Prince Harry reportedly a ‘no-show’ on flight to Toronto to visit actress Meghan Markle

Prince Harry reportedly scrapped a trip to Toronto this weekend to visit an American actress believed to be his new girlfriend after __news broke about their secret relationship.

“The flight was booked last week but he was a no-show,” a source told the Evening Standard.

“The crew for the British Airways flight knew the Prince was booked to travel with them. It appears he pulled out at the last minute and decided not to travel,” the source added.

According to the newspaper, Harry, 32, was scheduled to fly from Heathrow to Toronto on Sunday to visit Meghan Markle, a 35-year-old actress best known for her role as Rachel Zane on the legal drama Suits. (The show is filmed in Toronto).

But hours before his scheduled 11:30 a.m. British Airways flight, the British tabloid Sunday Express broke the __news of their apparent relationship. That raised concerns paparazzi would be waiting for Harry in London and Toronto, the Daily Mail reported.

The couple is said to have met in May when the Prince was in Toronto to promote the Invictus Games, an international athletic competition for wounded or sick military veterans.

“He’s in a very relaxed period of his life and Meghan has come along at the right time. They are taking each week as it comes and just enjoying each other’s company. But it’s fair to say that they love seeing each other and there’s a definite chemistry between them,” an unnamed source told the Sunday Express.

“Harry has been desperate to keep the relationship quiet because he doesn’t want to scare Meghan off. He knows things will change when their romance is public knowledge but he also knows he can’t keep it a secret for long.”

The Los Angeles-born actress has stayed with Harry at Kensington Palace and met the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Sunday Express reported.

“William and Kate really liked her and she fitted in straight away,” an insider told the newspaper.

The Prince opened up about the challenges of meeting a girlfriend in an interview earlier this year with the Sunday Times.

Even if I talk to a girl, that person is then suddenly my wife, and people go knocking on her door

“Even if I talk to a girl, that person is then suddenly my wife, and people go knocking on her door,” he said. “If or when I do find a girlfriend, I will do my utmost … to ensure that me and her can get to the point where we’re actually comfortable with each other before the massive invasion that is inevitably going to happen into her privacy.”

Prior to meeting Prince Harry, Markle was romantically linked with Canadian restaurateur and chef Cory Vitiello.

Vitiello tweeted on March 22: “So proud of my lady @meghanmarkle being named Global Ambassador for @worldvision.”

The actress was reportedly with the chef a month later at the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards.

#BTS from @oneyoungworld last night talking politics, social issues & life w/ @justinpjtrudeau (you were SO missed Sophie, @jessicamulroney @benmulroney 👌🏽👌🏽) photo cred: @afinsky #OYW #Ottawa

A photo posted by Meghan Markle (@meghanmarkle) on Sep 29, 2016 at 4:59am PDT

Jury selection begins in case of New Brunswick boys killed by falling python

CAMPBELLTON, N.B. — Jury selection begins today for a man charged in the deaths of two New Brunswick boys who were suffocated by a python in August 2013.

Jean-Claude Savoie, who now lives near Montreal, is charged with criminal negligence causing death.

Four-year-old Noah Barthe and his six-year-old brother, Connor, died after a 45-kilogram African rock python fell on top of them as they slept in Savoie’s apartment in Campbellton.

The RCMP said the snake managed to get out of its tank overnight and got into a ventilation pipe in the ceiling.

Its weight caused the pipe to collapse and the snake fell into the room where the boys were sleeping.

Jury selection is being held at the Campbellton Civic Centre in order to be able to handle the hundreds of potential jurors.

Two weeks have been set aside for the trial.

In bid to impress women he was with, Chinese man jumps down into panda pit and starts wrestling

Seemingly to impress his two female companions, a 20-year-old man jumped inside a Chinese zoo enclosure and was knocked to the ground by a giant panda, the South China Morning Post reports.

Mei Ling, the 12-year-old male panda weighing 120 kilograms, tore the man’s pants and pinned him to the ground. Luckily, he was able to escape the pit, seemingly unscathed.

The entire encounter was captured on a closed circuit video feed which went viral after it appeared on Chinese news.

In the video, you can see the man walk up to the sleeping Mei Ling and then attempt to touch the animal’s head. At that point the panda awakens and wrestles the man to the ground. In the background you can hear one of the man’s companions say “it is biting him.”

According to the SCMP, the man then left the park without alerting authorities. Zoo workers found no blood in the enclosure and determined the animal had not been hurt.

‘I was in shock’: Police probe Ottawa nursing home after elderly woman found with maggots in wound

The Ottawa police elder-abuse unit is investigating a nursing home after staff discovered maggots had infested a resident’s leg wound, landing the woman in hospital and horrifying her family.

The discovery suggests flies laid eggs and larvae hatched in the sore before anyone noticed, raising anew questions about the quality of care in Canadian long-term-care facilities.

It takes days for fly larvae to reach a full-grown stage, something that should not happen in a properly treated patient, said Jeff Tomberlin, a Texas A&M University professor and chairman of the American board of forensic entomology.

“Maggots in a wound are not good,” he said. “I can’t think of a case where you could actually say it’s not negligent … If they found fully developed larvae in it, you have to wonder how frequently they’re cleaning the wound, and really paying attention to what they’re doing.”

The incident comes two years after the same woman, 89-year-old Luba Ignatieva, was “viciously” attacked by another resident at West End Villa in Ottawa, sending her to hospital with a broken hip, her daughter, Lara Gerol, said.

In the most recent incident, Ignatieva failed to get one of the twice-weekly dressing changes required for a chronic “venous stasis ulcer” on her leg.

When staff finally removed Ignatieva’s bandage on Oct. 10 after six days, they found the sore crawling with maggots and sent her to hospital.

“I was in shock,” said the daughter, who believes either hospital employees or paramedics called the police. “It means the wound was not cleaned properly … It means they’re not even looking.”

I don’t have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the horror

In a letter to the home, she wrote: “I don’t have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the horror (we felt) when we learned my mother went to hospital with maggots in her leg.”

Extendicare Inc., West End Villa’s owner, said in a statement that it can’t comment on specific residents, but that Ignatieva is being looked after by a team that includes a doctor, while the facility is in an “open dialogue” with the family.

“We can assure you that the quality of care of our residents is of utmost importance to us,” the statement said.

In a letter to Gerol obtained by the National Post, West End administrator Kelly Keeler said the ulcer, caused by poor circulation, won’t heal partly because Ignatieva refuses to have her leg elevated. Keeler said the woman also declined twice on Oct. 7 to have the dressing changed.

But the daughter says Ignatieva told her no one even tried to replace the bandage, and that it would have been completely out of character for her to refuse.

Gerol alleged the letter also seemed to play down the incident and almost blame her mother. Keeler argued “maggots are not the result of a dirty environment or unprofessional care,” and said Ignatieva liked to spend time outside in the garden, where she said flies are plentiful.

The administrator also noted that in some countries, maggots are used for wound care.

But Tomberlin, the entomologist, said there is a world of difference between the “medical-grade” larvae that are reared in sterile conditions and used in some clinics, versus wild ones that can deliver nasty infections “or worse.”

The Ottawa force is investigating but will not comment on specifics to avoid compromising the probe, said Const. Chuck Benoit, a police spokesman.

Ontario Health Ministry spokesman David Jensen said a “critical incident” inspection was carried out at West End on Oct. 18.

An order for a “voluntary plan of correction” was issued to the home, and a report will be posted on the ministry website in November, he said.

Maggots in live humans — a phenomenon scientists call myiasis — is not unheard of, though it occurs mostly in tropical and sub-tropical countries, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

A University of California study in 2000 found 45 cases throughout the U.S., the largest group being homeless people.

Gerol said some of the staff at the home — where her mother has lived for seven years — are “wonderful, dedicated, really good people,” but that turnover is high and many other employees are less skillful and caring.

Two years ago, she had asked that West End remove the other resident living in Ignatieva’s room, believing the person to be “very dangerous.” The request was denied and her mother was almost killed in a subsequent attack, Gerol said.

