US Supreme Court to wade into social media free speech firestorm

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s health authority says the wait-list for family care has dipped by about 15,000 people in four months — a drop the premier credits to programs aimed at reducing the doctor shortage.

The figures for Oct. 4 indicate there were 145,114 people on the registry, compared to 160,234 when figures were last publicly released on June 1.

However, the numbers are still far higher than the summer of 2022 — after the Progressive Conservatives took office — when there were slightly more than 100,000 people seeking to be attached to a doctor or other family care practitioner.

Premier Tim Houston told reporters Thursday that programs introduced by his government to attract and retain doctors have helped stabilize the number of people without access to primary care. It is a positive sign, he added, that 11,501 people found a family care practitioner in September, the biggest number since the registry was created.

Nova Scotia Health had stopped publishing the monthly update for four months as it made calls to people on the list to verify if they were still looking for a doctor. As a result of its research, about 7,800 people were removed from the list, the authority said.

Karen Oldfield, chief executive of Nova Scotia Health, said in a news release the organization is “cautiously optimistic” the downward trend will continue in the number of people waiting for doctors. She credited the drop to ongoing recruitment efforts, including the creation of an assessment centre to help certify foreign-trained doctors more quickly.

Houston noted that 10 new doctors are expected to start later this fall, which will further reduce the numbers on the wait-list.

“It took a while to stabilize the system, and it’s now improving,” the premier said.

However, both opposition parties said the new figures were hardly anything to celebrate, given the fact the absolute number of people looking for a doctor has grown since the Tories took office in 2021.

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill said, “The numbers are bad. We’ve got twice as many people that need a family doctor as when Tim Houston started (governing).”

“If the best they can come up with is 145,000 people who still need a family doctor, this is a worsening crisis in our health-care system and the premier needs to be more focused on dealing with this,” Churchill said.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said she’s taking the figures with “a grain of salt” because she doesn’t have a clear picture of the methodology being used to take people off the list.

The overall wait-list number, she said, is still an “indictment of a government that was elected to fix health care.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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VANCOUVER – Elections BC says more than a million British Columbians have already cast their ballots in advance voting before Saturday’s provincial election, smashing a record set during the pandemic election four years ago.

The elections body says 1,001,331 people have voted, representing more than 28 per cent of all registered electors and putting the province on track for big overall turnout.

They include about 223,000 people who voted on the final day of advance voting on Wednesday, the last of six days of advance polls, shattering the one-day record set just a day earlier by more than 40,000 votes.

The previous record for advance voting in a B.C. election was set in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when about 670,000 people voted early, representing about 19 per cent of registered voters.

Some ridings have already seen turnout of more than 35 per cent, including in NDP Leader David Eby’s Vancouver-Point Grey riding where 36.5 per cent of all electors have voted.

There has also been big turnout in some Vancouver Island ridings, including Oak Bay — Gordon Head, where 39 per cent of electors have voted, and Victoria — Beacon Hill, where Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is running, with 37.2 per cent.

Advance voter turnout in B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad’s riding of Nechako Lakes was 30.5 per cent.

Total turnout in 2020 was 54 per cent, down from about 61 per cent in 2017.

Stewart Prest, a political-science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, said many factors are at play in the advance voter turnout.

“If you have an early option, if you have an option where there are fewer crowds, fewer lineups that you have to deal with, then that’s going to be a much more desirable option,” said Prest.

“So, having the possibility of voting across multiple advanced voting days is something that more people are looking to as a way to avoid last-minute lineups or heavy weather.”

Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.

Environment Canada says the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.

The dramatic downfall of the Official Opposition BC United Party and voter frustration could also be contributing to the size of the advance vote, said Prest, citing “uncertainty about the B.C. Conservative Party as an alternative.”

But Prest said it’s too early to say if the province is experiencing a “renewed enthusiasm for voting” or not.

“As a political scientist, I think it would be a good thing to see, but I’m not ready to conclude that’s what we are seeing just yet,” he said, adding “this is one of the storylines to watch come Saturday.”

Overall turnout in B.C. elections has generally been dwindling compared with the 71.5 per cent turnout for the 1996 vote.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said more than 180,000 voters cast their votes on Wednesday.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

TORONTO – Ontario’s top court has ordered a new hearing for a youth-led constitutional challenge of the provincial government’s emissions target.

The Ontario Court of Appeal’s ruling sends the case back to the lower court for a new hearing. It found the lower court judge’s analysis was flawed on some key points and the case raised important issues that should be considered afresh.

Ecojustice, an environmental law charity that backed the young people who brought the challenge, called it a landmark victory.

“The seven youth are optimistic and will push forward with the new hearing, with all the urgency the climate crisis demands,” the charity said in a written statement.

The case is the first in Canada to consider whether governments’ approach to climate change has the potential to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Appeal Court decision lays a “solid foundation” for the young people to win in a new hearing before the lower court, said Stepan Wood, a professor at the University of British Columbia.

“This unanimous decision is a major victory for Canadian children and youth who are seeking to hold governments accountable for their contributions to climate change,” Wood, a Canada Research Chair in law, society and sustainability, said in a written reaction to the decision.

“It establishes that, where a government makes a statutory commitment to combat climate change (as the federal government and all provincial and territorial governments have done), it must implement that commitment in a way that complies with the Charter of Rights.”

At stake was an emissions target that dates back to when Premier Doug Ford’s then-newly elected Progressive Conservative government repealed the law underpinning Ontario’s cap-and-trade system for lowering emissions.

The government scrapped the system and replaced the emissions target in that law — 37 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030 — with a new target of 30 per cent below 2005 levels.

The young people argued the weakened target committed Ontario to dangerously high levels of greenhouse gases, knowing it would cause harm to the province’s youth and future generations, in violation of the Charter.

They brought evidence to suggest the revised target would allow for 30 megatonnes more in annual emissions by 2030, equivalent to the annual emissions of about seven million passenger vehicles, or nearly 200 megatonnes from 2018 to 2030.

The Ontario Superior Court, however, decided that the case was ultimately about the government’s alleged inaction. It’s not that the province’s target increased emissions, as the young people argued, but that it allegedly did not go far enough to reduce them.

In its decision, the court said the applicants were trying to impose a “freestanding” obligation on the province to fight climate change.

The Appeal Court disagreed. Ontario voluntarily made a statutory commitment to combat climate change, its ruling said.

“The question is whether the application judge should have considered whether Ontario’s alleged failure to comply with its statutory obligation violated the appellants’ Charter rights,” the decision read.

The case is part of a wave of cases in Canada and abroad asking courts to take a more active role in overseeing governments’ climate plans.

The top court in the Netherlands ruled in 2019 that the government had a duty to protect citizens from the potentially devastating effects of climate change, and upheld lower court decisions ordering the government to further cut its emissions.

Thursday’s decision was also being closely watched by lawyers in another youth-led Charter challenge of the federal government’s overall climate plan, currently before the Federal Court.

“It’s going to be a very important decision,” said Catherine Boies Parker, a lawyer for the applicants in the federal case, in anticipation of the ruling.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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