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

TORONTO – Over his quarter century in the National Hockey League, Mark Messier witnessed sweeping technological changes to the game, from the advent of lighter hockey sticks to the use of video reviews.

Now, the Canadian Hall of Famer believes hockey is poised for another leap as it moves into the streaming era.

Messier will be among the on-air talent for Amazon Prime Video’s new NHL broadcast, “Prime Monday Night Hockey,” the league’s first exclusive national broadcast package with a digital-only streaming service in Canada.

Shows will be broadcast from the home team’s arena, kicking off Monday when the Montreal Canadiens host the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Bell Centre – with U.S. sports announcer John Forslund doing the play-by-play.

Amazon’s new venture could set the stage for a major shakeup in broadcast rights when Rogers Communications Inc.’s current 12-year deal with the NHL expires in 2026.

“(I learned) I have to evolve as a player if I’m going to be able to play for 26 years. I think the same thing can be said in the way we bring the game to life for people watching on TV,” Messier said on a call from Toronto.

“The technology’s changing all the time — sophistication in cameras, ideas of how we bring and immerse the fans into the game have all changed. You have to be willing to change in order to keep up.”

“Prime Monday Night Hockey” broadcasts will include Rapid Recap, an interactive feature where those who join a game in progress can watch a two-minute highlight package compiled with artificial intelligence.

Mark Shopiro, head of Prime Video Canada, said more innovations will be introduced throughout the season, but the current focus is “getting the broadcast right and giving a great product to fans.”

Amazon acquired the rights to broadcast all national, regular-season Monday night NHL games for the next two seasons through a deal with Rogers. The move has fuelled speculation that Amazon will bid for the Canadian broadcasting rights to all NHL games when they become available after the 2025-26 season.

“If someone thinks that two years from now, Amazon – which is this gigantic company that’s clearly very bullish about making an imprint in the sports world – will say, ‘We’re just going to do this for two years, just dabble and see where it goes and then go away,’ I would be stunned, quite honestly,” said Adnan Virk, who will co-host “Prime Monday Night Hockey” with Andi Petrillo.

“I cannot imagine how they wouldn’t be a part of the package.”

When asked about the NHL broadcasting rights, Shopiro said he “can’t speculate on future deals.”

A Rogers spokesperson said the Canadianmedia giantplans “to be at the table” when the NHL rights come up for renewal, but wouldn’t comment further.

NHL’s chief content officer and executive vice-president Steve Mayer couldn’t speak to the upcoming negotiations, but said “we hope this is a long relationship at the NHL with Amazon and obviously, we’re just starting things off with these two years.”

Rogers’ Sportsnet will continue to broadcast national games on Wednesdays for the next two years, along with “Hockey Night in Canada” on Saturdays, also available on CBC and other Rogers-owned channels.

One observer said the NHL is the biggest winner in the Amazon-Rogers deal because the price for the broadcast rights has now been “driven up,” adding that hockey fans are the biggest losers.

“You’re forcing your current subscribers to subscribe somewhere else. If you want to watch national Monday night games, you have to have Amazon Prime,” Toronto Metropolitan University sport media professor Laurel Walzak said.

“Now, instead of paying the subscription fee for Sportsnet, you’re also paying a subscription fee for Amazon Prime. So the fan is paying double.”

She said this speaks to a larger trend in sports, where leagues are now signing rights deals with multiple parties. In July, the NBA inked an 11-year agreement with Disney, NBC and Amazon.

Petrillo, who has worked for CBC and TSN, said she understands why there might be some backlash to the NHL’s move to streaming.

“I know exactly where people are coming from when you get so used to something for your entire life — channel surfing, sitting down and just wanting to subscribe to one thing and have everything on that,” said Petrillo, who will also host a Prime show on Thursdays called “NHL Coast to Coast,” featuring highlights, analysis and interviews.

“But the habits of people are dictating where the industry is going. And more and more people have cut the cord. They’re going the way of streaming … We’re going where they are.”

Amazon hopes to hook hockey fans with top-shelf broadcasts, using 30 HD cameras per episode that film in high dynamic range at 60 frames per second.

“I think the technology and advancement in cameras and angles, being able to put cameras in different positions than we’ve ever been able to in the past, is really going to elevate the experience,” said Messier, who joins a team of analysts including Blake Bolden, Thomas Hickey, Shane Hnidy and Jody Shelley.

Virk said “Prime Monday Night Hockey” will lean harder into statistics than most hockey shows.

“We’re going to use numbers in a way that will differentiate it from other broadcasts. We’ll use more analytics,” he said. “I don’t mean to disparage any of the other broadcasts, but I think this Amazon broadcast will be very smart and (geared) towards educated hockey fans.”

What’s more, he said the show’s theme song, recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, is “a banger.”

“I’ll tell you right now, (as someone who) grew up on the ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ theme, the music alone will have people paying attention.”

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

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.