'Warped stance on COVID': Fired Alberta Health Services board member calls out Smith

EDMONTON — A health system leader fired by Premier Danielle Smith has fired back in an open letter, saying her abusive, divisive attacks, blended with “warped” anti-science beliefs, make her a poor excuse for a leader and one literally putting Albertans in harm’s way.


'Warped stance on COVID': Fired Alberta Health Services board member calls out Smith© Provided by The Canadian Press

“(Albertans) are entitled to governance that is principle-based, respects decency and inspires confidence in its citizens," Tony Dagnone said in the letter issued Friday.

He was one of 11 members of the governing board of Alberta Health Services recently fired by Smith.

"The current premier defies all those aspirations as she spews wacko accusations at Alberta Health Services and its valued workforce," he wrote.

The premier has chosen to "play to her misguided followers who rant against science and academic medicine under the veiled guise of freedom," Dagnone said in the letter.

“Her warped stance on COVID, which I remind the premier was and is a public health issue not a political punching bag, is nothing short of borderline dereliction when the lives of AHS staff and Albertans are at stake," Dagnone wrote.

“In light of her unhinged public pronouncements, the premier represents the bleakest of role models for women who aspire to be accepted in positions of influence and leadership.

“Why would any self-respecting graduate pursue their health-care vocation in a province led by an anti-science premier?”

Dagnone could not be immediately reached for comment.

He and the other AHS governing board members were fired Thursday by Smith, fulfilling a promise she made in her successful summer campaign to win the leadership of the United Conservative Party and become premier.

The 12th board member, Deborah Apps, quit after Smith won the UCP leadership race in early October, citing concern for the disruption Smith promised to impose on a fragile health system.

Alberta Health Services is the agency of more than 100,000 staff tasked with delivering front-line care in the province.

Smith blamed both AHS and Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the chief medical officer of health, for bad advice and execution in the pandemic, leading to jammed hospital wards and forcing the province to impose freedom-limiting vaccine mandates and passports.

Hinshaw was removed from her job earlier this week.

The board has been replaced by Dr. John Cowell, who is charged with fixing multiple stress points in the system, including surgery wait times, ambulance bottlenecks, doctor shortages and overcrowded emergency wards.

Dagnone, an Order of Canada winner with four decades of work in hospital and health administration, said he has no political affiliations and felt compelled to defend AHS staff.

“I witnessed the extraordinary collective will of our health-care providers confronting the unimaginable COVID,” he wrote.

“All deserve our respect and gratitude, however, the premier chooses instead to vilify those who were saving Albertans.”

Smith spoke Friday at a meeting of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce but declined to speak with reporters. Her office, in a statement, said the province had to take action to address pressing issues in the health system.

"This decision (to fire the board) was not personal, this is about better outcomes for Albertans, and we are grateful for the work done by the AHS board," reads the statement.

Smith has said there will be no health restrictions or vaccine mandates during future waves of COVID-19. And she has said there will be no mask mandates in schools currently dealing with respiratory viral illnesses that are spiking absentee rates and filling children’s hospitals.

Smith has publicly embraced alternative approaches to COVID-19, including herd immunity and the since-debunked COVID-19 treatment ivermectin.

Earlier this month, she announced she wants to hear from Paul Alexander, a controversial critic of mainstream science who has characterized COVID-19 vaccines as “bioweapons.”

"The premier is taking her nonsense to a new level by inviting a former Trump adviser (Alexander) who has been universally scorned for promoting medical quackery,’ wrote Dagnone.

“If (she) persists in vocalizing false, conspiratorial and unfounded claims, she will be responsible for putting health-care providers and Albertans needlessly in harm’s way.

“Her loose and corrosive words appear to satisfy her need for bizarre musings that can and will ultimately impact people’s lives.”

NDP health critic David Shepherd, responding to Dagnone’s letter, echoed the concerns.

“(Smith) will continue to blame health-care workers for the current state of care while taking no responsibility herself for the impact of the dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories she promotes,” Shepherd said.

“Her reckless politicization of our public health-care system will make it harder to recruit and retain health professionals and for Albertans to access care.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2022.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

Canada must provide equitable funding for on-reserve policing, says First Nation lawsuit

Story by Logan Turner • Yesterday 

An Ojibway First Nation in northern Ontario has filed a lawsuit against the federal government alleging that chronic inequitable funding of their policing services has created a public safety crisis in the community.


Wilfred King, chief of Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek (Gull Bay First Nation), speaking during a news conference in Ottawa, says they are filing a lawsuit against Canada for inequitable funding of their police service.© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

"It happens more often than not where our officers couldn't execute an arrest because they had no back-up in the community. In fact, there are times when offenders were basically allowed to commit crimes and walk away," said Wilfred King, chief of Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek (KZA) (also known as Gull Bay First Nation) during a press conference Monday morning in Ottawa.

"It's a very dire situation," King added.

The statement of claim, filed Monday afternoon with the Federal Court, alleges, "First Nation policing services have been systematically and chronically underfunded, endangering First Nation [officer and community] safety."

The federal government has 30 days to file their defence with the Federal Court.

It's the latest move adding pressure on the federal government to ensure equitable funding and adequate policing services in Indigenous communities across the country, something the federal government says it is working toward.

Often no police protection in KZA

There are currently only two active police officers in Kiashke Zaaging, King said, which means there are often times when there is no police protection.

The officers often work alone, and sometimes have to request back-up support from Ontario Provincial Police detachments that don't always respond to those calls, he said.

"In a recent incident, we had a violent offender in the community and the police would not respond because they could not get the necessary backup," King said, adding he worries for their safety.

Chantelle Bryson, a lawyer representing the First Nation, added the officers are working without adequate resources, including no cell or satellite phone access, no police station or support staff, and receiving lower pay than other officers in Ontario.

"We have officers in KZA that don't have housing. We have one officer that was driving back and forth three hours each way from Thunder Bay, and another officer who sleeps on a friend's couch," said Bryson.

She said the federal government continues to invest its money elsewhere, instead of supporting the self-determination of First Nations and responding to recommendations set out by national inquiries, like the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls report published in 2019.

"KZA will not wait to become a lawless enclave," she said.

