Dracula's Castle in Romania Is Now Offering Free Vaccinations to Visitors

It's not quite the kind of bite that visitors to Bran Castle — better known as Dracula's castle — in Romania might expect, but it does come with a profound effect. On Friday, the castle announced that it's kicking off a COVID-19 vaccination marathon, offering visitors free doses every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in May without an appointment.

© Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images 

Admission to the castle is not required to receive the vaccine.

The castle, located in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania, hopes to lure more travelers with shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, calling it "another kind of sting." Admission to the castle is not required to receive a shot, and those who get it will earn a "diploma" saying that they were vaccinated at Bran Castle. Visitors who do also pay for castle admission will gain free access to the special exhibit on medieval torture tools, the attraction described on its Facebook page.

Further leaning into the location's theme, the campaign's imagery features a photo of fangs replaced by needles and a nurse with fangs ready to inject a dose. Plus, the on-site medics administering the shots have fang stickers on their scrubs, according to the BBC.

Video: Dracula's Castle in Romania Is Now Offering Free Vaccinations to Visitors (Travel + Leisure)

Visitors are required to follow all coronavirus safety measures, including using hand sanitizer, wearing a mask, and keeping a distance of two meters (about six and a half feet) from others, according to the castle's site.

The medieval castle, which was completed in 1388, is thought to be the inspiration for Irish author Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, "Dracula," though Stoker never actually visited the Romanian landmark himself. The fictional title character is often mixed up with the real Vlad Tepes — better known as Vlad the Impaler — who ruled in the 1400s and is often depicted as a "blood-thirsty ruthless despot."

The vaccines are being doled out in the Medieval Custom building on Fridays from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m, Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. this month. It's all part of the government's effort to get more Romanians vaccinated, since it's one of the nations with the highest rates of hesitancy in Central and Eastern Europe, according to a study by Globsec. As of today, 2,314,812 people — or 11.96% of the country's population — is fully vaccinated, with 5,891,855 doses having been administered, per data from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The CDC currently has Romania at a Level 4 "Very High Level of COVID-19" advisory, with the nation having had 1,066,111 cases and 28,966 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.

Football Fish: A monstrous-looking fish normally found thousands of feet deep in the ocean washed up on a California beach

By Amanda Jackson, CNN 

An unusual fish with teeth as sharp as glass and a body shaped like a football washed ashore on a California beach last week

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© Crystal Cove State Park The angler fish washed ashore at the Crystal Cove State Park in California.

The black colored creature with it's gaping mouth laid on the sand on the shore of Crystal Cove State Park's Marine Protected Area in Laguna Beach last Friday. The park shared images of the fish on social media and identified it as being most likely the Pacific Football Fish.

"To see an actual angler fish intact is very rare and it is unknown how or why the fish ended up on the shore," reads the Facebook post.

The Pacific Football Fish is one of more than 200 species of anglerfish worldwide, according to California State Parks, and is normally found in the dark depths of the ocean. The creature's teeth are sharp and pointy like shards of glass and their "large mouth is capable of sucking up and swallowing prey the size of their own body."

Due to the creature's size and the protruding stalk on the top of the head, California State Parks said this is a female.

"Only females possess a long stalk on the head with bioluminescent tips used as a lure to entice prey in the darkness of waters as deep as 3,000 feet!," according to the Crystal Cove State Park post.

They added that females can grow to lengths of 24 inches while males only grow to be about an inch long. The sole purpose of the male fish is to help a female reproduce, reads the post.

"Males latch onto the female with their teeth and become 'sexual parasites,' eventually coalescing with the female until nothing is left of their form but their testes for reproduction," reads the post.

The body of the fish is being held by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, according to CNN affiliate KFSN. It is expected to be studied for research and educational purposes.

"Seeing this strange and fascinating fish is a testament to the diversity of marine life lurking below the water's surface ...," reads the Crystal Cove State Park post. ".. and as scientists continue to learn more about these deep sea creatures it's important to reflect on how much is still to be learned from our wonderful ocean."

© Crystal Cove State Park The stalk on the fish's head is used to lure prey.

