More than three decades after it was created to honour the nation’s military heroes, and years of passionate advocacy by supporters, the Canadian Victoria Cross could soon have its long-awaited first recipient.

The Carney government has announced the establishment of an Independent Military Honours Review Board to review cases of Afghanistan veterans, where new evidence suggests that their bravery meets the criteria for the Canadian Victoria Cross.

“These days in Canada, we have so few precious symbols of our nation to pull us together as Canadians,” said Gen. (ret’d) Rick Hillier, who commanded Canada’s troops in Afghanistan and fought for the review board to be established. In particular, he has advocated the case of Private Jess Larochelle, who fended off an attack from more than 20 Taliban insurgents.

“Can you imagine the power of awarding a Canadian Victoria Cross to a guy like (Pt. Larochelle) on the 1st of July, on Parliament Hill, where the Governor General is doing it live in front of a couple hundred thousand Canadians and maybe millions across the country on TV? I think it would be a wonderful moment for a country.”

Hillier helped lead six years of lobbying that included 66,000 emails, a parliamentary petition, the Senate, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, unanimous calls from seven provincial legislatures, 109 veterans organizations, generals, admirals, Silver Cross mothers and wounded veterans.

The campaign was also the subject of a National Post initiative, Heroes Among Us, which proposed potential candidates for the Canadian Victoria Cross, including Pt. Larochelle.

Queen Elizabeth approved the ‘Canadianized’ version of the Victoria Cross in 1993. However, the Canadian medal has never been awarded.

None of the over 40,000 Canadians deployed during the 12-year Afghanistan mission have been awarded the Victoria Cross and that has not sat well with many veterans, when set against the context of eight service members throughout the Commonwealth having received Victoria Cross medals for their service in Afghanistan. Four have been awarded by Australia, three by the U.K., and one by New Zealand.

On Friday, Sherry Romanado, parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence, announced the review board would be created: “Honouring bravery and sacrifice and service to Canada is among our government’s most solemn responsibilities,” she said.

The review board’s make-up will be decided by the federal government, but it will need to have credibility with Canadian veterans as well as the public, says Hillier, who is also former chief of defence staff. “We clearly want to have some veterans’ voices on the review board. It will be necessary to have an understanding of military operations and the military experience.”

According to the federal government, the Victoria Cross is only “awarded for the most conspicuous bravery, a daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty, in the presence of the enemy.” The most recent Canadian recipient was Lieutenant Robert Hampton Gray. He was awarded the original Victoria Cross posthumously for combat action that occurred in August 1945.

As one of the principal advocates for the Independent Military Honours Review Board, Hillier talked of the extensive lobby effort undertaken by the Valour in the Presence of the Enemy, a Canadian nonprofit “meant to present the incredible real-life stories of Canadian Soldiers” such as Larochelle.

Larochelle provided covering fire for his company’s position while severely injured and receiving sustained enemy fire in an exposed position.

Larochelle “volunteered to go into an old, partly rubbled tower, as his platoon was providing security to the efforts to build a a hard surface highway, to allow the Afghans to get their crops crops to market. We were helping them get their life back in the winter,” said Hillier.

“He got into the tower by himself. His platoon would have normally put two people up there, but they were short-handed and had to have somebody up there. There was a request for volunteers. He just stuck his hand up. A few minutes later, the platoon was struck by a major Taliban attack.

“They just opened fire with a machine gun, fired a bunch of rounds. A rocket-propelled grenade came in through one of the openings in that tower and detonated inside. It smashed Jess back against the hard-baked in the sun mud wall of the tower.

“When he came to, he said it was like Star Wars, lights flashing and things going on around him. But he got himself back into the fight, carrying on for about another hour or so. He was down to his last 100 rounds and saved them for a last-ditch fight. And he started picking up and firing M72 rockets. He did that round after round after round. And he was so active that he was taking up literally one Taliban fighter at a time who were moving towards him. He did this while under constant fire.”

Then the firefight slowed down, says Hillier. Larochelle’s platoon commander went to check that they still had some cover.

“Jess popped up and said, ‘Hey, sure, I’ll provide you some covering fire. Come on in. When his commander said he was going to replace Jess because he wouldn’t be able to send someone else till later in the evening, Jess said, ‘Sir, look, I’ve got it now. You know, don’t impose this on somebody else. I’ve been in the fight. I’ll stay in the fight.’

“The platoon withdrew early the next morning, handing over to another platoon. Jess went back to Kandahar with his platoon. He participated in the ‘ramp ceremony,’ carrying the body of his best friend, Private Blake Williamson, onto the plane for his last trip back home to Canada. It was only after that on the ramp that he went to the medic said, ‘Hey, I’m hurting a little bit.’

