Alberta RCMP to start returning guns seized from evacuated homes in flood ravaged High River

Mounties in Alberta announced Sunday that they’ll begin returning some of the guns they seized during searches of evacuated homes in this flood ravaged town.

An RCMP news release says that owners of guns that were seized should call police, and that an officer will call them back to make arrangements to have the weapons picked up.

The Mounties said earlier that they took the guns as officers searched homes in High River’s flood zone to look for flood victims, pets and anything that might pose a threat to returning residents.

Any guns were removed from homes because they were not properly stored, said Staff Sgt. Brian Jones, who added that no charges are planned.

Our focus was on the search and rescue operations

“There is no indication of that at this point in time. That wasn’t the reason. That wasn’t the intention,” Jones said about the gun seizures.

“Our focus was on the search and rescue operations.”

The move to take the weapons was condemned by the Prime Minister’s Office, who said the Mounties should focus on more important tasks such as protecting lives and private property.

Critics took the PMO to task, saying the Harper government should not be dictating how the Mounties should conduct their operations.

Some evacuees were allowed into High River on the weekend, but part of the town are still under metres of water and it could be another five weeks before some people will be able to go home.

Jones said owners of guns that were seized can let RCMP hang onto their firearms if they can’t return to their homes, yet. He said it’s also OK if they want to store the guns with someone else.

“If the owner wants them and they have a place they can safely store them, we’ll give them back,” Jones said.

In a statement Friday, the RCMP said officers found that many gun owners had actually laid out their guns in plain view in order to move valuable possessions to higher ground in their homes.

Jones said some gun owners in High River were happy to hear that their weapons were safe.

Darryl Davies, a Carleton University criminology professor, considered the condemnation from the Prime Minister’s Office to be highly inappropriate.

“It’s completely and utterly inappropriate for the PMO to issue operational instructions to the RCMP,” Davies said Sunday.

Have we arrived at a point in Canada where the PMO can interfere in criminal investigations as well?“

Davies said he thought it must be embarrassing for the RCMP to be admonished by the PMO in the media, and that it undermines the force’s credibility and impartiality.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford defended the decision to seize the guns, although she noted she was disappointed to face questions about the issue, suggesting there were more important issues to deal with coming out of the flood disaster.

Jones said it was understandable that people in High River would be upset.

“The residents of High River have undergone a tumultuous experience,” Jones said.

View the original article here

Cirque du Soleil performer dies in Las Vegas after 50ft fall during show

LAS VEGAS — A Paris-born performer in Cirque du Soleil’s “Ka” died after a fall during a show in Las Vegas.

Sarah Guyard-Guillot was pronounced dead late Saturday night at a hospital after falling about 50 feet from the show’s stage.

Witnesses told the Las Vegas Sun that the accident occurred near the end of the production Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

Visitor Dan Mosqueda of Colorado Springs, Colo., said the 31-year-old acrobatic performer was being hoisted up the side of the stage when it appeared that she slipped free of her safety wire and plummeted to an open pit below the stage.

“Initially, a lot of people in the audience thought it was part of the [show],” he told the Sun. “But you could hear screaming, then groaning, and we could hear a female artist crying from the stage.”

The show momentarily continued, then stopped. Minutes after the accident, a recorded announcement informed audience members that refunds or vouchers to future shows would be offered, and the crowd was dismissed.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte issued a statement Sunday praising Guyard-Guillot and saying performances of “Ka” have been cancelled until further notice.

Guyard-Guillot, a mother of two children, had been with the original cast of “Ka” since 2006, and had been an acrobatic performer for over 20 years.

“I am heartbroken. I wish to extend my sincerest sympathies to the family. We are all completely devastated,” Laliberte said. “We are reminded with great humility and respect how extraordinary our artists are each and every night. Our focus now is to support each other as a family.”

Cirque officials are working with authorities investigating the accident and have offered their full co-operation, he added.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office will rule on the cause of death.

The Quebec-based Cirque du Soleil was founded in 1984 and has become an international entertainment giant, employing 5,000 employees around the world including more than 1,300 artists.

The company boasts on its website that more than 100 million spectators have seen a Cirque du Soleil show since 1984.

