Board orders deportation for trucker who caused horrific Humboldt Broncos crash
By: Bill Graveland
CALGARY (CP) – The truck driver who caused the horrific bus crash involving the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team has been ordered to be deported.
The decision came Friday at an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing in Calgary for Jaskirat Singh Sidhu.
Sidhu’s lawyer had said the decision was a foregone conclusion, as all that’s required to deport Sidhu is proof that he’s not a Canadian citizen and he committed a serious crime.
Sidhu is from India and has permanent resident status in Canada.
The rookie truck driver from Calgary barrelled through a stop sign and into the path of the junior hockey team’s bus at a rural intersection near Tisdale, Sask., in 2018.
Sixteen people on the bus were killed and 13 were injured.
Sidhu pleaded guilty to dangerous driving offences and was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was granted full parole last year.
Sidhu’s lawyer, Michael Greene, said there are still numerous other legal procedures to come, and the deportation process could take months or years.
Two years ago, the Canada Border Services Agency recommended deportation, and Greene went to court to fight it.
Canada expects ‘everyone’ to abide by ICJ’s latest Israel ruling, Trudeau says
By: Nojoud Al Mallees
OTTAWA (CP) – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the International Court of Justice’s latest ruling is in line with Canada’s position on Israel’s military operations in Rafah.
“Canada’s position has been clear for many, many weeks now. We need an immediate ceasefire. Hamas needs to lay down its arms, release all hostages, but there also must be no more military operations in Rafah by Israel,” Trudeau said on Friday during a news conference in Halifax.
“The ICJ’s proposals are binding, and we expect everyone to follow them as a matter of international law.”
His comments come after the United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza Strip city, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire for the enclave.
The sharply focused decision sent a three-pronged message to Israel, ordering the country to halt the Rafah offensive, allow war crimes investigators access to Gaza and immediately increase humanitarian aid into the region.
The ruling is a blow to Israel’s international standing, but the court doesn’t have a police force to enforce its orders.
Trudeau also reiterated on Friday Canada’s support for a two-state solution and called out the Israeli government for standing in the way of that aspiration.
“Unfortunately, the Netanyahu government is creating barriers and blockages to ever being able to create or even imagine that two-state solution. That is where we fundamentally disagree with the Netanyahu government,” Trudeau said.
— With files from The Associated Press.
BC United leader Falcon says Conservatives have rejected election deal
VICTORIA (CP) – BC United Leader Kevin Falcon says the BC Conservatives have rejected a deal to avoid vote-splitting in the fall provincial election.
He says talks between the two right-of-centre parties concluded with Conservative Leader John Rustad rejecting a proposed “non-competition” agreement.
Falcon says Rustad has “placed his own ambition” above B.C.’s interests and is risking the re-election of the governing NDP.
Ottawa willing to add to list of medications covered by pharmacare bill: minister
By: Anja Karadeglija
OTTAWA (CP) – Health Minister Mark Holland says the government is open to adding more medications to the list of drugs covered by its proposed pharmacare program.
Holland made the comments at a parliamentary committee studying the Liberals’ pharmacare bill.
Conservative health critic Stephen Ellis asked the minister why semaglutide — a class of antidiabetic medication — was not included on the list of drugs covered by the legislation.
The bill, introduced in February, charts a course toward a universal pharmacare plan that covers birth control and diabetes drugs and supplies.
It does not include Ozempic, a new semaglutide medication for diabetes that has been used off-label as a weight-loss drug.
Holland said the current list represents an “absolute minimum,” and the government is open to adding to it based on negotiations with provinces and recommendations from the committee.
“If there’s things you think should be on that list, I’m actually quite interested in having that conversation. Hopefully it would mean you support the legislation,” Holland said to Ellis.
Ellis responded: “Yeah, I don’t think we need to worry about that, because it’s bad legislation.”
It was one of a few tense exchanges between Holland and Ellis, who grilled the minister on topics including Canadians’ access to primary care and how long it takes to approve medications in Canada.
Supreme Court upholds sexual assault conviction, affirms refusal of evidence
OTTAWA (CP) – The Supreme Court of Canada says a man found guilty of sexually assaulting his long-time partner was not entitled to present evidence about sexual activity they engaged in shortly before the offence.
The man, identified only as T.W.W., was convicted after the trial judge refused to allow evidence of the earlier encounter.
The woman testified that she and her partner had separated several weeks before the events, and that he moved into a downstairs bedroom in their house.
She said that one morning he sexually assaulted her.
T.W.W. sought to introduce evidence that they had engaged in consensual sexual activity the prior evening.
Evidence of a complainant’s sexual history is presumed to be inadmissible, and the Supreme Court upheld the conviction while affirming the decision to deny admission of the evidence.
Search for truth goes on, regardless of killer Pickton’s fate, say victims’ advocates
By: Brieanna Charlebois and Nono Shen
VANCOUVER (CP) – Advocates for alleged victims of B.C. serial killer Robert Pickton say they remain focused on getting justice for the women, as Pickton lies in a Quebec hospital in a coma after being attacked in prison.
Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Vancouver-based Battered Women’s Support Services, reflected on the weekend assault that left Pickton with what police called life-threatening injuries, saying “There’s something to be said about jailhouse justice.”
But regardless of his fate, she said the fight on behalf of the women Pickton was accused of killing continues.
She said that includes a legal application opposing an RCMP bid to destroy about 14,000 pieces of evidence collected in the Pickton investigation.
There are also multiple ongoing lawsuits by family members of victims against Pickton and his brother, David Pickton.
Jason Gratl, the lawyer representing family members of victims in nine lawsuits against the brothers, said the potential death of the killer would have no bearing on proceedings.
“Robert William Pickton’s state of health or well-being — I don’t anticipate it will have any significant effect on the progress of the civil trial,” he said in an interview Thursday.
“Based on his self-published book, ‘The Fall Guy,’ I didn’t anticipate that he would have any constructive contribution to make at the trial.”
Hackers release corporate data stolen from London Drugs, company says
By: Brenna Owen
RICHMOND, B.C. (CP) – Retailer London Drugs says cybercriminals who stole files from its corporate head office last month have released some of the data after it refused to pay a ransom.
The Richmond, B.C.-based company says in a statement the files may contain “some employee information,” calling it a “deeply distressing” situation.
London Drugs was responding to a social media post by Brett Callow, a B.C.-based threat analyst with anti-virus software company Emsisoft, which said the hacking group LockBit had released what it claimed was the company’s data.
Lockbit has been described by British authorities as “the world’s most harmful cybercrime group.”
Callow said LockBit released more than 300 gigabytes of data on Thursday, describing it as an “absolutely huge amount” of information that could represent hundreds of thousands or possibly even millions of individual records.
He said that if the data proved to be from London Drugs, the move suggested LockBit had “given up” on being able to monetize the attack. The release also showed the hackers’ future victims what could happen if they refused to pay up, Callow said.
The statement from London Drugs said it was “unwilling and unable” to pay a ransom to hackers it described as “a sophisticated group of global cybercriminals.”
It said London Drugs was notifying employees whose personal information may have been affected and offering them credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.
The company said there was no indication any patient or customer databases were compromised in the breach that forced London Drugs to shut down its stores across Western Canada after it was discovered on April 28.