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Court reduces sentence for Moncton Mountie killer Justin Bourque

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New Brunswick’s highest court says it had no choice but to reduce the sentence of Justin Bourque, the man who used a semi-automatic rifle to murder three Mounties in Moncton in 2014.

In its 12-page decision released Thursday, the New Brunswick Court of Appeal said it was “duty-bound” to cut Bourque’s parole ineligibility period to 25 years from the record-setting 75 years imposed by a lower court judge after the triple slaying.

The three-judge appeal panel said its ruling was based on last year’s Supreme Court of Canada decision involving Quebec City mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette, which struck down a 2011 federal law that made it possible for judges to extend parole ineligibility periods beyond 25 years for people convicted of multiple murders.

“The Supreme Court’s decision in Bissonnette makes the sentence imposed on Mr. Bourque one that is neither permitted by law nor constitutional,” New Brunswick’s Court of Appeal said. It added that the ruling by the country’s highest court is “binding on us” and governs the outcome of Bourque’s appeal.

The Court of Appeal, however, said all other aspects of his sentence remain unchanged.

In August 2014, Bourque pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder after targeting RCMP officers on the night of June 4 of that year. He was automatically sentenced to life in prison — a minimum 25-year term.

But the judge at the time decided that the 25-year parole ineligibility period required for each first-degree murder conviction would be applied consecutively, meaning Bourque would have to wait 75 years — and be 99 years old — before he could apply for parole. It was the harshest penalty imposed by a Canadian court since 1962 — the last time state-sanctioned executions were carried out.

However, the Supreme Court in May 2022 decided that consecutive sentences violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because they amounted to cruel and unusual punishment for offenders who faced no realistic possibility of being granted parole before they died. The top court also declared the 2011 law was invalid retroactive to when it was enacted.

Bourque appealed his sentence, and on Thursday New Brunswick’s Court of Appeal said it had no choice but to grant the accused’s application. The killer — who was 24 at the time of the murders — should be able to apply for parole when he is 49 years old.

The RCMP, Crown prosecutor Patrick McGuinty and Bourque’s lawyer, David Lutz, did not immediately return a request for comment.

A statement from the National Police Federation, which represents about 20,000 RCMP officers, said it respects the authority of the Supreme Court of Canada “even if we disagree with this specific decision regarding broader public safety needs.”

In a statement, the police union said the federal government “should consider reviewing and modernizing sentencing guidelines in order to reflect modern public safety needs, which polling data from 2022 shows that a majority of Canadians would also support.”

An agreed statement of facts said Bourque’s actions in Moncton were “planned and deliberate” when he used a semi-automatic rifle to kill constables Dave Ross, 32; Fabrice Gevaudan, 45; and Douglas Larche, 40. Constables Eric Dubois and Darlene Goguen were injured in the shootings.

At his sentencing hearing, the court watched a videotaped statement from Bourque, who said he wanted to encourage people to rise up against the “soldiers” that defend federal institutions and protect the rich from the poor. He mused about his strict Roman Catholic upbringing, climate change, evolution, social engineering, class warfare, tyrants and threats posed by the Russians and the Chinese.

The Supreme Court’s May 2022 ruling was in response to an appeal filed by Bissonnette, who was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 40 years after he pleaded guilty to fatally shooting six people at a Quebec City mosque in 2017.

A judge found the parole ineligibility provision unconstitutional but did not declare it invalid. Quebec’s Court of Appeal subsequently ruled the provision invalid on constitutional grounds. And it said the court must revert to the law as it stood before 2011, meaning parole ineligibility periods are to be served concurrently instead of consecutively, resulting in a total waiting period of 25 years in Bissonnette’s case.

Thursday’s decision said New Brunswick’s attorney general acknowledges the binding effect of Bissonnette. “We are duty-bound to vary the sentences such that the period of parole ineligibility be concurrent terms of 25 years,” it said.

“As explained in Bissonnette, in the current state of the law, Mr. Bourque will be eligible for parole, but eligibility does not mean he has a right to parole.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 2, 2023.

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World on pace for significantly more warming without immediate climate action, report warns

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The world is on a path to get 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now, but could trim half a degree of that projected future heating if countries do everything they promise to fight climate change, a United Nations report said Thursday.

But it still won’t be near enough to curb warming’s worst impacts such as nastier heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts, the report said.

Under every scenario but the “most optimistic” with the biggest cuts in fossil fuels burning, the chance of curbing warming so it stays within the internationally agreed-upon limit “would be virtually zero,” the United Nations Environment Programme’s annual Emissions Gap Report said. The goal, set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, is to limit human-caused warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The report said that since the mid-1800s, the world has already heated up by 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit), up from previous estimates of 1.1 or 1.2 degrees because it includes the record heat last year.