With files from The Canadian Press

View the original article here

Arthur Porter trades medical advice for ‘makeshift bed’ and ‘a little bit of privacy’ in ‘medieval’ Panama prison

Like the other inmates who fight for survival inside Pavilion Six, the crowded, disease-ridden building reserved for foreigners at Panama’s notorious La Joya prison, Arthur Porter scrounges for food and fends off rats. But that’s about all he has in common with the local population, mainly drug traffickers and the odd killer.

Canada’s former spy review committee chairman and member of the Queen’s Privy Council sticks out like a sore thumb.

The rest are lost causes, men without options or second chances. They wonder what Dr. Porter is doing inside La Joya. They can’t understand why he has chosen to remain there, eating spoiled rice and beans, drinking dirty water, dealing with corrupt guards. They look at Dr. Porter in wonder, because unlike themselves, he could choose to leave.

Dr. Porter arrived at Pavilion Six earlier this month, determined to fight extradition to Canada, where he is accused of participating in an alleged $22.5-million kickback scheme relating to the construction of a Montreal super hospital. Before his curious international business affairs were exposed in this newspaper, forcing his resignation from Canada’s Security and Intelligence Review Committee and as boss of the McGill University Health Centre, Dr. Porter was an upper-crust jet-setter, winging from one country to another in an Air Canada business-class seat. He flew gratis: Dr. Porter served as an Air Canada director until his troubles began.

Earlier this year, he was charged in Canada with conspiracy and with laundering the proceeds of crime. But police couldn’t arrest him, because by then he was firmly ensconced in Nassau, Bahamas, where for years he has operated a private cancer clinic, and where his wife and three daughters resided.

Dr. Porter refused to return to Canada, telling local reporters that he had developed stage four lung cancer and was too sick to travel.

But in May, he was arrested by Interpol in Panama, where he claimed to be on a diplomatic mission on behalf of his native Sierra Leone. His wife Pamela was with him, and she was arrested on charges of money laundering in Canada.

This month has been especially hard for Dr. Porter. He observed his 57th birthday locked inside Pavilion Six, a ramshackle concrete bunker meant to house 250 prisoners and stuffed to the rafters with almost 500. Last week, his wife was extradited to Canada and was remanded in a Montreal jail. This week, she was denied bail and remains under lock and key.

On Wednesday, the government of Sierra Leone issued a press release from its embassy in Washington, D.C., declaring that it had cancelled Dr. Porter’s diplomatic passport, and that it had “revoked” his position as the country’s “Ambassador at Large.” Dr. Porter has also touted himself as Sierra Leone’s Ambassador Plenipotentiary; the title no longer applies, says Pasco Temple, information attaché at Sierra Leone’s embassy in Washington.

Mr. Temple would not say what prompted this week’s announcement. “I was simply instructed to put out the press release explaining that Dr. Porter no longer has any diplomatic standing with us,” Mr. Temple said Friday, adding that he wasn’t aware of Dr. Porter’s alleged crimes. Nor was he aware of his current predicament, inside the Panamanian prison.

An inmate inside Pavilion Six says Dr. Porter has gradually adapted to the prison regime and conditions, which he describes as medieval. Reached this week on his Blackberry — the device of choice among prisoners with enough resources to bribe guards and have goods smuggled inside — the inmate said Dr. Porter, an oncologist, has been dispensing medical advice to other captives, who have “1,001 medical needs.”

In return, they made him a “makeshift bed” from cardboard, and found a space for him on a crowded cellblock floor. He recently received an upgrade: Dr. Porter now has a bunk with curtains, affording him “a little bit of privacy.”

“I hope for the time we will have him here, we will benefit from his skills and experience as a doctor,” the inmate said in an email.

But he expressed surprise that Dr. Porter has chosen to fight extradition to Canada, especially since he’s purportedly dying of cancer. He’s been taking “oral chemotherapy” medication, the inmate says, and occasionally uses an oxygen mask. “Personally, I believe [jail in] Canada would have been a better option for him than La Joya Panama,” the inmate wrote in an email. “A man of his status and caliber deserves more than this. But it is his choice to fight extradition.”

Only Dr. Porter knows why he prefers to suffer in a dangerous hellhole, rather than return to Canada, like his wife, and answer to charges. Perhaps he has more to lose, should he come home.