Momentum toward declaring First Nation policing 'essential service'

Unlike non-Indigenous communities across Canada where policing operates as an essential service, under the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program (FNIPP), funding agreements are negotiated between the communities, Public Safety Canada, and the province.

There are currently 35 First Nations police services and one Inuit police service across Canada, with most located in Ontario and Quebec.

Lennard Busch says the legal challenge launched by KZA speaks to the mounting frustration about how First Nations policing services are funded and administered. He's the executive director for the First Nation Chiefs of Police Association.

"We certainly have been for quite awhile now pushing to eliminate some of the disparity between self-administered First Nations police services and mainstream policing," he told CBC News.

Funding has been a key issue, causing conditions that put both the communities and the police officers at risk, Busch said, but there is momentum toward declaring the service essential and providing equitable funding.

In January 2022, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled the Canadian government was discriminating against the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation, located 260 kilometres north of Quebec City, by chronically under-funding the Mashteuiatsh Police Service.

In the fall, Public Safety Canada released a report about the FNIPP detailing considerable problems highlighted during public consultations, and Minister Marco Mendicino has consistently reaffirmed his commitment to introducing new legislation this year.

The ministry did not respond to questions from CBC News about the legislation or about KZA's concerns by the deadline.

Busch says their organization, along with the Assembly of First Nations, have been supporting the consultations and the development of the legislation, and is cautiously optimistic about it.

"A lot of stuff we've heard before and then it just kind of died," Busch said.

"Hopefully this will change a lot of things in terms of how we resource First Nation police services, how we support them, how we fund them and how we regulate them."

But Wilfred King says he doesn't know what's in that long-promised legislation, and his First Nations police force needs sufficient resources and funding now.

"We cannot wait for that legislation," he said.

WORKERS CAPITAL

Exclusive: Canada's biggest pension plan, CPPI, ends crypto investment pursuit - sources

Story by By Divya Rajagopal • Yesterday


FILE PHOTO: A representation of bitcoin is seen in front of a stock graph in this illustration© Thomson Reuters

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's biggest pension fund, CPP Investments, has ended its effort to study investment opportunities in the volatile crypto market, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The reasons behind CPPI's abandonment of crypto research were not immediately clear. CPPI declined to comment but said it has made no direct investments in crypto. It referred to previous comments on cryptocurrency by its CEO, John Graham, in which he sounded a note of caution.

CPPI's Alpha Generation Lab, which examines emerging investment trends, had formed a three-member team in early 2021 to research crypto currencies and blockchain-related businesses, with a view to taking potential exposure, the people added.

But CPPI abandoned the pursuit this year and redeployed the team to other areas, the sources said.

CPPI's move also comes as two of Canada's largest pension funds have written off their investments after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and crypto lender Celsius this year.

Earlier this year CPPI CEO Graham said that the pension plan, which manages C$529 billion ($388 billion) for nearly 20 million Canadians, did not want to invest in crypto merely because of the fear of missing out.

"You want to really think about what the underlying intrinsic value is of some of these assets and build your portfolio accordingly," Graham said in a June speech. "So I'd say crypto is something we continue to look at and try to understand, but we just haven't really invested in it."

It was unclear when CPPI dropped its plan. One of the sources said the team was actively assessing investment opportunities as late as July this year, but the second source said the team ended its work earlier than that.

The details of CPPI's pursuit of cryptocurrency investment and its decision to end it have not been previously reported.

The sources declined to be identified because the information was not public.

Canadian pension funds' exposure to crypto sector has come under scrutiny following the FTX debacle. While Canadian pension funds are not prohibited from buying cryptocurrencies, they are known for their risk-averse investing strategies to generate steady returns for pensioners.

While CPPI has avoided crypto investments, some of its peers have been caught up in the sector's mayhem this year. The Ontario Teachers Pension Fund (OTPP), which oversees about C$242 billion in assets, has written off its investments worth C$95 million in FTX. OTPP said it was "disappointed" with its investment in FTX.

Earlier this year, Canada's second-largest pension fund, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), said it was writing off its investment of C$150 million in bankrupt crypto lending firm Celsius. CDPQ has initiated legal proceedings against Celsius in bankruptcy court.

The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), which manages C$121 billion, made three allocations to crypto-linked businesses through its OMERS Ventures business between 2012 and 2018 but exited all investments in 2020.

Another Canadian pension fund, OP Trust, told Reuters that it has investments in the digital asset fund space that is managed externally. The investment is in the underlying crypto technology, it said.

($1 = 1.3650 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Divya Rajagopal in Toronto; Additional reporting by Maiya Keidan; Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis)

COP15

Nature 'under attack' says Trudeau as UN biodiversity conference opens in Montreal

MONTREAL — In the 73 minutes on Tuesday afternoon that it took for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and five other dignitaries to officially open the 15th global talks to save nature from human destruction, statistics suggest another 4,000 hectares of forest around the world was lost to that same force.

Nature 'under attack' says Trudeau as UN biodiversity conference opens in Montreal© Provided by The Canadian Press

It is the kind of damage the meeting is looking to stop as the world faces a biodiversity crisis that is risking human health, contributing to food insecurity and exacerbating climate change.

"Nature is under threat," Trudeau said at the opening ceremonies of COP15 in Montreal.

"In fact, it's under attack."

Over the next 14 days, negotiators from all 196 countries in the world are being asked to hammer out an agreement to both end and begin to restore the ecosystems we have destroyed and damaged.

It is being called the "Paris for nature" hoping Montreal will see an agreement to slow the destruction of nature the way the 2015 UN conference Paris set the road map for slowing climate change.

In 2019, the UN issued a grim scientific assessment warning that about one-quarter of every species assessed in both animal and plant groups were at risk of extinction before the end of this century. It also said three-quarters of land-based ecosystems and two-thirds of marine environments had been "significantly" changed by human actions, including agricultural and industrial expansions, consumption patterns and population growth.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was also in Montreal on Tuesday, urging countries to stop treating nature "like a toilet."

"The loss of nature and biodiversity comes with a steep human cost," he said.

"A cost we measure in lost jobs, hunger, disease and deaths. A cost we measure in the estimated $3 trillion in annual losses by 2030 from ecosystem degradation. A cost we measure in higher prices for water, food and energy."