Animal shelter releases 1,000 feral cats onto Chicago streets to solve rat problem

National Post Staff 

One Chicago animal shelter thinks it has an answer to the city’s rat problem — 1,000 feral cats

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© Provided by National Post A picture of a cat a part of the Tree House Humane Society's

Since 2012, the Tree House Humane Society has released 1,000 cats onto Chicago’s streets as a part of their “ Cats at Work ” program.

In pairs of two or three, the feral cats are placed into residential or commercial settings to provide “environmentally friendly rodent control.” In exchange, property and business owners provide the furry pest-controllers with food, water and shelter.

“In most cases, our Cats at Work become beloved members of the family or team and some even have their own Instagram pages,” the shelter’s website says.

Chicago’s problem with rats stretches to 1977, when the city offered a $1 bounty for each rat killed by residents, in a so-called “war on rats.”

Toronto reports spike in raccoon attacks and sightings, warns people not to pet them

How Alberta completely eradicated rats from the province by declaring war on rodent hordes

Within two weeks, The New York Times reported that about 550 rats had been killed, with one family killing more than 40 in their own backyard.

In this century, Chicago topped Orkin’s list of “rattiest” U.S. cities for the sixth consecutive time in October.

According to the pest control company, Chicago had the highest number of rodent treatments performed in a year, followed by Los Angeles and New York.

Tree House Humane Society first started the Cats at Work program as an alternative to poisoning rats, reports WGN.

“We’ve had a lot of our clients tell us that before they had cats, they would step outside their house and rats would actually run across their feet,” Sarah Liss, Tree House Humane Society’s program manager, operations and community cats, told WGN .

The cats involved in the program are feral, meaning they aren’t able to thrive in a home or animal shelter. Usually, the shelter safely traps such outdoor cats and spays and neuters them, before returning them to one of their over 1,000 “feral cat colonies.”

However, sometimes the cats cannot be re-integrated into a feral cat colony, like when an abandoned building housing them is demolished. So, they’re put to work.

According to Liss, the cats a part of the program don’t typically eat a lot of rats, but they will kill some rats when they first arrive at a new location. Over time, much less effort is required on the cat’s part.

“They are actually deterring them with their pheromones. That’s enough to keep the rats away,” Liss said to WGN.

'Bucktooth bandits': Police trace stolen lumber to beaver dam

PORCUPINE PLAIN, Sask. — Mounties in east-central Saskatchewan have cracked what they are calling an "extremely Canadian case."

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

RCMP officers from the Porcupine Plain detachment were called to a rural area on Friday to investigate a theft of posts that had been piled on a property for fencing.

The thief was soon revealed to have sharp teeth, fur, and a broad tail.

Const. Conrad Rickards says the posts were found in a nearby waterway and it appears a beaver helped himself to the lumber to build a dam — perhaps with the help of some buddies.

Rickards says there was no sign of the culprit.

He says no charges will be laid.

“Who could really blame these little bucktooth bandits, considering the price of wood these days?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Police commission reverses course, orders hearing into case of Edmonton officer 'pressured' into dropping complaint

Jonny Wakefield 

The Edmonton Police Commission has reversed course in the case of an ex-city police constable who claims she was pressured into dropping a complaint against a fellow officer.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Former EPS constable Katherine Nelson, seen in an undated photo.

In 2018, Katherine Nelson filed a complaint against an Edmonton Police Service (EPS) detective who was assisting another agency in investigating Nelson’s sexual assault complaint against a colleague.


Nelson claims she was convinced to drop the complaint against the detective during an interview with the EPS Professional Standards Branch (PSB).

She later tried to have the complaint reinstated but was shot down by Police Chief Dale McFee and the Edmonton Police Commission, who deemed her attempts “vexatious.”


The independent Law Enforcement Review Board (LERB) reviewed the police commission’s decision and in a February decision ordered commissioners to reconsider.

“Having now had the opportunity to review the entirety of Ms. Nelson’s PSB interview, including the audio/video recordings, the commission concludes that Ms. Nelson was not capable of providing valid informed consent to withdraw her complaint given her mental state at the time of the interview,” the commission wrote in a decision dated April 22.

“She was too emotionally distraught to make the decision to withdraw her complaint, and her verbal withdrawal was therefore not valid.”

Nelson claims she was groped in her hotel room by a fellow officer during a 2016 training session in Green Bay, Wis.