National Post

• Email: bhutchinson@nationalpost.com | Twitter: hutchwriter

View the original article here

What’s more important to Ottawa: resupplying Canada’s navy or Arctic sovereignty?

The federal government will decide in the fall whether resupplying Canada’s navy or Arctic sovereignty is more important.

The Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard each has major shipbuilding projects scheduled to be ready for construction at the same time around 2015.

After years and millions of dollars spent creating, reviewing and then disgarding potential designs for new Royal Canadian Navy supply ships, it was recently announced that Canada will just buy a German design and build that.

This is good news. But it took far too long to get here.

Canada’s existing naval supply vessels are elderly. The younger of the two Protecteur-class ships in service with the Navy was commissioned in 1970 — 43 years ago. They have been scheduled for retirement and replacement for years, but budgetary pressures and difficulty coming up with a new design have repeatedly delayed the program, which was originally announced in 2004.

Continue reading …

But the Vancouver shipyard slated to build them can only handle one project at a time, meaning work on either the Navy’s new resupply ships or the Coast Guard’s new polar icebreaker will have to be delayed.

Senior officials briefing reporters on background on the government’s $35-billion national shipbuilding strategy Friday confirmed the conflict and said a decision is coming.

“It is clear that the decision will require that the production and delivery schedule for one of the projects be adjusted to accommodate the construction of the other,” said one Public Works official who could not be identified. “The final decision as to which project goes first will be made in the fall of 2013.”

There are major ramifications associated with putting off either project.

The navy’s 50-year-old resupply ships are environmentally unsound and prohibitively expensive to maintain, while the coast guard’s existing heavy icebreaker is also near the end of its life.

In addition, a delay to either project will have financial repercussions because of inflation and other increased costs, which means the government will have to either put in more money or accept fewer or less capable ships.

National Defence, the coast guard and the Public Works department will spend the summer assessing the potential impacts of delaying either project so an informed decision can be made.

“The decision will be based on a comprehensive assessment that will consider operational impacts such as the need to include ship-life extension and refit costs for existing vessels,” the Public Works official said. “The assessment will also include the readiness of each ship design, schedule optimization and risks.”

One coast guard official, who also could not be identified, said a study is already looking into what work will need to be done to keep the 44-year-old Louis S. St-Laurent heavy icebreaker in the water past its 2017 retirement date.

“That’ll involve some investment in that vessel if we are to keep her in service should we not be the first of the large shipbuilds,” he said.

The answer is both of them should go first, but you can’t do that

University of Calgary defence expert Rob Huebert said the Louis S. St-Laurent is nearing the end of its life and desperately needed, but so are new resupply ships, especially as Canada looks to increase its military presence in the Pacific Ocean.

“So there isn’t an obvious clear answer as to which should go first,” he said. “The answer is both of them should go first, but you can’t do that. So there’s going to be some real hard decisions.”

The government officials maintained, however, that both the navy and coast guard are not contemplating stabbing each other in the back to make sure their ships are chosen first.

“It’s important to understand that we’re working on this together,” said one naval officer. “It is the government’s fleet. … We’re just at the beginning of the detailed work on that, and we are working together to produce it and to come up with the best options, the best solution for Canada.”

Meanwhile, the officials maintained confidence the shipyards in Vancouver and Halifax responsible for overseeing the majority of work associated with the $35-billion shipbuilding plan will be able to scale up and begin cutting steel soon.

Physical work on the first offshore fisheries and science vessels is scheduled to begin in Vancouver in 2014 and 2015, respectively, while the navy’s new Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels are to start coming together in Halifax in 2015.

A schedule for work on the first replacements for the navy’s existing destroyers and frigates, which will also be built in Halifax, hasn’t been decided yet.

The government also announced $488-million for about two-dozen smaller coast guard lifeboats and science vessels earlier this week, contracts for which will be bid on by shipyards that aren’t part of the larger shipbuilding work.

View the original article here

Seeing our country through the eyes of those born elsewhere

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Civil service has grown 14% since Conservatives took power in 2006: report

OTTAWA — The Conservative government has made it clear that curbing public service costs is a key part of its agenda as it heads into the second half of Stephen Harper’s majority mandate.