“What we discovered was that when that rocket-propelled grenade detonated inside of the tower it knocked him unconscious, broke one of his eardrums, detached the retina in his right eye, broke bones in his neck and in his lower back, and left him with shrapnel cuts over a good portion of his body. So, here was the guy with a broken neck, a broken back, half deaf, half blind, still back in the fight carrying on.”

Larochelle was subsequently awarded the Star of Military Valour, which is Canada’s second-highest award for valour.

“With the rest of detail that has come out since that citation was discussed in early 2007,” says Hillier, “we believe there should be the appropriate recognition, and we believe it’s worth a look to determine if the Victoria Cross is right.” Larochelle suffered from medical complications caused by his battle injuries for many years and died on Aug. 30, 2023, at age 40, near Nipissing, Ont. Hillier says he is among 24 Star of Military Valour recipients from Afghanistan that could be Victoria Cross recipients.

“Now we think, actually, we should do something as a nation, officially review something independently from the military honours and awards commission, which in Canada, moves this through to the Governor General. And that’s where we are now.”

Hillier says that one of the issues involved in bestowing military honours is understanding what can happen on the battlefield. He recalls when he chaired the Canadia Forces honours and awards board and was reviewing citations. Board members would be “a little bit on the fence” about whether a particular citation deserved the Star of Military Valour or Victoria Cross.

“Here’s what I would say looking back. Number one, we were new to war, right? We had not been at war since Korea, and this was all new business to us.

“We were kind of saying, hey, you know, this is really powerful citation, however, what if one comes along, you know, next week? That’s, you know, even greater. What do we do then? And I think we were kind of hedging our bets just a little tiny bit. We wouldn’t have described it that way, but I do believe that is what happened.”

Another factor, points out Hillier, was the detailed “richness” that arise from subsequent battle stories. In Larochelle’s case, he says, “We had a battle group that was in combat, that was at war. And they’re trying to recognize their own individuals. They’re trying to write up the citations. They’re trying to do justice to everybody.” Now, years later, he says, there are several citations that many think “should be changed, or at least looked at.”

• Ghosts of Afghanistan: The story of a Canadian war hero
• Forgotten sacrifice: Afghanistan veterans say awarding Victoria Cross 'would be for all of us'

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Can a conservative ever trust a liberal?

“Just because it’s a Liberal government in Ottawa, and a Liberal prime minister, doesn’t mean it has to be fractious,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith tells me. With mutual respect, she says, “the sky’s the limit on what we can do.”

Smith points to history: Alberta premier Ralph Klein, a Progressive Conservative at the time, and Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien worked together to unlock the oilsands.

“That’s what we can return to,” Smith says, hopefully.

She is in surprisingly good spirits when we meet for a face-to-face interview in her Calgary office at the McDougall Centre. At least for today. Just the day before, separatist firebrand Jeff Rath was vowing to replace her as leader of the United Conservative Party. The day before that, Mitch Sylvestre of Stay Free Alberta was threatening to organize a leadership review of Smith.

That’s mostly inside baseball for political junkies. The bigger question on many Albertans’ minds is whether they can trust Prime Minister Mark Carney to deliver on a promised West Coast oil export pipeline. Smith has said publicly that she does. I want to know why.

“The main reason is the complete difference in dealing with this prime minister than the previous one,” she says. Her first conversation with Justin Trudeau was intended to be constructive: an offer to collaborate on an energy and emissions plan with a 2050 target. Instead, for two and a half years, she reports, “every time I opened the newspaper, it was one new terrible policy after another designed to shut down Alberta’s oil and gas.”

Trust was impossible under Trudeau, especially with Steven Guilbeault as environment minister. “I tried and tried and tried,” Smith says. She sees Guilbeault’s impending departure this summer as good for the country, but worries others like federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis will keep pushing to “keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

“If Wab Kinew and David Eby wanted to be helpful,” she adds, “maybe they could call Avi Lewis and get him to dial it down, because it’s politicians like that who I fear are going to continue to inflame the sentiments in Alberta.” She’s just finished hosting the Western Premiers’ Conference in Kananaskis and I get the strong impression this message was delivered.

With Carney, it’s different. “I saw a spirit of goodwill,” she reports. “He wasn’t interested in a compromise — he was interested in a win-win. That was the language he used in our first meeting.”

When they announced the pipeline MOU implementation phase in mid-May, Carney called trust “the most important commodity in the world” — something Canada has in abundance and is building today.