Nature can help prevent devastating losses due to climate change, not just by absorbing more of the carbon dioxide that is contributing to global warming, but also by reducing the impacts of extreme weather.

Related video: UN Biodiversity Conference kicks-off in Montreal (WION)
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The nature talks in Montreal are looking to agree to set 22 targets to reverse biodiversity loss. That would include everything from using less plastic and increasing urban green space to finding the money to help pay for it.

While all the targets depend on each other for success, the big get would be an agreement to protect 30 per cent of the world's land, inland waters and marine coastal areas from development by 2030.

But even before the COP15 UN nature talks officially opened Tuesday afternoon, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary for the UN convention on biodiversity, was warning things were already off course.

"Some progress has been made, but not so much as needed or expected," Mrema said at a news conference in Montreal on Tuesday morning. "And I have personally to admit that I don't feel that the delegates went as far as we had expected."

The negotiations are officially scheduled to begin Wednesday, but countries have been slowly putting together a draft agreement for the last few years. On the weekend, negotiators spent three days in a working group hoping to tame that draft into something more manageable.

It didn't work.

The main goal of protecting 30 per cent by 2030 didn't even come up because of time constraints, said Guido Broekhoven, head of policy at the World Wildlife Fund International.

As it stands the draft doesn't agree even on which land and water to protect, or how much.

Canada has its own goal of protecting 30 per cent of land and coastal marine areas by 2030 and has reached about 14 per cent of both already. Globally about 16 per cent of land and inland waters are under some level of protection, and about eight per cent of marine and coastal areas.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said 30 per cent is the minimum that must be protected.

Trudeau opened the talks Tuesday with a pledge to add another $350 million to Canada's global financing for international biodiversity protections. Quebec Premier François Legault told the delegates his province will commit to meeting the 30 per cent target within Quebec by 2030.

There are expectations of many protests at the event, which is expected to draw 17,000 delegates over the next two weeks. The first made itself known Tuesday when a small group of Indigenous protesters began drumming and singing during Trudeau's opening speech.

After about three minutes they were escorted out of the room by security.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2022.

— Bob Weber in Edmonton, Mia Rabson in Ottawa and Jacob Serebrin in Montreal.

The Canadian Press

New food technologies could release 80% of world’s farmland back to nature

Opinion by Chris D Thomas & Jack Hatfield & Katie Noble 

Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Here's the basic problem for conservation at a global level: food production, biodiversity and carbon storage in ecosystems are competing for the same land.


Longhorn cattle on a rewilding project in England: if we got most of our protein and carbs through new technologies, this sort of compassionate and wildlife-friendly farming could be scaled up. Photo courtesy of Chris Thomas/University of York© of Chris Thomas/University of York

As humans demand more food, so more forests and other natural ecosystems are cleared, and farms intensify and become less hospitable to many wild animals and plants. Therefore global conservation, currently focused on the COP15 summit in Montreal, will fail unless it addresses the underlying issue of food production.

Fortunately, a whole raft of new technologies is being developed that make a system-wide revolution in food production feasible. According to recent research by one of us (Chris), this transformation could meet increased global food demands by a growing human population on less than 20% of the world's existing farmland. Or in other words, these technologies could release at least 80% of existing farmland from agriculture in about a century.

Around four-fifths of the land used for human food production is allocated to meat and dairy, including range lands and crops specifically grown to feed livestock. Add up the whole of India, South Africa, France and Spain and you have the amount of land devoted to crops that are then fed to livestock.

Despite growing numbers of vegetarians and vegans in some countries, global meat consumption has increased by more than 50% in the past 20 years and is set to double this century. As things stand, producing all that extra meat will mean either converting even more land into farms, or cramming even more cows, chickens and pigs into existing land. Neither option is good for biodiversity.

Meat and dairy production is already an unpleasant business. For instance, most chickens are grown in high-density feeding operations, and pork, beef and especially dairy farming is going the same way. Current technologies are cruel, polluting and harmful to biodiversity and the climate -- don't be misled by cartoons of happy cows with daisies protruding from their lips.

Unless food production is tackled head-on, we are left resisting inevitable change, often with no hope of long-term success. We need to tackle the cause of biodiversity change. The principal global approach to climate change is to focus on the cause and minimize greenhouse gas emissions, not to manufacture billions of parasols (though we may need these, too). The same is required for biodiversity.

How can we do this?

Cellular agriculture provides an alternative, and could be one of this century's most promising technological advancements. Sometimes called "lab-grown food," the process involves growing animal products from real animal cells, rather than growing actual animals.

If growing meat or milk from animal cells sounds strange or icky to you, let's put this into perspective. Imagine a brewery or cheese factory: a sterile facility filled with metal vats, producing large volumes of beer or cheese, and using a variety of technologies to mix, ferment, clean and monitor the process. Swap the barley or milk for animal cells and this same facility becomes a sustainable and efficient producer of dairy or meat products.

Animal cruelty would be eliminated and, with no need for cows wandering around in fields, the factory would take up far less space to produce the same amount of meat or milk.

Other emerging technologies include microbial protein production, where bacteria use energy derived from solar panels to convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen and other nutrients into carbohydrates and proteins. This could generate as much protein as soybeans but in just 7% of the area. These could then be used as protein food additives (a major use of soy) and animal feed (including for pets).

It is even possible to generate sugars and carbohydrates using desalination or through extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere, all without ever passing through a living plant or animal. The resulting sugars are chemically the same as those derived from plants but would be generated in a tiny fraction of the area required by conventional crops.

What to do with old farmland

These new technologies can have a huge impact, even if demand keeps growing. Even though Chris's research is based on the assumption that global meat consumption will double, it nonetheless suggests that at least 80% of farmland could be released to be used for something else.

That land might become nature reserves or be used to store carbon, for example, in forests or the waterlogged soils of peat bogs. It could be used to grow sustainable building materials, or simply to produce more human-edible crops, among other uses.

Gone too will be industrial livestock systems that produce huge volumes of manure, bones, blood, guts, antibiotics and growth hormones. Thereafter, any remaining livestock farming could be carried out in a compassionate manner.