But budget measures and ministerial musings about everything from public sector pensions to the collective bargaining process and even sick leave may obscure the bureaucracy sprawl under the Conservative watch.

New data published by the Parliamentary Budget Office has tracked annual civil service payroll numbers by job classification and by federal department, and both are illuminating.

The PBO spread sheets reveal the number of individuals on the federal payroll rose 14% between the end of the 2005-06 fiscal year, when Harper’s Conservatives came to office, and 2012.

Information services employees were up 15.3%, administrative services rose 20%, financial management staff jumped 35% and welfare program employees were up 43%, according to the PBO.

The departmental breakdown shows dramatic increases in the country’s security, corrections and spy bureaucracies but some surprising shrinkage in other areas — including the Finance department, Industry Canada, and the Privy Council Office that serves the prime minister.

The largest staff increases came at the Canadian Border Services Agency, which grew by 5,200 employees, or 54.6%, and the Correctional Service of Canada, up by 4,516 staff or 31%.

The RCMP’s civilian staff grew by 40%, adding 1,787 employee to reach 6,210 on the payroll, and Public Safety Canada added 388 people to the payroll, more than 53%.

Public Safety officials said the PBO numbers reflect part-timers, term employment and job sharing, and that when converted to full-time equivalents “the departmental workforce has in fact increased by only 35.56%.”

Spokeswoman Josee Picard said departmental increases reflect “strengthening emergency management capacity, critical infrastructure protection and federal emergency response capacity.”

The RCMP says public service staff now account for 25% of the force, up from 21% in April 2006.

Spokeswoman Sgt. Julie Gagnon says the change partially reflects “civilianizing” operational support and administration jobs.

The Canadian Security Establishment added 587 employees, a 42% increase, while FINTRAC — the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada which tracks money laundering, organized crime and terrorist financing — almost doubled its staff to 376 from 200, an 88% spike.

The Department of National Defence was up by 6,199 civilian staff, or 29.5%.

Other smaller agencies under the public safety rubric — such as the National Parole Board, the Public Prosecutors Office and the office of the Correctional Investigator — also grew by factors greater than the overall public sector increase.

The Justice department grew 10.7% between 2006 and 2012, less than the overall growth in the federal civil service.

The powerful Finance department lost 22% of its staff and was at its smallest size since the late 1990s when Liberal government cuts had taken their toll

The Harper government’s preoccupation with justice and security issues is part of the Conservative party brand, so the big civil service staff increases in these areas come as little surprise.

Other growth areas are more surprising.

Aboriginal Affairs grew almost 38%, according to the PBO numbers, adding 1,481 people to the payroll.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency almost doubled, to 240 people on the payroll in 2012 from 127 in 2006.

But some other priority government departments have not witnessed any growth, and indeed may have grown smaller.

The powerful Finance department lost 22% of its staff and, with 781 people on the payroll in 2012, was at its smallest size since the late 1990s when Liberal government cuts had taken their toll.

Finance spokesman Jack Aubrey said the reduction can mainly be attributed to the transfer of “shared corporate services” personnel over to the Treasury Board.

Indeed, Treasury Board ballooned 163% as various services were consolidated in the department.

Citizenship and Immigration, another area of much Conservative policy revision, was down 8.3%, Canadian Heritage was down almost 7% and Industry Canada was down 10%.

“By 2015 the Department of Canadian Heritage will be nearly 40% smaller than it was at the start of the economic downturn in 2008,” said Jessica Fletcher, a spokeswoman for Heritage Minister James Moore.

Departmental figures show that arts funding transfers have remained stable.

“We cut the bureaucracy and protected funding for Canadians outside Ottawa who needed it most,” Fletcher said in an email.

Natural Resources Canada, which has been spending millions of dollars advertising its “responsible resource development” mantra, had 1.4% fewer employees on the payroll in 2012 than in 2006.

Library and Archives Canada was down less than 1%.

Perhaps most surprising, given popular talk of the growth and control of the Prime Minister’s Office and its bureaucratic support arm, the Privy Council Office, PCO staff numbers fell more than 4% — to 892 staff from 932 — between 2006 and 2012.

Much has been made of spending cuts in the Conservative government’s 2012 budget, which proposed slashing 19,000 positions from the federal public service over five years.

