Provincial and Territorial Update – July 19, 2024
The Provincial and Territorial Updates: An overview of the Provincial Legislative and Territories Legislative Updates for the week of July 19, 2024. Written by Wes McLean.
New Brunswick
- Premier Blaine Higgs, speaking as leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives, said Thursday he’d reduce the province’s harmonized sales tax to 13 per cent — if he is re-elected this year. Higgs appeared at a news conference in Moncton, while several cabinet ministers, with Progressive Conservative candidates, gathered at three other locations across New Brunswick to make the co-ordinated election promise.
- The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed the federal government does not have absolute immunity from liability when Parliament enacts laws that are later overturned as unconstitutional. The decision upholds a 2002 ruling — Mackin v. New Brunswick (Minister of Finance) — that says the state does have limited liability when it enacts unconstitutional laws, but only when those laws are “clearly wrong, in bad faith or an abuse of power.”
- Fredericton Pride’s new interim board of directors is committed to ensuring the festival and parade proceed, according to the chair. We “are focusing our efforts towards that goal,” they said in an unsigned statement to CBC News Wednesday afternoon, declining an interview. The interim board was appointed Monday and has “worked tirelessly to ensure the continuation of all planned events,” according to a statement issued later in the day.
- A judge will hear the New Brunswick government’s request to dissolve an education council this fall, after the provincial election. The application to dissolve the Anglophone East District Education Council (DEC) will be heard in Moncton’s Court of King’s Bench on Nov. 14. The application stems from a dispute between the education council overseeing Moncton-area schools and the provincial government over the province’s changes to a gender-identity policy last year.
Nova Scotia
- A three-day meeting among Canada’s premiers ended with provincial and territorial leaders calling on Ottawa to quickly ramp up defence spending in order to protect the country’s trade relationship with the United States ahead of its upcoming election. At the closing news conference of the Council of the Federation meetings in Halifax, multiple premiers highlighted the importance of Canada’s NATO commitment to spend at least two percent of GDP on defence. “It’s really important we meet those obligations on the world stage,” Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said Wednesday.
- Nova Scotia and the Mi’kmaq have temporarily suspended any moose hunting in Cape Breton due to a significant drop in the moose population. A news release from the Department of Natural Resources said its annual hunt will pause for three years and no licence lottery will take place this year. The Mi’kmaq have also put a moratorium on their rights-based moose harvest until the situation becomes sustainable.
- Nova Scotia’s Department of Environment and Climate Change is looking for public input on 16 proposed new or expanded wilderness areas and nature reserves. It opened an online survey that will be active until Sept. 20. “Designating these sites will be one more step in helping Nova Scotia protect 20 percent of its land and water by 2030,” the department said in a news release on Friday.
- Nova Scotia Health has confirmed a case of tuberculosis at a child-care centre in its central zone, which includes Halifax, Eastern Shore and Windsor-West Hants. The health authority would not disclose what facility was affected, citing privacy reasons. It did send a letter to families and staff of that child-care centre informing them of the case and said their risk of exposure is considered low. That letter was then widely shared on social media.
Prince Edward Island
- Organizers behind a protest seeking exemptions for foreign workers from a recent change in P.E.I.’s immigration rules say they have not made any progress with the provincial government. Some of the affected newcomers, most of whom are from India, held a news conference Thursday in Charlottetown to share their personal stories and clear up misinformation and hate they say is circulating online.
- P.E.I. households making a net income of up to $129,000 a year will now be eligible for a free heat pump under the federal government’s Oil to Heat Pump Affordability program. But to qualify for the maximum amount, at least five people must be living in the house. The federal program had been previously announced, but it wasn’t available on P.E.I. while the two governments had been in negotiations.
- Ahead of the new school year, P.E.I’s Chief Public Health Office is reminding post-secondary students to get a free meningitis B vaccine. The provincial program administered 1,900 doses of the vaccine in its first year, which began in May 2023. Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison said she is very pleased with those numbers. She’s encouraging students to get the vaccine before heading back to school this fall.