In early 2018, she filed a complaint against EPS Det. Marci Koshowski, who was assisting Green Bay police in the investigation from Edmonton. Nelson claims Koshowski shared text messages from her work phone with investigators in Wisconsin, and that Koshowski suggested those messages were evidence Nelson and the colleague were romantically involved.

On May 23, 2018, Nelson sat for an interview with a PSB detective, during which she agreed to withdraw her complaint against Koshowski. During the interview, Det. Darren Smith became concerned about Nelson’s mental health and asked the EPS crisis team to assess her for committal under the Mental Health Act .

Nelson later said she felt “very pressured and upset and agreed, in some way, to drop the complaint as she felt it was futile.” In December 2018 Nelson wrote to the police service, asking that the complaint be revived because she was in a fragile mental state and never signed an official complaint withdrawal form.

In March, the LERB found Smith did not commit misconduct during the interview. It found Nelson’s claim comparing the interview to an “interrogation” lacked “an air of reality.”

“The evidence in the record … was clear that the appellant stated without prompting that she wished to withdraw her complaint and repeated words to that effect during the interview,” the board wrote.
‘Sniffling, quietly crying, sobbing’

McFee decided Nelson’s complaint against Koshowski had been properly closed, and treated Nelson’s December 2018 letter as a duplication of a previous complaint and thus “vexatious.” He recommended the police commission sign off on the decision — which it did in July 2020.

Nelson appealed to the LERB, which found in her favour.

In particular, the review board noted the commission had not independently reviewed video of the May 2018 interview, which showed Nelson “sniffling, quietly crying, sobbing, sighing, and wiping her face with a tissue.”

“The commission … accepted without question the chief’s conclusion that the first complaint was properly withdrawn,” the review board wrote.

After reviewing the record, commissioners concluded the complaint was not vexatious and should proceed to a disciplinary hearing.

Commissioners added that they found no evidence Smith pressured or coerced Nelson into dropping the complaint. “She simply wasn’t in the proper state of mind that day to be able to validly withdraw her complaint.”

Police commission vice-chair John McDougall dissented, saying there is no evidence Nelson was incapable of consenting to withdrawing her complaint.

“The fact that someone may be emotional, depressed or even contemplating self-harm does not necessarily impact their capacity to provide valid, informed consent,” he wrote, adding there is no requirement that a complaint withdrawal form be signed.

He added it was unfair to Koshowski to have to defend herself against a complaint she believed was withdrawn three years ago.

It is now up to McFee to reinvestigate the complaint and determine whether Koshowski should face a disciplinary hearing.

jwakefield@postmedia.com

twitter.com/jonnywakefield

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with details of a March LERB decision dismissing Katherine Nelson’s complaint against Det. Smith.

Whitmer threatens profit seizure if pipeline keeps operating

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer threatened Tuesday to go after Enbridge's profits from a Great Lakes oil pipeline if the company defies her order to shut it down.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Democratic governor issued the warning in a letter to the Canadian energy transport company on the eve of a state-imposed deadline to halt operation of Line 5, which moves oil through northern Wisconsin and Michigan to refineries in Ontario. Enbridge repeated its intention to defy Whitmer's demand.

A nearly 4-mile-long (6.4-kilometer-long) section of Line 5 divides into two pipes that cross the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Whitmer, backed by environmentalists and native tribes, says the segment is vulnerable to a catastrophic spill in the cold, swirling channel. She revoked an easement last November that Michigan had granted in 1953 for the pipes to occupy the lake bottom and ordered them closed by May 12.

Enbridge insists the segment is in good condition and says its loss would cause economic damage in both countries, a position shared by the Canadian government, which filed a legal brief Tuesday in support of the company.

In her letter to Vern Yu, Enbridge's executive vice president for liquids pipelines, Whitmer said continued operation of the line after Wednesday “constitutes an intentional trespass" and that the company would do so “at its own risk.”

“If the state prevails in the underlying litigation, Enbridge will face the prospect of having to disgorge to the state all profits it derives from its wrongful use of the easement lands following that date,” Whitmer said.

Enbridge argues that the state has no authority to order the shutdown because the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration oversees interstate pipelines.

