National News
March 24, 2008OTTAWA - The RCMP is stripping crucial details about Taser firings from public reports as use of the controversial stun guns skyrockets across the country.
A joint investigation by The Canadian Press and CBC found the Mounties are now refusing to divulge key information that must be recorded each time they draw their electronic weapons.
TORONTO - With Ontario's budget already committed to ink and paper for Tuesday's release, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivered yet another instalment Monday in his campaign to push business tax cuts onto the provincial agenda as a way to boost Canada's faltering economic engine.
Dismissed as a partisan "stunt" by his provincial counterpart given the budget is already "locked in," Flaherty told a news conference that Ontario's Liberal government has plenty of time to heed his advice and change the budget bill before it's finally voted on - likely weeks from now.
OTTAWA - Nobody can remember anything like it.
After months of sniping at Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty for the province's slumping economy - and receiving return fire from Queen's Park - federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty called an unusual press conference Monday to tell his Ontario counterpart what to put in Tuesday's provincial budget.
TORONTO - Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk says he'll clear his name of allegations that he misled investors while he headed Biovail Corp. (TSX:BVF), a drugmaker he's battling in court and which agreed Monday to pay a US$10 million fine to settle a U.S. regulator's charges of civil accounting fraud and deceiving investors and analysts.
The Ontario Securities Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are alleging Biovail filed inaccurate financial statements and misled investors in recent years with the involvement of Melnyk and other executives.
OTTAWA - Brenda Martin's former boss says Mexican officials are using the jailed Canadian woman as collateral for his unpaid debt.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Alyn Waage said Monday his lawyers struck a deal with Mexican officials the day after his arrest in 2001, agreeing to pay $500,000 for his freedom.
OTTAWA - Canadian army gunners in Afghanistan are now cleared to fire GPS-guided artillery shells at Taliban militants - at the cost of $150,000 a round.
The Excalibur shell could very well be the most expensive conventional ammunition ever fired by the military.
TORONTO - The system that keeps working doctors abreast of medical developments is too reliant on drug company funding and organization and needs an overhaul, the Canadian Medical Organization Journal said in an editorial published Tuesday.
The strongly worded editorial, written by the journal's editor-in-chief, said giving drug companies such control over the continuing medical education of doctors distorts medical practice and compromises the ethical underpinnings of the profession.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canadian soldiers are getting back to work this Easter Monday after a weekend of rest and spiritual rebirth.
For Padre Jim Brown, chaplain for the Canadian contingent, it was a busy three days that capped a difficult several weeks.
SHANNON, Que. - It seems as if no one in this small town north of Quebec City drinks the water - not the mayor, not the hairstylist, not even the nurse.
Yet the residents of Shannon, Que., get their water from what many consider a reliable source, the Canadian army.
MONTREAL - A suspected Basque terrorist is accusing the Canadian government of relying on information gathered through torture to deport him.
Ivan Apaolaza Sancho told The Canadian Press that part of the evidence immigration officials are using against him comes from interrogation where Spanish police roughed up a suspect.
MOOSE JAW, Sask. - A man from British Columbia has been fined $48,000 after admitting to having illegal cigarettes in the minivan he was driving.
Lorne Douglas Clarke, 59, of Kamloops was stopped and arrested on the Trans-Canada Highway in Saskatchewan on the weekend. Officers said they found 1,500 cartons of illegal cigarettes in the van, which was heading west.
TORONTO - Canadians began being notified today about payments they might be entitled to in a class-action lawsuit over certain gas furnaces.
The 90-plus per cent high-efficiency furnaces were made by Carrier Corp. and include a secondary heat exchanger.
OTTAWA - Supporters of a Canadian man sentenced to die in Saudi Arabia rallied on Parliament Hill Sunday for Ottawa to push harder for clemency.
Several dozen protesters stood in sub-zero temperatures and urged the Conservative government to apply more pressure on Riyadh to spare Mohamed Kohail.
YELLOWKNIFE - With dozens of soldiers, Inuit reservists, snowmobiles and pallet loads of supplies starting the long journey to the High Arctic this week, the military is beginning another epic patrol of the sea ice and rugged coastline of Canada's remotest border.
And after repeated previous operations to enforce Canadian sovereignty over the increasingly disputed Arctic, the army says it's finally starting to feel more at home on the ice.
TORONTO - Toting banners bearing images of atrocities allegedly committed by the Chinese against Tibetans and bellowing "stop the torture" and "free Tibet" through megaphones, more than 1,000 protesters took to the streets of Toronto on Sunday to denounce the Chinese occupation that has left as many as 100 people dead in recent weeks.
Organized by the Joint Action Committee, the demonstration was meant to show solidarity with Tibetans. Participants also took the opportunity to call on the Canadian government to do more to pressure the communist country on its human rights record.
TORONTO - Lawyers tasked under Canada's newly rewritten national security law with testing top secret evidence against alleged terrorists say they fear a lack of resources, including things as simple as an office with a secretary to type letters, could damage their ability to do the job.
As a result, several of the 19 special advocates are pressing the government to provide the help they say will be critical to their ability to function.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - The 15-country Caribbean Community will begin negotiating a new trade and aid pact with Canada by the middle of the year, the trade bloc said Sunday.
Known as Caricom, the group has been urged by Canada to begin discussing updates to the CaribCan agreement which is more than a decade old.
OTTAWA - Toronto's Pearson airport is being dropped from a global review of airport efficiency after a complaint about its embarrassingly low ranking.
The president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority demanded the removal of Pearson from the annual survey of more than 150 major airports in a toughly worded letter last August.