- The emergency department at Western Hospital in Alberton, P.E.I., is closing early over the weekend due to a lack of staffing. The department will close at 4 p.m. July 19-21, Health P.E.I. announced in a news release Friday morning. It will reopen Monday for regular hours, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Newfoundland and Labrador
- A community on Newfoundland’s east coast is waiting for any news about a missing fishing vessel that is the focus of an intense search, says a mayor. The vessel, the 15-metre Elite Navigator, has not been heard from since Wednesday evening. The boat’s last known location was about 300 kilometres northeast of Gander. New-Wes-Valley mayor Mike Tiller said the people of his community are worried and anxious for any updates, and hoping the vessel will be found.
- Federal Labour and Seniors Minister Seamus O’Regan announced Thursday he’s resigning from cabinet and won’t seek re-election. O’Regan, 53, is staying on as MP until the next general election. He said in a media statement posted to social media that “ultimately, my family comes first. “I need to be a better husband, son, uncle, and friend, and this job means, and deserves, a lot of time in order to do it well.” He was elected to Parliament in 2015 as the MP for St. John’s South Mount Pearl. O’Regan has been in cabinet since 2017 and has also held the natural resources, Indigenous services and veterans affairs portfolios. He took over as labour minister in 2021.
- PC health critic Barry Petten says the growing number of people in Newfoundland and Labrador without family doctors makes clear the importance of a concrete plan from the provincial government. According to the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association, the number of people without a family doctor in the province has increased from 136,000 last year People without a family doctor increases to 175,000 this year. — about one-third of the population.
- The Innu Nation says it’s taking the Newfoundland and Labrador government back to court over the Muskrat Falls rate mitigation deal. The court case, first filed in August 2021, claimed Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador violated their duty to the Innu by not including them in consultations and accommodations in the $5.2-billion rate mitigation deal, breaching the Crown’s fiduciary duties to the Innu.
Quebec
- The premiers of Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador are so far the only leaders to publicly volunteer to take in asylum seekers to ease pressure on Quebec, despite a joint call from all premiers to distribute them more evenly across the country. During a news conference Wednesday in Halifax at the close of a three-day summit of Canada’s premiers, several provincial leaders said they are facing similar pressures from immigration, and would not commit to accepting more people. Quebec Premier François Legault says his province can no longer support the high number of asylum seekers who have arrived in recent years.
- Premier François Legault was forced to clarify remarks he made Monday when he appeared to forget recent history in asserting that Quebec politicians didn’t face political violence similar to the attempted assassination of former U.S. president Donald Trump. Speaking to reporters at the Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax, Legault said what happened over the weekend to Trump “is worrying for democracy in the United States” but “we don’t have that — violence against politicians, in Quebec.”
- A Quebec Superior Court judge has denied Concordia University’s request to delay a controversial tuition hike for out-of-province and international students. Justice Éric Dufour ruled on July 12 that Concordia didn’t demonstrate that the changes represent a clear violation of their rights, therefore rejecting the request for a stay to temporarily suspend significant tuition hikes. The university, he ruled, did raise serious issues and proved it would suffer serious or irreparable harm.
- An Angus Reid survey reveals that 42 percent of Canadians believe Quebec is better treated by the federal government than all other provinces, essentially receiving more than it gives. The only provinces that felt otherwise were Ontario and Quebec. The poll was conducted just before a three-day first ministers’ meeting began on Monday and aims to calculate what is referred to as a “net alienation score.”
Ontario
- Ontario Premier Doug Ford handed out fresh mandate letters to the executive council as his new election-focused team of ministers met for their first in-person cabinet meeting at Queen’s Park on Thursday. Weeks after shuffling his front bench, Ford confirmed to Global News that he gave his ministers new instructions on the policy expectations set out by the premier’s office.
- The union representing LCBO workers says that the province is refusing to sign a return-to-work protocol for its members and that a strike that has shuttered retail locations across Ontario will continue for the time being. The LCBO announced a tentative agreement with the workers earlier on Friday afternoon, noting that it would allow stores to reopen as early as Tuesday. But during a press conference later on Friday afternoon, a spokesperson for the union said that without a signed return-to-work protocol there is no deal.
- Ontario has the worst recycling rates in Canada for cans, plastic bottles and cartons of non-alcoholic beverages, with billions of these containers going to landfills and incinerators annually. But for more than a year, momentum was building toward a key shift to try to improve things. Premier Doug Ford’s government was seriously considering creating a deposit-return system for soft drink containers, a system that’s already in place in eight other provinces and that already exists for beer, wine and spirits in Ontario.
