The Canadian Parvasi-issue 53

The International News Weekly Canada
July 13, 2018 | Toronto 04
Brampton Coun. John Sprovieri
planning run for mayor’s office
Brampton and regional councillor
for Wards 9 and 10, John Sprovieri, has
confirmed he is planning to run against
incumbent Mayor Linda Jeffrey for the
city’s top job in the Oct. 22 municipal
election.
Sprovieri, who has served as a councillor
in Brampton since 1988, is the last
incumbent member of council to reveal
his plans for the next council term. “Our
present mayor came with good connections
from the province and Bramptonians
were expecting to get a better deal
from her and her Liberal friends. Instead,
Brampton received less and were
neglected and ignored by the premier
and prime minister,” said Sprovieri.
Cancelling Ontario's wind project could
cost over $100M, company warns
Ontario : The federal NDP
leader — who isn’t on the
public payroll because he remains
unelected — has never
drawn a salary from his party
and doesn’t intend to receive
a paycheque until its finances
“significantly” improve, his
press secretary says.
Green energy project that
has been under development
for nearly a decade could cost
more than $100 million, the
president of the company said
Wednesday, warning that the
dispute could be headed to the
courts.
Ontario's governing Progressive
Conservatives said
this week that one of their
first priorities during the
legislature's summer sitting
would be to cancel the contract
for the White Pines Project
in Prince Edward County.
Ian MacRae, president of
WPD Canada, the company
behind the project, said he
was stunned by the news
given that the project is weeks
away from completion.
"What our lawyers are
telling us is we have a completely
valid contract that
we've had since 2009 with the
(Independent Electricity System
Operator). ... There's no
He identified a number of areas he’d
like to focus on if elected where he feels
recent incarnations of council have
dropped the ball.
Among them, he listed hospital wait
times, LRT funding and unequal representation
on regional council. He also
said he believes the city has suffered
reputational damage resulting from
good reason for the government
to breach that contract,"
he said.
The government has also
not reached out to discuss the
cancellation, he said. Meanwhile,
construction on the site
is in full swing, he said.
"Over the last couple
weeks we've had an average of
100 people on site every day,"
he said. "The footprint of the
project is 100 per cent in. So,
all the access roads, the concrete
for the base foundations,
much of the electrical infrastructure.
The sub-station is
nearing completion."
The project includes nine
wind turbines meant to produce
enough electricity to
power just over 3,000 homes
annually. All of the turbines
are expected to be installed
over the next three weeks,
with testing scheduled for the
following month.
MacRae couldn't say for
certain who would have to
pay for the cancellation, electricity
ratepayers or taxpayers.
"Somehow that money
would come from IESO and it
would be my assumption that
would end up somehow on the
ratepayers," he said. "We just
need to see what the government
has in mind and who
will foot the bill."
Progressive Conservative
house leader Todd Smith, who
represents the riding where
the project is being built, said
the legislation to cancel the
project will also insulate taxpayers
from domestic litigation
over the dismantling of
green energy projects.
"This is something that
the people of Prince Edward
County have been fighting ...
for seven years," he said. "This
the seven-year-long, $28.5 million Inzola
lawsuit currently before the Ontario
Court of Justice. Sprovieri also questioned
the logic behind the chosen site
for the downtown Ryerson University
campus where the downtown GO train
station parking lot is located.
The site was chosen by the province,
but Sprovieri feels the city should have
stepped up lobbying efforts for more
decision-making power in the process.
In addition, Sprovieri says he’d like
to see what he described as pervasive
infighting on council come to an end,
and believes that starts with leadership.
Sprovieri is planning to file his nomination
papers early next week.
Heart drugs containing valsartan recalled in Canada
due to contamination with possible carcinogen
OTTAWA : Canada is one
of 22 countries affected by
a recall of a common drug
for treating high blood
pressure and prevention
of heart attacks and stroke
because of contamination
with a potential carcinogen.
In a release on July 9,
Health Canada identified a
list of 28 products containing
the ingredient valsartan
that are being recalled by
their manufacturers.
