UCP promises to allow mandatory drug treatment, open addiction and mental health beds
CALGARY- Danielle Smith says a United Conservative Party government would introduce a law to allow mandatory drug treatment if it’s re-elected May 29. The UCP leader says the proposed compassionate intervention act would allow a family member, doctor, psychologist or police officer to petition a judge to issue a treatment order. Smith made the announcement at a news conference in Calgary and promised several measures to improve public safety by addressing mental health issues and the ongoing addictions crisis. They are part of the UCP’s focus on a “recovery-oriented system of care.” Smith says the UCP would build more than 700 new addiction beds at 11 treatment centres in several communities, including four First Nations. She says it would also build five 75-bed mental wellness centres. This report by The...
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UCP promises to allow mandatory drug treatment, open addiction and mental health beds
CALGARY- Danielle Smith says a United Conservative Party government would introduce a law to allow mandatory drug treatment if it’s re-elected May 29. The UCP leader says the proposed compassionate intervention act would allow a family member, doctor, psychologist or police officer to petition a judge to issue a treatment order. Smith made the announcement at a news conference in Calgary and promised several measures to improve public safety by addressing mental health issues and the ongoing addictions crisis. They are part of the UCP’s focus on a “recovery-oriented system of care.” Smith says the UCP would build more than 700 new addiction beds at 11 treatment centres in several communities, including four First Nations. NDP Leader Rachel Notley says she agrees the issue needs a lot of work and...
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Trudeau meets with military personnel helping with Alberta wildfires
By Kelly Geraldine Malone and Ritika Dubey THE CANADIAN PRESS Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped in Edmonton on Monday to meet with military personnel who are helping fight wildfires in Alberta that worsened under the weekend heat. Trudeau was given an overview of the fires at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton and, along with federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair, was briefed about the weather forecast and threats from rising temperatures and dryness. About 300 soldiers are being deployed across the province to help with the fires, which have forced thousands to flee their homes and rural properties. Some reservists dressed in yellow jumpsuits and bright blue safety helmets trudged through charred forest near Drayton Valley over the weekend. Working along firefighters, they used tools, shovels and water to put out...
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Voters to choose MPs in four federal byelections across country next month
By Jim Bronskill THE CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA- Voters in four federal ridings will go to the polls next month. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Sunday the four byelections will be held June 19 to fill seats in three provinces. In the Manitoba riding of Winnipeg South Centre, Liberal candidate Ben Carr is looking to win the seat held by his father, longtime MP and former cabinet minister Jim Carr, who died in December. The southern Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar was left vacant when Conservative MP and former interim party leader Candice Bergen resigned in February. She soon became co-chair of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative election campaign, ahead of the provincial ballot this October. Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Marc Garneau, the retired astronaut who held the Quebec riding Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Westmount,...
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Memorial University sought $13,800 in PR help as president’s Indigenous claim probed
By Sarah Smellie THE CANADIAN PRESS ST JOHN’S, N.L.- Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador agreed to spend $13,800 on outside public relations help as questions arose about its former president’s claims of Indigenous heritage. A contract obtained through access-to-information legislation shows National Public Relations offered the university’s board of regents “communications counsel around a sensitive issue involving its president.” The signed contract is dated March 10, two days after CBC News published an investigation scrutinizing Vianne Timmons’s claims of Mi’kmaq ancestry. “We have worked with private and public sector organizations, including universities across the country, to navigate allegations of misrepresentation or misconduct directed at leadership,” National said in the document, responding to a request from Memorial. The firm offered media monitoring and communications help from a team that included...
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Indigenous couple fights for the return of their newborn daughter, taken by MCFD
By Anna McKenzie Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Every day for more than a month, Sonja Hathaway sat with her newborn baby Amella in the hospital, speaking to the infant in her Dene language. Despite the feelings of being watched, Sonja and her husband Philip diligently spent time at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Victoria General Hospital to feed and care for their daughter. While Amella was in the NICU, the Hathaways stayed at Jeneece Place, a home for families to live while receiving medical care in “Victoria.” Sonja was brought to the city at the end of February by ambulance from “Campbell River” because of health complications. When Amella was born on March 11, she was almost two months premature and weighed only three pounds at birth....
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Proposed provincial `Penetanguishene Day’ designation pondered
By Derek Howard Local Journalism Initiative Reporter What better way to celebrate Penetanguishene than with its own provincially-legislated day, is the push by locals to the town. A proposed `Penetanguishene Day’, to honour the heritage and historic legacy of Penetanguishene, according to its author Alexander Roman, had been introduced through a letter to council last September. With the transition to a new term of council following the 2022 municipal elections, the museum and heritage committee had an opportunity to revisit the proposal in early March. In the letter, Roman stated he had worked at the Ontario Legislature for over 30 years and helped develop many bills to promote Ontario’s history and culture. In joint recognition with Penetanguishene resident David Dupuis, the pair identified aspects of the town that they felt...
