Ontario pension fund manager OMERS earned 4.4% return for first half of 2024

TORONTO – When Jenny Tozer’s 18-year-old son with autism had been missing for more than two weeks, she started to prepare herself for the worst.

Logan left their home in Havelock, Ont., in the middle of the night, travelled 35 kilometres north through wooded areas and got lost trying to get back home, his mom said.

He was eventually found in an abandoned building on the 17th day of his disappearance — “safe with only three tick bites and an adventure to tell,” Tozer said — but the outcome could have easily been tragic, she said.

“(I was) trying to figure out how I was going to hold it together for all his siblings, because they couldn’t understand why he wasn’t home either, and they weren’t sleeping,” Tozer said Wednesday at a press conference.

“I wasn’t sleeping. It was kind of chaotic. It was something no one should have to go through and I’m just very, very lucky that he came home alive.”

Tozer is now adding her voice to others calling on the government to create a new type of alert for vulnerable people.

A provincial private member’s bill from New Democrat Monique Taylor would implement a system of alerts for vulnerable people such as children with autism or seniors with dementia, similar to Amber Alerts, but it is stalled at the committee stage in the legislature.

She introduced the bill in March 2023 and one day of public hearings was held a year later, but the next stage — in which the legislative committee looks at the bill clause by clause and considers amendments — has not yet happened.

“We’re here today to let the government know that we’ll do whatever it takes to ensure this passage, whether it’s sharing the bill with a member of the government — take the bill, make it your own, it doesn’t matter,” Taylor said Wednesday.

“This isn’t about me. It’s truly about the legislation and making sure that we get it passed.”

The bill was inspired by the stories of Draven Graham, a boy with autism who drowned in 2022 after going missing, and Shirley Love, a senior who died in December of that year after leaving her home not dressed for winter weather.

Those families support the bill, as does the Ontario Autism Coalition.

“Just try and envision how it would feel to lose a loved one who, due to their disability or cognitive impairment, is unable to ask for help, is unable to understand safety concerns and is often not going to be able to find their way home,” said Kate Dudley-Logue, vice-president of the coalition.

“It’s terrifying, and it’s any caregiver’s worst nightmare. In the autism community, we all hold our breaths and feel this immense stress every time we hear stories like Logan’s, because so many of us have experienced it and know all too well the very real possibility that their child may not come home.”

There are already various tools used to find missing people and try to help keep vulnerable people out of danger, Taylor said, but this alert system would be a necessary additional layer.

Paul Calandra said last year when he was government house leader that he believed the bill was flawed and he wanted it to go to committee so it could be improved. The office of the current government house leader, Steve Clark, did not immediately respond to questions about the bill.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

TORONTO – U.S. stocks surged Wednesday after Republican candidate Donald Trump won the election, with the Dow Jones industrial average gaining 3.6 per cent, while Canadian markets rose by one per cent.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 249.55 points at 24,637.45.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 1,508.05 points at 43,729.93. The S&P 500 index was up 146.28 points at 5,929.04, while the Nasdaq composite was up 544.29 points at 18,983.47.

The Canadian dollar traded for 71.76 cents US compared with 72.18 cents US on Tuesday.

The December crude oil contract was down 30 cents at US$71.69 per barreland the December natural gas contract was up eight cents at US$2.75 per mmBTU.

The December gold contract was down US$73.40 at $2,676.30 an ounceand the December copper contract was down 23 cents at US$4.25 a pound.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Four years ago, Fox News precipitated an internal crisis with a bold election night call that President Joe Biden would beat Donald Trump in the crucial state of Arizona. This year illustrated the difference that four years can make.

Fox News wasn’t the first network early on Wednesday to declare Trump had sealed his victory over Kamala Harris — upstart NewsNation, conservative rival Newsmax and Scripps Networks led the way — but its ultimate call came nearly four hours before ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and The Associated Press made theirs.

Judging by the cheers that erupted when Fox’s call was shown to the Trump faithful gathered at his West Palm Beach victory party, it was a decision that surely was received much better by its viewers than the 2020 call was.

“When you don’t like how the cake tastes, you’re not going to like the recipe,” said Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at NewsNation. “When you like the cake, you’ll love the recipe.”

Trump, Fox can both claim comebacks on election night

Fox’s Bret Baier called Trump’s victory “the biggest political phoenix from the ashes story that we have ever seen,” and Fox can claim a comeback of its own.

Fox’s Arizona call in 2020 infuriated Trump and many of the network’s viewers. While it ultimately proved correct, it set in motion furious internal second-guessing and led some Fox personalities to embrace conspiracy theories, which ultimately cost the network a staggering $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.

NewsNation, which used information from the elections forecasting company Decision Desk HQ, made its call at 1:22 a.m. on Wednesday. Scripps and Newsmax, which also use DDHQ, were within a minute of making the same declaration.

At about that time, Baier said that “we’re not there yet,” but noted there was no path to victory for Harris. Fox made its call at 1:47 a.m.

The AP called the election for Trump at 5:34 a.m. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the AP all made their calls within a few moments of each other. The AP explained that its declaration that Trump had won came after awarding Wisconsin to the former president by determining that remaining uncounted votes from around the Milwaukee area would not be enough for Harris to overcome Trump’s lead there.

For NewsNation’s Stirewalt, his network’s early call on Wednesday provided a rich irony. He was politics editor at Fox News in 2020 and he and a fellow executive, Bill Sammon, were essentially fired following the outcry over the Arizona call — even though they were proven right.

“It would be easy to overstate the results and I want to be careful not to do that,” he said. “I will say this, it is a victory for the way things used to be done and a personal vindication.”

Letting the numbers do the talking

He said Decision Desk HQ and NewsNation let the numbers do the talking with their calls. He would not criticize rivals for waiting longer, saying it was a natural reaction to be careful in making race calls following what happened in 2020.

The happiness of some viewers at Fox’s call was evident in some social media posts. Fox rejects any suggestion that its calls are politically motivated and its decision desk, led by veteran Arnon Mishkin, is widely respected in the industry. Stirewalt called Mishkin “superb” and said “it is to Fox’s credit that they kept him when they didn’t keep Bill Sammon and me.”

A vigorous conservative media ecosystem has built up in recent years to compete with Fox. But the network remains king of the hill, illustrated again Wednesday by the Nielsen company’s preliminary ratings of television election night coverage.

Fox averaged 9.7 million viewers for its coverage in the prime-time hours, well above second-place ABC News, which had 5.7 million. Newsmax, Fox’s chief rival for conservative viewers, had 947,000 viewers and NewsNation had 237,000, Nielsen said.

“I am extremely proud of our team’s commitment to delivering the top reporting and analysis to the largest and most politically diverse audience in news,” said Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott.

Trump’s complicated relationship with the network also attests to its continued influence. The Republican candidate was a regular guest on its shows during the campaign, particularly the morning “Fox & Friends,” yet also complains bitterly on social media if he doesn’t like something that is said there.

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.