The valsartan used in
the products contains an
impurity, N-nitrosodimethylamine
(NDMA), a chemical
that could potentially
cause cancer in humans
with long-term exposure,
according to the government
agency. The valsartan
was supplied by Zhejiang
Huahai Pharmaceuticals.
Health Canada indicated
it is monitoring the
companies’ recalls and suggests
people taking medicine
with valsartan should
keep doing so unless their
doctor or pharmacist tells
them to stop.Health Canada
also advises anyone taking
any medication containing
valsartan to speak to their
pharmacist to find out if
their medicine is being recalled.
Meanwhile, anyone
who has been using an affected
product should contact
their health care practitioner
as soon as they can to
discuss treatment options.
shouldn't have come as a surprise
to anybody that this was
at the top of the agenda for the
incoming government."
Smith questioned why
Ontario's Independent Electricity
System Operator gave
the final approval for the project
during the spring election
campaign.
"There's a lot of questions
about how this ever
got greenlighted in the first
place," he said. "This project
was granted its notice to proceed
two days into the election
campaign ... when (the IESO)
should have been in the caretaker
mode."
Terry Young, the IESO's
vice president of policy, engagement
and innovation,
said the agency could not comment
because of the pending
introduction of legislation to
cancel the deal.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath
said the new Tory government
is behaving like the
previous Liberal government
by cancelling energy projects
and tearing up contracts. She
likened the Tory plan to the
Liberal gas plant scandal that
saw the government relocate
two plants at a substantial
cost to taxpayers.
Bank of Canada expected
to resume tightening key
interest rate
The Bank of Canada is widely expected to boost a
key interest rate on Wednesday as it resumes efforts to
"wean" the economy off low borrowing costs.
The bank's target for the overnight rate — what major
financial institutions charge each other for one-day loans
— has been at 1.25 per cent since mid-January. Since
then, the bank has stood firm on three subsequent rate
announcements. That string is generally expected to end
this week. As of Tuesday, the implied probability of a rate
hike to 1.5 per cent stood at just over 96 per cent, according
to Bloomberg. A hike could lead financial institutions to
raise prime rates, and see Canadians pay higher borrowing
costs on such products as variable-rate mortgages.
The pending rate announcement comes against a
backdrop of somewhat cooler economic growth, gains in
employment and inflation running roughly on the Bank
of Canada's two per cent target.
"Given that the economy is pretty average at this
point, I think that does clear the decks for the bank to
slowly but surely get interest rates back to what they
would consider to be average or normal." said BMO Capital
Markets chief economist Douglas Porter.
"So we're expecting the Bank of Canada to raise interest
rates this week." CIBC is also expecting a hike, which
it believes will be the last for this year.
"In Canada, economic news has generally improved
for [the second quarter], and although that's likely enough
to prompt a quarter point hike in rates on Wednesday, it's
not as if the evidence of overheating is so overwhelming,"
said CIBC Capital Markets chief economist Avery Shenfeld
in a recent commentary.
Canada to make seatbelts
mandatory on new
highway buses by 2020
New rule coming in response to deadly Humboldt Broncos
bus crash. Transport
Canada said today it will
soon require all newly built
highway buses to have seatbelts.
The federal department
said in a news release it
will make seatbelts mandatory
on medium and large highway buses starting Sept.
1, 2020. The department said seatbelts have a strong and
proven record of saving lives.
Transport Canada said it first proposed the change in
2017. The idea of making seatbelts on buses mandatory
has been discussed since April 6, when a bus carrying the
Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team collided with a
semi-truck in rural Saskatchewan.
Sixteen people were killed and 13 others were injured
in the crash. A lawsuit filed by the parents of one
of the players this week asked for a court order requiring
all buses carrying sports teams in Saskatchewan to be
equipped with seatbelts. Transport Canada said mediumsized
buses are defined as having a weight over 4,536 kilograms.
The department said small buses, with the exception
of school buses, are already required to have lap and
shoulder belts. The department said the new rules won't
apply to school buses because they are already designed
to protect children in a crash.