Smith describes the MOU as “a great accommodation of both desires — to develop our energy as well as to reduce emissions over a reasonable time frame.” It’s her proof point to Albertans that Canada can work.

“We got to a pipeline MOU in November 2025,” she explains, “then we developed a number of different agreements.” Alberta’s premier and the prime minister ticked off the boxes: on methane; on Alberta’s environmental process taking priority; and on carbon pricing. Next up: oilsands producers and the carbon capture commitment.

Carney is also shifting Ottawa’s direction on net-zero power regulations, greenwashing rules and the emissions cap. “And the result is the chief architect of all of these terrible policies (Guilbeault) quit today,” the premier notes.

Some Albertans won’t believe it until first oil flows, Smith acknowledges with a wry chuckle. Her milestones: the oil export pipeline declared a project of national interest by Oct. 1 and final conditions/approvals by Sept. 1, 2027, enabling design and construction to begin.

“It’s not easy, you don’t agree on 100 per cent of things 100 per cent of the time,” she reiterates. “But when you have a prime minister who is willing to work with us, that is how the country is supposed to work, and I think it is working.”

Smith faced sharp criticism for adding an independence question to the Oct. 19 referendum in Alberta. How can she back a West Coast pipeline while floating separation? critics ask. On the day we spoke, another grassroots group launched — Alberta’s Voices — accusing her government of thinking Albertans are “dumb.”

The October ballot now includes 10 questions: control over immigration, constitutional matters, and the new independence one — asking whether Alberta should remain a province of Canada or direct the government to begin the legal process for a binding separation referendum.

At the Western Premiers’ meeting, B.C.’s Eby and Manitoba’s Kinew pressed her on the duty to consult First Nations on the pipeline. Smith agrees on that point: “On a major project like a pipeline to the West Coast, absolutely, we have a duty to consult — and beyond that, we think we have a duty to provide equity ownership so the Nations can benefit from development. There’s no dispute, for me, for proponents, on that.”

But she draws a firm line on the referendum: “I have a right to ask our citizens whether we want to change our relationship with Ottawa. That’s our right.” She’s honouring Alberta’s Citizen Initiative Act after one separatist group gathered roughly 300,000 signatures and a pro-Canada group about 400,000. “When you have 700,000 people say they want to have a conversation, you don’t solve the problem by shutting the conversation down.”

Alberta, she says, has a tradition of letting citizens decide big issues through referendums — prohibition, the Olympics, fluoride. “It’s part of our culture and our laws. I ask for respect that we do things a little differently in Alberta.”

Hell hath no fury like Albertans scorned. It’s significant that the 300,000 who signed a petition for a referendum on separation did so in the dead of winter. It’s also been noted that the recent court decision quashing their petition seemed oblivious to the 400,000 who signed the Forever Canada petition during the summer and fall.

Smith is also seeking a mandate on immigration: more like Quebec for economic migrants, and like the U.K. and Australia for guest workers who pay their own way. Under Section 95 of the Constitution, provinces have rights here and if the referendum delivers that mandate, she expects Carney to engage in good faith.

Smith isn’t naive about the trust-building ahead. Yet her optimism stands out. Earlier this week, I watched the debate between pro-Canada former premier Jason Kenney and separatist spokesperson Keith Wilson. It was a classic fear versus hope showdown.

“I don’t know that Albertans are going to be persuaded by fear,” Smith says. She sees the West as Confederation’s powerhouse and believes Ottawa is finally paying attention. Smith is squarely in the remain in Canada camp. The real obstacle, in her view, isn’t fellow Canadians but “misguided politicians who decided to target Alberta” and block its ability to create wealth. One of them — Guilbeault — just resigned.

• 'It was predictable': Court ruling doesn't slow this Alberta separatist
• Mark Carney finds a brand new way to clash with Alberta

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In a high stakes rescue mission, a B.C. pilot successfully evacuated an American doctor’s family after he tested positive for Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The flight, which took place on May 20, lasted an hour and 15 minutes and Dominic Villeneuve, 30, tells National post that he was “not particularly worried for my own well-being.” He said that he was confident in the safety precautions in place, including his wearing PPE for the duration of the flight.

Villeneuve, a Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot, flew the family to safety in neighbouring Uganda. The physician who contracted Ebola had been working at the remote Nyankunde Hospital and was evacuated separately to Germany for specialized treatment. The doctor’s wife — also a physician — their children, and another doctor who sustained direct exposure to the virus were aboard the flight piloted by Villeneuve.