She sued the home, with the case eventually settled out of court.

• Email: tblackwell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: TomblackwellNP

Zika virus shrank testes of infected mice by 90 per cent, sharply reducing fertility, new study shows

NEW YORK — Zika virus ravages the testes of male mice, sharply reducing sperm counts and fertility, says a study that raises a new spectre about its threat to people.

Experiments found testes of infected mice shrank about 90 per cent by weight, while their output of useful sperm fell by three-quarters on average, and often more.

Don’t jump to the conclusion right off that this is definitely what is happening to the human

Now it’s time to find out if Zika causes similar damage in men, experts said.

“We just don’t know that yet,” said Michael Diamond of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, a senior author of the study. The virus is known to infect a man’s reproductive system and persist in sperm and semen, “so it’s in the right place,” he said.

Diamond said he suspects that in mice, the damage is permanent.

But mice are not men, and experts unconnected with the study agreed that it can’t be assumed that the mouse results apply to people.

Shannan Rossi, who studies Zika in mice at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, noted that the researchers had suppressed the animals’ immune system defence against the virus. That’s a standard step in such experiments but it adds another level of difference from humans, she said.

Zika, which is transmitted by the bite of a tropical mosquito, is such a mild disease in people that most who get it don’t even know they are sick. But it can cause serious birth defects if women are infected while pregnant, so health officials have been concerned mostly with helping women who are pregnant or about to become pregnant avoid the disease.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, said the study alerts researchers to look for effects in men.

“Don’t jump to the conclusion right off that this is definitely what is happening to the human,” he said. But the mouse finding is a “red flag you need to pursue.”

The mouse results appear in a paper released Monday by the journal Nature. They show the virus attacks the anatomical structure where sperm are made and reach maturity. Testosterone levels also fell.

The infected mice were able to impregnate females at only about one-fourth the normal rate. And in females that got pregnant, the number of fetuses was less than half of normal.

Montreal police department monitored journalist’s cellphone to get numbers, track his movements

MONTREAL — For several months this year, the Montreal police department was monitoring the iPhone of La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé to determine the identity of his sources, the __news organization says.

The Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) was also able to determine Lagacé’s location using the cellphone’s GPS.

At least 24 surveillance warrants for the phone were granted by the court in 2016, at the request of the special investigations section, La Presse has learned. This section is responsible for tackling crime within the SPVM.

Three of the warrants allowed investigators to obtain incoming and outgoing numbers on the phone, be it for phone calls or text messages. A tracking warrant also allowed the SPVM to activate the GPS chip in the iPhone to know exactly where Lagacé was, admitted two investigators in charge of the file.

The vice-president of information at La Presse, Éric Trottier, strongly denounced the operation, which he said “constitutes an attack unequivocally against the institution of the press and against the journalistic profession.”

The controversial boss of internal affairs at the SPVM, Costa Labos, said in an interview that he gave the green light to the investigation. He declined to reveal whether police chief Philippe Pichet was informed of the surveillance of the iPhone. Labos also said that “to his knowledge” no other journalist had been under SPVM surveillance in recent years, but could not “guarantee” that.

The SPVM announced Friday that Labos was transferred to the internal affairs division for operational communications and police information, which manages the police force’s telecommunications. There is no evidence that a link exists between that decision and the surveillance of Lagacé’s cellphone.

This summer, Labos was himself the subject of a criminal investigation in connection with media leaks. No charges were filed against him.

Judge Josée Carufel of Montreal authorized the majority of the surveillance warrants. The warrants were requested and obtained in the framework of Projet Escouade, which involved allegations of fabricating evidence by investigators specializing in street gangs and drug trafficking. Five police officers were arrested this summer as a result of the investigation, and two were charged.

One of the officers targeted by Escouade was Faisal Djelidi. By monitoring his cellphone, the Special Investigations Section of the SPVM detected contact between the police and Lagacé, said investigators Iad Hanna and Normand Borduas.

Liberals rapped as $900M unspent by Indigenous Affairs among ‘lapsed’ funding for fiscal 2016

OTTAWA — Like the Harper government before it, the Trudeau government left billions of dollars unspent on everything from national parks to veterans services to economic development grants during the 2015-16 fiscal year.

The so-called “lapsed” funding for fiscal 2016 is $9.7 billion, according to the Public Accounts of Canada. All of those unspent funds were used to pay down the federal debt.

This year’s three-volume public accounts also close the books on fiscal 2016, a year in which the Harper Conservatives controlled the purse strings for the first seven months and the Trudeau Liberals for the final five months.

While it is normal every year to see billions of dollars lapse, NDP MP Charlie Angus is flagging the $900 million left unspent by the Department of Indigenous Affairs at a time when the department is, among other things, in court fighting demands to pay the health-care costs of some First Nations children.

“Theirs is the ultimate shell game in terms of finances. You can never find where the money goes,” said Angus, who is the sponsor of a motion that will be voted on Tuesday night in the House of Commons calling on the government to spend an additional $155 million immediately to improve health care for Inuit and First Nations children.

In fiscal 2015, indigenous affairs let more than $1 billion go unspent. The money it gave back represented 11 per cent of the more than $8 billion it had been given by Parliament to improve the lives of indigenous Canadians. The department has said the bulk of previous lapses were the result of land claims that did not get resolved in a given budget year.

“But still, they regularly pull back money … and just don’t spend it,” Angus said. “This is such a dysfunctional department, and government after government refuses to fix it. If there’s money there, make sure the damn money is spent.”

Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett’s press secretary Serena Williams said the government “is absolutely committeed” to moving funds out in the fiscal year in which they were committed and explained last year’s lapse this way: “Ninety-three per cent of the funds in question are for settling specific claims and claims under the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. This funding gets carried forward to be used in the next fiscal year to continue the important work of advancing reconciliation by funding the Residential School Settlement Agreement and settling specific claims.”

In fiscal 2016, Ottawa’s final spending total was $296 billion, an increase of 5.7 per cent or $16 billion compared with fiscal 2015.

About half of that is spending that takes place year-in and year-out — old age payments, employment insurance payouts, debt charges — that does not require annual approval by Parliament because it is authorized by other legislation. Another $55 billion in spending is the result of things such as depreciation and accounting reconciliation of non-cash items.

But the rest, about $95 billion in federal spending, required the approval of Parliament — approval that lasts only as long as the fiscal year. Departments that get this type of funding but don’t spend it must come back to Parliament in a future year to ask for the money again.

The government-wide lapse of $9.7 billion in fiscal 2016 represents about 3.8 per cent of the available funds authorized in one way or another by Parliament.

The percentage of lapsed funds peaked in 2010-11 at more than 10 per cent but dropped to 3.9 per cent by fiscal 2015, the final full year for the Harper government.

Some departments habitually have a more difficult time than others spending approved money.

National Defence, for example, left $1.3 billion unspent, or about 6.5 per cent of the $20.65 billion Parliament had authorized it to spend.

“National Defence manages the largest operating budget in the government, with projects needing funds over many years,” Jordan Owens, press secretary to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan wrote in an e-mail.

 “Despite sound long-term planning, delays happen. This results in funds needing to be moved into a reserve so that they can then be used in different years than initially expected.”

Owens said the lapse in fiscal 2016 was smaller than the last full year with the Harper government in charge. In fiscal 2015, it was $2 billion.

Public Safety Canada, which includes the RCMP, the Correctional Service of Canada, and Canada Border Services Agency, was authorized to spend $9.2 billion in fiscal 2016 but left unspent 11.6 per cent of that — about $1 billion.

Scott Bardsley, press secretary to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, said the lion’s share of the lapse — about $700 million — was related to disaster relief for the provinces that, while booked by the federal government in 2016, was not paid out.

Infrastructure Canada left $858 million unspent, nearly 20 per cent of the $4.4 billion it was authorized to use in 2016.

But that doesn’t mean that infrastructure money was never spent.

