Ontario should allow restorative justice in cases involving sexual offences: report
By Paola Loriggio A new report is calling on the Ontario government to revisit a policy that prohibits the use of restorative justice as an alternative to criminal prosecution in cases involving sexual offences. The report was issued today by the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, or LEAF, and the nonprofit Community Justice Initiatives. It says the Crown policy deprives those who have experienced sexual harm from choosing the form of justice that best fits their needs. Restorative justice is an approach that allows those harmed and those who take responsibility for said harm to reach a resolution together, typically with the help of a facilitator. Rosel Kim, a senior staff lawyer for LEAF, says a moratorium on restorative justice for sexual offences was put in place in the...
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Carney expected to unveil agreement with Alberta on new pipeline today
By Nick Murray Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to unveil an agreement with Alberta Thursday which could clear the way for a new oil pipeline in exchange for stronger environmental regulations, while also walking back some of Ottawa’s climate policies. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said her government has been negotiating with Ottawa a “grand bargain” which would see the proposed Pathways Alliance carbon-capture project move forward alongside a proposed oil pipeline to the West Coast. Speaking to reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday, Carney said the memorandum of understanding with Alberta “is about much more than one thing.” “It’s about building this economy, it’s about making Canada more independent, and it’s about making Canada more sustainable,” Carney said, adding there would be “many aspects” to Thursday’s announcement. Carney has...
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Ontario’s repeal of emissions target looms over landmark climate case
By Jordan Omstead Ontario’s repeal of its own emissions targets is an 11th hour attempt to escape accountability on its toothless climate plan, young activists behind a landmark case alleged on Wednesday as they vowed to continue their years-long legal saga. Lawyers for the seven young people were set to argue next week that the government’s weakened 2018 emissions target was without scientific basis and so out of step with the cuts required to limit severe climate impacts that it endangered their constitutional rights. Instead, the Monday hearing has been cancelled and lawyers will discuss how the province’s recent move to scrap legislation underpinning its emissions targets and climate plans could reshape the case. Shaelyn Wabegijig said that development has only strengthened her resolve to keep up the fight. “We...
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‘Expenditures exceed revenues’: Grand Erie school board reports $3.7-million deficit
By Celeste Percy-Beauregard, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Hamilton Spectator A school board in Brant has slipped into a deficit position for the first time in nearly 10 years. The Grand Erie District School Board entered the 2024-25 fiscal year with an operating budget of $397.3 million and capital budget of $23.5 million. But even after a revision in December, expenses ran higher. “Senior administration is reporting a compliant deficit position of $3.7 million, indicating expenditures exceed revenues,” Rafal Wyszynski, the board’s superintendent of business and treasurer, told trustees at a board meeting on Monday. It means the board had to pull from its surplus reserves, dropping them from $11.1 million to $7.4 million. Because it represents less than one per cent of the board’s operating allocation, it won’t trigger...
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An art historian looks at the origins of the Indigenous arts collection at the Vatican Museums
By Gloria Bell, Associate Professor of Art History, McGill University Pope Leo XIV met with the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on Nov. 15 to, in the words of the Vatican, “gift” the return of 62 Indigenous “artifacts” held in the Anima Mundi collection of the Vatican Museums. The papal narrative that these belongings are “gifts” needs correction. The Vatican says the artifacts are “part of the patrimony received on the occasion of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition (VME) of 1925.” However, as I document in my book Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome the majority of the Indigenous belongings in the Vatican Museums were stolen from Indigenous communities during the 1920s and displayed at this exhibition. The study divulges an important story, examining the history of the...
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Calls for grizzly hunts to return to Western Canada oversimplify a complex ecological issue
By Tandeep Sidhu and Lacee O’Neil Highly publicized grizzly bear attacks have ignited calls to reopen grizzly trophy hunts across Western Canada. The most recent push came from the B.C. Wildlife Federation, a conservation and hunting advocacy organization that called for a hunting season on grizzlies after a bear attacked a group of schoolchildren in Bella Coola, B.C., leaving two people critically injured and two others seriously hurt. The federation made the call while the circumstances of the attack were still unknown. Conservation officers now believe the attack involved a grizzly sow and her cubs. This does not dismiss or mitigate the traumatic nature of the incident, but it raises questions about why the federation would amplify this call during the early stages of an investigation. Amid calls for British...
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Senate approves bill ending second generation cutoff for Indigenous status qualification
By Jacqueline St. Pierre, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Expositor OTTAWA—In the sterile fluorescence of a Senate committee room, where legislation usually trudges along at a bureaucrat’s pace, history cracked open on November 17, and two women from Manitoulin—one in the gallery, one waiting at home—felt the ground shift beneath them. When senators voted ten to one to amend Bill S-2 and replace the second-generation cut-off with a one-parent rule for First Nations status, Dr. Dawn Lavell Harvard did what any daughter raised in the long shadow of a half-century legal battle would do: she reached for her phone. The moment the amendments passed, she texted her mother, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell—the same woman who, in 1971, dared to take the federal government to court after Canada erased her status...
