N.S. court rules in favour of creating francophone riding of Chéticamp in Cape Breton

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s Liberal leader is highlighting his party’s plan to get 80,000 homes built in order to ease a provincial housing shortage by 2032, if elected to govern on Nov. 26.

Zach Churchill says the plan, which was previously announced as part of the Liberal platform, would build homes faster and make them more affordable.

Churchill says the plan also intends to establish provincewide municipal zoning standards and spur housing innovation through the use of modular and factory-built housing.

The Liberals would also offer support to build more non-profit and co-op housing, although Churchill says there are no plans to build more government funded public housing.

As of May this year, the Progressive Conservative government had committed to building 273 new public housing units — the first to be built since 1993 — with the intent of housing 700 people.

The NDP has promised to build 30,000 new affordable rental homes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2024.

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LIMA, Peru – Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Donald Trump’s return to the White House has boosted Canada’s influence in the world as other international partners turn to Canada for advice on how to deal with him.

Joly made the comments in Peru, where she was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trump won’t be sworn in again until January, but his win in the presidential election last week looms large over the discussions of the group, which aims to improve trade among Pacific Rim nations.

Speaking to reporters in Lima on Friday morning, Joly said no country understands the United States better than Canada and multiple countries are now asking for advice on how they can adapt to a second Trump administration.

Trump’s first presidency saw him pull back from many multilateral agreements, including the Paris climate agreement and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, of which half of APEC nations are members.

He has also promised to slap at least a 10 per cent across-the-board import tax on all goods coming into the United States, which is causing great concern among America’s trading partners.

The London School of Economics warned last month that these policies would likely hurt the economies of the U.S., China and the European Union.

Joly confirmed she expects Trump to visit Canada next year when the G7 leaders’ summit is held in Kananaskis, Alta.

“If there’s a country in the world that understands the United States, it’s Canada,” Joly said. “That’s why there are so many delegations, so many countries, coming to see us to ask about how we, they, can adapt.

“I think Canada’s influence is actually increasing because of the impacts that the world is now facing with the new administration.”

Joly met Thursday night in Lima with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whose time in that office will end in January when the new administration is sworn in. Trump announced this week that he will nominate Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as the new secretary of state.

Joly also met with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, on Thursday, discussing Canada and China’s co-operation on air transport and combating fentanyl. She said she also discussed with him the Canadian public inquiry on foreign interference and sent “clear messages to China that we will never accept any foreign interference.”

“We need to have a predictable relationship,” she said.

Canadian officials have been mum on the prospect of Trudeau meeting with Xi, whether in a formal sit-down or an informal hallway chat, either in Lima at APEC or over the weekend when they both travel to the G20 leaders’ summit in Brazil.

John Kirton, head of the G20 Research Group, said he expects Trudeau and many leaders to have informal talks on the sidelines of both summits to make sense of how to navigate another Trump presidency.

“Trudeau will be in a relatively privileged position, because he’s been with Donald Trump at (several) summits, and we’re the next-door neighbours; we’re a front-line state,” he said.

Vina Nadjibulla, research vice-president for the Asia Pacific Foundation, said Trump’s re-election likely means a reduced role for the U.S. in multilateral institutions and fighting climate change, as well as greater tension with China over trade, tariffs and technology.

The Trudeau Liberals have been signalling their intention to continue to side with the U.S. against China on clean energy and electric vehicles. Canada this fall matched U.S. import tariffs of 100 per cent on Chinese-made electric vehicles, and increased tariffs on steel and aluminum products.

Canada is considering expanding tariffs as well on electric vehicle batteries and battery parts, critical minerals and solar panels, on which the U.S. has already planned to increase tariffs.

“APEC is meeting in the context of rising protectionism, intense geopolitical competition, uncertain economic growth and the Trump election,” Nadjibulla said.

That means Trudeau will be pushing to preserve rules-based trade “that is critical to our prosperity” over the coming days, she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2024.

LA RONGE, Sask. – Doctors in La Ronge, Sask., have treated 27 cases of scurvy within the last six months, bringing to light the severe impact of food insecurity in the province’s North.

Dr. Jeff Irvine told the news website larongeNow that a colleague was surprised to diagnose a case in May.

“The physician started to get some red flags from his other patients and started noticing that there’s even more signs and symptoms of scurvy in these other patients,” Irvine said.

“So they started testing more and more, and we’re finding more and more scurvy cases because of that now.”

The Lac La Ronge Indian Band hired Irvine to chair an investigation into vitamin C deficiency among members and the wider community. Of 50 vitamin C blood tests, 27 were confirmed to be deficient, pointing to scurvy, and 10 showed low levels. All patients were over 20 years old and 79 per cent were Indigenous.

Scurvy symptoms vary from fatigue and joint pain to hair changes, wounds not healing and loss of teeth.

The first case in La Ronge came almost by fluke. One of Dr. Yoseph Atreyu’s patients came to him with joint pain and, during examination, Atreyu noticed a curious pattern of corkscrew hairs on the person’s knee. He ordered a blood test, which showed vitamin C levels low enough to match a scurvy diagnosis.

Atreyu said he had thought scurvy would be a long shot.

“This person wasn’t low economic status, had a good paying job, ate well and was still having the issue,” he said. “This was the first case that I’ve confirmed. But thinking back in the past, I do wonder if I’ve seen it before.”

It’s also led him to wonder about more vulnerable populations, including children.

“I just don’t want to expose them to a poke for something that I know I can treat. I have been prescribing vitamin C a lot,” he said, noting some kids are coming to the clinic with low energy and dental issues symptomatic of scurvy.

Atreyu said in his research the only data he could draw upon was a nutritional status study in 2013. For the Prairies region, the sampling came from two urban sites. The overall results suggested 3.9 per cent of Canadians face vitamin C deficiency.

When looking for data for La Ronge or the Far North, there was none, something Irvine and Atreyu hope to change.

Despite scurvy’s rarity in modern medicine, the La Ronge diagnoses aligned with findings from a recent First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment survey, which revealed 42 per cent of respondents couldn’t afford balanced meals. A 2022 Saskatchewan Health Authority report noted the average weekly cost of nutritious food for a family of four was about $291, rising to $358 in the North and $464 in the Far North.

Fresh produce is hard to come by in the La Ronge area, and foraging for it has seasonal limitations.

For local retailers, co-ordinating a delivery of fresh food isn’t usually worth the minimal profit. The long travel distance leads to spoilage and fuel costs increase the consumer price.

Traditional foods like rosehip, Labrador tea, spruce needles, fireweed and mint have higher levels of vitamin C. Moderate amounts can be found in animal heart, liver and kidneys. But obtaining those foods is weather-dependent.

Further north, the problem intensifies, and the solution for many is out of reach. The more pressing issue is the ongoing stress of meeting basic needs, including stable housing.

“You can’t be talking to people about healthy eating when they don’t have a place to live,” Irvine said.

In assessing how widespread the problem is, the test for scurvy suffers from similar challenges to food transport.

Samples must be kept in darkness at temperatures below -70 C and, because of limited lab capabilities in La Ronge, they are shipped on dry ice to a lab in Regina lab for testing.

In the Far North, these requirements present too large of a logistical hurdle, meaning blood drawing can only happen in La Ronge.

The doctors aim to obtain federal funding to get a more detailed picture of scurvy’s impacts. Atreyu and Irvine hope to partner with other doctors in Saskatchewan and share their findings nationally.

It costs about 33 cents a month to buy enough vitamin C over-the-counter to satisfy the body’s needs, Atreyu said, but it’s a matter of getting that information out to the masses.

“It’s a disease with a known cure.” (larongeNOW)

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2024.