Legal groups and homelessness advocates are speaking out against the city’s decision to return to pre-pandemic enforcement at encampments, saying that tearing down tents won’t solve housing issues and will only further traumatize the people living in them.
WINNIPEG — Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is apologizing for comments he made almost a month ago about Canadian history.
Pallister says he’s asking for forgiveness after saying people who came to Canada, before and after it became a country, did not come to destroy but to build.
Since then, his Indigenous relations minister resigned from cabinet, two Indigenous men quit provincial economic development boards and Indigenous leaders have roundly condemned the premier.
Pallister says he wasn’t trying to praise colonialism and was trying to appeal to people to build the future together.
Some Progressive Conservative caucus members have distanced themselves from Pallister’s remarks.
Pallister, who has previously hinted at retiring before the next provincial election, did not directly answer when asked whether he plans to leave office in the coming months.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 3, 2021.
The Canadian Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Gov. Kim Reynolds fired the leader of Iowa’s state-run nursing home for veterans in May after learning he had been overpaid by $90,000 over a nearly two-year period, a state audit reported Thursday.
Iowa Veterans Home Commandant Timon Oujiri told governor’s office representatives in May that he was long aware of payroll errors that improperly boosted his salary by nearly $950 per week but that he kept receiving the excess pay, the report said.
Oujiri, 63, said he noticed the overpayments shortly after they began in July 2019 but did nothing to resolve the issue, the report said. By the summer of 2020, he said he “definitely noticed” he was still being overpaid but was “too embarrassed” to report the problem by that point, it said.
The governor fired Oujiri, who had been commandant since 2017, the next day and her office reported the financial irregularities to the state auditor.
Reynolds’ spokesman, Pat Garrett, said Thursday that the governor’s office was working with the attorney general’s office to recover any overpayments Oujiri received during his employment.
The report issued by State Auditor Rob Sand said that Oujiri received $90,000 in excess salary payments and that the state incurred another $15,000 in improper retirement and insurance benefits payments for him from July 2019 through April.
The report shed light on what had been a surprise and unexplained firing.
Reynolds appeared with Oujiri at a news conference in December to praise the “outstanding job” he and his staff had done running the veterans home, which is Iowa’s largest nursing home, during the coronavirus pandemic. In May, Garrett told reporters that Oujiri had been abruptly relieved of his duties as commandant, but he didn’t say why.
State officials refused to pay Oujiri $11,625 for unused vacation that he was owed when he was fired and credited that amount as a partial repayment. That leaves nearly $94,000 in improper disbursements, including $14,000 in retirement account contributions that the Iowa Veterans Home is trying to recover, the audit found.
Department of Administrative Services employees identified the excess payments to Oujiri in April while reviewing payroll information for accuracy before switching to a new system.
They found that the problems began in July 2019, when salaried department directors, elected officials, and board members were supposed to change the defaults on their timesheets from 56 hours to 40 hours per week.
While DAS officials sent an email to state agencies instructing them of the change, Iowa Veterans Home payroll assistants reported that they didn’t recall receiving it and the email wasn’t sent to Oujiri, the report said.
The state changed Oujiri’s default hours to 40, but Iowa Veterans Home staff responsible for entering his hours in the system overrode the change every pay period and added in 56, the report said.
The result was that Oujiri got a 43% pay hike beginning in July 2019 that increased his annual salary to $172,681.60 — far more than the maximum $128,890 salary that he knew was allowed for the job, the report said. His pay was $948.50 per week higher than his authorized salary over the next year, and that increased to $957.57 per week in July 2020.
Oujiri was the only person affected by the payroll change at the Iowa Veterans Home, and the audit found that he was the only state official who received an unauthorized increase in pay.
Oujiri has not responded to messages seeking comment since May and he declined to speak with auditors and Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agents looking into the matter, according to the report.
Sand sent his report to county prosecutors in Des Moines and Marshalltown, where the veterans home is located. So far, Oujiri has not been charged.
On Monday, the governor appointed former Marine Corps official Matthew Peterson as the new commandant of the home, which houses more than 500 veterans and spouses and has 900 employees.
Ryan J. Foley, The Associated Press
OTTAWA — New Democrats joined forces Monday with the Liberals to cut short initial debate on a bill aimed at ensuring a federal election could be held safely, if need be, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The move means Bill C-19 will be put to a second reading vote Tuesday, allowing it to be referred to a House of Commons committee for greater scrutiny and potential amendments.
It prompted howls of protest from Conservative and Bloc Quebecois MPs, who accused the minority Liberal government of gagging MPs and short-circuiting democracy on a bill meant to protect it.
Changes to election rules “should go forward if and only if there's a large consensus around it,” Bloc Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said.
“One player cannot impose his own rules on every other player on the ice.”
Among other things, the bill would allow for a three-day voting period, rather than the usual one day, and make it easier for voters to obtain and cast mail-in ballots. It would also allow Elections Canada more flexibility to conduct mobile polls in long-term care facilities.
Conservatives accused the government of “rushing” the bill on which they’ve had only four hours of debate since it was introduced almost five months ago.
Cutting short debate on legislation is never acceptable but doing so on a bill concerning “the right to vote of citizens is to add insult to injury,” said Conservative House leader Gerard Deltell.
They also argued that the move shows Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning to pull the plug on his own government in the midst of a deadly pandemic.