Since there would be less pressure on the land, there would be less need for chemicals and pesticides and crop production could become more wildlife-friendly (global adoption of organic farming is not feasible at present because it is less productive). This transition must be coupled with a full transition toward renewable energy as the new technologies require lots of power.

Converting these technologies into mass-market production systems will of course be tricky. But a failure to do so is likely to lead to ever-increasing farming intensity, escalating numbers of confined animals, and even more lost nature.

Avoiding this fate -- and achieving the 80% farmland reduction -- will require a lot of political will and a cultural acceptance of these new forms of food. It will require economic and political "carrots" such as investment, subsidies and tax breaks for desirable technologies, and "sticks," such as increased taxation and removal of subsidies for harmful technologies. Unless this happens, biodiversity targets will continue to be missed, COP after COP.

Chris D Thomas is the director, Jack Hatfield is a postdoctoral research associate and Katie Noble is a PhD candidate at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at the University of York.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors.

Oneida First Nation woman sues London, Ont., police, alleging officers sexually abused her for years

Story by Kate Dubinski • 

A 67-year-old Oneida Nation of the Thames woman has launched a $6-million lawsuit against the London Police Service (LPS) in southwestern Ontario, alleging three officers sexually assaulted her for years and officials did nothing to stop it.

Two officers sexually assaulted her over the course of 18 months starting when she was 12 and a third officer's abuse continued for five years, starting when she was 30, Elaine Antone says in her lawsuit.

Antone says she first reported the abuse to police and Ontario's police oversight body in early 1994, when she called the then police chief, Julian Fantino, and said she was worried one of the officers, the one who abused her in her 30s, was harming other women, according to documents filed with Ontario Superior Court.

"I have an excellent memory, and I wish I didn't," Antone told CBC News. "I thought police officers were supposed to help people."

Oneida Nation of the Thames, an Iroquois community that's home to about 2,200 residents, is about 30 kilometres south of London.

Antone's lawsuit names the LPS and the three officers: the estates of Brian Garraway and Keith Bull, who have died, and Edward (Ted) Lane, who is retired. A separate lawsuit asks for $4 million in damages for Antone's two daughters, who she says were fathered by Lane.

The allegations have not been proven in court. CBC has also reached out to all the defendants, but all have refused to comment because the matter is before the courts.

In a statement of defence filed with the court, lawyers for the LPS have denied any wrongdoing, saying the officers were screened and trained properly, officials didn't know about any sexual abuse, and that if it did happen, the officers were acting entirely on their own "without the knowledge or acquiescence of LPS."

But Antone's lawyer, Joe Fearon, disagrees, saying police had at least four separate occasions to investigate the officers since the late 1960s and did nothing to stop ongoing abuse or investigate allegations.

"It goes against every ounce of Elaine's dignity for her to have to go through that, survive that, live a life surviving that and the consequences of that, and to report it, and for the chief of police to do nothing," said Fearon, who is based in Toronto.

Antone shared her story in 2018 with the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG), naming the officers she says sexually assaulted her.

"I'm Indigenous and because of my criminal record, they figured that they had the OK, that nobody was going to listen to me," Antone said in the recent interview with CBC. "I believe that there might be other victims, maybe not victims of Bull or Garraway or Lane, but other victims of the London Police Department, and I feel that they should have a platform to tell their stories also."

Abuse began at age 12, woman says

Antone lived in Oneida with her grandmother until she was five, a childhood she describes as happy and carefree.

"I loved sports. I wanted to be a high school math teacher because I loved numbers," Antone said.

But when she moved with her mom and siblings to London, she said, life got tougher — Antone's mom was addicted to alcohol and police were often called to the family home for domestic disturbances.

When she was 12, Garraway came to the family's home, asked if Antone was alone, and took her into a bedroom, Antone alleges.

"He locked the door and he didn't do too much talking," Antone recalled. "He took his gun off and put it beside me on the mattress, and he forced me to have sex with him. He was on duty. The scariest part was that the gun was there, and I was petrified."

Abuse by Garraway and similar sexual assaults by a second officer, Bull, continued over 18 months, Antone alleges.

At one point, an officer found Antone in Garraway's vehicle, Antone said.


"She was brought back to the station, but no investigation was done," Fearon told CBC News. "When you find somebody with a 12-year-old Indigenous girl in the car, and they have no explanation as to why they're there and that person is a police officer, there should be an investigation."

Eventually, Antone was sent to the Ontario Training School for Girls (later called the Grandview Training School for Girls) in Galt, Ont. — a provincially run reform school for girls aged 12 to 18. Survivors, including Antone, allege abuse and neglect at the school. It closed in 1976 and in 2000, the Ontario government formally apologized to the hundreds of girls sent there. Eight former employees were eventually charged with various offences and two guards were convicted.

Antone said that by the mid-1980s, she was living in London, using drugs to cope with years of childhood abuse, and had frequent run-ins with police officers, including Lane.

Allegations in the lawsuit

"Antone alleges that commencing in or about 1985, when Antone was approximately 30 years of age, and on many occasions over the following approximately five years, the defendant Lane repeatedly sexual abused, battered, assaulted and molested the plaintiff, Antone," the lawsuit states.

"The plaintiff Antone alleges that the defendant Lane impregnated the plaintiff, Antone, twice, leading to the birth of two children."



Joe Fearon, from the law firm Preszler Injury Lawyers, is working on Antone's case.© Kate Dubinski/CBC

According to Antone, Lane at first denied he was the father of her two daughters, but after paternity tests proved he was, he was ordered by a family court judge to pay child support.

"At all material times, it would have been obvious to the defendants that the plaintiff, Antone, was a vulnerable person," the lawsuit says.

The three officers used their positions of authority and trust to make sure that Antone didn't tell anyone about the abuse, and "interfered with her normal upbringing solely for the purpose of their own gratification," it claims.

The defendants were in positions of power because of her age and family circumstance, and because they were police officers, the lawsuit alleges, and she trusted them and was dependent on them for safety and security.

The LPS didn't properly supervise the three officers, investigate their backgrounds and characters, or document their shortcomings as police officers, the court documents also claim.