“Once money is committed for approved projects, it remains available for that project until it is completed. Unspent funding is reprofiled to the next fiscal year,” said Brook Simpson, press secretary to infrastructure minister Amarjeet Sohi.

• Email: dakin@postmedia.com | Twitter: davidakin

No mistrial for Travis Vader as judge replaces second-degree murder convictions with manslaughter

EDMONTON — An Edmonton judge has changed his murder verdict to manslaughter in the high-profile case of Travis Vader and the two missing seniors he was convicted of killing.

Lawyers had returned to court to argue about whether there should be a mistrial because Justice Denny Thomas used an outdated section of the Criminal Code in his original verdict.

Thomas told Court of Queen’s Bench that he made a mistake when he convicted Vader last month of second-degree murder in the deaths of Lyle and Marie McCann.
The McCanns, in their late 70s, disappeared after setting out on a camping trip from their Edmonton-area home to British Columbia in 2010.

“I am glad to see this. I am glad to see this come to an end,” said Bret McCann, the couple’s son, when reached on the phone.

“I am glad that Vader will be in prison for a long time. I am glad that the public will be safe. At some point in the future, he will be looking for parole and I am hoping that he shows remorse and lets us all know where my parents’ bodies are.”

In finding Vader guilty, the judge used Section 230 of the Criminal Code, which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1990. The government didn’t remove the section from the book, as antiquated laws are rarely repealed.

Section 230 allowed for a second-degree murder verdict if a killing occurred during the commission of another crime such as robbery. Otherwise, there must be intent to cause death or bodily harm that one knows is likely to cause death.

“I accept that it was an error,” Thomas told court at the start of the mistrial hearing Monday.

Thomas told court his written decision for the change will follow.

Thomas said in his original verdict that Vader was a desperate drug addict who came across the couple in their motorhome and shot them during a robbery.

He said in his verdict that he found no evidence Vader intended to kill the McCanns and ruled out a planned and deliberate first-degree murder.

The defence had argued that the judge couldn’t go back and find Vader guilty of second-degree murder on other grounds, so the only solution was a mistrial.

The Crown wrote in its arguments that the judge could still do more analysis for second-degree murder or substitute the verdict with manslaughter.
Thomas set aside two weeks beginning Dec. 12 for a sentencing hearing.

Trudeau quietly held town hall where most were in favour of proportional voting system

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quietly held and attended a town hall on electoral reform in his riding of Papineau, where “most” were found to be favourable to a proportional voting system.

There was no public mention of the town hall. An itinerary for Oct. 6 sent to reporters by the Prime Minister’s Office didn’t include it on his schedule — a meeting with Quebec business associations was the only item for that day.  

The town hall took place Oct. 6 at the Papineau riding office, according to a report compiled by Trudeau’s office, submitted Oct. 11 and recently published by the special parliamentary committee on electoral reform.

About 40 people participated. Trudeau presented the “various types of voting systems and how they work,” the report says, then “mentioned that mandatory voting, electronic voting, and lowering the legal voting age to 16” are all options “the government will consider.”

The report lists questions and comments from participants, including one proposal “that parties no longer exist,” a proposal to impose “fiscal penalties” on people who don’t vote and a question on whether a referendum would be held. No answer to that question is listed.

While opinion was “mixed” regarding mandatory voting and the voting age, and “no one really talked about electronic voting,” the town hall found that “in general, most were favourable to the idea of a “proportional and mixed-proportional voting system.”

It was less than two weeks after the event that Trudeau came under fire for an apparent walk-back on the government’s promises to implement a new voting system.

In an interview with Montreal’s Le Devoir published Oct. 19, Trudeau implied the public desire for reform had diminished since they were happier with the Liberal government than they had been with their Conservative predecessors.

He and Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef reaffirmed the government’s commitment to its promise later that week. Meanwhile, the special committee on electoral reform unanimously passed a motion asking Monsef to bring summaries of town halls she’s held as minister.

Monsef had submitted an MP report based on her own constituents, like Trudeau had, but was meanwhile holding dozens of events across the country.

She was still holding town halls last week. On Thursday evening in Victoria, one participant posted on social media that Monsef was echoing the prime minister’s comments on how demand for reform had diminished.

The committee will compile recommendations for the federal government in a report they’re to table in parliament by Dec. 1.

• Email: mdsmith@postmedia.com | Twitter: mariedanielles

Star signals lead Quebec research team to suggest 234 potential systems may host extra-terrestrial life

The science community is keeping a wary eye on a Canadian research team’s claim of finding possible homes for life in outer space.

The researchers from Universite Laval in Quebec City say analysis of some unusual signals has helped them identify 234 potential systems that might be playing host to extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI).

The theory has evolved over several years and took root when lead researcher Ermanno Borra published a paper in 2012 speculating on how residents of other galaxies may try to broadcast their existence to the rest of space.

He published a theory that such life forms could use lasers to make their home planet emit an unusual signal that would be noticed by anyone carefully observing the cosmos.

Now, Borra and graduate student Eric Trottier say they’ve identified 234 stars emitting that exact signal, adding they all appear to have characteristics that would enable them to help sustain life.

Fellow academics are intrigued enough by the research to study the findings more closely, but are currently treating the findings with skepticism and saying it’s too early to make definite claims.

Borra agrees, saying the latest findings — which have been published to a repository of scientific papers and are awaiting peer review — are far from conclusive.

“The kind of signal we found is in agreement with the ETI hypothesis, but right now it’s still a hypothesis that must be confirmed with further work,” Borra said in a telephone interview from Quebec City.

The signal at the heart of the theory involves lasers, which Borra said are a simple form of technology to produce and would be well within the capabilities of civilizations that are potentially much more advanced than humankind.

Borra theorized that sending flashes of light millionths of a second apart would be an easy feat that could produce a dramatic result — altering the unique light spectrum produced by an individual star.

Earth-bound scientists have already dedicated vast resources to charting the spectra of planets, stars and other bodies in various galaxies and collecting the information in central databases.

For their research, Borra and Trottier turned to the Slone Digital Sky Survey, a 16-year project that has purportedly mapped more than 30 per cent of the sky and catalogued spectra for at least 2.5 million astronomical objects.

Borra said they compared the theoretical spectrum that would be produced by laser flashes to the survey results and found only 234 matches.

Borra said the stars in question all share spectral characteristics with the sun, which itself is too hot to support life forms. The stars he’s identified are therefore more likely to be the centres of prospective stellar systems in which other life-sustaining planets could exist, he added.

“We intuitively expect that an ETI would be in a planet that turns around a star like the sun at about the same distance as the Earth from the Sun,” he said. “This is because this environment would be the best for life to exist. The proof comes from the fact that life exists on Earth.”

Borra said he accounted for the fact that the spectra might be caused by factors other than ETI, such as chemical makeup or calculation errors, but said the research suggests such factors are not at play.

Academics at the University of California, Berkeley, however, aren’t so quick to dismiss such causes.

The university’s Breakthrough Listen project has announced it will be studying the results more closely, but currently doesn’t place much stock in the findings as a sign of life beyond Earth.

Scientists dedicated to searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence have developed the Rio scale to assess the likelihood that anomalies are a sign of alien life. UC Berkeley currently give the Canadian findings a 0 or 1 on the Rio scale, classifying them as “insignificant.”

“The one in 10,000 objects with unusual spectra seen by Borra and Trottier are certainly worthy of additional study,” the university said in a statement.

“However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is too early to unequivocally attribute these purported signals to the activities of extraterrestrial civilizations.”

Borra said the Berkeley researchers will try to reproduce the results with their own telescopes, adding he welcomes the additional scrutiny and potential confirmation from outside sources.

“I do not know myself what this really is,” he said. “More work has to be done to confirm it.

Dutch far-right politician upstages his hate speech trial by unleashing racial vitriol on Twitter

AMSTERDAM — The Dutch government’s prosecution of a far-right politician for hate speech was upstaged by his continued racial vitriol on Monday before the trial could get underway.

