Canada

More new medical school graduates will train to be family physicians in Canada this year than ever before, a development that will help but not solve a primary-care crisis that has left millions without a family doctor.

A total of 1,627 graduates from medical schools in Canada and abroad will become family medicine residents this summer, up from 1,529 last year, according to the organization that matches fledgling physicians with crucial hands-on training positions.

The increase isn’t solely due to provincial governments funding more residency placements in family medicine, although 73 new spots in the discipline were added nationwide this year.

It’s also a reflection of the fact that fewer family medicine training slots went unfilled this year than in any of the past three years, according to the Canadian Resident Matching Service, which released the final results of its annual matching process on Thursday.

The matching service, known as CaRMS, said 75 family medicine residency slots were left vacant, down from 100 last year, 99 in 2022 and 89 in 2021. The majority of this year’s unclaimed family medicine spots – 70 of the 75 – were in Quebec, a province that has long struggled to fill its quota for future GPs.

“Family medicine has gotten to such a crisis point,” that key players from provincial politicians to medical school leaders to doctors’ associations are finally giving the shortage the attention it deserves, said Michael Green, president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and head of the department of family medicine at Queen’s University.

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The orca had been stuck since 23 March after its mother died, sparking a huge rescue effort off Vancouver Island's west coast.

Repeated efforts to coax or carry her out a narrow path to open water were unsuccessful.

But on Friday, the calf managed to swim out on its own thanks to high tide.

LOL marvelous

Last October, cabinet minister François-Philippe Champagne joined the CBC’s Rosemary Barton to discuss what the government billed as a series of new measures to stabilize the spiraling price of groceries. Even with this somewhat conservative framing onhand (“stabilizing” prices, it should go without saying, isn’t the same thing as actually lowering them) Champagne was remarkably evasive — repeatedly implying that the best solution to high grocery prices ultimately lay with consumers.

“If you ask me, what’s going to have the most impact,” he told Barton, “is really if we as consumers… where we decide to spend our dollars… that’s going to have the most impact on them [major grocery and supermarket chains] responding to the needs of Canadians.” A few moments later, the minister took this absurd premise even further, suggesting that the only real power the federal government has at its disposal with regard to inflated food costs was the ability to get supermarket giants on the phone: “Obviously we have soft power [as the] government because you call them and they come… but then it’s really an appeal to all the consumers out there, all of us, to say ‘listen, let’s watch each of them and let’s direct our dollars to the one that is giving us the best value for our money.’”

Barton, to her credit, wasn’t having it, replying with the question probably at the top of mind for many viewers: “Okay, but then why are you needed at all?”

Just days before the 2006 election Stephen Harper made an extraordinary statement. Seeking to assure Canadians a potential Conservative majority government would be restrained from accruing “absolute power,” Harper submitted that his party would face “limits” because of “checks,” naming specifically courts, civil servants and the Senate.

His words would prove prescient. The majority government Harper’s party eventually formed in 2011 was held accountable by various democratic actors and lost 15 significant court cases, mostly for violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The assurance was justified.

Current Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is offering no such assurance. In fact, he is doing the opposite; just this week Poilievre offered encouragement to protesters promoting extreme positions on the purpose of government.

This raises the stakes of the next election as Poilievre’s politics represent a radical departure from the norms of Canadian decency, decorum and democracy.

Jama said Thursday she isn't afraid of further repercussions from the legislature.

"The focus should be on the genocide, the fact that 40,000 people have been killed and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight against this violence," she said. The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, at least two-thirds of them children and women.

In January, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide in its war in Gaza and said it won't throw out genocide charges against Israel for its military offensive in Gaza as part of its preliminary decision. Israel has rejected the genocide claim outright.

A new bill would give the Alberta government more power over municipalities, including granting cabinet the power to remove councillors from office, and forcing councils to repeal bylaws the province doesn't like.

Bill 20, the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment, was tabled in the legislature Thursday afternoon.

The bill would also allow the creation of municipal political parties, but it comes in the form of a pilot project only affecting Edmonton and Calgary.

Bill 20 proposes many other changes to the Local Authorities Election Act and the Municipal Government Act to reinforce the province's authority over municipalities.

A recent spring food drive in Barrie, Ont. fell $100,000 short on their financial goal. It's part of a growing trend across Canada.

Members voted 96.5 percent in favor of a strike authorization during stalled talks with Canadian indie film and TV producers on a new labor deal.

More than 81,000 positions approved in last three months of 2023

Bob Cole, whose voice and lively language were the Saturday night soundtrack to hockey games over a broadcasting career that spanned more than half a century, has died.

Cole, who was 90, died Wednesday night in St. John's surrounded by his family, his daughter, Megan Cole, said.

"Thank you for decades of love for his work, love of Newfoundland and love of hockey," Megan Cole told CBC News on Thursday.

Cole said her father had been healthy "up until the very end."

Cole's trademark call — "Oh, baby!" — was one of many signposts he brought to play-by-play commentaries that earned him the love of fans and even players themselves.

Cole, who said he still got goosebumps in his mid-80s when he stepped into an arena broadcasting booth, called one of the most famous plays in Canadian sports history: Paul Henderson's Summit Series goal in 1972, against the Soviet Union.

Jury selection is scheduled to happen Thursday in the case of a man accused of killing four women in Winnipeg.

Jeremy Skibicki, 37, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the 2022 deaths of three First Nations women — Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — and a fourth unidentified woman, who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community members.

Police have said they believe Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe was Indigenous and in her mid-20s, but the location of her remains is unknown.

Roughly two years ago, in mid-May, partial human remains later identified as belonging to Contois were discovered in a garbage bin near a Winnipeg apartment building. The following month, police recovered more of her remains from the Brady Road landfill in south Winnipeg.

History's greatest sidekick's plans for independence have hit a wall. My Patreon is actually good: https://www.patreon.com/PaigeSaunders Mastodon: https://masto.canadiancivil.com/@paige Translation...

Tenant David Siscoe still owes more than $43,000 after being dunned by CRA for foreign landlord’s failure to pay

The Conservative leader is facing questions after stopping to cheer on an anti-carbon tax convoy camp near the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where he bluntly accused the prime minister of lying about "everything."

In video filmed by the protesters, who have been living at the site for three weeks, Poilievre tells the group to "keep it up" and calls their protest "a good, old-fashioned Canadian tax revolt."

"Everyone hates the tax because everyone's been screwed over," Poilievre is heard saying in the video, which shows protesters with "Axe the tax" and "F--k Trudeau " signs and flags. A car with 'Make Canada Great Again' scrawled on the rear window is seen parked at the site.

"People believed his lies. Everything he said was bullshit, from top to bottom."

Credit bureaus are testing the inclusion of rent payments in credit scores, saying it's a positive move launched by Ottawa. But critics fear the move could compound the issues faced

A prominent Canadian technology investor joined the chorus of Canadian businesses criticizing the increase to the capital-gains tax. Read on

Weak productivity, business investment contribute to sluggish economic performance