The lawsuit also alleges the London police chief at the time knew that Lane repeatedly sexually assaulted Antone after she reported him, but didn't investigate or reprimand him and allowed him to remain on active duty.

Lane retired in 1996. CBC News has tried repeatedly to get in touch with him, but has been unsuccessful. He is not represented by a lawyer in this lawsuit and has not filed a statement of defence.

Antone said that in 1994, she had reached out to Fantino and Howard Morton, head of the then new Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which investigates incidents when police interactions lead to serious injuries or involve allegations of sexual assault. She had called both men at home to report she had run into Lane at a bingo and she was worried he was harming other women. Antone said she couldn't remember how she got their home numbers.

According to a letter filed as part of the court documents, Morton wrote to Fantino: "Ms. Elaine Antone contacted the director Mr. Morton at his residence on Nov. 20, 1994, and complained of a sexual assault by Const. Ted Lane. She indicated she met Const. Lane in April 1985 and although they had intercourse, it was without her consent. She stated that she has two children fathered by Const. Lane, who does pay child support. Ms. Antone fears that Constable Lane might be assaulting another woman, but has no proof."

Morton's eventual report to Ontario's attorney general that's dated Jan. 30, 1995, states Antone "does not wish SIU to investigate the matter nor does she wish to complain to the police complaints commissioner." Because Antone didn't want the matter investigated, Morton writes, "I have determined that no further action is warranted by my office and I am, therefore, closing our file."

In another letter to Fantino that's contained in the lawsuit documents, Morton suggests "it would be perfectly in order" for the chief to discuss the matter with Lane. There is nothing to indicate whether that was done, and the London police have not turned over any records to indicate that an internal investigation was done or that Antone's allegations were investigated further.

Lane remained on duty for another year.

CBC News reached out to Fantino, the police chief in 1994 and 1995 — the years the correspondence was dated — and the deputy chief at the time, Elgin Austen, who was in charge of public complaints.

Fantino said he didn't recall such a situation, and even if he did, he could not comment because of the ongoing legal case. Austen said he remembered Antone as a troubled teen that officers dealt with. He also said he had no knowledge of Lane fathering her two children and didn't recall her allegations against the officer.

Morton remembered the phone call from Antone because it was so unusual to get a call at home, but he couldn't recall what happened with the case. Lawyers for the estates of Garraway and Bull said they couldn't comment because of the ongoing lawsuit.

'Trying to keep my spirits up'

Antone's voice is steady as she tells her story. She's told it many times before — at the MMIWG inquiry and to classes of criminology students because one of Antone's best friends is a professor.

She is in touch with her daughters and loves playing with her grandchildren. She writes poetry and watches television in her apartment.

"Health wise, I'm not doing well. Emotionally, I'm trying to keep my spirits up," Antone told CBC News. Still, she said, she has bouts of severe depression for about a week every month, the symptoms keeping her from performing her daily routine.

At a minimum, the LPS should pay for Antone's counselling while this case winds its way through the court system, Fearon said.

This week, he will be back in court to try to amend the claim to include allegations that the LPS breached Antone's charter rights. Lawyers for the police oppose that amendment.

A trial date will be set shortly.

A mix of worry and hope as Iranians in Canada watch an uprising from afar

Story by Katie Nicholson, Marie Morrissey • Nov 22

Sara Shariati stares intently at her phone screen, willing it to connect to her grandfather in Iran. The University of Toronto student hasn't been able to get ahold of the 95-year-old for two weeks. When the call doesn't go through, she tries a text message and shakes her head.

"The message doesn't even deliver. Their internet is shut," Shariati said, her voice catching.

Shariati is one of the nearly 90,000 Iranians who have settled in the Greater Toronto Area, according to Statistics Canada. Only Los Angeles has a larger Iranian population outside of Iran.

For many in the wider Iranian diaspora, the last three months have been rife with worry, anger and frustration as they watch the ongoing cycle of protests and violent crackdowns in Iran sparked by the in-custody death of Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16.

The 22-year-old died while she was in the custody of Iran's morality police after she had been detained for reportedly wearing her headscarf incorrectly, violating the strict public dress codes imposed on Iranian women. Her death has sparked outrage in and outside of Iran.

"So many years that we had to be worried about whether the colour of our shirt is too bright, whether our toes are showing because we are wearing open-toed shoes or whether our hair is showing too much," Shariati said. "And now this generation is saying enough is enough."

Shariati is proud of the stand many in the country are taking, but she also worries about the safety of her friends and family in Iran and feels guilty about her own relative safety in Canada.

"Some of my friends have been arrested. We have no news of them. Some of them have been injured. There has been so much tear gas into university dormitories," she said.

"I keep thinking when I'm walking on campus [here] that, 'Oh my God, how safe I am and how normal life is here.' And they have to worry if they can even be alive tomorrow," she said.

Shariati is doing what she can to bring attention to the protests in Canada and pressuring the Canadian government to do more, including helping organize three protests.



Members of the Iranian community gather in Toronto on Sept. 20 to protest after the death of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old woman died after being detained by Iran's morality police, reportedly for wearing her headscarf incorrectly.© Darek Zdzienicki/CBC

She also knows her work to amplify the voices of revolt in Iran has put a target on her back.

"When I go to Iran, I will probably be arrested at the airport. And I know that. And my family knows that. But I keep thinking in my head, what have I done to deserve this?" she said.

'Impossible' to stay in touch with friends, family

Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the ongoing protests, estimates at least 388 people have been killed and more than 16,000 have been arrested since they began nearly two months ago.

There are few Iranians in Canada who understand the price of standing up to the Iranian regime as well as Azam Jangravi. In 2018, the young mother climbed on top of an electric transformer box in Tehran, removed her headscarf and was promptly arrested.

Jangravi escaped with her daughter to Turkey and now lives in Canada. Watching the events unfold in Iran has filled her with worry and hope.

"You know, I broke my silence. This is the key. Now every Iranian broke their silence," she said. I think they are so brave. They know they might be killed, but every day, they come back to the street."

It has been hard to get a good sense of what's really happening on the streets of the country. Like so many, Jangravi depends on social media posts and WhatsApp messages from friends to get a sense of what's happening, as information trickles out between government-imposed communications blackouts.

