🏥 Study found 49% increase in patients who are dying while on surgery wait list

Data analyzed by a think tank found the number of Canadian patients who died while awaiting surgery has increased by 49% year-over year.

▪️Analysts found that in the fiscal year from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023, 2,096 patients died while awaiting surgery – in the previous fiscal year that number was 1,417 patients.

Data from the same year-over-year comparison also revealed that deaths of those waiting for a diagnostic scan (MRI/CT) have also risen by 27% and cardiac surgical wait list deaths are up by 17%.

▪️Government data shows that despite spending more and more money, there has been a steady increase in waiting list deaths in Ontario over the past seven years.

For example, Ontario spent an average of $4,057 per patient on healthcare in 2015/2016 and by 2022-23 the province spent $5,400 per patient, according to data from Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). That is an increase of about 8% higher than the rate of inflation.

#healthcare

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🇨🇦🇨🇳 Canadian minister urged to quit Chinese government advisory body chaired by senior member of Politburo

The federal Conservatives are calling on Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to resign his position on an advisory group to the Chinese government – a body chaired by a former chief of staff to President Xi Jinping – and to end Canadian funding to this organization that instructs Beijing on green development.

Mr. Guilbeault is headed to China in late August on a diplomatic mission to participate in the annual general meeting of this council. He currently serves as an executive vice-chairperson, according to its website. He will be the first Canadian minister to visit the Asian country since 2019.

“Not only has China wrongfully detained our citizens and meddled in our democracy but it’s now using our good name to burnish its reputation on the environment,” Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said Thursday.

“We need to engage with China. We need to indicate our point of view to them,” he said. “But a Canadian minister of the Crown should not be sitting as executive vice-chairperson and giving it the prestige of Canada’s good name on environmental issues while at the same time China is massively increasing construction of coal-fired plants.”

Canada has donated or pledged more than $16-million to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development since 2017, according to information provided by the federal government.

#China

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🇨🇦🇺🇸 Canada mulling 'game plan' if U.S. takes far-right, authoritarian shift: Joly

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada has been considering a "game plan" for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year's presidential election.

"We are certainly working on scenarios," Joly said in French during an interview with a Montreal radio station Wednesday.

Joly added that Ottawa's close political and economic ties to the U.S. mean that "we must certainly prepare several scenarios." She suggested Canada has a game plan in mind but wouldn't get into details.

Joly drew an analogy to her government's experience working with the administration of former U.S. president Donald Trump.

#US

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💰Toronto to explore municipal sales tax

Toronto is proposing a municipal sales tax as part of a slew of new measures aimed at easing a projected $46.5 billion in budget pressures over the next decade, an "unprecedented financial crisis" that if left unaddressed threatens the fiscal foundations of the city.

The recommendation to pursue a one per cent sales tax applied to existing HST/GST was one of the key items included in a staff report released Thursday.

"There will be devastating consequences for the City of Toronto and the greater region and country without serious attention given to address the city's financial challenges," the report says, noting the region accounts for 20 per cent of Canada's gross domestic product (GDP) and 53 per cent of Ontario's GDP.

Speaking at a news conference later Thursday, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow noted that even if the city adopts all of the various possible revenue tools outlined by staff in the report, they still would not generate enough money to make up for projected budget shortfalls in the long-term. Chow said Toronto taxpayers are covering the costs of programs and initiatives that should fall to the province or federal government.

#Ontario

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Police recover nearly $3 million worth of stolen vehicles in GTA theft ring investigation

Police have recovered nearly $3 million worth of stolen vehicles and laid more than 80 charges after dismantling a theft ring in York Region.

The investigation began in May, officials said in a news release issued Wednesday. Three suspects were identified and eight search warrants were executed.

During the course of the investigation, 31 stolen vehicles, valued at about $2.8 million, were recovered. Officers also seized about $30,000 in cash, as well as police scanner devices, key re-programmers, and more than 100 master keys.

The alleged offences include theft of a motor vehicle, possession of property obtained by crime and trafficking in property obtained by crime.

#Ontario

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🌱🔌Ford, partners pick Canada for $900 mln battery materials plant

A consortium of Ford Motor Co and South Korean companies on Thursday said they would build a C$1.2 billion ($887 million) plant to produce electric vehicle (EVs) battery materials in Becancour, Quebec, a town seeking to become an EV-supply-chain hub, Canada's industry ministry said.

