party in.

In the 2018 election, he said Higgs “squeaked” by, when 22 Tories were supported by three People’s Alliance members to get a majority in the 49-seat legislature. In 2020, Higgs called a snap election, and voters judged the premier and his party mostly for how it handled the COVID-19 pandemic, Lewis added.

“I think this (election) is more of a good test of what people think about his leadership, even though it’s six years into his time as premier.”

Standing by him on the campaign trail has been his wife Marcia, his high-school sweetheart before they got married and settled in Saint John. The couple have four daughters: Lindsey, Laura, Sarah and Rachel.

During a news conference on Sept. 19, Higgs said he wished people knew him outside of politics. He recounted an incident during which “complete strangers” commented on how funny he is.

“They say, ‘you actually have a sense of humour …. When did you get that?’ I say, ‘I’ve had that all my life.'”

He also said that his foray into politics has been longer than he and his wife expected, but he doesn’t seem to want to turn back now.

“If people say, you know, ‘you’re done,’ I’m done,” he said. “But it’s because of that determination, that desire for a bigger, better, brighter future for our next generation, that’s what keeps us going.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.