“We will not stop operating the pipeline unless we are ordered by a court or our regulator, which we view as highly unlikely,” spokesman Ryan Duffy said. "Line 5 is operating safely, reliably and is in compliance with the law.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a lawsuit last fall in support of Whitmer's order, while Enbridge countersued in federal court and wants the matter decided there. A federal judge is considering which court should have jurisdiction.

Nessel’s office said it will continue seeking a shutdown order.

“We are reviewing other remedies that may be available to the state if Enbridge continues to operate the pipelines after the deadline,” spokeswoman Lynsey Mukomel said.

Although U.S. District Judge Janet Neff has ordered mediation, the latest developments suggested the two sides remained deeply entrenched.

Canada's brief, filed in federal court, urged further efforts to reach a settlement.

“Line 5 is essential to our energy security,” said Seamus O'Regan Jr., minister of natural resources. “It heats both Canadian and American homes. It supports both Canadian and American jobs.”

Advocacy groups stepped up the pressure.

In Lansing, labor organizers spread 1,200 hard hats across the grounds of the Michigan Capitol, saying they represented jobs that would be lost without the pipeline. Among them were members of a union representing workers at a refinery in Toledo, Ohio.

“If Line 5 were to shut down, we don’t have alternatives to get our crude oil to the refinery because of where we are and the infrastructure that we have,” said Justin Donley, president of Local 912. "So our refinery would likely shut down.”

The Consumer Energy Alliance, a business coalition, said a shutdown would imperil 33,000 jobs and cause at least $20.8 billion in economic losses in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Environmentalists said a spill in the straits would be far more costly.

“The decrepit, deteriorating and dangerous Line 5 pipeline is an ecological and public health tragedy waiting to happen in the world’s largest freshwater lakes,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

The Bay Mills Indian Community, which has treaty-recognized fishing rights in the Straits of Mackinac, approved a resolution Monday that “banishes” the underwater pipelines from its territory.

“Enbridge’s continued harm to our treaty rights, our environment, our history, our citizens, and our culture, is a prime example of how banishment should be used,” said Whitney Gravelle, president of the tribe's Executive Council. “Banishment is a permanent and final action that is used to protect all that we hold dear.”

Enbridge is seeking state and federal permits to drill a $500 million tunnel beneath the straits to house a new pipeline, which supporters say would remove any threat of a leak. Opponents say the project carries its own environmental risks.

___

Flesher reported from Traverse City, Michigan. AP correspondent Rob Gillies contributed from Toronto. Nichols is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

John Flesher And Anna Liz Nichols, The Associated Press

U.S. border guards regularly engage in racial profiling, 3 Black officers allege in lawsuit

Alexander Panetta 
CBC

© Paul Sancya/The Associated Press Three U.S. border officers stationed at the Blue Water Bridge crossing between Ontario and Michigan have sued the U.S. government alleging racial discrimination at the border. At the same time, the American Civil Liberties Union has…

Allegations of racial profiling at the U.S. border are nothing new: A number of reported incidents have made headlines, including last year's flood of detentions of Iranian-born travellers.

What's more unusual is how those allegations are now coming from inside the agency that oversees the U.S. border — and they're from border officers themselves.

They're contained in a lawsuit against the U.S. government from three officers stationed at a Michigan-Ontario border crossing.


The officers are all Black men, all U.S. military veterans and they're all employed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency at the Blue Water Bridge crossing between Port Huron, Mich., and Sarnia, Ont.

Their lawsuit coincides with the release of data on thousands of apprehension records that the American Civil Liberties Union says proves blatant racial profiling at the border in Michigan.

"I've seen it with my own two eyes," said Mikal Williams, one of the three officers who filed the lawsuit several weeks ago in the U.S. District Court in eastern Michigan's southern division.

"Travellers of colour [are] receiving more scrutiny."

What the lawsuit alleges

The three officers filed the legal action against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the border agency, and will ask a court to grant exemplary and punitive damages in a dollar amount not yet specified.

Their allegations have not yet been tested in court.

The border agency has not yet filed its response to the lawsuit, and a spokesperson said its policy is not to comment on matters of pending litigation.

The legal complaint recounts several anecdotes in which, the plaintiffs say, their white colleagues were harsher on people of colour entering from Canada than on whites.

