Canadian News

The most productive teenage hockey player in all of Canada was an extra forward without set linemates when the world junior pre-tournament schedule began last Thursday. Read More

Venne, born in Lamont, Alta., was one of the first appointees to Alberta's Human Rights Commission in 1973 and later served as chair.

The central Edmonton building had over 60 people living inside at the time the closure was ordered, including about two-dozen children.

Megan Parker says bullies armed with airsoft pellet guns targeted her home last week, smashing her son's bedroom window, along with windows on her car and garage.

Brigitte Cleroux was sentenced to seven years in prison for working as a nurse at B.C. Women's Hospital under stolen credentials.

Families enjoyed the magic of the Polar Express on a heritage train ride at Aspen Crossing in Mossleigh. The ride takes them to the "North Pole" to meet Santa.

B.C.'s top court says a law passed by the provincial government to stave off opposition to a supportive housing development in Kitsilano is unconstitutional.

Cody Jerome is set for his ONE Championship debut in Bangkok, With unwavering dedication, he is seeking a shot at a top five world ranking.

The holidays aren't always the easiest time of year for people, and one regina recovery facility is looking to brighten the spirits of client’s days before Christmas.

The Canada Post Strike backlog is affecting more than just late holiday gifts, with thousands of Canadians left waiting for their passports.

It was like Santa dropped a lump of coal in the Christmas stockings of fans of the Ottawa Senators even before he was supposed to arrive. Read More

The Canadian Transportation Agency, the quasi-judicial tribunal and regulator tasked with enforcing air passenger rights and compensation rules, has unveiled proposed amendments to the Air Passenger Protection Regulations.

B.C. Emergency Health Services said one ambulance with primary care paramedics, one ambulance with advanced care paramedics and one supervisor responded to the incident.

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A newborn orca calf has been sighted in Puget Sound in Washington state, sparking cautious hope for the endangered southern resident killer whale population.

The story involves allegations of many familiar elements of road rage: honking, tailgating, forcing someone off the road and brandishing a firearm

Mike Ellis says he is shoring up the Alberta sheriffs and giving communities the power to choose if the RCMP is right for their needs

Let’s cut right to the chase: What the analysis made public yesterday by the Chief Actuary of Canada shows is that if Alberta were to split from the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) it would only be entitled to 20 to 25 per cent of the CPP investment fund, or about $120 billion to $150 billion.

In other words, the 2023 report by the Lifeworks consulting firm commissioned and heavily promoted by the United Conservative Party Government that concluded Alberta would be entitled to walk away with 53 per cent of the $575-billion investment fund, about $334 billion, turns out to be just as it appeared, too good to be true.

So the complaint by Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner’s spokesperson that “we received their interpretation of the legislation, but it did not contain a number or even a formula for calculating a number” turns out to be not completely accurate. 

Yes, the government received the report. And, yes, the report didn’t do the math for readers. Nevertheless, upon reading it, Alberta Finance Department experts should have had no difficulty coming up with the conclusions above.

Now that the Office of Chief Actuary Assia Billig has publicly released the report, Alberta voters can read it for themselves. Its title may not be all that riveting, but the conclusions of Chief Actuary Position Paper – Subsection 113(2) of the Canada Pension Plan are both clear and persuasive. 

Section 113(2) of the legislation that created the Canada Pension Plan, by the way, “outlines the calculation that the Minister of Finance shall apply in determining the amount that would be transferred to the Government of Alberta,” the position paper explains. So figuring out what it means, quite literally, is the money question! 

A very helpful commentary was posted yesterday afternoon on social media by University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe, who is cited in the report as being one of many experts Billig’s staff consulted who reached similar conclusions.

In particular, the report pointedly endorses the conclusion published by Dr. Tombe in December 2023, that the LifeWorks estimate of Alberta’s entitlement was wrong, and the right number is in the 20- to 25-per-cent range. 

If the same approach were applied to both Alberta and Ontario, Dr. Tombe noted in that 2023 paper, “then it would result in more assets being paid out than actually exist within the CPP.” Needless to say, such an outcome would not just strain Confederation, it would be politically impossible in Canada outside of Quebec, which with its own grandfathered pension has no dog in this fight.  

“The Chief Actuary’s position, although independently developed, is consistent with the findings of the IAP and the method presented in Dr. Tombe’s paper,” the position paper states – the IAP being the Independent Advisory Panel of actuaries created by her office to gather independent views. 