According the PBO data, more than 34,000 individuals were added to the public payroll between 2006 and 2012.

View the original article here

Civil service has grown 14% since Conservatives took power in 2006: report

OTTAWA — The Conservative government has made it clear that curbing public service costs is a key part of its agenda as it heads into the second half of Stephen Harper’s majority mandate.

But budget measures and ministerial musings about everything from public sector pensions to the collective bargaining process and even sick leave may obscure the bureaucracy sprawl under the Conservative watch.

New data published by the Parliamentary Budget Office has tracked annual civil service payroll numbers by job classification and by federal department, and both are illuminating.

The PBO spread sheets reveal the number of individuals on the federal payroll rose 14% between the end of the 2005-06 fiscal year, when Harper’s Conservatives came to office, and 2012.

Information services employees were up 15.3%, administrative services rose 20%, financial management staff jumped 35% and welfare program employees were up 43%, according to the PBO.

The departmental breakdown shows dramatic increases in the country’s security, corrections and spy bureaucracies but some surprising shrinkage in other areas — including the Finance department, Industry Canada, and the Privy Council Office that serves the prime minister.

The largest staff increases came at the Canadian Border Services Agency, which grew by 5,200 employees, or 54.6%, and the Correctional Service of Canada, up by 4,516 staff or 31%.

The RCMP’s civilian staff grew by 40%, adding 1,787 employee to reach 6,210 on the payroll, and Public Safety Canada added 388 people to the payroll, more than 53%.

Public Safety officials said the PBO numbers reflect part-timers, term employment and job sharing, and that when converted to full-time equivalents “the departmental workforce has in fact increased by only 35.56%.”

Spokeswoman Josee Picard said departmental increases reflect “strengthening emergency management capacity, critical infrastructure protection and federal emergency response capacity.”

The RCMP says public service staff now account for 25% of the force, up from 21% in April 2006.

Spokeswoman Sgt. Julie Gagnon says the change partially reflects “civilianizing” operational support and administration jobs.

The Canadian Security Establishment added 587 employees, a 42% increase, while FINTRAC — the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada which tracks money laundering, organized crime and terrorist financing — almost doubled its staff to 376 from 200, an 88% spike.

The Department of National Defence was up by 6,199 civilian staff, or 29.5%.

Other smaller agencies under the public safety rubric — such as the National Parole Board, the Public Prosecutors Office and the office of the Correctional Investigator — also grew by factors greater than the overall public sector increase.

The Justice department grew 10.7% between 2006 and 2012, less than the overall growth in the federal civil service.

The powerful Finance department lost 22% of its staff and was at its smallest size since the late 1990s when Liberal government cuts had taken their toll

The Harper government’s preoccupation with justice and security issues is part of the Conservative party brand, so the big civil service staff increases in these areas come as little surprise.

Other growth areas are more surprising.

Aboriginal Affairs grew almost 38%, according to the PBO numbers, adding 1,481 people to the payroll.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency almost doubled, to 240 people on the payroll in 2012 from 127 in 2006.

But some other priority government departments have not witnessed any growth, and indeed may have grown smaller.

The powerful Finance department lost 22% of its staff and, with 781 people on the payroll in 2012, was at its smallest size since the late 1990s when Liberal government cuts had taken their toll.

Finance spokesman Jack Aubrey said the reduction can mainly be attributed to the transfer of “shared corporate services” personnel over to the Treasury Board.

Indeed, Treasury Board ballooned 163% as various services were consolidated in the department.

Citizenship and Immigration, another area of much Conservative policy revision, was down 8.3%, Canadian Heritage was down almost 7% and Industry Canada was down 10%.

“By 2015 the Department of Canadian Heritage will be nearly 40% smaller than it was at the start of the economic downturn in 2008,” said Jessica Fletcher, a spokeswoman for Heritage Minister James Moore.

Departmental figures show that arts funding transfers have remained stable.

“We cut the bureaucracy and protected funding for Canadians outside Ottawa who needed it most,” Fletcher said in an email.

Natural Resources Canada, which has been spending millions of dollars advertising its “responsible resource development” mantra, had 1.4% fewer employees on the payroll in 2012 than in 2006.