Geert Wilders, the politician whose tirades against Islam, immigration and the European Union have made him one of the most divisive figures in Dutch politics, refused to attend the trial, which he has denounced as a “travesty” targeting freedom of speech. Instead, he issued a series of inflammatory posts on Twitter, saying the Netherlands has a “huge problem with Moroccans” — an echo of the denunciations he made in 2014 that are at the centre of the hate-speech charges.

“To be silent about it is cowardly,” Wilders wrote, distracting the __news media and the public from the prosecution’s opening of the case in court. Referring to a 2014 poll by his Freedom Party, he added in his Twitter post that “43 percent of Dutch want fewer Moroccans. No verdict will change that.”

The trial has exposed deep fissures in Dutch society, which is known for its traditions of religious tolerance but has a pained relationship with its recent history: More than three-quarters of Dutch Jews were deported and killed during the Nazi occupation in World War II.

The Netherlands was one of the six founding states of what became the European Union, but skepticism toward the bloc has been rising. In April, Dutch voters rejected a trade and cooperation agreement between the EU and Ukraine, and after the British referendum on June 23 to leave the bloc, Wilders proposed that the Dutch hold a referendum on withdrawing as well.

Wilders, 53, is charged with offending members of a group based on their race, and hate speech and discrimination. He could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, though people convicted of such offenses are more commonly fined or required to do community service.

A conviction could affect his career in Parliament, where he has been the leader of his party since 2006.

Wilders announced on Friday that he would not attend the trial, which is being held in a secure courtroom near Schiphol Airport, which serves Amsterdam. He called himself “a politician who says what the politically correct elite do not want to hear.”

The case revolves around two sets of remarks made near the time of municipal elections in The Hague in 2014. On March 12 of that year, Wilders was speaking to an interviewer on Dutch national television at a public market; a week later, he addressed a rally in a catering establishment.

Wilders said at the rally: “I’m asking you, do you want more or fewer Moroccans in this city and in the Netherlands?” The audience responded by chanting: “Fewer, fewer!” Wilders responded: “Well, we’ll arrange that, then.”

After the comments, more than 6,400 Dutch citizens filed complaints, mostly through local police offices. About 60 of those complainants requested damages, as they are allowed to do under Dutch law. Some of those demands were thrown out for various reasons — including claims for excessive reimbursement — but 35 of the complaints have been discussed in court.

The primary judge of the three overseeing the case, Hendrik Steenhuis, said it was unfortunate that Wilders had declined to attend. “We would like to have heard the answers from Wilders, because we would have liked to ask him if what he said in the market matched the policy of his political party,” the judge said. Whether the comments reflected the party’s views or Wilders’ own opinions could be legally significant.

“There were so many complaints that police were worried that they would lose too much capacity over it,” said Elianne van Rens, one of the other judges, who presented the facts of the case. The cities of The Hague and Amsterdam got involved, as did the Justice Ministry, she said.

After Wilders made the comments, about 13 of the 100 elected members of his party quit national and local assemblies in protest at his remarks.

Wilders was acquitted on charges of hate speech in 2011, after complaints about his fierce criticisms of Islam.

There are some significant differences between that case and the current proceedings. The earlier case focused on hate speech against a religion or religious beliefs; this time, the target was a population group, according to a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s service, Frans Zonneveld.

If speaking about this is punishable, then the Netherlands is no longer a free country but a dictatorship

“Islam is an idea, a religion, but according to the public prosecution service, you have a lot of room to criticize ideas, but when it comes to population groups, it’s a whole different matter,” Zonneveld said. “His remarks touched the very being of this population group.” He added, “You cannot choose to be part of a population group or not; it’s a group that’s decided by birth, so it’s a whole different matter.”

As Zonneveld put it, the case is about a conflict between freedom of speech and the freedom from discrimination. “These are two essential rights in the Dutch rule of law,” he said, “and it’s clear that these two rights are conflicting in this case.”

On Friday, Wilders denounced the proceedings against him as a violation of his right to free speech.

“It is a travesty that I have to stand trial because I spoke about fewer Moroccans,” he said. “Not because they despise all Moroccans or want all Moroccans out of the country, but because they are sick and tired of the nuisance and terror caused by so many Moroccans.”

He added, “If speaking about this is punishable, then the Netherlands is no longer a free country but a dictatorship.”

In response, Zonneveld said, “The fact that the politician has to appear before a court doesn’t make it a political trial. The public prosecution service has to maintain the law in the Netherlands.” He added, “The whole of Dutch society and the people who have made complaints on this issue, as well as Mr. Wilders, have a right to have a court verdict on this matter.”

Steenhuis suggested that Wilders’ motivations might factor into the legal considerations. “He claims that his comments have to do with crime rates and criminal Moroccans, but he doesn’t take back his more broad statements about all Moroccans. How does this match? What does Wilders think about all this commotion? Would he have liked to use other words?”

One of the chief prosecutors, Sabina van der Kallen, expressed irritation that Wilders had failed to inform them that he would not be showing up.

“We would have appreciated if we had heard about his absence from the defense and not from the newspaper,” she said. “We would have found that courteous. He was present during the pretrial hearings. Now that it’s for real, he sneaks out the back door.”

Transportation board pushes Pearson airport for safety upgrades after crash

A fire truck hoses down the wreckage of Air France flight 358 at Pearson Airport in Toronto on Wednesday Aug. 3, 2005.The fiery crash of an Air France jet in Toronto led to urgent calls to improve airport safety in 2005, but the Transportation Safety Board of __canada says more than a decade later, the federal government hasn't done enough to meet international safety standards for runways. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

OTTAWA — The fiery crash of an Air France jet in Toronto led to urgent calls to improve airport safety in 2005, but the Transportation Safety Board of Canada says more than a decade later, the federal government hasn't done enough to meet international safety standards for runways.

"We realize that these are tough issues that can take some time to resolve, but a decade?" board chairwoman Kathy Fox told a news conference Monday, saying the board's recommendation to require runway-end safety areas is among 52 recommendations that the Transport Department has failed to deal with for more than 10 years.

And about three dozen of those recommendations — on civil aviation, railways and marine transportation — have been languishing for 20 years.

"There is no reasonable excuse for taking that long on so many outstanding issues, especially when the department agrees," Fox said.

As a result, she said the independent agency will be taking a new, proactive approach to make sure governments and industry leaders take action.

"Good intentions aren't enough," said Fox. "The TSB will be watching."

Transport Minister Marc Garneau said his department has some work to do.

"Some of (the recommendations) have been around for a long time," he said outside the House of Commons. "We are working on all of them. Some of them are extremely complex and require consultation."

Garneau acknowledged that a TSB recommendation to install cockpit voice recorders in small aircraft was tabled 20 years ago, but he stressed that what was once seen as a prohibitively expensive option is now more feasible, owing to cheaper technology.

He said he asked department officials to take another look at recorder regulations after the small plane carrying former Alberta premier Jim Prentice crashed outside Kelowna, B.C., on Oct. 13, killing all four people aboard. The aircraft wasn't carrying an in-flight data or voice recorder because there is no legislation requiring smaller planes to carry so-called black boxes.

The TSB renewed its calls for legislative changes after the crash, calling on Ottawa to expand the law, which orders only medium and large commercial planes to carry the recorders.

As for runway regulations, Garneau said some airports can't afford runway-end safety areas.

Fox said she isn't waiting for the minister to do something.

She said she plans to meet with the president of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority on Thursday to ask what steps have been taken to improve runway safety, noting that Transport Canada has promised new regulations, but they are not yet in effect.

The Air France jet, carrying 309 passengers, skidded off a rain-slicked runway and burst into flames at Lester B. Pearson International Airport on Aug. 2, 2005. The jet had landed nearly halfway down the 2,700-metre runway in the midst of a severe thunderstorm. It overshot the end and tumbled into a ravine. Forty-three people were injured, some seriously.

