Canada

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/21671776

Demand Walmart Sign the Grocer Code of Conduct

https://www.change.org/p/demand-walmart-sign-the-grocer-code-of-conduct

Convicted B.C. serial killer Robert Pickton is in critical condition and undergoing surgery after he was assaulted by another inmate in a Quebec prison on Sunday.

The Correctional Service Canada (CSC) confirmed in a statement Tuesday that Pickton was the victim of a "major assault" at the maximum-security Port-Cartier Institution.

Two sources, including one police source, told Radio-Canada that Pickton is between life and death.

Pickton was taken to a hospital for treatment and the assailant is in solitary confinement according to the Quebec provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), which is investigating.

The big companies, known as consolidators, have bought hundreds of clinics from 2012 onwards, according to records and reports, across the country, because pets and vets are big money.

Sixty per cent of Canadians have a pet, according to a recent report from Mintel, a consumer research firm, and the country's vet practices pull in around $9.3 billion a year according to a 2023 report prepared for the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association.

A 2023 report from the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association (OMVA) said corporate interests contol 20 per cent of veterinary hospitals in Canada, and estimates those chains employ about 40 per cent of the nation's vets.

https://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html?lat=48.474131&lng=-109.995117&zoom=4&type=Roadmap&layers=o&pid=0&ds=0

Fancy Bermudez scored two tries as Canada recorded a historic rugby win over New Zealand on Sunday, holding on to dispatch the reigning World Cup champion 22-19 and win the Pacific Four Series.

The Canadian women had lost all 17 previous meetings with the Black Ferns, with 10 of those defeats by 27 points or more. The six-time world champions won 52-21 the last time they met, last July in Ottawa in the same tournament.

The closest Canada has come to a win was a 16-8 loss in Tauranga in June 2014, a match that marked the only time New Zealand had failed to score 20 points against Canada.

“I feel like we’ve been knocking on the door and pushing to make a statement on the world stage for Canada for a while now,” said captain Sophie de Goede.

The milestone win moved the Canadian women to No. 2 in the world rankings behind England, replacing New Zealand and equalling their highest-ever position (last reached in November 2016). Canada started the tournament at No. 4, but moved past France into No. 3 after beating Australia 33-14.

“We worked so hard for the last, well it feels like for ever, and then having this outcome,” said an emotional Canadian prop DaLeaka Menin who earned her 55th cap

The Black Ferns have never been lower than No. 2 in the rankings, which were introduced in February 2016.

As we enter another wildfire season, Environment and Climate Change Canada is advising people to pay attention to air pollution levels and check the Air Quality Health Index – especially on smoky days.

HOW CAN I CHECK THE AIR QUALITY READING IN MY AREA?

The Air Quality Health Index is at: https://weather.gc.ca/airquality/pages/index_e.html

You can take a look at the ratings in communities across your province or territory.

A rating of 1-3 is low risk, 4-6 is moderate risk, 7-10 is high risk and over 10 is very high risk.

Environment Canada also encourages people to download the WeatherCAN app and set personal notifications for the AQHI in their region.

The authors of the study said the figures should serve as a ‘wake-up call’ for the country’s Liberal government

Immigration lawyers say the screening questions go ‘above and beyond what is asked in a normal immigration application’

In Prince Edward Island, a province in Canada, hundreds of Indian students are facing deportation after it changed its provincial immigration rules. Around 300 students are protesting and have threatened to go on a hunger strike if the Canadian province doesn't review its latest immigration policy.

Kelly O’Connor, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, said she gasped out loud when she saw the text. Any medical worker who denies care to someone hurt in a war zone is committing a “serious breach of the Geneva Convention,” she said in an interview.

“It’s completely outrageous that the government would ask these kinds of questions because it’s trying to promote that someone would violate the Geneva Conventions in wartime, which is really not something that the Canadian military stands for,” O’Connor said.

Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Randall Cohn said the questions in the letter are “patently illegal and absolutely egregious.” He has seen two such letters asking about medical treatment of Hamas members — sent to a doctor and a nurse — and he is aware of two more, he said in an interview.

The people who received these letters and brought them to lawyers were afraid to do it, Cohn said, because they worried they would be penalized by Canadian immigration officials. He wonders how many other people have received similar letters but haven’t shown them to anyone out of fear.