One example in the court filing involves 17 U.S. citizens, all Black men, returning home from Toronto in SUVs who were pulled over. "[They] were treated without respect and were insulted ... only because of their race," the lawsuit claims.

Another alleged episode involves a Black family from Texas that accidentally turned onto the bridge toward Canada and was stopped after turning around the car to head back south.

The lawsuit says border officers called the local police department when they noticed the driver lacked a valid licence, which, it says, is not the way similar incidents are handled involving white drivers.

A supervisor then threatened the driver with arrest unless he had someone come to the border to drive his vehicle home — which, again, the lawsuit calls unusual.

"Management went above and beyond in trying to get this person arrested. He had no warrants, no criminal history," Jermaine Broderick, one of the plaintiffs, said in an interview with CBC News.

"There was no reason to try to put this person in jail."

'Stop that Black guy'

Another family was stopped on their way out of the United States. It was an American family on the bridge, leaving the country and heading north toward Canada.

The lawsuit alleges that a supervisor called the family suspicious-looking and says that opinion was based entirely on the fact they were Black people in a luxury vehicle.

"I was directed by a senior officer to 'Stop that Black guy,'" Johnny Grays, a 13-year veteran of the agency with eight years' experience at the Port Huron crossing, said in an interview.

"[He was] referring to a family crossing the border."

Grays said stopping a Black family for no reason traumatized him because he thought of his own children as he saw the frightened kids in the vehicle.

The lawsuit alleges that after that incident, a top-level supervisor at the border told the officers they did a good job.

Asked whether he's seen Canadians being treated unfairly, Grays told CBC News: "Absolutely." He said dark-skinned people, from a wide array of nationalities, tend to get more scrutiny.

"Unjust scrutiny ... whether they be Canadian citizens or U.S. citizens. Brown people in general."

Plaintiff's request to leave border crossing was refused

The legal complaint alleges that the Black employees felt discriminated against at work themselves.

Grays said senior officers kept asking to touch his hair, even after he objected. He said a senior staffer repeatedly asked how he had a job in Port Huron instead of Detroit — which has a much higher Black population.

During Black Lives Matter protests last year, the suit alleges, a colleague joked that Grays could wear civilian clothes and infiltrate the protests.

It alleges that the colleague told Grays: "Tell the protesters your name is Indike Mfufu," using an African-sounding name.

Jermaine Broderick said that as an immigrant from Jamaica who spent 14 years serving in the U.S. military, it bothers him to see this discrimination.

"That [service] is [apparently] not good enough," he said in an interview.

© Rebecca Cook/Reuters Vehicles enter Port Huron, Mich., from Sarnia, Ont., on the Blue Water Bridge, as seen from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Blackhawk helicopter.

"The shade of my skin colour has subjected me to undue scrutiny."

Broderick said he asked to leave the border crossing but was refused. Grays, after feuding with a supervisor mentioned in the lawsuit, filed a union grievance last year and was subsequently sidelined from his regular work.

"Placed on desk duty," he said in an interview.
Data from a study on Michigan

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan says it has statistical evidence that travellers are treated differently on the basis of race.

It sued to obtain, and has now released, thousands of federal documents spanning seven years — including more than 13,000 CBP apprehension log records from 2012 to 2019 in Michigan.

A report based on racial data on people detained by the CBP's law enforcement arm, which was released by the ACLU, found that 96.5 per cent of those stopped are listed as having a dark, dark brown, light brown, medium brown, medium or black complexion.

Just 3.5 per cent are listed as having a light or fair complexion.

© Todd Korol/Reuters U.S. Border Patrol, the law enforcement unit of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is accused in a new ACLU report of stopping people of colour in disproportionate numbers in Michigan.

Those numbers are wildly disproportionate, the ACLU report says, not only to the demographics of the state of Michigan but also to the demographics of people ultimately arrested for crossing illegally.

People of Latin American origin comprise less than 20 per cent of the state's foreign-born population, but 85 per cent of non-citizens apprehended in Michigan were from Latin America, the report says.

Because U.S. border officials exercise jurisdiction within 160 kilometres (100 miles) of any international waterway, they can stop travellers anywhere from the Canadian border to the farthest points in the state.

The ACLU report begins with the story of a lawful U.S. resident, Arnulfo Gomez, who was pulled over for his vehicle's loud exhaust system.