Even though Transport Canada has yet to introduce it own standards, the Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport has already installed a runway-end safety area that meets internationally recommended practice, Fox said.

The safety board has also been calling for improved training for pilot decision-making and crew management since the mid-1990s, but Transport Canada has yet to follow through on its promise to upgrade those training standards.

The aviation issues were highlighted Monday in the board's biennial "watch list" of outstanding recommendations.

The agency also reported it is concerned that fatigue among freight train crews has been a factor in numerous railway investigations.

Too many train crews aren't getting the rest they need because of long shifts and irregular scheduling that interferes with normal sleep patterns, the board said.

As well, the board said other issues keep coming up again and again on the watch list. Calls to improve safety in Canada's commercial fishing industry, for example, have been on the list since it was first introduced in 2010.

The agency said the industry records about 10 fatalities every year.

Many deaths could be prevented by more regulations for vessel stability and a "culture shift" among fishermen who don't like wearing personal flotation devices or immersion suits when they're working, Fox said.

— By Michael MacDonald in Halifax

Follow @NovaMac on Twitter

CETA a bright light against a protectionist world, says trade minister

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Minister of International Trade, holds a media availability on the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA — With the U.S. presidential election looming, Canada's new trade deal with Europe should be seen as a showcase for how strong trading relationships are better than "building walls," International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said Monday.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, could set the tone for any future talks with a new administration in Washington, Freeland said as she hailed Sunday's signing of the deal.

"I am very concerned by the protectionist rhetoric we are hearing in the United States," Freeland told an Ottawa news conference prior to tabling legislation to implement the agreement for review by Parliament.

"The protectionist backlash we're seeing in a lot of the world, including in Europe, is dangerous. In being able to get CETA signed ... __canada has done something very powerful and very strong in the world to push back against that."

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has warned that he would renegotiate or even tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement — NAFTA — and impose hefty tariffs on goods imported from outside the United States.

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton hasn't gone that far, but has also been critical of NAFTA.

Since coming into force in the mid-1990s, NAFTA has created a common trading market between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

But on Monday, just days before next week's U.S. election, Trump repeated what he's been saying for months: the trade agreement has been a "disaster" for employment in America's industrial heartland and should be torn up.

Freeland said that kind of rhetoric has her worried for Canada's exporters.

"Now is not the time to be building walls," she said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended CETA as a deal that will provide immediate benefits to Canadians and Europeans, even though the agreement could be scrapped at any time before final ratification.

The timeline for enacting the deal had the Council of Canadians, a staunch opponent of CETA, questioning why the Liberal government wouldn't wait to table an implementation bill.

"Given the process could take another five years in Europe, what’s the rush here other than another photo op?" asked Maude Barlow, the council's national chairperson.

"There needs to be a fuller public consultation process on CETA, just as the government has done with the Trans-Pacific Partnership."

The bulk of CETA, some 98 per cent of the deal, will come into force once it survives ratification votes in both the European Parliament and in Canada. The remaining two per cent only comes into force with the additional approval of Europe's 28 national parliaments.

Regardless, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce applauded CETA as the beginning of a new generation of trade agreements, calling it "a first step into new trade territory."

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said that for CETA to come into force, it must be ratified by the European Parliament and each of Europe's 28 national and 10 regional parliaments.

Royalty changes boost Alberta's competitiveness, says study

The Canadian Press

Changes to Alberta's royalty regime makes it more competitive than both Saskatchewan and British Columbia when it comes to oil investment.

CALGARY - A new report says changes to the Alberta royalty regime will help make Alberta more competitive than its neighbouring provinces for conventional oil investment.

The paper out Monday from the University of Calgary School of Public Policy found that changes to the royalty system will bring the marginal effective tax and royalty rate for conventional oil projects in Alberta from 35 per cent to 26.7 per cent when it goes into effect Jan. 1.

Study authors Jack Mintz and Daria Crisan found the change will switch Alberta from having one of the highest to one of the lowest rates among its peers, including ahead of British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

The study, which pegged B.C.'s rate at 28.7 per cent and Saskatchewan at 32.6 per cent, did not take into account other regulatory and carbon policies that affect competitiveness.

In July, the Alberta government announced that companies could immediately apply for well projects under the new royalty regime that weren't already planned.

The new royalty framework left oilsands royalties unchanged and simplified the system for conventional oil and gas wells.

Fort McMurray first responders honoured in Alberta legislature ceremony

The Canadian Press

Members of the Strathcona County Professional Firefighters take a break from fighting wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alta., on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 in this image posted on Twitter.

EDMONTON — The Alberta government is moving to increase fines in an attempt to prevent the spread of wildfires.

The province has tabled legislation that would raise maximum fines to $100,000 from $5,000 for anyone engaging in behaviour that could lead to wildfires.

The fine for corporations would be up to $1 million.

The size of a fine would depend on the nature of the violation and would be determined by the courts.

The proposal also includes a $10,000 maximum fine for industrial violations such as lack of firefighting equipment on a work site.

People burning fires during a fire ban without a permit or abandoning a campfire while it is still going would be fined between $150 and $1,000.

Montreal police tracked journalist's phone for months: La Presse

La Presse

La Presse columnist Patrick Lagace's iPhone was being monitored by Montreal police.

MONTREAL — A Montreal journalist whose iPhone was monitored by police for months says he was outraged to discover he'd been "spied on" as part of what he calls an effort to identify his sources.

"I was living in the fiction that police officers wouldn't dare do that, and in the fiction that judges were protecting journalists — and hence the public — against this type of police intrusion," La Presse columnist Patrick Lagace said in an interview Monday.

"Clearly, I was naive."

The French-language newspaper said it learned at least 24 surveillance warrants were issued for Lagace's phone this year at the request of the police's special investigations unit. That section is responsible for looking into crime within the police force.

Three of those warrants reportedly authorized police to get the phone numbers for all Lagace's incoming and outgoing texts and calls, while another allowed them to track the phone's location via its GPS chip.

The surveillance was ordered as part of an internal probe into allegations police anti-gang investigators fabricated evidence.

Five police officers were arrested this summer and two were charged as a result.

Lagace said police told him they obtained the court-authorized warrants because they believed the target of one of their investigations was feeding him information.

But he said the story in question was actually first reported on by a competitor, leading him to believe the investigation was actually a thinly veiled attempt to learn the identity of his sources within the police department.

"To me, this was a great pretext to try to investigate a reporter who has done numerous stories in the past that have embarrassed the service," he said.

"This is a big thing in a country like Canada. Police were permitted to spy on a journalist under very, very thin motives on a secondary part of a criminal investigation."

Montreal police Chief Philippe Pichet said the surveillance was in response to an "exceptional situation" and he pointed out the operation targeted the force's own officers and not Lagace.

"We are very aware of the importance of freedom of the press," he told a news conference. "On the other hand, the (Montreal police) also has the responsibility to investigate all types of crimes involving police officers."

He said to his knowledge no other journalists had been placed under surveillance recently, but added he could not guarantee it.

Reaction to La Presse's story was swift, with many unions and media organizations denouncing the police operation, and some opposition city councillors calling for Pichet to step aside while the matter is investigated.

La Presse's vice-president of information, Eric Trottier, called the surveillance "an unequivocal attack on the institution that is La Presse and against the entire journalistic profession."

Mayor Denis Coderre said he was concerned by the report but that it isn't his role to intefere with the work of the courts or the police.

"We have to be concerned and we can't take it lightly," he told a news conference in Montreal, adding he had discussed the matter with Pichet and Quebec Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux.

Coiteux later said his department was conducting "verifications" but he would not elaborate on what that entailed.

He described the reports as "troubling" but, like Coderre, stressed the importance of keeping politics out of the police and court systems.

"We as a government won't involve ourselves in judicial decisions, we won't involve ourselves in police investigations, but we will ask questions," Coiteux told reporters in Quebec City.

The case also attracted the attention of renowned whistleblower Edward Snowden, who tweeted about it. "Are you a journalist? The police spying on you specifically to ID your sources is not hypothetical. This is today," he said, with a link to a Montreal Gazette story about the matter.

