Patrick Mitsuing says he hopes to be an inspiration to Indigenous youth in Canada and across the globe A man from the Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation in Saskatchewan is taking his talents to one of the biggest stages in the world. Patrick Mitsuing will help to shine a spotlight on Indigenous culture as he performs at Super Bowl LVII on Sunday. After growing up on the small First Nation, located northwest of Saskatoon, Mitsuing said the opportunity in front of him is worth savouring. “It’s a story I could tell my kids, and if I’mRead more

Surgeries scheduled within weeks with price tags over $20K prompt concerns over 2-tiered health care It’s a contentious reality in a country with a universal medicare system: Canadians can pay to sidestep the queue for surgeries with long waiting lists, such as hip and knee replacements. Private clinics across Canada are advertising to prospective patients that within weeks they can get surgeries that typically take six months or more under provincial health plans. The price for a single hip or knee replacement runs in the range of $20,000 to $28,000,Read more

Plan involved restructuring, several rounds of layoffs and facility closures over 3 years Aurora Cannabis Inc. announced Thursday that it has completed a transformation plan delivering $340 million in annualized savings since February 2020, but said it still incurred a $67.2-million net loss in its most recent quarter. The plan involved an extensive restructuring and several rounds of layoffs and facility closures over the last three years as it contended with shifting COVID-19 measures and grappled with aligning supply and demand. The Edmonton company’s goal was to reach profitability basedRead more

Fewer than 30 per cent of Canadian doctors trained abroad are matched to residency positions The country’s health-care system is suffering from an acute shortage of doctors — even as hundreds of qualified Canadian physicians trained abroad are turned away each year because of a tangle of red-tape and bias, experts say. Canada is passing up a chance to add hundreds of these Canadian doctors to a strained system because, critics say, tight-fisted provincial governments have restricted the number of residency spots — and because the system explicitly privileges students who went to CanadianRead more

Verdict delivered in Supreme Court on Friday afternoon WARNING: This story contains distressing details. Krysta Grimes, a St. John’s substitute teacher accused of having sex with her underage student in 2018, has been acquitted. Justice Vikas Khaladkar dismissed the sexual exploitation charge against her in Supreme Court on Friday afternoon. Reading from his decision, Khaladkar said he couldn’t accept the complainant’s credibility because of a series of “serious, significant inconsistencies” in his testimony. Grimes leapt from the dock, hugging her lawyer, Rosellen Sullivan. She dodged a question from a reporter, surrounded by familyRead more

Tory had just begun 3rd term in office as Toronto’s mayor Toronto Mayor John Tory announced on Friday that he will step down from his office after admitting to a relationship with a former staffer. “During the pandemic I developed a relationship with an employee in my office in a way that did not meet the standards to which I hold myself as mayor and as a family man,” Tory said during a brief statement at city hall. Tory said the relationship ended by “mutual consent” earlier this year. TheRead more

City to add bike lanes, explore closures for special events this summer Ottawa city councillors voted in favour of reopening Wellington Street to vehicles Wednesday with a motion that leaves the door open to making the downtown roadway pedestrian-only for special events as soon as this summer. City councillors voted to take down the concrete barricades “as soon as is operationally feasible” but no sooner than March 1. Capital Coun. Shawn Menard and Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Jessica Bradley dissented. Phil Landry, director of traffic services with the city, said he couldn’t give a precise date cars would be able toRead more

Alberta’s energy regulator has given Imperial Oil until the end of the month to figure out how to deal with ongoing seepage at a tailings pond at its Kearl oilsands mine. On Monday, the regulator issued an environmental protection order to Imperial to clean up ongoing seepages of industrial wastewater at the mine, located in the Athabasca region of northern Alberta, about 70 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. The company also needs to submit plans for wildlife protection, environmental remediation and notifying the public. The order covers two separate contamination incidents that took place over nine months.Read more

The company failed to treat effluent for selenium and nitrate, Ministry of Environment says. A Canadian mining company has been fined more than $16 million for polluting waterways in B.C.’s East Kootenay. The B.C. Ministry of Environment has imposed three administrative penalties on Teck Coal Limited, a subsidiary of Teck Resources, citing the company’s failure to have water treatment facilities ready by a required date to limit emissions of nitrate and selenium from its Fording River operations in the Elk Valley. The ministry says administrative penalties are monetary fines issued by theRead more

It isn’t just about high interest rates. When rent goes up, it often goes up most dramatically in major urban centres. And, sure enough, Toronto and Vancouver have consistently been in the spotlight as rental prices have skyrocketed over the last year. A two-bedroom apartment in the Ontario capital averaged $1,765 a month in 2022, while the same place in Vancouver soared to $2,002, according to the latest Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). But it isn’t just a problem for Canada’s biggest cities. Across the country, high interest rates have left would-beRead more