Library and Archives Canada was down less than 1%.

Perhaps most surprising, given popular talk of the growth and control of the Prime Minister’s Office and its bureaucratic support arm, the Privy Council Office, PCO staff numbers fell more than 4% — to 892 staff from 932 — between 2006 and 2012.

Much has been made of spending cuts in the Conservative government’s 2012 budget, which proposed slashing 19,000 positions from the federal public service over five years.

According the PBO data, more than 34,000 individuals were added to the public payroll between 2006 and 2012.

View the original article here

Seeing our country through the eyes of those born elsewhere

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Seeing our country through the eyes of those born elsewhere

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

View the original article here

Ottawa lets at least $5-million in multiculturalism funding go unspent each year while demand for cash remains high

Millions of federal dollars earmarked for multiculturalism programming are going unspent, resulting in what the government calls responsible cuts to program budgets but what critics consider a sign of a worrisome shift.

Figures from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration suggest at least $5 million a year hasn’t been disbursed since 2007, and the department’s marquee funding program has seen nearly 40 per cent of available funds go unused.

So the department is scaling back the amount of money it sets aside for community multiculturalism projects, despite the fact that an internal government audit suggests demand for the cash remains high and that the government itself is partly to blame for the fact it isn’t being spent.

“It is irresponsible and inefficient to year after year budget spending that is not being used,” Citizenship and Immigration spokeswoman Erika-Kirsten Easton said in an email.

This also means that the funding now being allocated to the program each year will not decrease, but instead more accurately reflect what is actually being spent

“This also means that the funding now being allocated to the program each year will not decrease, but instead more accurately reflect what is actually being spent.”

The federal multiculturalism budget has slowly been eroding since the mid-1990s and for this year, the government had originally forecast it would spend $21.3 million.

Those numbers have now been revised down to $14.3 million, according to the department’s plans and priorities report.

Easton said what looks like a $7-million funding cut can be explained partially by a change in the way the government accounts for the money spent to administer programs.

But the Inter-Action budget, the department’s signature granting program, is also seeing its funds scaled back.

It was set up in 2010 to support events deemed to be promote intercultural understanding, respect for democratic values or civic memory and pride.

In 2010-2011, about $14 million was spent under the program to fund 140 projects and events.

But that money represented only 63 per cent of what was set aside, according to documents from the department obtained via the Access to Information Act.

The lack of transparency and lengthy timelines associated with this process made it very difficult for program staff to manage their clients or expend their budgets

That year, 751 proposals were received, with the total value of requested funds being nine times the available cash, a 2011 audit found.

Though 567 projects were considered eligible, only 39 were recommended to the minister for approval and only 25 per cent were funded.

“The approval process for projects and events was identified by many stakeholders as the single biggest impediment to the effective operation of the program,” the audit said.

“The lack of transparency and lengthy timelines associated with this process made it very difficult for program staff to manage their clients or expend their budgets.”

When asked why the money was lapsing if the demand was clearly present, a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said applications just weren’t up to snuff.

“Only those projects that fulfill all of the rigorous program criteria are approved for funding,” Alexis Pavlich said in an email.

“These criteria are in place to ensure that funded projects provide beneficial services that are in line with the program’s objectives, and provide good value for taxpayer money.”

In 2011-12, about $9.5 million was spent under the program to fund 30 projects and 202 events.

For this year, the budget will be scaled back further by at least $2.5 million.

But all of the money is expected to be spent, Pavlich said.

The government has narrowed the criteria for the program in a way that’s made it more difficult to access the funds, said Ratna Omidvar, who runs the Maytree Foundation in Toronto, a not-for-profit group involved in diversity programming.

“I don’t think the multiculturalism program is being taken seriously any more and I worry about the nation-building aspects the program used to have,” Omidvar said.

“There were a lot of problems with it, but to simply let it die down is not the route to go.”

There is also an ongoing evolution in how governments thinks about multiculturalism, suggested Jack Jedwab, the executive director of the Association of Canadian Studies.

Core funding for multi-ethnic groups disappeared in the 1980s, and the funding model shifted to supporting specific projects. In the early 2000s, the government changed its focus again, this time to support integration and settlement for newcomers.