Originally from Kamloops, Villeneuve joined MAF, a Christian organization that uses aviation to provide aid to isolated communities, in 2019, having previously obtained his pilot’s licence through the Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta. He moved to DRC in 2021.

Villeneuve’s dream of becoming a pilot goes right back to his childhood. “My earliest memories are growing up in Kamloops, riding my bike to the airport with my dad and watching the planes come and go. Watching him and dreaming that one day I could become a pilot,” he told National Post.

At 14, Villeneuve became a Christian. Shortly after, an MAF pilot visited his church, setting him on the path that eventually led him to his current work in DRC.

And this latest mission was not Villeneuve’s first high-pressure evacuation. “Last year, we were evacuating humanitarian workers out of a community that had an army marching on them. I got the last group out 20 minutes before the army arrived,” he said.

However, he added that it was his first medical evacuation involving a virus such as Ebola. “We’re used to those more intense flights, but it was my first time doing a medical evacuation of somebody who had (come into contact with) something like Ebola.”

The evacuation mission came amid a rapidly evolving epidemic, driven by a rare variant of the virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) designated the crisis a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 16 and, so far, the organization reports 125 confirmed Ebola cases, which include 17 deaths, and 906 suspected cases, which include 223 deaths.

“One of the important things to know with Ebola is that if you do not have symptoms, you are not contagious,” Villeneuve said. “We knew (the family) were asymptomatic, and so there was a risk of them developing symptoms in flight, at which point I would be considered exposed, but I wasn’t concerned.”

This marks the 17th recorded Ebola outbreak in the DRC since 1976, and MAF personnel have provided critical logistical support during six previous outbreaks.

“When crises of this magnitude hit, our international fellowship acts as a coordinated body,” said Brad Bell, chief executive officer of MAF Canada, in a news release. “Through our partnerships with other NGOs and local hospitals, Canadian pilots like Dominic can plug directly into mature, deeply rooted frontline infrastructure.”

Bell added: “Our commitment is to maintain a safe, steady presence, providing the reliable logistical expertise that frontline health workers and local institutions need to do their vital work.”

MAF operates major regional networks across the DRC, partnering with 13 missionary families and more than 35 Congolese staff members to keep isolated communities connected to vital infrastructure and resources.

Reflecting on the ongoing emergency response, Villeneuve called for global solidarity, adding in the news release, “Please pray for those who have been impacted by the resurgence of Ebola and for quick containment and elimination.”

Meanwhile, Ottawa announced on Thursday that Canada will provide $8 million in international assistance funding to support organizations responding to the current Ebola outbreak.

• Ontario traveller tests negative for Ebola; no further cases of hantavirus confirmed in Canada
• 'No time to sleep': Ebola spooks eastern DRC as risk raised to highest level

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.

New data from Statistics Canada has revealed how much Canadians earn on average per week, along with average earnings across each province and territory.

The findings, which use data from the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH), show that the average weekly earnings in Canada reached $1,333 in March 2026, up by 3.5 per cent compared to March 2025. This follows 2.8 per cent year-over-year increase recorded in February.

StatCan noted that, “Growth in average weekly earnings can reflect a range of factors, including changes in wages, composition of employment, hours worked and base-year effects.”

In March, Canadians worked an average of 33.4 hours per week, remaining relatively unchanged month-over-month while declining 0.3 per cent year over year.

The StatCan data also revealed the average earnings in March 2026 for each province.

At the top of the list for earnings is Nunavut, where residents earned an average of $1,874.95 per week — an increase of 7.8 per cent year-over-year.

This is followd by Northwest Territories ($1,741.07), Yukon ($1,520.39), Alberta ($1,371.07), Ontario ($1,368.71), British Columbia ($1,348.36), Newfoundland and Labrador ($1,290.53), Saskatchewan ($1,288.82), Quebec ($1,283.60), New Brunswik ($1,231.77), Manitoba ($1,214.49), and Nova Scotia ($1,210.83).

At the bottom of the list is Prince Edward Island, where residents earned an average of $1,177.97 per week in March 2026 — an increase of 7.7 per cent compared to the same period in 2025, but nearly $700 less than Nunavut’s average.

All provinces recorded wage increases between March 2025 and March 2026. Nunavut’s wages increased the most, by 7.8 per cent, while Newfoundland and Labrador saw the smallest increase, at 1.2 per cent.

But despite these increased average wages, Canadians continue to feel the pinch.

Canada’s annual inflation rate rose to 2.8 per cent in April, Statistics Canada said earlier this month, up from an increase of 2.4 per cent in March.