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UCCM Police launch video to reengage public in search for Juanita Migwans
By Jacqueline St. Pierre, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Expositor M’CHIGEENG—Thirteen months is a long time to stare into silence. It’s been more than a year since Juanita “Winnie” Migwans slipped from sight in M’Chigeeng First Nation, her absence spreading through the community like a cold front that never quite lifts. Families here know the kind of grief that walks on two legs and lingers. They also know the stubborn, enduring love that refuses to let a name vanish. The investigation into Winnie’s disappearance remains active—carried jointly by the United Chiefs and Councils of Manitoulin Anishnaabe Police Service (UCCM APS) and the Ontario Provincial Police. Officers still move through leads, sifting them like sand for anything that might glint. Now, the police services are releasing a new awareness video...
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Kenora services board says more supportive housing ‘a primary focus’
By Matt Prokopchuk, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, TBnewswatch.com KENORA — Improving access to housing for people with more complex needs is an ongoing priority for the Kenora District Services Board, its acting CEO says. “Constantly,” Sarah Stevenson said of the KDSB developing plans for more supportive housing in Kenora. “It is a primary focus of our work.” Stevenson said the Kenora District Services Board works with a number of partners, including Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, other housing corporations and chiefs councils. “There’s a big — as there should be — a big focus on the development of housing and supportive housing,” she said. Anti-poverty advocates in Kenora have pointed to an ongoing need for various types of housing that can accommodate people dealing with things like addictions or other mental...
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Island elder addresses Senate during review of Indian Act
By Jacqueline St. Pierre, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Expositor OTTAWA—Jeanette Corbiere Lavell, called Keewednanung, “North Star,” born June 21, 1942 in Wiikwemkoong, began a fight against the Indian Act — that culminated at the Supreme Court — more than 50 years. A woman of principles and extraordinary ethos, she has fought for the rights of her people and her descendants for more years than the author of this piece has lived. The issues that first prompted her to take action remain today. The marginalization of Indigenous women, rooted in colonial policies, continues to affect diverse communities across the country. Her goal is to see justice reach all those who have suffered the most—Indigenous and non Indigenous alike—restoring humanity to those long denied them. When the tide rises, every...
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BC Liberal MPs face pressure from voters over pipeline, tanker ban
By Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada’s National Observer Speculation is swirling on Parliament Hill that Alberta and Ottawa will strike up a formal agreement involving a pipeline this Thursday, putting some BC Liberal members of parliament in a tricky position. Liberal MP for Victoria Will Greaves said he has been getting correspondence from constituents for months — but particularly within the past week or so — that “is almost universally opposed to lifting the tanker ban and is deeply skeptical of building another pipeline to tidewater through the central interior of BC,” he told Canada’s National Observer in an interview on Tuesday. The Globe and Mail and the CBC are reporting that Ottawa and Alberta are close to signing a memorandum of understanding involving a pipeline to BC’s...
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Little Feather Steps on to the world stage—without waiting for Canada to notice
By Jacqueline St. Pierre, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Expositor CANADA—Some stories begin in Paris, or Milan, or on the kind of Manhattan sidewalk where the steam lifts like a blessing. But Little Feather swears hers began in Sudbury —the Nickel City, the sleeper city, the surprising birthplace of an artist who would leapfrog the whole Canadian fashion circuit before Toronto even realized she’d packed her bags. “I feel like my whole year started in Sudbury,” she says, half laughing, half stunned in the remembering. She’d been invited to a First Nations fashion program show in late 2024 —“I don’t even know how to say it properly,” she shrugs—for an Indigenous fashion show. A small stage, a quiet room, the kind of event where you expect polite applause and...
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Reconciliation without accountability is just talk — especially when it comes to Indigenous health
By Jamaica Cass Canada’s latest auditor general’s report reveals an uncomfortable truth: billions of dollars and countless commitments later, the federal government still cannot demonstrate meaningful improvement in health services for First Nations. As a family physician working in my First Nation, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in southern Ontario, I see the evidence of this failure not in spreadsheets but in people — patients navigating a health system that remains structurally unequal. Nearly 10 years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Calls to Action, it is clear that reconciliation without accountability delivers only rhetoric, not care. The report states: “Increasing First Nations’ capacity to deliver programs and services within their communities is critical to improving outcomes for First Nations people and supporting reconciliation.” Yet the same report concludes that the...