It's also made it near impossible to stay in touch with friends and family on a regular basis.

"When I called and I don't know what happened to my family or to my friends, I am really frustrated. I am worried. I cry," she said.

Even when people successfully manage to get in contact with loved ones in Iran, it's not always safe to talk.

Protests 'on everybody's minds'

In his usually bustling Persian grocery store Khorak Supermarket, Sam Fayaz describes how cautious his in-laws in Iran are when they speak with his wife because of fears their phone might be monitored by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"It becomes a one-way conversation where when you ask the other side 'hey, what's going on over there,' a lot of them, my brother-in-law, won't talk, right? So he'll avoid the questions," he said.

The months-long unrest and violence has put a damper on the wider Iranian community, Fayaz said.


Sam Fayaz, whose Persian grocery store Khorak Supermarket in Toronto is a hub for the Iranian community, says the protests in Iran weigh heavily on the minds of everyone who shops here.© Katie Nicholson/CBC

"Everybody's upset. Everybody's down," Fayaz said, gesturing around the store. "Things quiet down, right? I mean, it's Monday. My store's supposed to be a little bit busier than it is right now, but, you know, we're not."

"It's on everybody's minds. Nobody wants to go out and party. Nobody wants to go to, you know, go to a concert. A lot of events have been cancelled because people are just… it's on their minds," Fayaz said.

A poster hangs in the door of the store reading "Women, Life, Freedom" and "Be the voice of the Iranian people." Fayaz isn't shy about his own support for the protesters whose voices he says he tries to amplify as much as possible.



This poster hangs in the window of Khorak Supermarket, a Persian grocery store located in north Toronto. Owner Sam Fayez says he does everything he can to amplify the protesters' voices.© Katie Nicholson/CBC

"The more this gets shared, the more likely the, you know, external governments such as the Canadian government, the U.S. government, hopefully, you know, different parts of the world will impose stricter sanctions on this regime and bring change," Fayaz said.

As snow falls from a grey Toronto sky, Shariati thinks about what more Canada and the world could do to help the Iranian protesters.

"Canada has done a lot. A lot more than many European countries. A lot more than even the U.S. But I think there can be more. I think they can push for more action from other countries as well because Canada has a strong voice in international platforms," she said.

Canada has issued five sets of sanctions on Iran this year in response to what Global Affairs Canada calls "ongoing gross and systematic human rights violations and continued actions to destabilize peace and security." The sanctions lists include businesses and leaders associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

"There can be more targeted sanctions on the leaders. IRGC can be recognized as a terrorist group," she added.

She also wants to see UNICEF and the United Nations step up their involvement.

"Statements don't cut it. We need a lot stronger action."

Federal NDP leader says Alberta sovereignty act 'a distraction' from real problems

CALGARY — Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says Alberta's proposed sovereignty act is undemocratic and an unwelcome distraction from the struggles residents of the province are facing.


Federal NDP leader says Alberta sovereignty act 'a distraction' from real problems© Provided by The Canadian Press

After a meeting Friday with union leaders in Calgary, Singh took aim at the bill Premier Danielle Smith introduced on Tuesday.

Smith has described it as a deliberately confrontational tool to reset the relationship with a federal government she accuses of interfering in constitutionally protected areas of provincial responsibility, from energy development to health care.

But Singh said that at a time when Albertans are suffering from record-high inflation and an overloaded health-care system, the proposed legislation makes no sense.

"I think it is a bit of a distraction at a time when we're seeing unprecedented record inflation, at a time when people are having a hard time buying groceries and people are using food banks more than ever," Singh told reporters Friday.

"At a time like that, Danielle Smith chooses to bring in this act. It really shows a lot of heartlessness."

Smith has rejected accusations that the bill amounts to a power grab.

“Every decision that is going to be made has to first get the validation from this assembly,” she told the legislature earlier this week.

If a resolution passes in the house identifying a federal matter deemed unconstitutional or harmful to Alberta, the bill grants cabinet powers to unilaterally rewrite provincial laws without sending them back to the legislature for debate or approval. Cabinet would be allowed to direct public agencies, including police, municipalities, school boards, post-secondary institutions and health regions, to flout federal laws.

It would also give cabinet wide latitude on how to interpret the resolution it receives from the assembly. It says cabinet should follow the direction of the house, but doesn't mandate it. Instead, cabinet is told to exercise its new extraordinary powers however it deems "necessary or advisable.''

"It's dangerous and it's undemocratic, and there was no mandate for this," Singh said.

Kaycee Madu, Alberta's deputy premier, has said amendments may be needed to clear up confusion over some aspects of the proposed legislation.

However, Singh said the bill "shows a callous behaviour" by the governing United Conservative Party.

"I think it is intended to be a distraction from the real problems people are faced with," Singh said.

"The worry I have about Danielle Smith as premier is about people being left behind — and I really mean it."

Last month, the provincial government announced payouts of $600 for middle- to lower-income families to help with the increasing costs of living.

Those with a household income of less than $180,000 a year are to get $600 for each child under 18 over a period of six months. The same income threshold and benefit applies to seniors.

The government also promised to remove its provincial gasoline tax and to continue providing electricity rebates. It has also earmarked $20 million to help food banks.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 2, 2022.

Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

'She didn't hesitate': The untold story behind a Black Canadian woman's wartime portrait

Story by Ashley Burke • 

Thousands of people have seen it over the past 70-plus years: a dramatic oil portrait from 1946 of a Black Canadian woman in a military uniform, standing behind a canteen counter.

Her arms are crossed. Her face is stern. Decades later, the portrait still conveys an image of strength.

It's one of the most famous canvases to come from the brush of Molly Lamb Bobak, Canada's first female war artist. It's been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.

But while the painting itself is familiar, the story behind it — of its subject, Eva May Roy — is far more obscure.

"This painting of Private Roy has been part of the public imagination for decades," said Laura Brandon, a retired curator of war art at the Canadian War Museum. "It's well known, but Private Roy's story is not."


Sgt. Eva May Roy's photo remains in storage at the Canadian War Museum.© Pierre-Paul Couture/CBC News

Roy died in 1990, having retired from the military with a sergeant's rank. She's one of many Black women who served in the Canadian Forces during the Second World War — people whose stories are largely missing from the public record.