Despite having a valid Michigan driver's licence, he was forced to sit on the side of the road for half an hour while he and his wife were questioned, the report says.

"There was no reason for him to pull us over," the report quotes Gomez as saying. "As soon as he saw we are brown, he was after us."

He was never ticketed for the loud exhaust.

VANCOUVER
Coalition says users were shut out of drug decriminalization proposal, demands redo


OTTAWA — Advocates are calling on the federal government and the City of Vancouver to halt the march toward possible drug decriminalization in the city, saying the process excludes users and demands a do-over.

 Provided by The Canadian Press

In a letter to federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu and the Vancouver and British Columbia working groups on decriminalization, a coalition of 15 organizations said the current proposal must be scrapped immediately or risks reproducing the harms of prohibition.

"We cannot abide by the phony 'Vancouver Model' of decriminalization and refuse to be tokenized in petty political bids," reads the letter from groups representing users.

"We want decriminalization — but on our terms, not the terms of the police and politicians."

The group says police have an oversized role in developing the so-called Vancouver model and that the thresholds that define simple possession are too low in the latest submission to Ottawa.

The letter comes after the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users' (VANDU) board of directors resigned from the city's decriminalization working group Monday. A morning meeting between the working group and Health Canada officials confirmed that the board's input "is not being taken seriously," VANDU said in a statement.

The open letter also comes ahead of a planned submission on decriminalization to the federal Health Department this Friday.

Health Canada is currently working with Vancouver on the city's request for exemption from criminal provisions on simple possession of small amounts of drugs.

Vancouver has been the epicentre of an opioid crisis that saw B.C. record 1,176 illicit drug overdose deaths in 2020 — the highest ever in a single year — and more than 7,000 deaths since a public health emergency was declared in April 2016.

Mayor Kennedy Stewart said officials "respect the views of VANDU and other groups."

"The proposed thresholds are a starting point and will be monitored and evaluated as more data become available," Stewart said in a statement.

He said the city's application to Health Canada is grounded in local data — though VANDU argues the figures are outdated — and aimed at reducing stigma to achieve a "fully health-focused approach to substance use."

"As with many pioneering projects, efforts must be made to find consensus between a variety of groups with often vastly differing opinions," Stewart added.

In an emailed statement, Hajdu stressed that "substance use is a health issue, not a moral one." Police are among the "relevant stakeholders," along with Vancouver Coastal Health, the city and the province, she said.

The coalition is demanding the Vancouver Police Department take a backseat in discussions and asking the city to raise the proposed drug thresholds from a supposed three-day supply.

"The police and city officials and health officials go off into a room and prepare something and then they show it to us as they’re about to send it to Health Canada," said VANDU representative Garth Mullins in a news conference Tuesday.

"That is a focus group ... That is not co-design," he said. "That is a decriminalization regime designed by and for police, and it is a Trojan horse to recriminalize us on the other side of its implementation."

Caitlin Shane, a lawyer at the Vancouver-based Pivot Legal Society, worries that a defective decriminalization model could set a harmful precedent for jurisdictions across the country.

Lower thresholds on what constitutes simple possession — rather than possession for the purpose of trafficking — mean users cannot buy multiple days’ supply in one purchase without violating the Criminal Code.

It could also necessitate more frequent interaction with dealers, along with the attendant danger, Shane said.

"These thresholds mean that we are actually incentivizing people to engage with that criminal system more frequently because they are unable to purchase in larger amounts."

Drug users also face greater dangers as the third wave of COVID-19 forces harm reduction sites and outreach programs to curtail their services, leaving at-risk communities out in the cold.

In B.C., deaths linked to the synthetic opioid fentanyl had been on the decline for more than a year until April 2020, when monthly numbers routinely began to double those of 2019.

Opioid-related deaths countrywide could climb as high as 2,000 per quarter in the first half of 2021, far surpassing the peak of nearly 1,200 in the last three months of 2018, according to modelling from the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Canada's ongoing border restrictions have disrupted the flow of illicit drugs, and dealers looking to stretch their limited supplies are more apt to add potentially toxic adulterants.

Benzodiazepines have been detected in drugs circulating in parts of several provinces. Users can be difficult to rouse and slow to respond to naloxone — the drug that reverses opioid overdoses — and more likely to overdose when fentanyl or other opioids are also in the mix.