That’s forced groups working in the sector to change as well.

“The organizations out there are challenged by way of their capacity to undertake the types of projects that the multiculturalism program has identified as a priority,” Jedwab said.

“Things are getting done, but they are not getting done through that program.”

For example, settlement funding has risen by $400 million since 2005-06, according to the department.

The two aren’t at all alike, argued Jinny Simms, the New Democrat’s immigration and multiculturalism critic.

She said it’s important for the federal government to play an active role in both.

“Settlement services are really there for when people arrive to help them transition,” she said. “Multiculturalism is something different. It’s not just for the new arrivals. It’s for all of us.”

Multiculturalism does remains a mainstay of how Canadians think about Canada at large, Jedwab said.

In an online poll conducted in mid-June for his organization, 43 per cent of those surveyed said their preferred image of Canada was a multicultural country with two official languages.

View the original article here

Four people dead after mid-air crash between plane, glider in B.C.

Four people are dead after a glider collided mid-air with a Cessna 150 near Pemberton, B.C.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria said the incident happened early Saturday afternoon just above Nairn Falls Provincial Park near Pemberton, about 50 kilometres north of Whistler.

Sgt. Rob Knapton with Whistler/Pemberton RCMP said when emergency personnel reached the scene, they saw pieces of aircraft — some of which had caught on fire —scattered around the wooded areas in a campsite.

“As well, we do have two areas where the main fuselage came down, one on [the west] side of 1/8Green River3/8, and one on the east side of the river,” he said in a phone interview.

Second Lt. Erin Edwards with the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre said the Cessna and the power glider were both two-seater aircraft and were each carrying two people. The bodies of the pilot and passenger in each aircraft have been recovered she said.

Knapton said all of the provincial park’s campsites were full on Saturday.

“It’s a terrible thing anytime something like this happens,” he said. “We’re thankful just that with a full campsite like this that nobody on the ground here actually got hurt by some of the debris that came down.”

Knapton said the identities will not be released until BC Coroners Services reach the scene, and the victims families have been notified.

A police news release said the Cessna was from the community of 100 Mile House while the glider was based out of Pemberton. It was not immediately clear if the occupants were from those communities.

The Transportation Safety Board also said it will conduct an investigation.

Topics: Canada, Cessna 150, Pemberton (British Columbia), Royal Canadian Mounted Police

blog comments powered by

View the original article here

Cirque du Soleil performer dies in Las Vegas after 50ft fall during show

LAS VEGAS — A Paris-born performer in Cirque du Soleil’s “Ka” died after a fall during a show in Las Vegas.

Sarah Guyard-Guillot was pronounced dead late Saturday night at a hospital after falling about 50 feet from the show’s stage.

Witnesses told the Las Vegas Sun that the accident occurred near the end of the production Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

Visitor Dan Mosqueda of Colorado Springs, Colo., said the 31-year-old acrobatic performer was being hoisted up the side of the stage when it appeared that she slipped free of her safety wire and plummeted to an open pit below the stage.

“Initially, a lot of people in the audience thought it was part of the [show],” he told the Sun. “But you could hear screaming, then groaning, and we could hear a female artist crying from the stage.”

The show momentarily continued, then stopped. Minutes after the accident, a recorded announcement informed audience members that refunds or vouchers to future shows would be offered, and the crowd was dismissed.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte issued a statement Sunday praising Guyard-Guillot and saying performances of “Ka” have been cancelled until further notice.

Guyard-Guillot, a mother of two children, had been with the original cast of “Ka” since 2006, and had been an acrobatic performer for over 20 years.

“I am heartbroken. I wish to extend my sincerest sympathies to the family. We are all completely devastated,” Laliberte said. “We are reminded with great humility and respect how extraordinary our artists are each and every night. Our focus now is to support each other as a family.”

Cirque officials are working with authorities investigating the accident and have offered their full co-operation, he added.

The Clark County Coroner’s Office will rule on the cause of death.

The Quebec-based Cirque du Soleil was founded in 1984 and has become an international entertainment giant, employing 5,000 employees around the world including more than 1,300 artists.

The company boasts on its website that more than 100 million spectators have seen a Cirque du Soleil show since 1984.

With files from The Canadian Press

View the original article here