Canada's inflation rate inches up again, to new 31-year high of 6.8% – CBC News

FREDERICTON – After her party won a majority government in the New Brunswick election on Monday, Liberal Leader Susan Holt thanked all the women who came before her.

Flanked by her three young daughters on stage in Fredericton, Holt, the first female premier-designate in New Brunswick history, delivered a bilingual victory speech that paid tribute to female trailblazers in provincial politics.

The 47-year-old former business advocate and public servant led the Liberals to victory after a 33-day campaign, thwarting Blaine Higgs’s bid to secure a third term as Tory premier.

Aside from her tough-talking style, the 47-year-old party leader from Fredericton is known for her varied work history, which includes stints in the private and public sectors.

Her first job was scooping ice cream at a gas station in Fredericton before she was promoted to cashier at a nearby grocery store. She later worked for other local entrepreneurs, including an engineering firm and some IT startups. She went on to management roles within large IT firms, including IBM, Xerox, HP and Research In Motion.

Before entering the political arena, Holt served as CEO of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce and CEO of the New Brunswick Business Council. A graduate of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., she has also worked as a business lobbyist and consultant.

After working as an adviser to former Liberal premier Brian Gallant, Holt won the provincial Liberal leadership in August 2022. She was elected to the legislature in an April 2023 byelection, representing a largely rural riding in northern New Brunswick. At the close of the latest campaign, she won a riding in Fredericton

Holt has repeatedly drawn attention to what she has described as Higgs’s top-down leadership style.

“We’ve seen that Blaine Higgs can’t work with anyone,” Holt said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press, noting that 14 of his caucus members have quit their posts since the Tories won a majority in 2020 — several of them openly complaining about how the premier ran the government.

“He’s a my-way-or-the-highway, one-man show,” Holt said. “And that’s not good for New Brunswickers.”

She said Higgs, a former Irving Oil executive, had shifted his party towards more conservative policies. She cited his decision last year to require teachers to ask parents before they use the preferred pronouns of transgender students under 16 and promised a Liberal government would change that policy.

Holt has pledged to implement changes recommended in a report released last year by Kelly Lamrock, the province’s child and youth advocate. Lamrock said children in Grade 6, who are around the age of 12, should be allowed to make the decision without parental consent.

As for the campaign, it was a lacklustre affair, perhaps most notable for the Progressive Conservative leader’s decision not to take part in any scheduled public events during at least 10 days of the race.

Still, it wasn’t an easy ride for Holt. Last week, she was on the defensive for comments she made about residents in her former riding in northern New Brunswick.

In January, Holt was describing the diversity of the province when she told a podcast that in Fredericton there were “really progressive people here, highly educated … and my riding of Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore has (a) totally different makeup.”

In response, the Progressive Conservatives released a campaign ad that accused the Liberal leader of suggesting Bathurst residents were not as smart as people in the capital.

Holt acknowledged she should have been more careful with her words. “It’s always a lesson that you have to speak carefully because there are people out there who will want to twist your words … for political gain,” she said in the interview.

The Liberals focused much of their campaign on improving the province’s health-care system. Holt said the topic dominated discussion at the doorstep.

“People are legitimately afraid to go to an ER because they might be waiting there for 12 hours,” she said. “Our health-care system is in crisis.”

The Liberals are pledging to build at least 30 community care clinics across the province over three years, bringing together doctors, nurses and other health professionals under one roof. Holt has said doctors are eager to work in such clinics because the administrative support can free them from paperwork and other time-consuming tasks.

Asked how she felt about the possibility of making history as the province’s first female premier, Holt said: “I thought we would get here before now.”

Then she turned attention to her daughters, ages 12, 10 and seven.

“It’s pretty surreal to think that I might show them that this particular glass ceiling can be broken and there won’t be barriers to what they can achieve in their lives,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Schools in Mexico will have six months to implement a government-sponsored ban on junk food or else face heavy fines, officials said Monday.

The rules, published on Sept. 30, target products that have become staples for two or three generations of Mexican schoolkids: sugary fruit drinks sold in triangular cardboard cartons, chips, artificial pork rinds and soy-encased, salty peanuts with chile. School administrators who violate the order will face fines equivalent to between $545 and $5,450, which could double for a second offense, amounting to nearly a year’s wages for some of them.

Mexico’s children have the highest consumption of junk food in Latin America and many get 40% of their total caloric intake from it, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund which labeled child obesity there an emergency.

The new ban targets products that have become staples for two or three generations of Mexican schoolkids: sugary fruit drinks sold in triangular cardboard cartons, chips, artificial pork rinds and soy-encased, salty peanuts with chile.

Previous attempts to implement laws against so-called ‘junk food’ have met with little success.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday schools would have to offer water fountains and alternative snacks, like bean tacos.

“It is much better to eat a bean taco than a bag of potato chips,” Sheinbaum said. “It is much better to drink hibiscus flower water than soda.”

However, the vast majority of Mexico’s 255,000 schools nationwide do not have free drinking water available to students. According to a report in 2020, the effort to install drinking fountains succeeded in only about 10,900 of the country’s schools, or about 4% of them. Many Schools are located in areas so poor or remote that they struggle to maintain acceptable bathrooms, internet connection or electricity.

Also the most common recipes for beans, refried beans, usually contain a significant dose of lard, which would violate rules against saturated fats.

Mexico instituted front-of-package warning labels for foods between 2010 and 2020, to advise consumers about high levels of salt, added sugar, excess calories and saturated fats. Some snack foods carry all four of the black, octagonal warning labels.

But under the new rules, schools will have to phase out any product containing even a single warning label from school snack stands. It wasn’t immediately clear how the government would enforce the ban on the sidewalks outside schools, where vendors usually set up tables of goods to sell to kids at recess.

Mexican authorities say the country has the worst childhood obesity problem in the world, with about one-third of children overweight or obese.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

NEW YORK – Florida Panthers centre Sam Reinhart was named NHL first star of the week on Monday after leading all players with nine points over four games last week.

Reinhart had four goals, five assists and a plus-seven rating to help the Stanley Cup champions post a 3-0-1 record on the week and move into first place in the Atlantic Division.

New York Rangers left-winger Artemi Panarin took the second star and Minnesota Wild goaltenderFilip Gustavsson was the third star.

Panarin had eight points (4-4) over three games.

Gustavsson became the 15th goalie in NHL history to score a goal and had a 1.00 goals-against average and .962 save percentage over a pair of victories.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.