Manitoba cabinet ministers’ travel expenses now online, but not those of staff

SASKATOON – Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe has released his entire platform to voters before election day on Oct. 28.

Moe says his promises would cost $1.2 billion over four years, with deficits in the first three years followed by a small surplus in 2027.

The platform contains pre-announced commitments, including broad tax relief to reduce personal income taxes, an expansion to the Graduation Retention Program and additional rebates for families with children in sports and arts.

Moe says he’s running on the Saskatchewan Party’s record of growing the province’s economy and population, with plans to make life more affordable.

He says the old NDP government of two decades ago saw economic decline, forcing young people to move to other provinces.

Moe’s platform promises to maintain investments in health care and education, with plans to build new schools and hire more health workers.

His last budget as premier offered a record $7.6 billion for health care and $2.2 billion for school divisions.

“It’s a plan for building Saskatchewan, and it’s a plan for our growing province, and our plan for investing in those very dividends of growth, into health care, into education and into so many services that are important to you and your family, wherever you live,” Moe told supporters Saturday in Saskatoon.

NDP Leader Carla Beck has said Moe’s economic and fiscal performance as premier has been dismal, with the province increasing the debt and posting large deficits.

Her fiscal plan proposes an additional $3.5 billion in spending over four years, mostly on education and health care.

Beck has said she would pay for her promises by growing the economy and cutting what she calls Saskatchewan Party waste.

Her plan shows small deficits in the first three years, followed by a small surplus in the fourth year.

The NDP criticized Moe’s platform Saturday for not promising new dollars for health care and education.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 12, 2024.

— By Jeremy Simes in Regina.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

HALIFAX – Wastewater tested in Halifax in 2023 contained almost twice the amount of cannabis metabolites compared with samples taken from other big cities in Canada, like Toronto or Montreal.

The results are from a survey conducted in November 2023 by Statistics Canada, which tracked various drug metabolites in the wastewater in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Vancouver.

In Halifax, the survey found 748 milligrams of THC metabolites per 1,000 people per day — well above the 448 milligrams average among the surveyed cities. THC is the compound in cannabis that causes the drug’s psychoactive effects.

Lisa Oliver, chief of the survey, said researchers continuously collected samples from wastewater plants over a one-week period and calculated the concentration of drug derivatives found in them.

The project started in 2019 as a way to measure substance consumption because “drugs, and in particular illicit drugs, can be very difficult to understand” using traditional survey methods, Oliver said.

“The thing about wastewater is it’s not biased and there’s no response burden on individuals,” she said.

While there’s no way to know for sure why Halifax’s rate of cannabis use is so much higher than other major cities, psychiatrist and Dalhousie University professor Dr. Phil Tibbo says the province’s Department of Health may want to consider the survey results when, or if, it looks at revising its cannabis policies.

“This data shows that high rate of cannabis use in our population, and that’s concerning,” he said, “but what this doesn’t show is the age group of the people using, or the potency of the (cannabis) product.”

The federal government legalized cannabis across Canada in October 2018, and one year before, Nova Scotia had the highest cannabis-consumption rate in the country, according to the federal statistics agency.

Tibbo said that while the hypothesis is only anecdotal, he believes the high rate may be due to the fact a “cultural acceptance has been there for quite some time” in Nova Scotia’s capital regarding marijuana.

“I think historically, even before legalization, it tends to be the case that we see intergenerational use” of cannabis, Tibbo said, such as parents smoking weed and using it around their teenage or young adult children, who then consume the drug. It’s also possible that Halifax’s large university and college student population is contributing to the high levels, though there’s no way to know without demographic use data, Tibbo said.

Tibbo’s research focuses on the link between early signs of psychosis and cannabis use among youth and young adults. Evidence shows the younger someone is when they start using cannabis and the more frequently they consume it are “high risk factors” for developing psychosis symptoms, he said.

“And more recently, a lot more attention is being paid to the potency of cannabis products,” as a high risk factor for psychosis, Tibbo said, adding that for many years cannabis plants only produced flowers with between one to two per cent THC.

“But over the last couple of decades the plant has been bred to produce a far higher potency product.”

Nova Scotia sells cannabis through the provincial liquor corporation, which offers dried cannabis flower on its website that contains THC levels as high as 38 per cent.

Tibbo said the province could consider limiting the potency of the products it sells, or consider age-based restrictions on high-potency pot. Or, Tibbo said, Nova Scotia could consider increasing the legal age to purchase cannabis, which is 19.

In Quebec, only people 21 and older can legally purchase weed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.

CHARLOTTETOWN – The government of Prince Edward Island is reporting a deficit of $14.8 million for the 2023-24 fiscal year ending March 31.

The figure is $82.8 million smaller than the $97.6-million deficit forecast in the spring 2023 budget.

The Finance Department says revenues were $47.2 million higher than expected and expenditures nearly $35.6 million lower than budgeted.

The province says its fiscal position was helped by $30.7 million in additional provincial income tax revenues and $24.8 million from other income sources and sales.

Expenditures dropped because of lower-than-anticipated spending by some government departments and Crown corporations.

The Island’s net debt at the end of the fiscal year was about $2.6 billion.

In fiscal 2022-23, the province reported a $14.4-million surplus.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.