The factory will eventually produce 45,000 tonnes of cathode active materials per year for Ford EVs. Ford in a separate statement described the materials as high-quality Nickel Cobalt Manganese for rechargeable batteries that are targeting greater performance and improved EV range.

It is Ford's first investment in Quebec, although it has operated in neighboring Ontario for more than a century.

Canada's federal government will provide the consortium with a conditional loan of C$322 million and Quebec will offer the same amount as a partially forgivable loan, the statement said. The factory is expected to be operational in the first half of 2026, creating more than 345 jobs.

#Quebec

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Lack of local media, Meta’s news block impact Northwest Territories residents’ access to information

Up to 50 per cent of Canadians use Facebook to find out what’s happening in cities and towns across the country.

Yellowknife’s 20,000 residents and two nearby First Nations have been ordered to evacuate by noon on Friday, as crews battle more than 200 blazes in the Northwest Territories. The wildfires have burned an area about four times the size of Prince Edward Island, but no deaths have been reported.

Meanwhile, news outlets have been unable to post on Meta’s social media sites since earlier this month after the digital giant, in response to federal legislation, began rolling out its restrictions on Canadian news. The federal government’s Online News Act requires some tech giants to pay for news content shared or repurposed on their platforms. In response, Meta decided it would simply block news to evade the law’s reach.

#wildfires

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B.C. declares state of emergency amid ‘worst wildfire season in our province’s history’

British Columbia Premier David Eby declared a state of provincial emergency Friday evening, amid a rapidly escalating wildfire crisis.

“We are facing the worst wildfire season in our province’s history — this unprecedented situation has come to a head this evening,” Eby said.

“In the last 24 hours the situation has evolved and deteriorated quite rapidly. In just the last hour, we’ve gone from about 4,500 homes under evacuation to about 15,000 (people) being evacuated from their homes across the province.”

As of Friday evening, there were 380 active fires across B.C.

#BritishColumbia #wildfires

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🏠 Over a third of Canadians regret their current mortgage

The Real Estate and Mortgage Institute of Canada reported 34% of borrowers say that they regret their current mortgage, and an additional 12% say that they regret being locked in at a “bad rate.”

45% of current borrowers believe that they will be paying off their mortgages until the age of 60, while 8% think that they will be making payments until they’re 80 or older. Even so, just 30% of borrowers indicate that they would have purchased a less expensive property if they anticipated the conditions they are contending with today.

Surprisingly, 58% of respondents admit to not knowing what their monthly mortgage payments are “without looking them up,” according to REMIC.

#housing

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Key documents left out of top-secret briefing on foreign interference: Elizabeth May

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said a top-secret briefing on foreign interference this week did not allow her to access key intelligence documents.

Former special rapporteur David Johnston had released an initial report on alleged meddling in Canadian elections in May, along with a confidential annex of evidence that he said opposition party leaders who obtained relevant clearance could review.

May and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh have both received top-secret security clearance, and May was the first to attend a confidential briefing on Wednesday.

“There’s so much more that I thought I was going to find out about,” May told reporters Friday on Parliament Hill.

She said officials presented her only with two documents Johnston authored — 25 pages in total. The main 20-page annex cited numerous intelligence reports she was not allowed to read, she said.

May said the Privy Council Office is still considering her request for access to all the cited records, saying that she needs them in order to assess the credibility of Johnson’s findings.

The former governor general’s report had concluded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government didn’t knowingly or negligently fail to act on foreign attempts to interfere in the last two federal elections.

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Toronto's waterfront deploys 'robotic sharks' to collect 500 kg of waste a day

In a Canadian first, two WasteShark aquadrones, capable of collecting 500 kilograms of waste a day from aquatic areas, have been deployed in Toronto. The pilot program is a partnership with PortsToronto and Netherlands-based RanMarine Technology, which manufactures the WasteShark.

The aquadrones Ebb and Flow are based out of the Outer Harbour Marina and will troll problem areas for floating debris on the water’s surface.

They are part of the city’s larger trash trapping program, which already includes a network of Seabins that pull in water to collect garbage. The WasteSharks will focus on larger items, like plastic bags and bottles, and can remove the equivalent of over 22,700 plastic bottles daily.

The WasteShark retails for about US$24,600 or about $33,200, according to Reuters.