Much of the increase was attributed to higher gas prices, which were driven in part by the conflict in Iran.

This comes as documents recently obtained by National Post show that Canadian trucking and delivery companies have passed increased fuel costs on to customers, which economists say ultimately raises consumer prices.

Meanwhile, a recent TD survey revealed that more than one in three Canadians (35 per cent) plan to spend less this summer, with 44 per cent citing fuel costs as the reason they’ll be cutting back on travel.

The survey also found that Canadians are adapting to cost pressures through practices like redeeming loyalty points (66 per cent) and choosing lower-cost options like second-hand or DIY (36 per cent).

Elsewhere, the StatCan data revealed that job vacancies held steady at 500,300 in March 2026. This marks a 3.2 per cent decline when compared with the same month in 2025, though the report notes that this is significantly lower than the decline from March 2024 to March 2025, when job vacancies fell by 13.7 per cent. It was also the smallest year-over-year decline since September 2019.

There were three unemployed persons for every job vacancy in March 2026, according to the data, down by 0.1 persons from the previous month and unchanged on a year-over-year basis.

Areas where job vacancies had increased in March 2026 include administrative and support, waste management and remediation services (17.7 per cent), information and cultural industries (38.2 per cent) and utilities (28.4 per cent).

Meanwhile, vacancies were down in other services (except public administration) by 14.6 per cent, as well as arts, entertainment and recreation (-18.2 per cent) in March 2026.

Saskatchewan was the only province or territory to record a month-to-month increase in job vacancies (the first vacancy increase in this province since May 2024), but StatCan notes that “across provinces and territories, the job vacancy rate has stabilized or has declined at a slower rate in the 12-month period ending in March 2026 compared with the previous 12-month period.”

• What a comfortable income looks like in Canada, according to a new survey
• Canadians plan to spend less this summer, but one generation intends to splash out: survey

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Uncontrolled, undetected internal bleeding, an emergency medicine “time bomb,” can kill within hours.

So, when Dr. Fraser Mackay saw a young woman recently with a minor shoulder injury from a fall who seemed in an inordinate amount of pain, his gut told him something was off.

She was seated in a chair in a very public, high traffic area of a Saint John, N.B., emergency department. No space for a proper assessment. Nowhere to assess her privately. Mackay decided she needed a bedside ultrasound of her abdomen. A proper ultrasound requires laying the patient down and lifting their clothing. Except there were no empty stretchers. So, she just sat there, in pain.

With his shift over, Mackay told the on-coming doctor, “Until we get a stretcher, she can’t go home.”

Her stomach was finally scanned, an hour or two later. The test showed internal bleeding requiring emergency surgery to find and stop the source of bleeding.

“It would have been very easy to say, ‘Well, if things get worse, come back later,'” Mackay said. “Who knows how long she could have sat there. And what if that stretcher hadn’t become available, and her bleeding had gotten worse? She shouldn’t have been assessed in a chair in the first place.”

Except “chair medicine” and “waiting room care” have become routine and common, default responses to Canada’s severely gridlocked emergency rooms, Mackay and other emergency physicians are reporting.

“ER chair medicine in Ontario (the awful cousin of hallway medicine) is unacceptable. Full stop,” Toronto emergency physician Dr. Raghu Venugopal posted on X.

“We need to get rid of it. We must fund hospitals and fix the problem of critically ill patients put in a chair. There is zero exaggeration here. I am sounding the alarm. Hear it.”

ER chair medicine in Ontario (the awful cousin of hallway medicine) is unacceptable. Full stop. We need to get rid of it. We must fund hospitals and fix the problem of critically ill patients put in a chair. There is zero exaggeration here. I am sounding the alarm. Hear it. pic.twitter.com/J6LZ5vUm7z

— Raghu Venugopal MD (@raghu_venugopal) May 3, 2026

Venugopal posted that he witnessed people in “extremis from pain ” being “put and kept in a chair.”

Extremis can mean uncontrolled, doubled-over-in-agony pain. “Generally speaking, those patients shouldn’t be in a chair,” Mackay said.

But as backed-up emergency departments desperately try to manage more demand than they have the capacity to meet, more people are being assessed in “unconventional spaces,” the official euphemism for spaces never designed, or equipped, to provide emergency care: No access to oxygen or suction, no nurse call bell, no easy access to a washroom or sink, no shred of privacy.

“Unconventional spaces” can include any carved-out space. Hospitals are converting ambulance bays into patient wards. “No heating, no plumbing, but, ‘Hey, it’s great — we’re taking care of our patients by sticking them in a cold garage,'” said Mackay, chair of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physician’s rural, remote and small urban section.