“If the government does not want a pandemic election, what is the big desire to rush this bill through now?” asked Regina Conservative MP Warren Steinley.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc noted that the Conservatives are the ones who repeatedly move motions of non-confidence in the minority Liberal government — which would result in an election if all three main opposition parties were to support any of them.
“If anybody is rushing to an election, it would certainly appear the Conservatives are willing to play chicken all the time, hoping somebody else swerves,” he said.
“We do not think that is a very responsible way to to proceed,” LeBlanc added, noting that the bill was prompted by the chief electoral officer’s urgent appeal last fall for temporary rule changes to allow, if needed, for the safe conduct of an election during the pandemic.
While Conservatives maintained they wanted more time to debate the bill, they ate up the three hours that were supposed to be devoted to C-19 Monday, using a procedural tactic that forced the Commons to debate instead a committee report on the Line 5 pipeline dispute with Michigan.
New Democrat MP Daniel Blaikie said his party supported imposing time allocation on C-19 debate only after the Conservatives made it clear they’re only interested in blocking the bill.
“I don’t think it’s responsible as parliamentarians to wait until we stumble into an election,” he said in an interview.
Earlier Monday, the NDP had proposed extending Commons sitting hours to allow more time for debating C-19 but Blaikie said the Conservatives rejected that idea.
“It’s hard not to conclude that the Conservatives are being totally disingenuous when they say they want more time for this bill, that they’re not just trying to stop it from moving forward at all,” he said.
The Conservatives’ approach to the bill raises the suspicion that they’d be perfectly content if a pandemic election was held and thousands of voters were not able or were afraid to cast ballots, Blaikie added.
“This is the kind of conclusion one ultimately has to draw,” he said. “I think we all have to ask ourselves why it is that the official Opposition is so dead set against (moving the bill forward).”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2021.
Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press
Federal New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh is the latest to say he believes there’s a connection between anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests and far-right extremism.
OTTAWA — Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen says he expects changes to federal strategy to finance experimental ways to deliver social services should more easily, and quickly, bring in needed private-sector backers for the plan to work.
Hussen says the changes respond to the concerns he heard from social-purpose organizations over the last year as revenues have dropped and demand for their services rose.
Last month’s federal budget outlined a pledge to boost near-term spending for groups to partner with a private investor and test ways of delivering services like skills training.
The budget would also redo the parameters of the program to have the treasury take on a little more financial risk to lure the private capital needed.
Hussen says in an interview the risk is necessary if the government wants to lure private dollars and stretch public funds.
He says the government expects to attract $2 of private money for every $1 of public dollars flowing to groups through the social-finance fund.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2021.
The Canadian Press
A federal watchdog says he is investigating Pornhub over potential privacy breaches related to exploitive content posted online, as concerns around non-consensual use of images in a digital world continue to mount.
Online conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and protests against public health orders are helping to spread dangerous ideas laden with racism and bigotry, says a network monitoring hate groups in Canada.
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp plans to sign a repeal of Georgia’s Civil War-era citizen's arrest law on Monday, a year after the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man pursued by white men who said they suspected him of a crime.
The state House and Senate passed House Bill 479 by overwhelming margins. Kemp and lawmakers made the bill one of their top priorities after Arbery’s killing.
The outcry over Arbery’s fatal shooting, which was recorded on video by one of the murder defendants, also pushed lawmakers to give Georgia new hate crimes law in 2020, more than 15 years after the state Supreme Court overturned an earlier law.
The law would end the right of people in Georgia to make an arrest if a crime is committed in the person's presence "or within their immediate knowledge.” It still provides for self defence and allows business owners to detain suspected thieves.
Those who had long pushed for the repeal said the law was approved in 1863 to round up escaped slaves and was later used to justify the lynching of African Americans.
Arbery, 25, was fatally shot while running through a neighbourhood near Brunswick on the Georgia coast in February 2020.
The father and son who pursued Arbery — Greg and Travis McMichael — weren't arrested or charged until the state took over the case more than two months after the shooting. A prosecutor initially assigned to the case had cited Georgia's citizen's arrest law to argue that the shooting was justified.
Defence lawyers said the McMichaels pursued Arbery suspecting he was a burglar, after security cameras had previously recorded him entering a home under construction. They said Travis McMichael shot Arbery while fearing for his life as they grappled over a shotgun.
Video of the fatal encounter was recorded by William "Roddie" Bryan, a neighbour who joined the chase. All three men are charged with murder.
Prosecutors have said Arbery stole nothing and was merely out jogging when the McMichaels and Bryan chased him. They remain jailed without bail.
Issues surrounding citizen's arrest could be aired in pretrial hearings in coming days.
Under the repeal bill, people who are mere bystanders or witnesses generally would not have the right to detain people. Deadly force couldn't be used to detain someone unless it's in self-protection, protecting a home, or preventing a forcible felony. The changes would retain Georgia's "stand your ground" law, which says a person who is being threatened isn't required to retreat.
It would still allow business employees to detain people they believe stole something, and let restaurant employees detain people who try to leave without paying for a meal. It also would let licensed security guards and private detectives detain people.
Someone who is detained must be released along with their personal belongings if a police officer or sheriff's deputy doesn't arrive within a reasonable time.
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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
Jeff Amy, The Associated Press
After suggesting that under Bill C-10, the Canadian Radio-television and telecommunications Commission (CRTC) could impose discoverability regulations on individuals who have a large-enough following online, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault now says that’s not the case.