The federal Immigration Department said that an interview with its minister, Marc Miller, was not possible.

It was early August 2022, when Michelle Wigmore was on her way back from leading a crew of wildland firefighters near Grande Prairie, Alta. They stopped for a coffee in Fox Creek, about 230 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

"There was a 'help wanted' sign up and the wage that they were offering at the Tim Hortons was higher than all our crew members," said Wigmore in an interview with CBC's What On Earth.

While they made a joke of it at the time, Wigmore — who has about three decades of experience fighting wildfires in Ontario and Alberta — says it felt unfair when she considered the amount of training and work involved in the job.

Low wages are one of the reasons Wigmore and others say wildland firefighters in Alberta are not returning to the seasonal jobs, resulting in a dwindling number of experienced firefighters and creating potential safety risks to personnel and the public.

Other reasons include "lack of benefits [and] lack of potential opportunity in the organization," said a former wildland firefighter, whom CBC News has agreed to call by one of his initials, D, because of concerns speaking out could harm his livelihood.

Some Canadian provinces have logged a jump in unclaimed dead bodies in recent years, with next of kin citing funeral costs as a growing reason for not collecting loved ones' remains.

The phenomenon has prompted at least one province to build a new storage facility. Demand for memorial fundraisers has surged. The overall cost of a funeral in Canada at the top end has increased to about $8,800 from about $6,000 in 1998, according to industry trade group estimates.

Now, in the wake of an uproar over unclaimed bodies kept in freezers outside the (Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador), the province is constructing a permanent storage unit to hold remains.

"People weren't claiming bodies because they realized they couldn't afford to bury them," said Jim Dinn, leader of the province's opposition New Democratic Party. "It's not about building a bigger storage unit: It's about addressing the underlying cause causing the accumulation of bodies and removing the barriers so people can have a dignified burial."

Almost a week after some of his officers violently cleared out a peaceful Palestine solidarity protest on the University of Alberta campus, Edmonton Police Chief Dale McPhee finally showed up Thursday to make his case at a police commission meeting.

But not before the doors were locked and the public was barred from the meeting because 100 or so still-peaceful protesters made the official participants nervous.

Notwithstanding the metal detectors and heavy security at Edmonton City Hall since a shooting in January, protesters were told they’d have to watch the proceedings online because, in the words of commission chair John McDougall, “we had our back to a very, very large crowd. Admittedly they were peaceful… but when you know you have angry people behind you and you can’t see what’s going on, that’s a bit of a challenge.”

Well, nobody likes criticism. I guess no one thought to suggest that if it made them that uncomfortable to have people staring at their backs and grumbling, they could always turn their chairs around. Really, people, you can’t make this stuff up.

For his part, McPhee can be heard on various news organizations’ broadcasts claiming that his officers “protect free speech and we protect the very essential right of free expression, when both police and protesters respect their rights and responsibilities.”

On Saturday, in the chief’s opinion, those protesters’ responsibilities, apparently, included not camping on the campus of a public university even though there’s plenty of legal opinion that in fact they had every right to do just that.

Months after cancelling the construction contract for a new downtown pedestrian bridge in the face of “unforeseen challenges,” city officials have called off the project altogether.

As stated in a post on the city’s website on Friday, plans to build a bridge over the Speed River connecting The Ward with Downtown Guelph have been scrapped. Instead, city officials will look for ways to include pedestrian flow into another nearby project over the river.

“I want to reassure Canadians that the Canada Revenue Agency does not intend to collect any portion of any non-resident landlords’ unpaid taxes from individual tenants,” read a statement released by Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on X, formerly known as Twitter, Friday afternoon.

“It is incorrect to state otherwise.”

Bibeau said in her statement that she would work with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland “to provide absolute clarity on the law and to ensure that tenants have the certainty they need and deserve.”

A child under five years old has died of measles in Ontario, according to the province's public health agency, the first such death in more than a decade.

In a report published Thursday, Public Health Ontario said the child was not vaccinated against the highly infectious respiratory virus. It did not indicate when or where the child died, or their age.

The report shows there were no other measles-related deaths recorded in the province between Jan. 1, 2013 and this week.

Measles has been on the rise in both Ontario and elsewhere in Canada as cases increase globally, particularly in Europe, which has seen tens of thousands of infections over the last year.