Patients have been examined in closets and washrooms. Doctors are wading into waiting rooms and pulling sick patients into corners and cubby holes. Blankets are being hung off IV poles to create makeshift curtains for people stranded in chaotic hallways. While it may give the illusion of an acceptable version of medicine, care is “guaranteed being comprised by the concept, ‘We can just see a patient in a chair,'” Mackay said.

He’s had several “near misses” involving patients treated in chairs — close catches where a disaster was narrowly avoided because of, in the internal bleeding case, vigilance. “I got a bad vibe, which is honestly a big part of being a doctor.”

The pressure to provide treatment in whatever space they can is creating a moral, “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dilemma for emergency staff across Canada, said Medicine Hat, Alta., emergency physician Paul Parks.

“You don’t want to watch suffering and see patients not doing well and lingering in the waiting room. But you also know that, when you walk out there, you don’t really have a nurse, you don’t have monitoring, you don’t have the standard things you would have if you had a normal care space,” said Parks, a past president of the Alberta Medical Association.

“You, by definition, are basically kind of MacGyver-ing it and giving suboptimal care to a degree.”

But while some care, some intervention, may be better than nothing, “this is just a Band-Aid on a massive, gaping wound,” he said.

An average of 1,390 people seen in an emergency room on any given day in Ontario in 2023-24 received care in an unconventional space, a metric first tracked by the news outlet, The Trillium.

Not every person who lands in emergency needs to be in a space with monitors and a gurney or stretcher — the old school thinking of the 90s.

Over the years, emergency departments pulled together “minor treatment” spaces. At Parks’ Medicine Hat hospital, that meant three chairs separated by office space dividers in a public hallway outside the waiting room.

Thus, “chair care” was born.

More recently came “rapid assessment zones” designed for the “less acutely unwell” who can be safely seen in an internal waiting area or chair space — people with sprains, cuts needing stitches, sore throats, ear infections. There are comfortable padded recliners, perhaps a bed or two. The aim, to increase patient flow — assess, treat and move people out, quickly. “It maximizes your space and allows good throughput,” said Ottawa area emergency physician Dr. Michael Herman.

The potential danger occurs when the emergency department gets “jammed up with admits,” meaning every cubicle or hallway stretcher already filled with people who need to be admitted to the hospital, but with no empty beds on the wards to move them to, because those scarce beds are filled, often with people who no longer need to be there but can’t leave because there’s nowhere for them to go — no space in a nursing or long-term care home, no home care or rehab bed. What’s known as “access block,” another administrative euphemism.

Suddenly, people with more serious complaints trickle down to the fast-track zone, “where it’s really not optimized for that person or that complaint,” Herman said.

“It slowly becomes normalized — the frog in the boiling water. ‘We just wanted to see them to get things started or get things moving along,’ and then it becomes two patients, then eight, then 10.”

“You’ve normalized a patient population through one of these zones that isn’t appropriate for them,” Herman said.

That can be risky with “undifferentiated” patients: Is the chest pain acid reflux, pneumonia or an evolving heart attack?

“That’s the five-alarm fire situation many of us worry about every day,” Herman said.

When hospitals are running at 100 per cent capacity, and the congestion backs up into emergency, “the goal posts move, and the appropriateness goes out the window,” Mackay said.

“You cannot appropriately examine a patient in a chair, physically, or from a patient privacy perspective. You have to lift up shirts, take off pants, put on monitors, get your stethoscope out.”

And when the rapid-access zones and other chair areas are overflowing, including with now very sick patients needing more prolonged care, and those areas get gridlocked, “then we’ll go out into the waiting room,” Parks said, to try to find the near misses and avert another waiting room disaster.

Even then, there often aren’t enough personnel to help. Parks said it’s not uncommon for doctors to see waiting room patients with lower, right-side abdominal pain and fever that looks suspicious for appendicitis. Blood work, a CT scan and antibiotics and pain meds can be ordered. “But, while the blood work and maybe CT scan gets done, there’s no one available to deliver the antibiotics or pain medication,” Parks said. Hours later, the patient is still in the waiting room, with no comfort or pain relief. “And you get the CT scan back and, indeed, it is appendicitis and they go straight to the operating room,” after having spent eight or nine hours in the waiting room.

It’s a “duct tape,” workaround solution that’s sparked ongoing ethical debate among doctors.