Earlier this year, a WasteShark was also deployed in England’s River Thames. The U.K.’s second-longest river, the Thames has among the highest levels of microplastic concentrations found in any river globally.

#Ontario

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🏠 Every developer has opted to pay Montreal instead of building affordable housing, under new bylaw

🔹Two years after Valérie Plante's administration said a new housing bylaw would lead to the construction of 600 new social housing units per year, the city hasn't seen a single one.

The Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis forces developers to include social, family and, in some places, affordable housing units to any new projects larger than 4,843 square feet. If they don't, they must pay a fine or hand over land, buildings or individual units for the city to turn into affordable or social housing.

According to data released by Ensemble Montréal, there have been 150 new projects by private developers, creating a total of 7,100 housing units, since the bylaw came into effect in April 2021.

🔹None of the units have yet been made into affordable housing, with all the developers of those projects opting instead to give Montreal financial compensation. Only 550 units are big enough to be considered family housing. Five developers ceded a piece of property to the city instead of creating affordable housing.

The money from the fees paid by developers goes into either the city's affordable housing fund or its social housing fund. Those fees have so far amounted to a total of $24.5 million — not enough to develop a single social housing project, according to housing experts.

#Quebec #housing

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Hundreds of appointed positions vacant after 8 years of Trudeau's government

Almost eight years after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government came to power, hundreds of government-appointed positions — from boards of port authorities and advisory councils to tribunals that hear refugee claims or parole cases — are vacant or are being occupied by someone whose appointment is past its end-date.

A CBC news analysis of governor in council (GIC) appointments to 206 government bodies or institutions found that 418 of the 1,731 positions — 24.1 per cent — are either vacant or are being occupied by someone whose appointment has continued past its end date.

Of that number, 280 positions — 16.2 per cent of the total — were vacant. Another 138 appointees — 7.9 per cent — were past their end-dates and were awaiting either replacement or renewal of their appointments.

Some experts say leaving hundreds of positions vacant can affect wait times for services or decisions, while leaving boards staffed by people who are past their end-dates can affect an organization's ability to make decisions.

#Trudeau

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B.C. orders fire-zone travel bans as evacuations soar to 35,000

A day after the B.C. government declared a provincial state of emergency, Premier David Eby has used that power to implement a tourist travel ban for areas that are currently impacted by fires, like the Okanagan.

“This order will restrict travel in fire-affected areas when you are travelling for the purposes of staying in temporary accommodations, like a hotel, motel, provincial park or campground," he said Saturday. "This order says stay off the roads for tourist related non essential travel to stay in temporary accommodation.”

He noted the order does not affect people who are already in hotels.

Eby says the number of people ordered to evacuate wildfire zones has more than doubled to 35,000 people.

#BritishColumbia #wildfires

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🌱🔌Ottawa announces up to $74M for small modular nuclear reactor development in Sask.

Canada is getting behind the development of small modular nuclear reactors in Saskatchewan, the federal minister of energy and natural resources announced on Saturday.

Ottawa has approved up to $74 million in federal funding for small modular reactor (SMR) development in the province, which will support pre-engineering work and technical studies, environmental assessments, regulatory studies.

Saskatchewan and three other provinces — Ontario, New Brunswick and Alberta — have led the charge on developing SMR technology that would help supply power in their respective provinces.

While a conventional nuclear reactor generates about 1,000 megawatts of energy, SMRs generate between 200 and 300 megawatts — enough to power about 300,000 homes.

A final decision on whether to build a SMR in Saskatchewan won't happen until 2029 but the planning process has been moving ahead with SaskPower put in charge of development and implementation in the province.

If approved, construction could begin as early as 2030 with the first SMR coming on line sometime in 2034.

#Saskatchewan

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🌱🔌Renewables companies hit brakes on Alberta projects after govt delays approvals

Four major international companies at various development stages stopped working on their renewable power projects in Alberta, an industry official said. Some domestic companies also consider whether to refocus investment on other provinces and the U.S.

Alberta paused approvals on Aug. 3 of new renewable electricity generation projects over one megawatt until Feb. 29. The pause is necessary to address concerns about renewables' reliability and land use, said a spokesperson for Alberta's utilities minister.

This state of affairs worsens the relationship between the Trudeau government and the Alberta authorities, as Trudeau continues with his plans to force provinces to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from their grids on a net basis by 2035.

#Alberta #energy

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