- The Ontario government is announcing the start of construction by Enbridge Gas on its $358 million Panhandle Regional Expansion Project in the southwest region. Premier Doug Ford was in Leamington on Friday to announce details. The project is expected to secure about 7,000 jobs and enable $4.5 billion of investment opportunities in the province. “Our government is continuing to secure the reliable and affordable energy that is critical to our plan to rebuild Ontario’s economy, keep costs down for families and build homes across the province,” said Ford. “This project will help deliver that reliable energy supply and, in the process, create good-paying jobs, support our world-leading greenhouse sector and power Ontario’s economic growth for many years to come.”
Manitoba
- The federal Conservatives have picked an electrician who calls himself a proud union member to run for the party in a working-class Winnipeg riding. Colin Reynolds will represent the Conservatives in an upcoming byelection in Elmwood-Transcona, a seat known for its blue-collar roots. In a video posted on social media Friday morning, Reynolds says he’s a construction electrician and a “proud member” of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2085. “Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau’s costly coalition does not represent union workers like me,” he says, referring to a confidence-and-supply agreement between the two parties.
- The former CEO of Shared Health saw his pay exceed $600,000 last year — a nearly 83 percent increase from the prior year — despite only working for four months before his unexpected departure from the provincial healthcare organization. Adam Topp earned $603,604 in 2023, according to recent compensation disclosures. The same documents reveal some executives also claimed in the range of $30,000 to $60,000 in extra compensation, attributed at least partially to them collecting retroactive pay increases to match the raises of unionized healthcare staff.
- A provincial union leader says it’s understandable some public-sector workers in Manitoba’s healthcare system would feel overlooked if they were paid as much as those cooking burgers at fast-food joints. “You start at $17 an hour working as a custodian, while McDonald’s in Swan River is hiring at $17 an hour — so where are you going to go? These jobs aren’t competitive,” said Kyle Ross, who represents thousands of healthcare workers in rural Manitoba whose positions have nowhere near the public profile as doctors or nurses.
- The provincial government says it’s “outraged” by recent evictions at a Winnipeg apartment it says were illegal, which saw dozens of tenants given cash and forced out of the building after a notice was posted at the front entrance Friday saying it was being shut down. “These events are unacceptable and they’re roadblocks to our efforts to end homelessness,” Bernadette Smith, minister for housing, addictions and homelessness, said at a Wednesday news conference.
Saskatchewan
- A tech outage has disrupted operations in multiple industries around the globe, but only minimal effects have been reported for public services in Saskatchewan so far. Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike says the company’s Falcon Sensor software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, according to Reuters. The problem sends Windows machines and servers into a recovery loop, rendering them unable to properly restart.
- A small city sprouts up alongside the canola every year near Langham, Sask. That’s where Ag in Motion holds its three-day outdoor farm show. The event attracts about 10,000 daily visitors to its 40-hectare site northwest of Saskatoon. “It’s like they got one of everything out here,” said Trevor Kwiatkowski. He farms grain and oil seed crops near Prince Albert, so he’s always looking for the newest seeding and tilling technology.
- One advocate says crowding at a Prince Albert, Sask., jail for women has reached crisis levels. As of Friday, there were 227 female inmates inside Pine Grove Correctional Centre, government officials confirmed. The facility is designed to hold a maximum of 166 inmates. More than 90 percent of them are Indigenous. It was even worse earlier this month when numbers reached 275. Spaces once used as a chapel, gymnasium or visitor area are now filled with beds, officials said. Some cells designed for two people have had three, a practice known as “triple bunking.”
- A growing number of premiers are throwing their support behind Newfoundland and Labrador’s bid to sue Ottawa for what they say are unfair principles in the federal equalization program, which provides billions of dollars to have-not provinces. At the final day of the Council of the Federation in Halifax, British Columbia Premier David Eby and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said they will both intervene in the court case that N.L. intends to launch, in an effort to seek a more equitable distribution of transfer payments to provinces.
Alberta
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says no rules were broken when she and other cabinet ministers attended multiple Edmonton Oilers playoff games this spring, including in the luxury box of the company that imported the province’s ill-fated foreign shipment of children’s pain medication. Smith made the comments Friday in response to a story published late Thursday by the Globe and Mail, that described how Smith attended a playoff game in Vancouver alongside B.C. Premier David Eby courtesy of a board member of Invest Alberta, the Crown corporation tasked with drawing investment to the province.