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Native Americans demand accountability for ancestral remains identified at Dartmouth College
By Michael Casey THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BOSTON (AP)- As a citizen of the Quapaw Nation, Ahnili Johnson-Jennings has always seen Dartmouth College as the university for Native American students. Her father graduated from the school, founded in 1769 to educate Native Americans, and she had come to rely on its network of students, professors and administrators. But news that the Ivy League school in New Hampshire identified partial skeletal remains of 15 Native Americans in one of its collections has Johnson-Jennings and others reassessing that relationship. “It’s hard to reconcile. It’s hard to see the college in this old way where they were taking Native remains and using them for their own benefit,” said Johnson-Jennings, a senior and co-president of Native Americans at Dartmouth. The remains were used to teach...
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Cartier’s use of images of Amazon tribe prompts Indigenous advocates to allege hypocrisy
By Fabiano Maisonnave THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BOA VISTA, Brazil (AP)- Until two months ago, Cartier’s website showed Yanomami children playing in a green field. The French luxury jewelry brand said it was working to promote the culture of the Indigenous people and protect the rainforest where they live, in a vast territory straddling Brazil and Venezuela. But the project that the site described protecting the Amazon never took place. And Cartier published the photo without the approval of Yanomami leadership, violating the beliefs of a people who had been living in almost total isolation until they were contacted by outsiders in the 1970s. Some of the Yanomami and their defenders praise Cartier’s promotion of Yanomami causes. However, advertising by one of the world’s biggest jewelers with images of an Indigenous...
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Denmark’s mystery tremors caused by acoustic waves from unknown source, officials say
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)- A series of minor tremors recorded on the Danish Baltic island of Bornholm Saturday has puzzled scientists, who now say they were caused by ”acoustic pressure waves from an unknown source.” At first the tremors were thought to have been caused by earthquakes. Then, seismologists theorized that they originated from controlled explosions in Poland, more than 140 kilometers (nearly 90 miles) to the south. On Monday, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, an official body that monitors the underground, said the tremors were “not caused by earthquakes, but by pressure waves from an event in the atmosphere.” However, they came from “an unknown source.” “The seismologists can report that it is unlikely that the tremors originate from a controlled explosion in Poland, which was carried out...
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Pipeline plot twist: where Line 5 threatens nature, now nature is a threat to Line 5
By James McCarten THE CANADIAN PRESS WASHINGTON- The controversial Canada-U.S. oil and gas conduit known as Line 5 could be facing its toughest challenger yet: the very watershed the pipeline’s detractors are trying to protect. Spring flooding has washed away significant portions of the riverbank where Line 5 intersects Wisconsin’s Bad River, a meandering, 120-kilometre course through Indigenous territory that feeds Lake Superior and a complex network of ecologically delicate wetlands. The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa has been in court with Alberta energy giant Enbridge Inc. since 2019 in an effort to compel the pipeline’s owner and operator to reroute Line 5 around its traditional territory. But last month, Mother Nature raised the stakes. “There can be little doubt now that the small amount of remaining...
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‘Bring our women home’: Landfill search for women’s remains could cost up to $184M
By Brittany Hobson THE CANADIAN PRESS WINNIPEG- A search for the remains of two First Nations women at a Winnipeg-area landfill could take up to three years and cost $184 million, but family members and Indigenous leaders say it must go ahead. “If a search is not carried out, it will demonstrate to all First Nations across Canada that this government condones the despairing act of disposing of First Nation women in landfills,” Grand Chief Cathy Merrick of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs told a news conference Friday. A study examining whether a successful search is possible, obtained by The Canadian Press,looked at the various scenarios and challenges that come with searching a landfill and concluded a canvass of the Prairie Green Landfill is feasible. It warns there are risks...
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Trudeau’s arrival in Labrador said to be first Nunatsiavut visit from a sitting PM
By Sarah Smellie THE CANADIAN PRESS NAIN, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR -The president of the organization representing Inuit in Canada hailed the arrival of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a small village on Labrador’s north coast Friday as “momentous.” Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed said Trudeau’s visit to Nain, N.L., is the first time a sitting prime minister has travelled to Nunatsiavut, the Inuit region of Labrador. “This is a long time in the making,” Obed said as he sat next to Trudeau in the Illusuak Cultural Centre, which looked out onto a landscape of frozen sea ice and sprawling mountains. “I’ve been inviting the prime minister to my hometown of Nunatsiavut since 2015.” Trudeau was in town for a regular meeting of the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee, of which Obed...