“What is more important,” Mackay asked. “Do we compromise care to at least do some sort of assessment, which then perpetuates and even normalizes substandard care as a result of half-assed status quo system policies that lack accountability, versus we stick to the high ground of, ‘I will not see a patient until I have the capacity to do so to the best of my abilities in an appropriate site.’

“More and more we’re recognizing that we just want to see the patients. We want to try and find those ticking time bombs. We want to get people out of the department that have been there for 12 hours.”

Earlier this month, a patient was discovered dead in the waiting room of an overcrowded emergency department at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital. In late December, Prashant Sreekumar, a 44-year-old father of four, died at Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Hospital. After waiting eight hours in an emergency with chest pain, he collapsed within minutes of being called to a treatment area.

“My heart goes out to our triage nurses who have the impossible task of looking through a packed waiting room and trying to figure out who’s the needle in the haystack,” Herman said. “They’re being set up to fail by the system that doesn’t allow them to flow these patients into the care spaces they need to be in, in a timely manner.”

Sreekumar had complaints that likely required cardiac monitoring and a nurse-staffed bed, Herman said. “What so-called ‘unnecessary’ visit was sitting in the bed that he needed to be in? Was it an ankle sprain? Of course not. It was another equally sick person or admitted patient who wasn’t able to get out of that space so he could get in.”

Everyone fights over that one final stretcher, he said. “We put people in these suboptimal environments and then act surprised when suboptimal things happen.”

One of the biggest indicators of a system in free-fall is assessing, treating and discharging an acutely ill patient in a chair, Mackay said. “And that is driven by the pressure we have. We are not taught to do that. It goes against our training. One of the fundamental aspects of training a physician is patient respect. Patient privacy.

“You don’t undress patients in a hallway. You don’t ask patients their deepest, most personal questions when there’s someone sitting in a chair next to them.”

It also does nothing to reduce what’s been described as the “ barbaric ” and growing practice of boarding — keeping admitted people, like an 80-year-old with a fractured hip, on a hallway stretcher for one, two, three days, with 24/7 light and noise, and no sleep, waiting for a ward bed to open. A recent systematic review found strong evidence linking boarding with higher death rates in hospitals, longer hospital stays, more medication errors and worsening burnout for staff.

Canada’s chronic hospital bed shortage is a major driver of emergency department crowding, but in addition to more beds, a more integrated health system overall is needed, Mackay said, including more community supports — more long term care, more physiotherapy — to discharge patients wherever they need to go.

“None of this has anything to do with the emergency department. That’s the frustrating part,” he said.

“But it’s a huge burden on staff and a huger burden on the patients, because they’re not getting the care they need in the place they need it.”

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A Tunisian national living in Quebec has received a conditional discharge and three years’ probation for a violent domestic assault and subsequent harassment, in a sentence the judge admitted was “lenient” and unlikely to satisfy the victim.

Mohamed Aziz Ben Ishak, who had arrived in Canada a year earlier as a temporary resident, attacked Fatma Abada because she had lit a cigarette before nightfall during Ramadan on April 30, 2021.

He then dragged her by the hair into the apartment’s entryway. She broke free but he attacked her again, striking her in the head. When police arrived, she refused to give a statement and said she did not wish to press charges. The police left but came back after subsequent calls from Abada and her friend, and arrested Ishak.

He was released the following day, under orders not to communicate with Abada and her friend, be in their presence or go to their places of work or study. But Ishak breached those conditions, eventually meeting Abada in a park and going to her workplace, contacting her by phone, and sending her text messages. He was arrested again.

Court of Quebec Justice David Simon said the “assaults committed by the offender are neither trivial nor minimal, far from it. They demonstrate a high degree of violence, manifesting itself repeatedly in various forms: multiple kicks to the body, including to the ribs; snatching the telephone from the victim’s hands; punches to the head; and hair-pulling to drag the victim.”

Further, he wrote: “Several blows were inflicted to the head, a particularly vulnerable part of the body. The use of a cigarette to burn the victim’s forearm constitutes a cruel act: more deliberate than the blows, and insidious, it aims to inflict acute pain and leave a lasting mark on the victim.”

He dismissed Ishak’s attributing some of the responsibility for his actions to irritability linked to Ramadan fasting.

Simon reviewed a range of what he described as mitigating circumstances: Ishak, 28, pleaded guilty to all charges and had no prior criminal record. He expressed “sincere and profound” remorse and he was only 23 years old at the time of the offences. Simon also cited a spotless academic record, stable employment, strong career ambitions, an absence of substance abuse and connections to criminal elements, and the constant support of his mother.

