In the news today: Health ministers in Charlottetown and Joly talks Israel airlifts

By The Canadian Press on October 11, 2023.

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…

Joly to provide update on Canada’s Israel airlift plans

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly will hold a news conference to explain how the federal government will help get Canadians out of harm’s way as a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza rages on for a fifth day.

Joly announced Tuesday that Ottawa is planning to airlift Canadians out of Tel Aviv in “the coming days” using military aircraft.

She also urged all Canadians in Israel to register with Global Affairs.

Israel has vowed unprecedented retaliation against the Hamas militant group ruling the Gaza Strip after its fighters stormed through a border fence Saturday and gunned down hundreds of Israelis.

Palestinians in the sealed-off Gaza Strip are struggling to find any safe area, as Israeli strikes demolish entire neighbourhoods, hospitals run low on supplies and a power blackout is expected within hours.

The strikes smashed entire city blocks to rubble in the tiny coastal enclave and left unknown numbers of bodies beneath mounds of debris.

Health ministers to meet in Charlottetown

Federal Health Minister Mark Holland is set to sit down with his provincial and territorial counterparts in Charlottetown on Wednesday to discuss how they’re going to grow the health workforce.

Holland, who was shuffled into the health portfolio this summer during what many advocates have called a crisis in health care, as health workers struggle to keep the provincial and territorial systems afloat.

Bringing new workers into the industry and retaining those who are already there is the priority, Holland said.

“We have to look at our foreign credentials, we have to look at pan-Canadian licensure,” he said at a press conference in British Columbia on Tuesday.

The ministers will also talk about improving the integration of health data from one province to the next, which is a condition of the health accord the prime minister offered premiers in February.

The meeting in Prince Edward Island comes a day after British Columbia signed the first bilateral funding agreement with Ottawa as part of that accord.

Judge to rule on local witnesses in convoy trial

The criminal trial of two prominent “Freedom Convoy” organizers is expected to resume today with a ruling on whether the court will hear testimony from local Ottawa residents.

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are facing charges related to their role in organizing the protest that brought thousands of big-rig trucks to Ottawa, where demonstrators remained for three weeks.

Lich’s lawyer Lawrence Greenspon asked the judge not to let the locals testify, arguing their testimony would be irrelevant.

Lich and Barber have already signed admissions that the actions of certain individuals who participated in the protest interfered with public transit and the lawful use and enjoyment of property and businesses.

The Crown has maintained that it prefers to call its case as it sees fit, and wants local witnesses to tell the court how disruption, intimidation and obstructions caused by the protest manifested on the streets.

PM to visit fire-ravaged Northwest Territories

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to visit areas ravaged during a record wildfire season in the Northwest Territories today.

Trudeau is scheduled to meet with local leaders in Hay River and visit sites affected by recent wildfires.

A fast-moving wildfire in August tore through the hamlet of Enterprise, about 40 kilometres south of Hay River, destroying nearly all of the community’s homes and structures.

Burnt trees, scorched homes and melted vehicles remain throughout the community of about 100 located along a highway north of the Alberta boundary.

Around 20 people have returned, but many remain elsewhere in the territory and other parts of Canada after their homes were destroyed.

The territory saw nearly 70 per cent of its population displaced during the fire season, including a three-week evacuation order that forced around 20,000 people to flee Yellowknife.

New facts emerge from decades-old war crimes study

When an individual suspected of taking part in the Second World War murder of Jews in western Ukraine applied for admission to Canada in 1951, immigration officials did not follow up with potential witnesses who might have provided crucial details.

In another case, a Slovak leader hoping to unite émigrés under his leadership was allowed to visit Canada repeatedly in the 1950s and ’60s, despite a record of war crimes.

In 1962, the RCMP learned that a Soviet trial of concentration camp guards in what is now called Belarus had named two people living in Canada as active participants in the execution of civilians during the war.

These are among several unsettling vignettes in the latest, more revealing version of a September 1986 study prepared for a landmark federal commission of inquiry on war crimes.

Even though the cases are labelled with letters of the alphabet, not names of suspects, they were excised from the original version of researcher Alti Rodal’s study, initially released under the Access to Information Act in heavily censored form in 1987.

Rodal’s archival research and case analysis – including the once-hidden elements – are finding new relevance amid a push for greater transparency about how Canada has dealt with suspected Nazi war criminals and collaborators.

Alarm over B.C.’s draft plan for grizzly bears

Grizzly bears seen starving in the rainforests of British Columbia’s south coast because there isn’t enough salmon to sustain them raises alarm bells for wildlife biologist Wayne McCrory, who’s known as a leading bear expert in Canada.

The science is “crying out” for greater habitat protections for the iconic species as industrial activities eat away at the landscapes the bears depend on, he said.

“There’s a huge amount of protection work that needs to be done that isn’t happening, so you can say it’s in a crisis mode,” he said in an interview.

McCrory said the province’s draftplan to adjust grizzly management doesn’t meaningfully address habitat loss and could prove “disastrous” for the bears.

He is among the signatories of an open letter sent to provincial officials last week as public engagement closed for the draft grizzly stewardship framework.

The letter published by Pacific Wild and signed by more than 50 scientists, advocates and conservation groups says the proposed plan minimizes the threats posed by the “severe fragmentation” of grizzly habitat in B.C. by logging, road building and other industrial activities against the backdrop of climate change.

New Ontario top cop won’t tolerate racism

Thunder Bay, Ontario, police Chief Darcy Fleury knows firsthand what it’s like to experience racism ““ and that has helped guide his first few months on the job as he looks to overhaul the embattled police force and repair relations with the Indigenous community.

The Métis man took over the top job on the police force in May and has made one thing clear to his officers.

“Racism will not be tolerated and it will cost people their jobs,” Fleury said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Several damning reports in recent years, including an expert panel’s findings this past spring, have found systemic racism within the Thunder Bay police force toward Indigenous people. The panel also found a “profound lack of trust” in the police by the Indigenous community.

Fleury, a veteran RCMP officer who rose through the ranks over the past few decades to a district commander in central Alberta, believes his Indigenous heritage will help him navigate the rough waters in Thunder Bay.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2023

50
-49