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Jury at Moses Beaver inquest backs investment in mental health support at prisons
By Sharif Hassan THE CANADIAN PRESS The jury at the inquest into the death of Moses Beaver said Thunder Bay, Ont., where the prominent Indigenous artist died by suicide in a jail cell, needs more money to train police and health workers in dealing with mental health cases. The month-long inquest following Beaver’s death in February 2017 focused further attention on Thunder Bay law enforcement, which has faced widespread condemnation over its relations with First Nations, including accusation of systemic discrimination. Jurors largely endorsed the dozens of recommendations put forward earlier this week by lawyers for the artist’s family, the Ontario government and other parties. Overall, they called for strengthening systems for police and others to deal with people experiencing mental distress. One recommendation urged the creation of a mental...
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First Nation did not prove Aboriginal title for entire claim area: B.C. Supreme Court
By Brieanna Charlebois THE CANADIAN PRESS VANCOUVER-A British Columbia Supreme Court judge ruling on a First Nations land title lawsuit says it did not prove it had rights to its entire claim area, although he suggested it may be time for the provincial government to rethink its current test for such titles. The Nuchatlaht First Nation, a community on Vancouver Island’s northwest coast, wanted title over an area of Crown land that included a portion of Nootka Island and much of the surrounding coastline. Justice Elliott Myers said in his decision issued Thursday that there “may be areas” the nation can establish in its claim, but if it wants to do that another hearing would be required. “I stress that I am not prejudging any of the issues or whether...
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‘The devil’: Metis settlement looks to rebuild from wildfire as hot weather to return
By Kelly Geraldine Malone THE CANADIAN PRESS A Metis settlement devastated by an out-of-control blaze remains at risk as hot and dry conditions in Alberta’s forecast threaten to worsen an already intense wildfire season. “That fire, I call it the devil. I’ve never seen a fire like that in my life,” said Raymond Supernault, chair of the East Prairie Metis Settlement. “I never seen a fire like that come that quick and fast and go through the settlement and burn everything in its sight.” Driving through the settlement around 165 kilometres east of Grande Prairie, the ground is charred black, electrical poles look like matchsticks and 14 homes were consumed by the inferno. Around 80 per cent of the community was touched by the blaze in...
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Fort Albany gets federal women’s shelter funding to create ‘a stable environment’
By Amanda Rabski-McColl Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Fort Albany First Nation will receive federal funding for an on-reserve women’s shelter and it is expected to make a big difference for survivors of violence, say officials. The federal government announced $103 million in funding for 178 transitional housing programs and Indigenous women’s shelters for those fleeing violence on May 8, 2023. “The shelters and transitional homes will be located on reserve, in the North, and in urban areas, and will offer survivors a stable environment when they need it most,” said Indigenous Services Canada spokesperson, Jennifer Cooper. “The announcement is one of the many actions necessary to end the national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people, and to provide supports to families, survivors and communities.” Fort...
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‘Why can’t there be a system?’: Tribe pushes to ease US border crossings for Native Americans
By Hallie Golden THE ASSOCIATED PRESS For four hours, Raymond V. Buelna, a cultural leader for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, sat on a metal bench in a concrete holding space at the U.S.-Mexico border, separated from the two people he was taking to an Easter ceremony on tribal land in Arizona and wondering when they might be released. It was February 2022 and Buelna, a U.S. citizen, was driving the pair, both from the sovereign Native American nation’s related tribal community in northwestern Mexico, from their home to the reservation southwest of Tucson. They’d been authorized by U.S. officials to cross the border. But when Buelna asked an agent why they were detained, he was told to wait for the officer who brought him in. “They know that we’re coming,”...
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This tribe’s land was cut in two by US borders. Their fight for access could help dozens of others
By Hallie Golden THE ASSOCIATED PRESS For four hours, Raymond V. Buelna, a cultural leader for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, sat on a metal bench in a concrete holding space at the U.S.-Mexico border, separated from the two people he was taking to an Easter ceremony on tribal land in Arizona and wondering when they might be released. It was February 2022 and Buelna, a U.S. citizen, was driving the pair, both from the sovereign Native American nation’s related tribal community in northwestern Mexico, from their home to the reservation southwest of Tucson. They’d been authorized by U.S. officials to cross the border. But when Buelna asked an agent why they were detained, he was told to wait for the officer who brought him in. “They know that we’re coming,” said...
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Intervention hearing into Six Nations land rights case hears challenge on if Haldimand Deed is a treaty
By Lisa Eisse Writer TORONTO- Who gets to intervene in Six Nations multi-billion-dollar land rights case is now in the hands of Justice Jasmine T. Akbaral after the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) challenged whether Six Nations Haldimand Deed is an actual treaty. The court heard Friday (May 12) from MCFN lawyer Nuri G. Frame that the case has important implications to MCFN, “It is essential and foundational to my clients worldview, to their cosmology, to their understanding of their place in the world. To their understanding of their future generations’ place in their world. Southern and southwest Ontario is their traditional territory.” The MCFN are seeking intervenor status in Six Nations huge land rights case that has been valued at billions of dollars. Their lawyer, Nuri Frame told...
