N.B. election promise tracker: HST cuts, community care clinics, rent caps

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – A Newfoundland biologist with a specialty in mystery blobs that wash up on the island’s shores is hoping to get his hands on a specimen from the latest gooey arrivals.

Steven Carr, a biology professor at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L., is fascinated by the strange, white globs appearing recently on the shores around Placentia Bay, along Newfoundland’s southern coast.

He said they may be mounds of fat or oil that somehow wound up in the water and were preserved by the North Atlantic’s icy brine — a process he called “adventitious pickling.”

“I don’t think it’s any kind of a vertebrate animal. I don’t think it’s any kind of plant material. The obvious candidates for an invertebrate, they’re simply not there,” he mused in an interview Friday.

“The longer I stare at it, the more it looks like my mother-in-law’s really excellent Polish pierogi.”

It’s not clear when the gummy masses first arrived on Newfoundland beaches. Philip Grace first shared a picture of the globules last month in a Facebook group of local beachcombers, asking if anyone knew what they were.

Some were as small as toonies, others as a big as dinner plates, he wrote.

People had many suggestions, some more helpful than others: slime moulds, whale boogers, invertebrates known as sea pork, or toutons, referring to a fried bread dough popular in Newfoundland breakfasts.

One commenter said they’d seen the blobs floating in the water all over the bay.

Officials with the federal Environment Department have been out to investigate and collect samples of the “mystery substance” three times since Sept. 7, said a spokesperson. Neither the substance nor its source has been identified yet, but preliminary tests suggest it may be “plant-based,” the department said in an email.

“Additional analysis is required before a final determination can be made on the substance and its potential impacts,” the email said.

This is not the first time the North Atlantic has pushed a bizarre substance onto Newfoundland shores. In 2001, a 5.6-metre-long gelatinous, stinking mass was found languishing in the August sunlight on the shores of Fortune Bay. Local residents nicknamed it the “blobster.”

Carr was able to use a DNA process to determine it was actually the remnants of a badly decomposed sperm whale.

“I don’t think this is a whale. The pieces are not at all similar to what we found,” he said Friday. “I’m imagining a crate of something, some sort of food stuff, that fell overboard.”

Sea-hardened palm oil has long been washing up on beaches in the United Kingdom, prompting warnings from officials that the white globs are harmful, even fatal, for dogs.

A government website in the northern England district of Wyre notes there have been several “cargo incidents” in recent decades off the coast, “and it is estimated that tonnes of palm oil remains in the wreckages.” Ships bringing palm oil to the United Kingdom are also allowed to dump a limited amount of the substance into the sea while cleaning their tanks, the site said.

“Any kind of carbohydrate, any kind of fat, any kind of oil could show up like this,” Carr agreed.

He has so far only seen photos of the Placentia Bay blobs, but he has written to federal officials to ask for a sample. Carr hopes his past success in sea blob sleuthing will secure him a specimen.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick is “ceded” land, the province’s Progressive Conservative leader said Friday on the campaign trail, highlighting his party’s position regarding a major lawsuit involving First Nations.

In a speech in Moncton, N.B., Blaine Higgs said the fundamental premise of the lawsuit “is whether the land (title) is ceded or unceded, and certainly we have evidence to say it was ceded many, many years ago.”

Higgs restated the party’s position while accusing the Liberals of failing to give an accurate costing of potential legal settlements with First Nations.

Indigenous groups in the province, however, don’t see it that way. They say First Nations never relinquished or legally signed away their lands to the Crown. A land claim filed in December 2021 by the six chiefs in the Wolastoqey Nation says private and public corporations have long exploited resources on Wolastoqey lands. The chiefs want land returned, compensation for the use of that land for the last 200 years and a title to a significant part of the province.

Higgs has said the title claim has far-reaching implications. One of his party’s 11 campaign promises is to “defend landowners.”

“The provincial government is being sued to assert Aboriginal title over the entire province,” the platform reads. A re-elected Progressive Conservative government, it says, “is committed to reconciliation and working with First Nations, but treaties have already settled this matter. We will defend landowners in court.”

On Thursday, Wolastoqey chiefs issued a news release saying the Tories’ election platform “villainizes” First Nations and is filled with “falsehoods about our title claim and fearmongering about our intentions.”

“As we have said dozens of times, we are not seeking to displace individual New Brunswickers from their lands, residences of farms.”

As well, the chiefs say, “the Supreme Court of Canada has twice held that the Peace and Friendship Treaties do not cede and surrender land.”

The Wolastoqey Nation didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Higgs’s statements on Friday.

A Liberal Party spokeswoman said leader Susan Holt had no comment on Higgs’s speech either. The party’s platform says it would “commit to rebuilding relationships with First Nations based on a nation-to-nation relationship that establishes trust and a shared understanding of treaty obligations.”

The Liberals have also said if they form government they would “renegotiate tax agreements to ensure all parties have a fair deal.”

With just days left before the Oct. 21 vote, Holt was in Moncton focusing her message on her pledge to spend about $625.5 million more on health over the next four years. That money includes $115.2 million to create 30 community clinics that would bring together doctors, nurses and other health professionals under one roof.

Also among her health promises is $74 million on payments to nurses to encourage them to stay in the province in the 2024-25 fiscal year, and $37 million more over the following 12 months.

But the Greens critiqued the Liberal plan, saying they would spend $480 million to create at least 70 community care clinics over four years.

Higgs told reporters the public should be skeptical about the Liberals’ long list of election promises, saying they aren’t based on realistic cost estimates.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

— Story by Michael Tutton in Halifax.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

The Yukon government says groundwater samples at the site where a mine’s ore containment facility failed in June “continue to reveal high levels of cyanide.”

In a written update, the Yukon government says tests from Dublin Gulch below the slide at the Eagle Gold mine also show metals such as cobalt, copper, mercury, nickel, silver and selenium in the groundwater.

While the government says the form of mercury found in the groundwater “has low potential for accumulating in the tissues of fish and wildlife,” it says the tests do show that more action is needed to protect the environment near the mine.

Those protections include several planned groundwater interception wells below a safety berm that is now 30 per cent complete, and the statement says work on three of the wells has already begun.

The ore containment facility failure in June caused millions of tonnes of cyanide-contaminated rock to escape.

Mine owner Victoria Gold is in receivership, but the Yukon government says it is in regular communication with the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyak Dun situated downstream and current mercury levels in nearby Haggart Creek “do not pose a heightened risk” to residents’ health.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.