Roy was a trailblazer, serving overseas at a time when it was rare to see a Canadian military woman working in Europe.

"She was right in there with everybody else doing the same thing," said her granddaughter Shannon Roy. "She didn't hesitate...She commanded respect."

Stacey Barker, Canadian War Museum historian of art and military history, recently combed through Canadian Forces records to uncover more about the person behind the painting.

She learned that, after the war broke out, Roy left her job as a presser in a laundry to become a machine operator and fuse assembler at the General Engineering Co. munitions plant in Scarborough, Ont.

Roy enlisted in 1944 and joined the Canadian Women's Army Corps (CWAC), a new division created just three years earlier. CWAC had 50,000 women in its ranks during the Second World War in support roles ranging from cooking to decoding.

Historians say that before the CWAC was created, the only option available to Canadian women looking to get involved in the war effort was to serve as a nurse — and it was nearly impossible for Black women to get that training.

Roy trained as a cook and served in military canteens in Canada, the United Kingdom and Holland.

"That was pretty unusual," said Mélanie Morin-Pelletier, the acting director of research and chief historian at the Canadian War Museum.

"Only one in nine Canadian women in the army served overseas. So it was amazing that she was able to do that."

Related video: 'She commanded respect': A Black Canadian woman's untold wartime story (cbc.ca)

Duration 2:16  View on Watch

Roy's military records show that the stern image presented by her portrait was a little misleading. She had an outgoing personality, was enthusiastic about the army and loved to sing.

She was posted for a month to audition with the Army Show, an in-house performance troupe that entertained Canadian soldiers overseas. But no one would teach her the routines, the museum said.

"There's no official reason why she didn't make it, but we have to remember she would have been the only Black woman in the chorus," said Morin-Pelletier. "So it's easy to read behind the lines."

After returning to Canada in January 1946, Roy worked as government postal clerk in Toronto, the museum said. Almost a decade later, when CWAC launched another recruiting campaign, Roy re-enlisted, served from 1955 to 1965 and attained the rank of sergeant.

Shannon Roy said her grandmother wasn't the type to be pushed away from something she wanted to do.

"It was a different time back then, and unfortunately there was a lot of racism," she said. "So the fact she was able to make the rank of sergeant is just incredible in my mind.

"You think they may hold her back, but I'm sure she wouldn't have let them because that's just the type of person she was. She would have stood her ground."

She has another painting of her grandmother hanging in her house. Her photo albums are filled with black-and-white images of Roy in her uniform and doing track-and-field.

Those photos show a side of her that Bobak's portrait does not — confident, calm, always smiling.

"People would gravitate toward her," said Shannon Roy. "Just for her smile alone."

Her family describes Roy as an outgoing, determined and hard-working single mother who lived in Cobourg, Ont. for more than 25 years. Roy worked at the Queen's printing shop and was known for having the "best laugh," said Marney Massy.


Molly Lamb Bobak's preliminary sketches of Roy, which are still in the Canadian War Museum archives.© Ashley Burke/CBC News

Massy's grandmother, Joan Cork, lived with Roy. They were both single mothers with military experience. Cork served in the reserves, her family said.

"They had a lot in common and helped each other out during tough times," said Massey.

Roy's son Peter was known in town for his support for the Royal Canadian Legion and for helping with the annual poppy campaign in his mother's memory.

Before he died in 2018, he travelled to Ottawa to see his mother's portrait in person.

"He was so happy to have another picture taken with his mother," said his wife Hilda Roy.

That painting of Roy is so evocative, so filled with life, it casts a spell on almost everyone who sees it.

Tanya Lee, who runs a national book club for high-risk teens, first saw a photo of the painting in a book 20 years ago. She said she couldn't believe she hadn't known before that Black Canadian women served in the Second World War. It was never taught in school, she added.

"When I looked at that first, I was looking at her and wondering what it must have felt like to fight for your country ... knowing that at home you're still considered a second-class citizen," said Lee.



Tanya Lee runs a book club in Toronto for high-risk teen girls who can't afford books of their own.

© Ashley Burke/CBC News

Lee spent years learning about Roy and is now working on a pitch to make a documentary about her life. She said plans are also in place to bring Black veterans in to meet her book club in the new year, to ensure Roy's story is shared with a new generation.

"It was a missed opportunity back then, but it's an opportunity now," said Lee. "Only certain people's stories are honoured and we need to revisit that conversation."

U$A
‘We’re doubling down’: how abortion advocates are building on midterm wins

Story by Melody Schreiber • YESTERDAY

Renee Bracey Sherman answers the phone and apologizes – is it OK if we speak while she drives? Like many abortion advocates, she tends to keep a packed schedule and talk at lightning speed – the next initiative, the next law, the next policy on the horizon. Ask advocates how they felt in June after the Dobbs decision sharply curtailed reproductive rights across the US, or in November after wins in the midterm elections signaled strong public support for abortion, and they’ll answer immediately: We knew this was coming; but the fight’s not over.


Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters© Provided by The Guardian

What Bracey Sherman – founder and executive director of We Testify, a group focused on the leadership and representation of people who have abortions – and her colleagues in the pro-choice movement don’t spend much time doing is elaborating on the past, or how they mourned or celebrated, because it’s already in the rear-view window. Their eyes are laser-focused on the future.

“We’re doubling down,” Bracey Sherman said.

Abortion was a central issue in a midterm election that saw Democrats retain the Senate and relinquish only a narrow majority in the House. In Kentucky and Montana, voters rejected anti-abortion initiatives on the ballot; and in Michigan, California and Vermont, voters chose to establish reproductive rights in state law. Over the summer, Kansas voters similarly rejected a ballot measure to remove abortion rights from its constitution.

“When abortion was on the ballot, it won, so that was fantastic,” said Elisa Wells, co-founder and co-director of Plan C, an organization that helps access abortion medication. Those wins “really demonstrate that legislators are out of touch with what the majority of Americans want. They support abortion access, and understand that it’s basic, common medical care.”