- Premiers David Eby of B.C. and Danielle Smith of Alberta have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at cooling a wine war that has been brewing between the two provinces since the beginning of this year. In January, Alberta’s liquor wholesaler told B.C. winemakers it would stop selling their products in retail stores. The move was made because the agency which regulates the sale of wine in Alberta believed wineries in B.C. were allowing consumers in Alberta to order wine directly, rather than buying it in stores.
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith — who once told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson she wished he would put a federal cabinet minister in his “crosshairs” — called on “progressive” politicians to temper their language Monday after former U.S. President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt. Speaking to reporters as premiers gather in Halifax for the annual Council of the Federation, Smith said she’s concerned about the language sometimes used to describe Canadian conservatives.
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s content with letting premiers work out a new system for equalization and not joining in a legal challenge of the formula brought forth by Newfoundland and Labrador. Smith made the remarks Wednesday on the final day of the Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax. “We take a bit of a different approach. I don’t know necessarily that I want the Supreme Court deciding this solution, the answer to this,” she said.
British Columbia
- British Columbia’s premier says he wants to support Newfoundland and Labrador’s plans to sue Ottawa over the federal equalization program, which transfers money from wealthier provinces to poorer ones, calling the current formula “completely absurd.” The premier said British Columbia taxpayers are put at a disadvantage by the equalization formula, which is an attempt by Ottawa to reduce regional wealth disparities across the country.
- The B.C. government says it is taking action through new child welfare measures, announcing changes to its approach following the release of a report that outlined a “web of actions and inactions” that ultimately led to the death of an 11-year-old boy at the hands of those chosen to be his caregivers. The Don’t Look Away report by B.C.’s representative for children and youth (RCY) was released Tuesday, noting the ministry that is supposed to be protecting British Columbia’s children made what she says was a “massive error,” resulting in the torturous death of the boy, identified in the report with the pseudonym Colby.
- Families with special needs children who have aged out of high school say they have been left in the lurch with no support because of funding shortages from the NDP government. Thomas Jung’s 20-year-old son Christopher is on the autism spectrum and finished school in June 2023. Jung’s wife and Christopher’s mother died of cancer two years ago. Jung told Global News that along with his son’s confusion about where his mother is, he essentially has not left the house since he left high school because there is no funding for a spot in a day program.
- The federal government and the Province of British Columbia are investing a combined $195 million to upgrade highway infrastructure in B.C.’s northwest to support critical mineral development in the region. The funding will be through the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund and the project has been conditionally approved to support the development and operation of several copper, molybdenum, zinc, nickel and cobalt projects in B.C.’s Golden Triangle region, a Natural Resources Canada release said. The federal contribution is $75 million with the remaining $120 million funded by B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
Northwest Territories
- The N.W.T. government has issued a travel advisory for multiple highways in the territory over smoke from wildfires. The advisory is for the following areas:
- Highway 6
- Highway 1, from kilometre 0 to 84
- Highway 1, from kilometre 260 to 294.
- The N.W.T.’s Department of Infrastructure said people should expect delays and should check the N.W.T. highway conditions map for updates.
Yukon
- The Yukon government says it’s ready to step in to “complement or supplement” Victoria Gold’s work to contain the massive slide that took place last month at the Eagle mine heap leach facility. Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday morning, Deputy Energy, Mines and Resources Minister Lauren Haney said the company hasn’t shared much information publicly about its work to remediate and contain the spill. The briefing comes as experts working with the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun are sounding the alarm on the level of cyanide contamination at the mine site.
Nunavut
- Tourist visits in Nunavut have started to rebound since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Figures provided by Parks Canada show that in one park alone, visitation in 2023-24 is at 77 percent of where it was in the last season before the onset of the pandemic. “Last year, we had 253 visitors,” said Leanna Ellsworth, manager of Auyuittuq National Park. “Annually, we do get up to 300 visitors,” Ellsworth says of all five national parks in Nunavut, Auyuittuq is the most popular one. But it’s not just national parks that draw tourists. Cruise ships also make their way to Nunavut communities, such as Pond Inlet. “There was a bit of a slow start after the pandemic,” said Dylan Mablick, Pond Inlet’s economic development officer. “There weren’t too many cruise ships visiting, but it started progressively increasing.”