Instead the world is on pace to hit 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. But if nations somehow do all of what they promised in targets they submitted to the United Nations that warming could be limited to 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the report said.

In that super-stringent cuts scenario where nations have zero net carbon emissions after mid-century, there’s a 23% chance of keeping warming at or below the 1.5 degrees goal. It’s far more likely that even that optimistic scenario will keep warming to 1.9 degrees above pre-industrial times, the report said.

“The main message is that action right now and right here before 2030 is critical if we want to lower the temperature,” said report main editor Anne Olhoff, an economist and chief climate advisor to the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre. “It is now or never really if we want to keep 1.5 alive.”

Without swift and dramatic emission cuts “on a scale and pace never seen before,” UNEP Director Inger Andersen said “the 1.5 degree C goal will soon be dead and (the less stringent Paris goal of) well below 2 degrees C will take its place in the intensive care unit.”

Olhoff said Earth’s on a trajectory to slam the door on 1.5 sometime in 2029.

“Winning slowly is the same as losing when it comes to climate change,” said author Neil Grant of Climate Analytics. “And so I think we are at risk of a lost decade.”

One of the problems is that even though nations pledged climate action in their targets submitted as part of the Paris Agreement, there’s a big gap between what they said they will do and what they are doing based on their existing policies, report authors said.

The world’s 20 richest countries — which are responsible for 77% of the carbon pollution in the air — are falling short of their stated emission-cutting goals, with only 11 meeting their individual targets, the report said.

Emission cuts strong enough to limit warming to the 1.5 degree goal are more than technically and economically possible, the report found. They just aren’t being proposed or done.

The report ”shows that yet again governments are sleepwalking towards climate chaos,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, who wasn’t part of the report.

Another outside scientist, Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the report confirms his worst concerns: “We are not making progress and are now following a 3.1 degree path, which is, with next to zero uncertainty, a path to disaster.”

Both the 3.1 degree and 2.6 degree calculations are a tenth of a degree Celsius warmer than last year’s version of the UN report, which experts said is within the margin of uncertainty.

Mostly the problem is “there’s one year less time to cut emissions and avoid climate catastrophe,” said MIT’s John Sterman, who models different warming scenarios based on emissions and countries policies. “Catastrophe is a strong word and I don’t use it lightly,” he said, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report saying 3 degrees of warming would trigger severe and irreversible damage.

The report focuses on what’s called an emissions gap. It calculates a budget of how many billions of tons of greenhouse gases — mostly carbon dioxide and methane — the world can spew and stay under 1.5 degrees, 1.8 degrees and 2 degrees of warming since pre-industrial times. It then figures how much annual emissions have to be slashed by 2030 to keep at those levels.

To keep at or below 1.5 degrees, the world must slash emissions by 42%, and to keep at or below 2 degrees, the cut has to be 28%, the report, named, “No more hot air… please !” said.

In 2023, the world spewed 57.1 billion metric tons (62.9 billion U.S. tons) of greenhouse gases, the report said. That’s 1,810 metric tons (1,995 U.S. tons) of heat-trapping gases a second.

“There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video messaged released with the report. “We’re playing with fire, but there can be no more playing for time. We’re out of time.”

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.



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Hamilton Tiger-Cats sign Canadian kicker Liegghio to extension

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HAMILTON – The Hamilton Tiger-Cats signed Canadian kicker Marc Liegghio to a two-year contract extension Thursday.

Liegghio, 27, of Woodbridge, Ont., remains under contract with Hamilton through the 2026 season.

Liegghio has made 39-of-44 field goals (88.6 per cent) and 37-of-38 converts (97.4 per cent) this season. The five-foot-seven, 198-pound kicker was named Hamilton’s top 2024 special-teams player Wednesday.

He has appeared in 66 regular-season games over four CFL seasons. He has made 117-of-138 field goals (84.8 per cent) and 125-of-139 converts (89.9 per cent). He began his pro career with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (2021-22) before joining the Ticats last season.

Liegghio played collegiately at Western Ontario. He was selected in the fifth round, No. 39 overall, by Winnipeg in the 2020 CFL draft.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Rogers Communications reports $526M third-quarter profit, up from loss a year ago

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TORONTO – Rogers Communications Inc. reported a third-quarter profit of $526 million compared with a loss a year ago.

The company says the profit amounted to 98 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30.

The result compared with a loss of $99 million or 20 cents per diluted share in the same quarter last year.

Revenue for the quarter totalled $5.13 billion, up from $5.09 billion a year earlier.

On an adjusted basis, Rogers says it earned $1.42 per diluted share in its latest quarter, up from an adjusted profit of $1.27 per diluted share a year ago.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of $1.36 per share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:RCI.B)

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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