The outgoing head of internal affairs for the Montreal police confirmed to La Presse he authorized the surveillance.

Costa Labos told the newspaper he didn't believe any other journalists had been the object of surveillance in recent years but he couldn't guarantee it.

Lagace said the newspaper is contesting the legality of the warrants and will try to retrieve the information collected by police.

Ottawa may review parties' use of Canadians’ private data

File photo

A House of Commons committee plans to study whether political parties should have some basic rules for collecting — and protecting — private information from millions of citizens.

OTTAWA—As Parliament considers peering into political parties’ collection and use of sensitive personal information about citizens, those parties are busy developing more powerful and sophisticated tools to track voter data.

Canada has virtually no rules governing how political parties collect, use and share information about voters they meet on the doorstep, hear from on issues, or observe on social media.

In fact, Canadians are largely in the dark about what kinds of information parties collect and how they use it.

But a House of Commons committee plans to study whether parties should have some basic rules for collecting — and protecting — private information like political beliefs, financial information, family makeup, and contact information from millions of citizens.

Daniel Blaikie, the New Democrat MP who suggested the study, said multiple witnesses brought the issue to the Access to Information and Ethics committee during a review of the Privacy Act this year.

“Witnesses had expressed a lack of knowledge of where exactly (the data) goes.” Blaikie said in an interview Thursday. “So the idea was really just to get a better idea, if there was going to be regulation, where would you put it and how would it work.”

How much of an appetite Parliament has to debate the issue, however, remains to be seen. All three major parties have a strong interest in keeping secret the specifics of their data operations.

The Star asked the three parties to outline exactly what types of data they were collecting and what steps they take to protect that data from both outside intrusion, such as hackers, or internal misuse.

Liberal party spokesperson Braeden Caley did not get into specifics about what sorts of information the party collects — although he did point to the party’s privacy policy, which states they collect any “information you choose to give (them).”

Caley said that in 2015, 80,000 Liberal volunteers had an estimated 4 million conversations with voters.

“We engage with Canadians from coast to coast to coast on a daily basis and we are committed to protecting information assets and any personal data we collect in the process,” Caley said. “The party also does not sell personal information under any circumstances.”

The Conservatives use an in-house database known as CIMS, short for the Constituent Information Management System. Party spokesperson Cory Hann said it would be difficult to list all the types of data that go into CIMS, as 338 local campaigns upload information into the central database.

However, he said in a statement, “I’d say you want to know if the household is voting Conservative.”

“That’s the minimum, in my opinion, to make going door-to-door worthwhile.”

According to reported accounts from former party officials, CIMS also keeps track of donors, people who request election signs, and supports both electronic and on-the-ground outreach efforts. In 2007, one former Conservative politician even accused the party of logging the concerns citizens brought to their local MPs into the party’s central database.

Hann added the party takes “every precaution” to ensure the CIMS data is secure.

The NDP used a new voter database in the 2015 election called “Populous.” According to Dave Hare, the party’s director of operations, the database can track demographics, party membership, even specific issues of concern for individual voters.

“The information is primarily used to direct our ground efforts (mobilizing supporters and talking to persuadable voters) during and in-between elections,” Hare wrote on Friday.

He said the NDP hired an independent firm to conduct a security audit of the database before the party used it, and even commissioned “white hat” hackers to test the limits of its security.

It’s not clear when the parliamentary committee will begin the study into this issue. The committee has committed to just two studies ahead of it — on private sector privacy and on the Security of __canada Information Sharing Act — but other business could push the examination of parties’ data practices further down the line.

Conjugal visits increase public safety, help offenders reintegrate, experts say

The Canadian Press

Lee Chapelle poses for a photo in Toronto on Friday, October 28, 2016. Chapelle who runs Prison Consulting Services __canada and spent a number of years behind bars, during which time he got married and conceived a child.

VANCOUVER — Lee Chapelle has fond memories of spending afternoons with his wife in the mid-1990s, barbecuing in a small yard while his young children played in the grass and mimicked the cows' moos as the animals grazed in a nearby field.

Were it not for the five-metre, barbed-wire penitentiary fence interrupting the view, the scene could easily have been mistaken as an everyday family experience.

Between 1991 and 2010, Chapelle spent about 15 years behind bars for property theft. On more than a dozen occasions over that period, his young family was able to spend as many as three days at a time living with him.

The stays, which remain a part of the Canadian correctional system, are linked to a long-standing program aimed at increasing the chances of inmates successfully reintegrating into society after their release.

"It was a really big motivation to come home to my family to be able to spend time with my newborn baby and realize just how much was out there and just how much I wanted to be with them," Chapelle said.

"I had a family that needed me and that I loved and that I wanted to be with."

Some experts say Canada's so-called private family visit program, which began in 1980 as a pilot project, plays an important role in rehabilitating offenders, and also provides corrections officers with a useful tool for encouraging good behaviour from inmates.

The program has received recent attention after a media report that Kelly Ellard, a notorious killer in British Columbia, is eight-months pregnant following a conjugal visit from her boyfriend.

Lisa Kerr, a law professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., said the program recognizes that the majority of federal inmates will be released and that it is in society's best interest to make that process as successful as possible.

"Close personal relationships are part of what makes people have hope about their future and gives them reason to invest in their correctional programming and move towards a release plan," she said.

Canada's longtime correctional investigator, Howard Sapers, said conjugal visits have been around for as long as he can remember. He cited research showing inmates who are allowed to maintain close family bonds have a lower likelihood of reoffending.

There is nothing in Canada's private family visit legislation that discriminates between gender or sexual orientation.

The stays typically happen in a more private section of the prison within small living units complete with kitchens and a yard, which Chapelle said inmates commonly refer to as "trailers." There are strict guidelines around who qualifies, both as an inmate and a visitor, and families pay for any food during the stay, which can last up to three days.

The program is only in place in federal institutions.

Prisons were a longtime fixture in Chapelle's family life. His wedding took place inside Kingston's medium-security Joyceville Institution and he said he consummated the marriage during his first private family visit.

The woman who would become Chapelle's wife was pregnant at the time of his incarceration, and the couple conceived another child during a later prison visit. Those experiences were crucial in developing the close relationship he now has with his children, he said.

"When it comes to your wife, it gives you a fighting chance of being able to keep your family," Chapelle said, adding that people underestimate the importance of human touch that conjugal visits allow.

One woman who makes frequent private family visits attributes the close connection between her partner and their two-year-old son in large part to the extended visits they have had while he serves time for home invasion.

"My son and his father have the sweetest little bond," said Jennifer, whose last name isn't being included because her employer isn't aware of her personal circumstances.

"He is at the age where he knows who his dada is. When my phone rings he thinks it's his dada. When we're in (the prison) waiting for him to come down he runs to him."

She described staying at the private-visit facilities at Fenbrook Institution in Kingston. Correctional officers would deliver four sets of utensils at the beginning of the stay, and there was only one steak knife on hand, which was attached to the wall with a 25-centimetre chain, she said.

An official with the Canadian Correctional Service said private family visits are part of a system of treating inmates humanely, and help connect them to the community.

"The goal of corrections goes beyond punishment and goes beyond custody," said Michael Bettman, head of offender programs and reintegration.

"The majority of offenders are going to return to Canadian society and our job in the correctional service is to prepare them and to mitigate any risk that they might pose."

— Follow @gwomand on Twitter

Adults shamed from speaking indigenous languages hold key to revival, survival

Dr. Onowa McIvor, an assistant professor in Indigenous Education, is photographed on campus at the University of Victoria in Victoria, B.C. Friday, October 28, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

VICTORIA — There's a generation of indigenous people across __canada who were once shamed for speaking their own language.

Now, people who didn't learn their mother tongue from their parents are key to saving and revitalizing the languages, British Columbia researchers say.