Richard Elliott, executive director of the HIV Legal Network, said decriminalization helps to remove stigma and barriers to services. But safe supply and treatment programs also make up a key part of the equation, "especially if people's use patterns are being affected by restrictions and by changes in the drug market," he said in an interview.

The B.C. government have made several commitments to helping drug users — Vancouver is also pushing to enhance safe supply — with some supervised consumption sites in the province as well as overdose prevention sites in many cities.

Hajdu said the federal government's focus on harm reduction includes its support for the 2017 Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act, which exempts people from charges after they call 911 during an overdose. The Liberal government has also funded programs that seek to divert users from the criminal justice system and enhance access to safe consumption sites and treatment options, she noted.

Ottawa's work on the decriminalization file is "guided by the health needs of people who use substances" as well as recommendations from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and federal prosecutors, she added.

B.C. is preparing its own provincewide application for exclusion from the rules around simple possession — illegal under the Criminal Code, but open to exemption along with other provisions of the Controlled Drugs and Substances "if, in the opinion of the minister, the exemption is ... in the public interest," the legislation reads.

"Our approach will seek input from many different groups including people with lived/living experience, frontline service workers and health care professionals, and chiefs of police," the B.C. Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions said in an email.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2021.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

MANITOBA
'Health officials, Pallister lied to us for weeks'


Business owner Jeremy Regan woke up angry and dejected Monday — yet another day when his barbershop had been forced to shutter again by the Manitoba government without any evidence about why it needed to happen, more than 14 months into the COVID-19 pandemic.

This time, Regan is frustrated for his storefront not even because it had to close. “But I’m just absolutely confused and irritated that public-health officials and Premier Brian Pallister lied to us for weeks leading up to this,” the Hunter & Gunn owner told the Free Press.

“We would’ve all been OK with these type of circuit-breaker closures, but it’s completely ruthless that they get a free pass on doing this, when all they did was tell us that the virus wasn’t coming from businesses and that we were doing a good job... When Pallister said the same things about us today, while telling us we still had to close, I just sighed so loudly. I literally wanted to yell.”

Regan is not the only such business owner expressing this kind of discontent.

In fact, stakeholders like the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce insist the provincial government has “completely flip-flopped” on its messaging leading up to new restrictions that came into effect Sunday, just before further measures were announced for schools and educators.

“We simply don’t have the rationale, data or any such evidence provided to us right now for why this happened,” said Chuck Davidson, president and chief executive officer for the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce.

“It seems businesses are bearing that brunt certainly, not because they’re the cause of the soaring cases, but because they’re lumped into helping turn down the dial on transmission overall at other places — mostly gatherings which the province isn’t enforcing to its full capacity,” said Loren Remillard of the Winnipeg Chamber.

On Monday, Premier Pallister announced new grants, after a weekend of outrage from the business community. Pallister failed to provide such supports earlier at a press conference announcing the restrictions, which he also did not attend.

The Manitoba Bridge Grant, which will dole out $5,000 a pop, is expected to be automatically provided to small- and medium-sized business owners who had qualified for its previous three iterations by the end of this week.

“We’re grateful for this grant because, yes, we’d been asking for this for weeks,” said Davidson. “Is it going to be enough? I don’t think $20,000 will ever be enough when you’ve been basically closed for well over a year.”

Pressed Monday, Pallister would not answer why the Tory government changed its tune about imposing new restrictions that required these grants in the first place. And Pallister also refused to say how this “tough decision” was made without any modelling or contact tracing data showing they were needed.



“I’m not going to apologize. We had to act. We chose to act,” Pallister told reporters at a news conference, about his “unapologetic” demeanour for imposing restrictions that he admitted were “done out of a sense of urgency without a lot of advance notice.”

The premier acknowledged restaurants, in particular, were “caught off guard” by the Mother’s Day measure. “So, this is a thank-you to them,” he said of a new top-up for eateries on top of the bridge grant for their plight.

“We continue to offer the most generous programs and supports in the country,” said Pallister inaccurately, when asked about assistance for workers, who will lose hours or be stuck without pay altogether due to the new provincial measures. He touted a new provincial pandemic sick leave program that provides workers $600 for up to five full days, but only if it’s related to COVID-19 and if they’re taking time off completely — not if they lose hours because of the new measures.

