Ontario commuters to face disruptions if unprecedented rail work stoppage goes ahead

SAANICH, B.C. – Police on southern Vancouver Island say they’ve arrested almost as many impaired drivers in the first eight months of this year than they did in 2023 in a concerning trend of people getting behind the wheel while drunk or on drugs.

Statistics released by Saanich police show that officers stopped 464 impaired drivers up until the end of August compared with 468 arrests for the same problem in all 12 months of last year.

Police say almost a third of those arrests this year happened in July and August.

Chief Const. Dean Duthie says it’s concerning that drivers continue to get behind the wheel while impaired and endanger not only their own lives, but the lives of everyone else in the community.

He says the department will continue to invest resources into stopping this “selfish behaviour.”

Of those arrested, 65 lost their licence for 90 days, six were impaired by drugs and seven drivers were already on an interlock program, where a device in their vehicle is supposed to prevent them from using it if they have alcohol in their body.

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

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

VANCOUVER – Organizations representing family doctors in British Columbia say physicians need paid sick days, vacation coverage, extended health and dental benefits and a pension plan.

The BC College of Family Physicians and BC Family Doctors published a series of requests for whoever forms the next government after this October’s provincial election.

The groups say the province is in a “family doctor crisis” and those in power need to streamline paperwork, fund additional support and provide family doctors with employment standards and benefits.

They say more than 700,000 British Columbians don’t have access to a family doctor and nearly 40 per cent of family doctors are set to retire or reduce clinical hours within five years.

Dr. Vincent Wong, president of the BC College of Family Physicians, says doctors are being pushed to the brink by a system that isn’t supporting them and that a new “advocacy tool kit” will allow them to advocate for themselves and their patients.

The kit for doctors includes questions to ask candidates this election campaign and tips for creating effective social media posts.

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

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

OTTAWA – The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP says police officers acted unreasonably when they arrested a man who was hiking in British Columbia’s Fairy Creek area in 2021 around the same time as old-growth logging protests.

In a summary of its review of a public complaint, the commission says Mounties demanded to search the hiker at a checkpoint on a public road in September 2021, and arrested him after he refused to leave the area or to be searched.

The commission says the arrest was “groundless,” and the demand to search his backpack was “unfounded.”

The summary says the man had been lawfully using the forest service road where he encountered police who were trying to keep people out of “exclusion zones” set up by the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group.

It says he was also not obligated to identify himself or submit to a police search after coming upon Mounties who refused to identify themselves by name, only reading out their badge numbers “quickly” and refused to repeat them.

The commission says the police acted unreasonably enforcing the exclusion zones in Fairy Creek, removing their name tags, while one office wore a “thin blue line” patch against RCMP uniform policy.

Police actions in Fairy Creek have been sharply criticized by a B.C. Supreme Court judge for overstepping the terms of a court injunction granted to Teal Jones in 2021 after logging activity in the ecologically sensitive area set off protests, leading to hundreds of arrests.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP says it continues to review the actions of the Mounties’ community industry response group in a “systemic investigation,” after the B.C. judge threw out numerous cases against logging protesters for police failures in properly enforcing the court injunction.

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

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.