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B.C. Coastal First Nations vow oil pipeline to coast ‘will never happen’
By Nick Murray The president of the Coastal First Nations in British Columbia says an oil pipeline linking Alberta to the province’s north coast “will never happen.” In a news release issued Wednesday morning, Marilyn Slett says her group — which represents nearly a dozen First Nation groups along the B.C. coast — has faced a “wall of silence” from the federal government on a possible pipeline deal with Alberta. The group is not the only voice in B.C. to raise concerns this week about a pipeline agreement between Ottawa and Alberta, which is expected to be announced Thursday when Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Calgary. B.C. Premier David Eby says he told Carney on Monday that it was “unacceptable” for Ottawa and Alberta to negotiate a possible pipeline...
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New book provides answers for day school survivors
By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com Students by Day: Colonialism and Resistance at the Curve Lake Indian Day School, written by settler-Anishinaabe historian Dr. Jackson Pind, is a powerful offering of Two-Eyed Seeing, a methodology that mixes Indigenous knowledge with Western practices. Pind uses oral Indigenous history and western archival analysis to chronicle the lesser-known story of Indian day schools, centering life at the Curve Lake Indian Day School, which operated from 1899 to 1978. Almost 1,400 Indian day schools were located on First Nations reserves throughout Canada from the mid-1800s until 2000 with approximately 200,000 Indigenous children forced to attend. “Adding in the oral history after you’ve looked at the archive, I think, is a good route to go,” said Pind, currently an assistant professor, Indigenous methodologies...
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B.C. Coastal First Nations vow oil pipeline to coast ‘will never happen’
By Nick Murray The president of the Coastal First Nations in British Columbia says an oil pipeline linking Alberta to the province’s north coast “will never happen.” In a news release issued Wednesday morning, Marilyn Slett says her group — which represents nearly a dozen First Nation groups along the B.C. coast — has faced a “wall of silence” from the federal government on a possible pipeline deal with Alberta. The group is not the only voice in B.C. to raise concerns this week about a pipeline agreement between Ottawa and Alberta, which is expected to be announced Thursday when Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Calgary. B.C. Premier David Eby says he told Carney on Monday that it was “unacceptable” for Ottawa and Alberta to negotiate a possible pipeline...
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Brantford backs $450K primary care pilot program
By Kimberly De Jong, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Brant Beacon City of Brantford Council supported a two-year $450,000 pilot program to bring more healthcare professionals to the city during a Committee of the Whole, planning and administration meeting on Tuesday, November 18, 2025. The City has funded the Community Physician Recruitment Committee since 2002 to help recruit and retain family doctors, but the committee announced back in October 2024 that it would be disbanding in December 2025. City Council asked that staff develop a program to replace it, and a report has now come forward with the two-year Primary Care Access Program. “The proposed plan would continue the hands-on recruitment of family physicians and expand the focus to include recruitment of nurse practitioners and healthcare students,” stated the report from...
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New book provides answers for day school survivors
By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com Students by Day: Colonialism and Resistance at the Curve Lake Indian Day School, written by settler-Anishinaabe historian Dr. Jackson Pind, is a powerful offering of Two-Eyed Seeing, a methodology that mixes Indigenous knowledge with Western practices. Pind uses oral Indigenous history and western archival analysis to chronicle the lesser-known story of Indian day schools, centering life at the Curve Lake Indian Day School, which operated from 1899 to 1978. Almost 1,400 Indian day schools were located on First Nations reserves throughout Canada from the mid-1800s until 2000 with approximately 200,000 Indigenous children forced to attend. “Adding in the oral history after you’ve looked at the archive, I think, is a good route to go,” said Pind, currently an assistant professor, Indigenous methodologies...
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Six Nations Firefighters responded to a blaze at a house at 1621 Fifth Line
Six Nations Firefighters responded to a blaze at a house at 1621 Fifth Line Saturday Nov. 22. The fire started on the deck. Damage estimates were not available at press time. There were no injuries and Six Nations Fire Chief Mike Seth said the cause is under investigation. (Photo by Jim C Powless)...
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Six Nations Councillor concerned after Senate passes amendments to First Nations status bill; MPs still need to vote
Senators have passed sweeping amendments to a bill that would simplify the transfer of First Nations status between generations. Bill S-2, introduced in the Senate and supported by the Liberal government, was drafted to eliminate some gender inequities in the Indian Act and allow some 6,000 people to become eligible for First Nations status, but some senators and community leaders said it didn’t go far enough. Senators have changed the legislation to remove what is known as the second-generation cutoff, opting instead for a one-parent rule for the transmission of status. The second-generation cutoff, which came from a 1985 amendment to the Indian Act, prevents individuals from registering for status under the Indian Act if they have a parent and a grandparent who did not have status. The bill does...
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