Two University of Victoria indigenous languages experts whose own parents did not speak their aboriginal languages at home are moving to bridge the language gap with a mentor-apprentice program that teaches adults.

"There were generations of people, my parents and grandparents, who were sent to residential school and forbidden to speak their language and beaten and shamed and ridiculed and punished in all sorts of awful ways for speaking the language," said Peter Jacobs, a UVic linguist and fluent speaker of his Squamish Nation language.

"A lot of those people who came out of that school system chose not to teach their children the language," he said. "My dad doesn't speak Squamish as his first language for that very reason even though both his parents were fluent speakers. That caused a big disruption."

There are almost 60 indigenous languages spoken in Canada, with B.C. leading the country with 34 languages.

A November 2014 report by British Columbia's First Peoples' Cultural Council found a decline in fluent indigenous language speakers but an increase in semi-fluent speakers. The study looked at 129,000 people in B.C. who speak an indigenous language and found 60 per cent of fluent speakers are aged 65 and older, while one in three semi-fluent speakers are under the age of 25.

The program focuses on adults learning an indigenous language by being paired with a fluent speaker who is a mentor. The teacher and student are immersed in a curriculum where classes could involve hunting expeditions or family chores but are conducted entirely in the indigenous language.

Onowa McIvor, director of UVic's indigenous education department, said she and Jacobs are compiling three years of data from 67 participants in the mentor-apprentice program. The participants range in age from young adults who recently completed high school to people in their 50s, she said.

"These are the people, the first generation, their parents didn't teach the language to them," said McIvor, a Cree from Norway House, Man., who completed the mentor-apprentice program as an apprentice.

"Their parents were growing up in a Canada where it wasn't cool to be Indian," she said. "In fact, most indigenous people thought they were doing right by their kids and doing better for their kids by not teaching them the language."

McIvor said she believes the researchers' work is "a tangible example of reconciliation in action."

Participants have noticed their connections with relatives and their traditions have strengthened along with their language skills, she said.

"We are seeing what's happening on the ground and we are watching in our lifetimes, in the last 10 or 15 years that Peter and I have worked in the field, we've witnessed new speakers, new adult speakers of the language."

Elisha Elliott is a graduate of the program and is an indigenous languages teacher at Lau Welnew Tribal School at Brentwood Bay, about 20 kilometres northwest of Victoria.

Elliott, 29, known by her indigenous name Menetiye, pronounced Monethia, said her first language lessons with elders from the Tsartlip First Nation involved playing with dolls to learn the Sencoten language of southern Vancouver Island. She's now teaching elementary students.

She said the time is right for indigenous languages even though many fluent elders have died in recent years.

"What we're doing now, I don't think could have been done back then. It's come at a time when there's been enough healing."

Elliott said her students are reading, writing and solving math problems using their indigenous language.

Earlier this month, a Vancouver Island Grade 8 student stunned a gathering of national aboriginal leaders and federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett by saying he volunteered to become his school's indigenous language teacher.

Tim Masso, 13, said he volunteered to help teach the indigenous studies course at Ucluelet Secondary School on British Columbia's west coast even though he is still learning the Nuu-chah-nulth language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Facing charges nothing new for accused diamond thieves

The Canadian Press

Charlottetown Police Services issued this handout photo of a couple suspected of involvement in an Oct. 12 robbery in Charlottetown.

A year to the day before Natalia Feldman, 44, wound up in handcuffs outside of her Thornhill condo, York Regional Police allege, she was assaulting her partner, 70-year-old Grigori Zaharov, with an ashtray.

Feldman and Zaharov, the alleged diamond thieves suspected in a spree of high-value heists across the country, are each facing one count of theft over $5,000 in New Brunswick and one count of theft over $5,000 in Prince Edward Island. They were arrested on a nationwide warrant outside their condo in the early hours of Oct. 20.

Exactly a year earlier, Feldman was charged with assault with a weapon and wilfully damaging Zaharov’s property — specifically a door and television, whose value exceeded $5,000. She was also charged with an assault against Zaharov that allegedly occurred 10 days prior to that, using a mug as a weapon. All of the charges were withdrawn, but court documents indicate Feldman received two years of probation and had to pay a $200 fine within six months.

Feldman faced assault charges in 2008, 2009 and 2010 — all of which were withdrawn. Torstar News Service could not ascertain who these assaults were allegedly against.

Zaharov’s own history with legal trouble goes back to the early ’90s.

In 1992, he was convicted of possession of housebreaking instruments. Court records show police found six pairs of surgical gloves, a “jimmy” tool, lock picks, a bent clothes hanger, two bolt cutters, a wire cutter, a mini-crowbar, a pry-bar, a 14-inch spike, a screw head and fencing pliers in a car belonging to Zaharov.

They also found a map with X's on both a hotel where Zaharov had stayed and the Radio Shack store where a robbery had taken place.

In 1999, court records indicate he was charged with theft under $5,000. He pled guilty to a lesser charge, served one day in jail and got a year of probation.

In 2000, he was charged with theft, breach of probation and possessing the tools of a break-in artist, according to court records. Those charges were withdrawn, but he was convicted in Ottawa in 2003 of theft under $5,000 and was fined $500.

In Toronto of the same year, Zaharov was charged with theft and assaulting a peace officer. Records show he was fined $3,000 and got a year of probation for the theft. The assault charge was withdrawn.

Real estate records indicate the pair also has a complex marital history.

Torstar News Service

The condo building at 1 Maison Parc Court in Thornhill where Natalia Feldman purchased a penthouse suite for $453,899 in 2005. Feldman and Zaharov are each facing one count of theft over $5,000 in New Brunswick and one count of theft over $5,000 in P.E.I.

According to public records, Feldman purchased her Thornhill condo in 2005 for $452,899. By 2010, there was nearly $50,000 worth of writs against the property.

The couple lives on the penthouse floor of the eight-storey building. The off-white building, with its clean lines, archways and a fountain out front, is unassuming. But it boasts a number of amenities including 24-hour security, a recreation room, gym, indoor pool and sauna.

In 2007, the Thornhill condo was designated as the couple’s “matrimonial home.” In July 2011, Zaharov made an application to the Ontario Superior Court to that designation removed, claiming the couple were divorced. That record of the application was subsequently deleted from the file.

But just three months later, Feldman applied to the Land Registrar to have Zaharov added to the property title as 50-per-cent owner, listing him as “spouse.”

Most recently, this year Zaharov and Feldman were identified after video footage appeared to show a couple swapping a fake diamond for a $10,000 real one on Oct. 7 at a jewelry store in Saint John, N.B. Police in Charlottetown, P.E.I., allege they pulled the same sleight-of-hand at a store there, making off with another $20,000 in precious stones.

So far the couple is only facing charges regarding the alleged heists in Saint John and Charlottetown. But Nicole Shannon, co-owner of Kier Fine Jewelers in Whistler, B.C. said she’s convinced the pair also pulled off a bait-and-switch at her store back in August.

“Basically it was the same situation. We found that diamonds had been swapped out,” Shannon said. “We’re fairly confident it’s the same couple.”

Shannon said protecting against sleight-of-hand thefts like the one Feldman and Zaharov are accused of is difficult.

Sales employees have to strike a balance, being vigilant without alienating customers by treating them like potential thieves.

“It is absolutely a fine line,” Shannon said. “Our business is built on trust. You want people to feel comfortable, and you want to treat them like family.”

Shannon said the jewelry industry is often reluctant to report thefts because of fears that reports will undermine customer trust, but she and Smith both decided to speak out, hoping to change that attitude.

“I think that it’s the other way around. If you talk about it, it makes them realize that you are onto it and are not an easy target,” she said.

Saint John police Sgt. Charles Breen said the missing stone from Smith’s store has not yet been recovered.

Both Smith and Shannon said their stones were laser-etched with unique identifying markers. If they’re found, they can be matched with and returned to their rightful owners.

Zaharov and Feldman will appear for a bail hearing in a New Brunswick court on Monday.