While it may not seem completely reassuring, it is said here the Finance Minister’s press secretary can probably be forgiven for not properly understanding the position paper, which, while clearly written, requires a certain level of actuarial expertise not typical of political staffers. 

Anyway, the Chief Actuary sided with the majority of experts when it came to rejecting the LifeWorks claim the province would be entitled to as much interest as it would have collected if it had set up its own pension plan in 1966.  

This does not mean the UCP’s pension scheme is not viable, Dr. Tombe noted in his Bluesky commentary, but it does indicate the much smaller contribution rates claimed by the government are not possible. 

Responding to a commenter, Dr. Tombe concluded that “reading carefully the various pieces of analysis now publicly available would lead to the conclusion that the LifeWorks interpretation will not withstand careful judicial review.” This is an opinion, but obviously a well-informed and important one. 

Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt weighed in on Bluesky with the opinion that “the Smith government will quietly abandon the APP when there is a change in the federal government. The APP rears its head when there are Liberals in Ottawa, and buries its head when the Conservatives are in office.”

I am not so sure. The UCP brain trust has been singularly focused on the huge sums that could become available to prop up Alberta’s oil and gas sector if it got its paws on CPP assets, so don’t expect this divisive scheme to go away any time soon. 

The post AB not entitled to 50% of Canada Pension Plan: Chief Actuary report appeared first on rabble.ca.

Had the United Conservative Party (UCP)’s John Middleton-Hope won Wednesday’s by-election in Lethbridge-West, one wonders if Health Minister Adriana LaGrange would have invited him along yesterday to help her make her long-overdue announcement of the government’s funding agreement with Alberta doctors? 

Alas for the UCP, Middleton-Hope was not the winner of the by-election. The Alberta NDP’s Rob Miyashiro was, so Premier Danielle Smith had to satisfy herself by publishing a longish post on social media congratulating Middleton-Hope for losing the election.

There was nary of a word of congratulations for the winner, of course, but that’s how the UCP rolls. Alberta Conservatives are poor losers. But it’s always worth keeping in mind that, as Smith’s government illustrates daily, they’re worse winners!

Smith’s note congratulating the loser for his loss included this interesting phrase: “While we did not come away with a win, our candidate and the UCP gained a higher percentage of votes than we had earned in the 2023 General Election.” 

Let’s pause for a moment to examine this bit of hyperbole:

On Wednesday, Middleton-Hope captured 44.9 per cent of the vote, an increase of a whopping 2.4 per cent over the 42.5-per-cent accumulated UCP candidate Cheryl Seaborn in the 2023 general election. 

By this standard, the UCP would also be entitled to boast that Mr. Middleton-Hope’s tally also topped party standard-bearer Karri Flatla’s 44.3 per cent in the 2019 general election. 

Another way to describe this phenomenon, of course, would be to say that no matter how many people vote in Lethbridge-West – 13,561 on Wednesday compared to 22,635 in the 2023 general election – the UCP just can’t seem to get past 45 per cent. There are about 37,000 eligible voters in the riding nowadays. 

Indeed, the last time a Conservative candidate got more than that – 48 per cent – the winner was Progressive Conservative Clint Dunford, the premier was named Ralph Klein, and the year was 2001. Dunford passed away in 2021. 

On Wednesday, Miyashiro, the winner, captured 53.4 per cent of the ballots cast, compared with the 53.9 per cent taken by former MLA Shannon Phillips in 2023 – so, a Conservative might argue, this was a percentage loss almost as huge as the increase posted by Middleton-Hope!

Pay deal for family docs is finally official – almost 

Getting back to LaGrange’s announcement, the deal agreed to by the government and the Alberta Medical Association (AMA), which bargains collectively for the province’s physicians, will provide a new payment option to family docs who have a full-time practice with 500 or more patients. It is expected to increase pay for many physicians.

This may in fact make it a little easier to recruit more doctors to Alberta. 

The big mystery that went unacknowledged in the government’s press release yesterday is why a deal has that was first announced by the government on April 17 has been sitting on a desk in the provincial Treasury Department for almost long enough to bring a baby to term while AMA leaders pleaded with the government to sign and implement what they’d agreed to. 

“This agreement should have been done back in May when the premier promised it would be signed within a couple of weeks,” NDP Health Critic Sarah Hoffman remarked yesterday. 

Speculation has been that the government didn’t want to reveal anything that might impact ongoing negotiations with other health care workers such as nurses, medical technologists and care aids, not to mention civil servants, municipal employees, schoolteachers and other education workers. An additional $250 million a year for physician compensation might well have an impact on their demands. 

