Manitoba government apologizes as part of $530M child welfare lawsuit settlement

REGINA – Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck is promising to invest $1.1 billion to help fix a health system struggling with staff shortages and long waits for care.

Beck made the pledge as her party campaigns to win government in the Oct. 28 election.

She says the money would aim to reduce wait times for treatment by focusing on hiring, training, recruiting and retaining front-line health workers.

She says the situation is critical, pointing to a briefing note last month to the government from the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union.

The note highlights concerns that staffing shortages in cancer care are creating dangerous domino effects of staff burnout along with delayed and cancelled tests, putting patients at risk.

Beck says it’s up to everybody in Saskatchewan to come together and put an end to the health-care crisis.

“This election, you have a choice,” Beck said in a statement Tuesday.

“We can ensure that our loved ones are getting the care they deserve. We can invest in hiring more health-care workers and rebuild our health-care system.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

VANCOUVER – Political leaders are condemning what they describe as “hateful rhetoric” from a speaker at a pro-Palestinian rally in Vancouver who told the crowd that “we are Hezbollah and we are Hamas.”

Both groups are listed by Public Safety Canada as terrorist entities.

In videos circulated online, the unidentified masked woman led a crowd of hundreds at the Vancouver Art Gallery Monday night in chants of “death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel,” while some in the group burned Canadian flags.

The protest was organized by the pro-Palestinian group Samidoun and held on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people while triggering a war that has left about 41,000 dead in Gaza.

On social media platform X, British Columbia NDP Leader David Eby responded to a post describing the speech, saying “this kind of hateful rhetoric is wrong and has no place in our province.”

B.C. Conservatives Leader John Rustad said in a statement that the behaviour is “completely unacceptable,” while federal Conservatives Leader Pierre Poilievre vowed to list Samidoun as a terrorist entity if his party forms the next Canadian government.

“We’ve seen what happens when these groups aren’t taken seriously,” Poilievre’s statement said.

Rustad, whose provincial Conservatives are in a contest with Eby’s NDP in the upcoming B.C. election on Oct. 19, says in his video statement that his party would “crack down on this type of hate” if elected.

Eby says in his social media post that the province’s people “stand together against violence — and the glorification of it. And we strive for peace.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

HALIFAX – A device used by researchers with Fisheries and Oceans Canada appears to have been the victim of an attack by a great white shark.

Clark Richards, a research scientist with the federal department, says his colleagues are confident the bite marks on an ocean glider used to track ocean data are from a great white — a species known for their sharp, serrated teeth.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada sends autonomous ocean gliders into the ocean as part of a program to gather data on salinity and temperature and to track small particles in sea water.

At around 9 a.m. on Sept. 22, Richards says one of the five gliders in the program was about 300 metres below the ocean’s surface when it suddenly malfunctioned.

The shark had bitten into the body of the two-metre-long device and taken off two of its wings, Richards says, but “miraculously” the damaged glider was able to keep moving and return to the surface, and researchers were able to recover the device.

The researcher says it appears the glider, which will be repaired, was attacked a second time before it made it to the ocean’s surface.

“The shark probably hit it down deep, thought it injured it, waited for it to drift up, and then probably took another crack at it,” Richards says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.