Preparation for next U.S. president started months ago, Trudeau’s cabinet says

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservatives promised on Tuesday to introduce a universal shingles vaccine program for people 65 and older if re-elected Nov. 26, the latest in a series of targeted health announcements.

Party leader Tim Houston said the program would cost $27 million the first year before dropping below $3 million by the third year as the focus shifts to people reaching the age of 65. Houston said the shingles vaccine should be free because statistics show one in three people will develop the painful skin rash, the risk of which increases as people age.

“We have the tools to fight shingles with a vaccine that can reduce or eliminate the symptoms of this disease, but too many of our seniors don’t get the vaccine because of the cost,” he said, which he estimated at about $100.

“I hear from seniors all the time … saying it (vaccine costs) puts them under pressure in other parts of their finances,” he said.

The announcement followed earlier health-care promises by the Tories, such as introducing a travel nurse team to address staffing shortages in the network, including in emergency departments, and creating a centre of excellence to treat the symptoms of menopause.

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill, meanwhile, promised on Tuesday to build a new six-lane bridge across Halifax harbour to help relieve traffic congestion in Atlantic Canada’s largest city. He said his plan would replace the MacKay Bridge with a larger span that would have dedicated bike and bus lanes.

He was also critical of a Tory promise to remove the tolls on the city’s two harbour bridges.

“That’s the opposite of what we need right now,” he said. “Experts are saying this move will actually increase traffic congestion by 10 to 20 per cent. Those tolls generate revenue that we can’t afford to lose right now.”

Churchill repeated his party’s promise, announced in September, to make public transit free across the province and expand municipal transit services. He said a Liberal government would also promote flexible work arrangements to reduce the number of vehicles on the road.

The Liberal leader was joined by Thomas Trappenberg, the former Nova Scotia Green Party leader, who is now running for Churchill’s party in the Halifax-area riding of Sackville-Uniacke. Trappenberg, who served as the Green leader from 2016 to 2021, said it was Churchill’s free public transit promise that initially attracted him to the party.

“This really resonated with me because I actually campaigned on this many years ago,” he said. “I still have Green values, but I think the Liberal party is much more organized and is able to implement things.”

Housing remained the focus of the NDP on Tuesday, as leader Claudia Chender promised to create a compliance and enforcement unit for resolving tenant-landlord disputes.

“Right now the vacancy rate in Nova Scotia is at one per cent,” Chender said in a statement. “If a landlord isn’t maintaining their property, renters don’t feel like they have any options. The disparity in power is often huge; the current system isn’t balanced or fair.”

Chender said the unit is needed because the province doesn’t have the necessary resources to manage disputes.

After the release of a $300,000 report in September, the Progressive Conservative government decided against an enforcement unit, saying it would result in more red tape and longer resolution times for both landlords and tenants.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.

— With files by Michael Tutton in Halifax

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

MONTREAL – Quebec universities and public colleges say they should be exempt from the government’s plan to reduce the number of international students in the province, but the immigration minister says that’s unlikely.

The schools say a bill tabled last month would hurt their ability to attract top talent from around the world.

But Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge says it’s “not reasonable” to think the government could cut the number of foreign students in Quebec without including universities and public colleges.

The bill would give the government new power to cap foreign student enrolment at Quebec schools based on region, institution and program of study.

Roberge has said the bill is necessary to prevent schools from selling Canadian citizenship, but the universities and public colleges say they aren’t the problem.

There are currently about 124,000 foreign students in Quebec, which Roberge says is a 140 per cent increase in the last decade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – A scientist has determined that the strange white blobs puzzling Newfoundland beachcombers are made of a plastic commonly found in adhesives, but the origin of the mysterious goo is still unknown.

Hilary Corlett, an Earth sciences specialist at Memorial University, collected several of the sticky globs from a beach in Arnold’s Cove, N.L., last month and gave them to a colleague for testing. The results, she said, came in late last week: it was polyvinyl acetate, often found in glue.

“It is pollution,” Corlett said in an interview Tuesday. “It’s plastic. It needs to be cleaned up.”

Members of a Newfoundland and Labrador beachcombers group on Facebook began sharing pictures of the bizarre gunk in September, asking if anyone knew what it was. Group members had many suggestions, some more helpful than others: slime moulds, whale boogers, or toutons — fried dollops of bread dough popular in Newfoundland breakfasts.

Corlett was intrigued. She studies marine microplastics and figured she had to go find a sample for herself. She said she was amazed to find about 20 of the mysterious mounds within her first few steps onto the small beach about 100 kilometres northwest of St. John’s.

“There’s a lot of them,” she said.

They smell like plastic, like “that smell when you walk into a Canadian Tire,” Corlett said. Some had imprints of rocks and pebbles, as if they’d once been liquid.

They were slimy and “quite squishy,” but still firm, she said. When ripped apart, the material had no pores.

She gave the samples to Memorial University chemistry professor Christopher Kozak, who subjected them to a barrage of tests. The goo remained intact even in temperatures beyond 180 C. Using a procedure to identify the individual elements of the substance, he determined it was polyvinyl acetate, Corlett said.

Kozak did not respond to requests for an interview.

Environment Canada said last month that preliminary tests suggested the “mystery substance” may be “plant-based.” The department did not immediately return a request for comment, but said Friday its scientists were analyzing the substance and that officials could not speculate about what it might be or where it came from.

Corlett said the testing shows the blobs are safe to touch, and she hopes there will be beach cleanup efforts to remove it.

She also hopes officials will work to determine where the substance came from, and whether there are more blobs — possibly much larger — sitting on the ocean floor.

“Understanding where it is in the ocean, I think would be something that would be a good idea,” she said. “Because I think it should be cleaned up.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.

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