The agreement still hinges on the willingness of a minimum of 500 doctors to take part in the new funding formula, so while the deal is done, it’s not really a done deal just yet. 

UCP claims Chief Actuary’s CPP pullout estimate is missing

According to a political aide to Finance Minister Nate Horner, a report by the Chief Actuary of Canada on the UCP’s scheme to pull Alberta out of the Canada Pension Plan is missing an estimate of how much the province would be entitled to get from the CPP’s huge investment fund. 

“We received their interpretation of the legislation, but it did not contain a number or even a formula for calculating a number,” the CBC quoted press secretary Justin Brattinga saying yesterday.

Just a suggestion, but before we all freak out, perhaps someone should put in a call to the office of Chief Actuary Assia Billig to see what’s going on. 

There has been, for one thing, some stuff taking place in Ottawa in the past few days related to federal government financing, and the finance minister who asked the Chief Actuary to deliver the report is no longer on the job.

Moreover, even without a need to replace a federal finance minister in a hurry and deliver a financial update, the week before Christmas seems like a peculiar time for the Chief Actuary’s estimate to have been expected by the province.

One thing that can be safely assumed is that with or without the Chief Actuary’s full report, the UCP’s estimate that Alberta, with about 11.5 per cent of Canada’s population, is owed 53 per cent of the CPP fund is both preposterous and obviously politically motivated. 

Meanwhile, the UCP continues to refuse to provide any details of what the 94,000 Albertans who filled out the government’s flawed online survey last fall on replacing the CPP with an Alberta pension plan had to say. It’s not hard to guess why. 

The Sovereignty Act: Sound and fury, signifying nothing

If you have time this holiday season, it would be well spent reading the latest post on the University of Calgary Law Faculty’s blog, in which Professor Emeritus Nigel Banks and Assistant Professor Martin Z. Olszynski examine the Smith Government’s use of its Sovereignty Act to try to try to derail the federal greenhouse gas emissions cap. With a Shakespearean flourish, they find the government’s legal strategy to be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5, in case you missed the performance.)

“Such motions, even when implemented, can do nothing to better the legal position of the province when faced with federal statutes and regulations with which it does not agree,” the authors conclude. “This is indeed political theatre.”

The post Danielle Smith congratulates the loser of the Lethbridge-West by-election appeared first on rabble.ca.

Premier Doug Ford is introducing new legislation aimed at giving local police services and municipalities increased legal authority to dismantle unhoused encampments. 

Bill 242, which will amend Ontario’s Trespass to Property Act, will allow courts to weigh aggravating factors of reoffense and likelihood of reoffense to impose harsher sentences. 

The Ford government says this is aimed at preventing an increasing number of encampments in the province from reemerging once they have been dismantled. 

According to The Association of Municipalities of Ontario, there were at least 1,400 encampments across Ontario in 2023. 

The proposed bill also gives local police services the authority to ticket people for the consumption of illegal drugs in public space with penalties of up to $10,000 in fines or up to six months of jail time.

Harini Sivalingam, Director of the Equality Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the proposed amendments will criminalize and punish vulnerable individuals that have nowhere else to go. 

“Homelessness is a crisis, not a crime,” Sivalingam said in an interview with rabble.ca. “These measures will only further criminalize people for being unhoused.”

Ford said he is willing to use the notwithstanding clause, which allows governments to override certain Charter rights for up to five years, to push the legislation through, should the bill face resistance from the courts. 

Potential use of notwithstanding clause alarming, advocates say

Sivalingam said she’s concerned about the government’s willingness to use the notwithstanding clause to enact legislation that may infringe upon Charter rights. 

“The Ontario government is willing to override basic human rights of Ontarians and invoke the notwithstanding clause to keep this legislation, once it’s passed, from being overturned by the court,” she said.

Sivalingam said that the bill, as it stands, could violate Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is the right to life, liberty and security of the person. 

“When there is no shelter space for people to go to overnight, evicting them or dismantling encampments – the courts have already said that this violates people’s rights,” she said.

In January 2023, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that a Waterloo Region municipal bylaw could not be used to evict unhoused people from an encampment, as it violated their Section 7 Charter rights. 

Sivalingam said a similar legal challenge could be mounted against Bill 242 – but not if it is passed using the notwithstanding clause. Still, she said courts have a role to play in making people aware of the violation.