So pro-choice advocates are taking the fight to new areas, principally access to abortion care, which is now heavily restricted in many places, and support for abortion seekers in states that have criminalized it.

The focus is squarely on the states. For the next two years, with Congress divided, it’s understood that little will get done at the federal level.

“The state level is probably where abortion rights advocates will need to work, and have had some success in the last year,” said Shana Kushner Gadarian, professor of political science at Syracuse University.

Ballot initiatives were one of those real successes. It’s important for organizers “to get things directly in front of voters, because they seem to be winning on that side”, she said.

They were successful in two ways. First, reproductive health can be an issue that stretches across partisan lines, with Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike voicing some level of support for abortion – especially when it comes to opposition to total abortion bans.

But the Dobbs decision also drove a surge in voter registration, especially for Democrats, and it made abortion rights a more salient voting issue, even beyond ballot initiatives, Gadarian noted.

That translated into results. Voters opposed anti-abortion candidates in several states: Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin elected Democratic governors who could veto anti-abortion legislation, while Republicans in Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin failed to reach a supermajority in both the state senate and house, making it impossible to override such a veto.

That’s a strong message to candidates in future elections. “Politicians care about re-election,” Gadarian said. “They want to make sure that they’re not going so far ahead of the public that they are going to get punished during the next election cycle.” That could mean instituting less-encompassing laws in conservative states, such as Florida’s 15-week restrictions, she said.

Anti-abortion advocates went too far by creating state-level bans, which are extremely unpopular, and even pushing for a nationwide ban, said Bracey Sherman. “They overplayed their hand on everything.” There was also an unprecedented number of candidates and elected officials who were open about their own abortions – “a historic moment” for abortion support, she said.

Advocates in at least 10 states with restrictive abortion policies are now considering ballot initiatives. In Oklahoma and South Dakota, abortion advocates have asked to add initiatives to 2024 ballots; while several key leaders in Missouri, which has a near-total abortion ban, are up for re-election in two years, and the state could also see ballot initiatives in 2024.

New ballot initiatives could enshrine abortion rights into state law in New York, New Jersey and Ohio, a proactive move that several states have taken. In some states, citizens can put forth the proposals to be added to the ballot, or they may ask their state lawmakers to add them.

Next in Kentucky is a legal challenge to the near-total abortion ban after six weeks that has no exceptions for rape or incest and that only allows abortions under a licensed physician’s care and if life-saving organs are threatened. Even if that challenge is successful, the next ban in place is on pregnancies after 15 weeks – so the fight would need to continue, advocates say.

One important takeaway from places like Kansas, the first state to put abortion rights to a vote this summer, is that long-term community organizing and education was highly effective. Other grassroots organizations are taking note. The Afiya Center, a reproductive justice organization in Texas that had to stop its work as an abortion fund due to new state law, is focusing more on community mobilization, voter registration and education campaigns.

“We are actually launching a voter engagement campaign at the top of the year, called ‘I am a reproductive justice voter,’” said Cerita Burrell, director of programs at the Afiya Center. “We need to educate folks more on the electoral process. It really comes down to policy and lawmakers – getting the right people in office that understand the right to full bodily autonomy.”

Elsewhere, the pro-choice movement is not just entrenching but pushing as many laws as they can, “and they’re sticking”, Wells said. “So why don’t we go on the offensive?”

Some groups are focusing on shield laws to protect providers who prescribe abortion medication via telehealth. In July, Massachusetts passed a sweeping law that shields providers who offer care to residents of states where it’s restricted. “With this new law in place, we’re helping get a group together of providers who would then be able to legally provide telehealth care into states that restrict access,” Wells said. Other states should do the same, she said.

Plan C advocates for exactly that, as well as pushing to remove federal regulatory limitations on medication abortion. Some international organizations like AidAccess already ship to places where state law restricts abortion.

Abortion pills are “safer than Tylenol, safer than Viagra – it doesn’t need to be as highly regulated and medicalized as it is”. Wells said. “Why are these restrictions still standing on this extremely safe and effective technology? It’s politics.”

She would like to see abortion medications available over the counter. “Our philosophy has always been you really need to push the envelope and try these things, because they might stand up,” Wells said.

Courtrooms, not coat hangers

With medication and self-managed abortion, safety is not the concern it was in pre-Roe America. The current challenges are not about back-alley abortions and coat hangers, advocates say.

“Self-managed abortion now does not look like what it looked like in the 70s,” said Jennifer Lim, the communications and media director of Indigenous Women Rising, a reproductive justice organization that runs an abortion fund. “We don’t lean in towards, ‘We won’t go back’, because we don’t have to – the future looks very different than what it used to. Abortion pills are very safe, they’re very effective. But the criminalization aspect is a whole different part of it.”

Criminalizing pregnancy was a rising threat even before Roe was overturned, and the Dobbs decision could see prosecutions jump.

So legal assistance in a rapidly changing and often confusing landscape has become a huge new area of focus.

“We need to stop criminalizing people for their pregnancy outcomes,” Wells said. “We need to not have criminal charges falling on a person who needs healthcare in our country.”

And those who have been marginalized – people of color, people living in poverty, gender-variant folks, younger people, immigrants – are the most likely to experience challenges like these. “It’s people who lack access and resources and face obstacles who are left with fewer options,” said Jill Adams, executive director of If/When/How, a legal resource for reproductive justice.

The organization’s Repro Legal Helpline has seen a 14-fold increase in inquiries since the Dobbs decision. “We expect that higher level of interest to maintain, and we have been staffing up,” Adams said. The jumble of reproductive laws in the US is puzzling to anyone attempting to navigate care, Adams said, and many callers at first “need to understand what the legal landscape is – what, if any, legal risks they face so that they can make the decision that’s best for them,” she said.

If/When/How also has a Repro Legal Defense Fund to provide financial assistance to people who have been criminalized for abortion, including partners, friends and family members. The fund supports pre-trial release, with bail bonds and bail alternatives, as well as the full costs of legal defense. More money is going into that, too, Adams said.

Abortion was a “hot topic” in the midterm elections, with politicians relying on the issue to turn out voters, Lim said. “How do we get folks to stay engaged and understand that this is a long-term battle?” she asked. “​​We don’t want to lose momentum.”