Murder and segregation: the story of Adam Capay and Sherman Quisses

Sherman Quisses, left, was 35 when he was in an altercation with Adam Capay, right, and was allegedly stabbed in the neck at the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre. (SUBMITTED IMAGES)

THUNDER BAY, ONT.—Their lives, in many ways, ran on parallel tracks. Two men from reserves in northern Ontario, each with a spotted history of run ins with the law.

But it was jail that brought Adam Capay and Sherman Quisses together. Their lives intersected in the most sinister way.

One of them is now dead, and the other has risen to national prominence as the poster boy for the cruelties of solitary confinement. Capay has languished in segregation at a Thunder Bay prison for four years as he waits to go on trial, a revelation that has provoked shock and outrage across the country. Yet he also stands accused of murdering Quisses in a jailhouse spat on June 3, 2012.

Quisses’s aunt Zelda, who lives in the remote community of Fort Hope, feels a mix of sympathy and anger at the sudden attention paid to her nephew’s accused killer.

“To be honest, I feel he deserved the treatment that he got. But as a caring person, I do feel sorry for him too,” she said. “I guess when you do something, you have to face the consequences of whatever you did to a person, the crime you committed. You have to face it.”

What actually transpired is up for dispute, but what’s known for sure is that Quisses died and Capay was charged with first degree murder. The day it happened, a bunch of inmates dared Capay to eat a fat beetle that was scuttling around, according to one prisoner who was at the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre that night.

“He ate it,” recalled the prisoner, who was listed as a witness on court documents. “I guess something in that spider juice made him go crazy.”

Later, at around 1 a.m., the prisoner woke in his bunk in an open range dormitory. He asked that Torstar News Service protect his identity, for fear of reprisal over what he saw: Capay scuffling with Quisses, who lay in his bunk a few beds down. “It all happened really fast,” said the prisoner. “I thought they was just fighting.”

The Crown alleges that Capay, who was weeks shy of turning 20, used some sort of “instrument” to “attack and puncture” Quisses’s carotid artery, according to court documents. The 35-year-old man bled out through his neck and died.

From that gruesome scene, suffering has spun out in all directions. Quisses died just a week before his release, his family says. He left behind a young son, Tristan, and a host of other grieving relatives.

Meanwhile, Capay was transferred to the Thunder Bay Jail, a maximum security prison in an ashlar sandstone fortress where an estimated 90 per cent of inmates identify as indigenous. Earlier this month, Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Renu Mandhane toured the jail and witnessed Capay’s condition, after the local union president and corrections officer Mike Lundy told her “she had to know.” She learned that Capay has been in segregation since 2012; 23 hours a day, alone beneath glaring lights in a plexiglass cell. Mandhane told Torstar last week that she spoke with Capay, who is now 24. He told her he couldn’t tell night from day, and showed her scars from his attempts at self-harm.

The story has summoned calls from Mandhane and others to put an end to solitary confinement at provincial jails. Breese Davies, a criminal defence lawyer in Toronto, called Capay’s treatment “unconscionable” in light of how the United Nations has deemed solitary confinement for 15 straight days to be a form of torture. On Friday, Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day posted a statement on Facebook describing how he visited Capay this week. “I'm so pissed off at the system and what it has done to so many of our people and what it continues to do today,” he wrote. “There is no rhyme or reason for what Adam Capay is going through.”

In response to the revelations, Ontario’s corrections minister, David Orazietti, pledged an external review “of the corrections system as a whole” and insisted this week that the province’s goal is to use segregation only as a last resort. That’s on top of the review announced earlier in October, scheduled to be finished by next spring, that will aim to find ways to reduce the use of segregation at provincial jails. It also comes 19 months after another solitary confinement review was called by Orazietti’s predecessor, current-Attorney General Yasir Naqvi, whom Lundy claimed to have told about Capay last January, when he visited the jail. Naqvi’s review, concluded this month, was done internally and resulted in a new rule to cap consecutive days in segregation at 15 instead of 30.

On Wednesday, Orazietti put out a statement saying Capay had been moved to a different cell, which has lights that can be dimmed and access to showers and a television. Lundy told Torstar that, contrary to Orazietti’s statement, Capay remains in segregation and was only moved due to construction in the prison. “What’s going to happen when construction’s finished—he’s going right back to where he was,” Lundy said on Friday.

Capay’s parents and siblings, who live on the Lac Seul First Nation near Sioux Lookout, did not want to speak with Torstar, on instructions from Capay’s lawyer. He is still accused of killing Quisses, and they don’t want to say something that could harm his case. The trial has been postponed three times since he was charged in June 2012: once for a psychiatric assessment, which deemed Capay fit to stand trial; again when he challenged the makeup of his jury as unconstitutional for a lack of diversity, a motion he lost; and then when he fired his first lawyer just before proceedings were to begin again this fall.

His new lawyer, Tony Bryant, told Torstar: “We are doing our upmost to represent Mr. Capay in the defence of his first degree murder charge and to take all possible steps to ensure that his rights are protected.”

Rob Sakamoto was one of Capay’s teachers at the Queen Elizabeth District High School in Sioux Lookout. He said that Capay was “in and out of youth detention centres” over the years, but that is not uncommon for many young people in the communities around that town. “We as a society, like Adam, need to own the role we have played in the past, what we are doing in the present, and our responsibility to support First Nations communities on their path to healing in the future,” he said. “Youth like Adam deserve better.”

For Quisses’s family, the massive profile of Capay’s confinement has brought up complicated feelings. “I don’t know why so many feel sorry for him. He took my nephew away from me,” said his aunt, Jessie during an interview at her Thunder Bay apartment. “I loved Sherman, my boy, so much. I raised him when was a baby,” she said, tightly clasping her hands with tears in her eyes.

Speaking with Torstar in downtown Thunder Bay, Quisses’s son Tristan, now 18, said he remembers every detail from the day his father died. He was playing video games back home in Neskantaga First Nation when his aunt called for him upstairs to tell him his dad was stabbed in jail. Tristan and his mother rushed to take the next flight to Thunder Bay. Hours later, he was standing over his father, who was now hooked up to life support at the hospital with bloodstained bandages wrapped around his neck. “I touched his cold hand and said farewell dad,” Tristan said.

Four years later, the grade 12 student is on track to graduate next June. He plans to become a police officer—“cops and robbers” was one of the favourite games he used to play with his dad — and ultimately, one day, leave Thunder Bay.

“Life is hard on the reserve, you know, life is hard being First Nation,” he said. “To work as a police officer in Toronto or Ottawa—that’s my dream because that society is peaceful compared to life on the reserve.”

Four years after Quisses’s death, his alleged killer is still waiting to go on trial in the Thunder Bay Jail. Earlier in October, the Ontario Human Rights Commission released a report that concluded there is an “alarming and systemic overuse of segregation” at Ontario jails. Between October and December 2015, more than 4,100 inmates spent at least one day in segregation; more than 1,500 of them—38.2 per cent—had a “mental health alert” on file. Nearly a quarter of segregation placements in the report exceeded two weeks—with 15 days being the UN threshold for torture.

In 2013, a ruling from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ordered that inmates put into segregation receive a handout that spells out their rights while in solitary confinement. The handout stipulates that a review of their segregation must be done every five days, while another review that includes the inmate’s mental health needs and explores any alternatives to solitary confinement, must be done for every 30 days of continuous segregation. For each 30-day review, the prison superintendent must report on an inmate’s segregation to the Assistant Deputy Minister of Institutional Services.

In Capay’s case, this would mean that the assistant deputy minister should have received dozens of reports on his segregation.

The Thunder Bay Jail superintendent, Bill Wheeler, and the acting superintendent Deborah McKay, did not respond to questions about Capay’s confinement, or whether the handout protocols were followed in Capay’s case. The assistant deputy minister, Christina Danylchenko, did not return calls or emails from Torstar, either.

Spokespeople for the corrections ministry and Minister Orazietti also did not respond to questions about solitary confinement, Capay’s case, and the segregation protocol.