“It’s very dangerous to use the Charter overlay to try and circumvent or get around court decisions,” she said. “And it’s also easy to threaten or override the freedoms of vulnerable and marginalized groups.”

“But it’s important information for people to know – that your rights are being violated – so that they can make informed electoral decisions,” she added.

Unhoused people could be displaced

The Encampment Support Network Parkdale (ESNP) is a volunteer-run group of housed and unhoused community members that advocates and provides support for people living in encampments in Parkdale, a neighbourhood in Toronto.  

Joey D’Angelo, who’s been a member of the ESNP since the summer, said the proposed legislation has many people living in encampments worried about where they’ll go next. 

“That just gets discussed like kitchen table discussion,” they said in an interview with rabble.ca, when asked about what encampment residents are planning to do. “It’s hard to say where someone will go.”

D’Angelo explained that some residents are waiting on housing or shelter placements, but many may be forced to move further out of the city centre, which comes with its own risks. 

“There is a concern that a secluded area is actually really dangerous for a person,” she said. “They’re not close to the city centre’s resources. They’re not within community. It runs the risk of someone dying and no one knowing or someone needing help and no one knowing.”

D’Angelo also expressed their concern about where unhoused people will be allowed to consume drugs, pointing to the government’s decision to close down 10 of the province’s 19 supervised consumption and treatment service sites. 

Read More: Ontario to go ahead with consumption site closures despite auditor general’s report

“A population of people who are unhoused rely on the safe consumption sites as a place to be able to safely consume,” she said. She said the decision to close consumption sites is “at battle” with the criminalization of public consumption. 

Diana Chan McNally, a community support worker who’s been working with unhoused people in Toronto for over 10 years, called the legislation “cruel” and “severe”. 

“We’ve just seen that supervised consumption sites will be shut down,” she said in an interview with rabble.ca. “And now we’re criminalizing public drug use, understanding that we’ve taken away the spaces where people could actually go.”

McNally said the bill, if passed, leaves no place for unhoused people to exist – and punishes them for it. 

“You don’t have a private space of your own. Now you’re being told that you can’t exist in public space either,” she said. “Well that means you would likely be thrown into jail and have harsher sentences, without an offer of shelter.”

McNally also emphasised that the legislation won’t remove encampments, just displace them to less harsh municipalities. 

“What’s going to happen if this gets rolled out is that municipalities who take a harder line on this – and there are some where they absolutely just don’t want homeless people – they will push them out,” she said. “And, you know, the cities that don’t want to punish people will suddenly have lots more people within their borders that they will have even less resources to support.”

Bill 242 could also infringe on protest rights

Sivalingam warned that the bill could be used as a tool to suppress protest efforts.  

“The focus of this has been to deal with unhoused encampments,” Sivalingam said. “But a corollary effect of it is that this can also be used as a tool to suppress protest.” 

Like unhoused people, protesters could be subject to fines of up to $10,000 for trespassing, especially if they continue to offend or are considered likely to reoffend. 

“It definitely has an impact on protest rights and freedom of expression,” Sivaligam emphasised, “even if the legislation is being introduced as a way of dealing with unhoused encampments.”

This year, a number of pro-Palestinian encampments were erected on university and college campuses across the country to protest educational institutions’ investments in Isreal. At the University of Toronto, protesters remained in an encampment on campus for over 60 days before being ordered to leave by an Ontario Superior Court Justice. 

Lack of housing the core issue, say advocates

In October, 13 Ontario city mayors asked Premier Doug Ford to use the notwithstanding clause to override the Ontario Superior Court decision that prevents them from dismantling encampments if local shelters are at capacity. 

Harini Sivalingam said that while she empathises with communities that are struggling with encampments, Bill 242 – and the use of the notwithstanding clause – is not the solution to the problem. 

“This is not the right approach to dealing with the homelessness crisis, which really is a housing problem,” Sivalingam said. “People living in encampments need a housing solution. You don’t actually solve the housing crisis long term by criminalizing people who have nowhere else to go.”

McNally said that over 10 years, she’s seen more diversity in people who are accessing her services – but it’s become more difficult to help them get access to housing. 

“It’s increasingly common to see people you would never expect to end up on the street,” she said. “The largest group of people that I’m seeing now are people who are over the age of 70.”

“More I’m seeing young people who can’t find a job,” she continued. “The demographics have diversified so much that I don’t think people really realize just who’s ending up homeless.”

The post Ford willing to use notwithstanding clause to pass bill aimed at dismantling encampments appeared first on rabble.ca.