Last week, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin announced more than a dozen new measures, as coronavirus infections reached a level not seen since the peak of the second wave in November. The new orders will last at least until May 30.

“I think it’s a valid question to ask why businesses are being closed when all we’ve heard is cases are coming from elsewhere,” said Jonathan Alward, Prairies director for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, on Monday. “That said, I know for a lot of people this grant extension will definitely be very helpful as they deal with that.”

The CFIB, Retail Council of Canada (Prairies), and the Winnipeg and Manitoba Chambers of Commerce all expect future closures and layoffs as a result of the new restrictions.

Temur Durrani, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Winnipeg Free Press

Alberta justice minister sorry for saying feds, others rooting for COVID disaster


EDMONTON — Alberta’s justice minister says he was wrong to accuse Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, Alberta’s Opposition NDP, and the media of rooting for COVID-19 to buckle his province’s health system.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

"I would like to offer an apology for my recent comments on my personal Facebook account," Kaycee Madu wrote on Twitter Tuesday night.

"Alberta is facing an unprecedented public health crisis. My comments were wrong, as all Canadians want this global pandemic to end as soon as possible.

"I fully support the premier’s recent call to avoid the divisive political rhetoric during what we all hope is the final period of this pandemic and will continue the important work of government in protecting Albertans from this virus."

The apology came a day after Madu’s spokesman, Blaise Boehmer, told reporters in a statement that Madu was standing by his accusations, adding, "The minister won’t apologize for stating the obvious."

Earlier Tuesday, prior to Madu’s apology, Trudeau rejected the accusations.

"It’s a shame to see people pointing fingers and laying blame and suggesting that anyone in Canada wants anything else than to get through this pandemic as safely as possible everywhere," Trudeau said in Ottawa.

Premier Jason Kenney, also asked about Madu’s comments prior to the apology, said he hadn’t seen them but said, "COVID has caused us a lot of us at various times to say things we regret, and I just encourage everybody — whatever side of the political spectrum they’re on — to give each other a break right now."

Trudeau noted he reached out to Kenney and Alberta's big city mayors last week to offer further support if called upon. Kenney declined the offer.

"Every step of the way the federal government has been there to support Canadians, with $8 out of every $10 in pandemic support coming from the federal government," said Trudeau.

The issues of blame and responsibility have recently been at the centre of debate in Alberta. Kenney’s government has been criticized for waiting weeks to respond with tighter health restrictions to the current third wave that now threatens to overrun the health system if left unchecked.



Alberta has recently had COVID-19 case rates that are the highest in North America.

Kenney acted with renewed rules a week ago, closing schools and introducing sharper limits on businesses and worship services.

He also stressed now is not the time to lay blame. Prior to that, Kenney and his ministers had repeatedly accused Trudeau's government of hamstringing the relief effort with a slow vaccine rollout. As late as April 29, Kenney blamed Alberta's entire third wave on Ottawa.

Last Friday, Madu, in a Facebook post, wrote that the province couldn’t risk giving the COVID-19 virus a chance to "overwhelm our health-care system.

"That's what the NDP, the media and the federal Liberals were looking for and want," he wrote.

NDP Leader Rachel Notley said her caucus has done its job as the Official Opposition.

She said they’ve pushed Kenney’s government to enact rules to reduce the spread of the virus, while giving businesses financial aid to survive and workers support to allow them to isolate but still provide for their families.

Notley added, "You don’t tend to see that sort of incendiary, thoughtless messaging or tone from someone who takes on the role of justice minister."

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the chief medical officer of health, reported 24,998 active COVID-19 cases Tuesday. There are 705 people in hospital with the illness, 163 of them in intensive care — the highest since the pandemic began.

Hinshaw confirmed the province won't give out more first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for the time being.

“Based on global supply challenges, we do not know when Canada, and in turn Alberta, will receive additional doses,” said Hinshaw.

There are 8,400 doses left, which will be used for second shots.

Hinshaw also said they will wait at least 12 weeks between AstraZeneca doses, given current research is showing that the interval delivers the best protection.

Alberta has administered more than 255,000 first doses of AstraZeneca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2021.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press