Given Ishak’s status as a temporary resident, Simon reviewed the impact of a criminal sentence on his immigration process, including a plan to apply for permanent residency. Simon said that Ishak had made significant efforts at integrating in Canada and had not breached his work permit conditions.

“Granting a conditional discharge to a young first-time offender who certainly committed serious offences with significant consequences for the victim, but has since proven himself, rehabilitated himself, and has become an asset to society, reflecting with remorse on his past behaviour, and whose offences are isolated (by COVID-19) throughout their history, would not be contrary to the public interest.”

A conviction, wrote Simon, would risk uprooting Ishak from Canada, his family and emotional support network, sending him back to Tunisia where he no longer has real ties.

Simon, instead, shifted his focus to domestic abuse case law in Quebec, in particular, cases where a conditional discharge was a possibility.

“The province’s highest court recently granted or confirmed conditional discharges in cases of significant physical violence against an intimate partner … not limited to a single incident and offenders facing indirect immigration consequences.”

The judge noted that the Crown argued incarceration was not appropriate given the minimal risk of reoffending and the parole service concluding that the offender is a suitable candidate for community supervision.

Instead, he decided that “a conditional discharge is the most appropriate measure in the particular circumstances of this case. Although this measure is lenient and, admittedly, in the margins of applicable sentences, it remains justified in light of the principles of individualization, moderation, and harmonization of sentences, as well as the balancing of all relevant sentencing objectives.”

A conditional discharge leaves no criminal record, but the offender must follow specific conditions set out by the judge.

Among Ishak’s conditions were not to communicate with the victim, not be in her presence or refer to her on social media, and not to be within 500 metres of her home. He also has to report to a probation officer and notify the officer of any changes to his address, name and employment. Finally, Ishak was ordered to complete 240 hours of community service within 18 months.

He acknowledged that the sentence was unlikely to “satisfy the victim, who likely continues to suffer some consequences of the crime. I am aware of this and can only sympathize, even in my leniency. I dare to hope that the conclusion of this legal process, at least at the first instance, will allow the victim to turn the page, although it is probably impossible to completely erase the scars of this experience. I wish to commend her courage and determination.”

He said that when assessing the public interest, sensitivity to a reasonable person’s reaction “cannot lead a judge to refuse a sentence if it is adequate.”

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Crime rates in rural parts of Canada are much higher than in urban areas, according to a new report from Statistics Canada . The crimes committed in the countryside are also more severe overall.

So, while the majority of Criminal Code (excluding traffic) offences occurred in urban areas, says StatCan, the crime rate “in rural areas was 42 per cent higher than the rate in urban areas,” with 7,421 incidents per 100,000 population, compared with 5,235 incidents per 100,000 population in urban areas. Ten years earlier, in 2014, this gap was 29 per cent.

StatCan also uses what is known as the Crime Severity Index (CSI) to describe crime in Canada. CSI measures the volume and severity of crimes. (CSI weight is based on the incarceration rate and average length of the prison sentence handed down for violent offences.) In 2009, the first year with comparable data, the violent CSI was lower in rural areas (84.5) than in rural areas (95.3). The reverse was true 15 years later, says StatCan.

In 2024, the violent CSI was 46 per cent higher in rural areas (134.8) than in urban areas (92.5).

The agency’s latest comparative analysis of crime reported by police services, entitled, “Police-reported crime in rural and urban areas in the Canadian provinces, 2024,” was released Tuesday.

It should be noted that StatCan designated two types of “urban” areas. The first includes metropolitan communities with a total population of at least 100,000, having 50,000 or more living in the urban core. The other includes areas where there is a cluster of adjacent municipalities with a core of 10,000. Outside such areas are what StatCan deems to be “rural” Canada.

StatCan notes that when police-reported data was compared rural-to-urban for the first time in 2017, rural crime was primarily an issue in the Prairie provinces and somewhat less so in Newfoundland and Labrador. At that point, the crime rate in rural areas was roughly equal to or lower than that in urban areas. But the latest StatCan data paints a very different picture today.

“While rural areas in the Prairie provinces and Newfoundland and Labrador continue to show the largest gaps in crime rates compared with urban areas, crime is now higher in rural areas in nearly every province. In 2024, only rural Prince Edward Island and Ontario had crime rates lower than in urban areas. Violent crime rates also increased more in rural areas than in urban areas in most provinces between 2014 and 2024. Rural areas in New Brunswick (+92 per cent) Quebec (+90 per cent) and Prince Edward Island (+83 per cent) recorded a considerable increase in the violent crime rate,” the report says.

The homicide rate in rural areas has shown an upward trend in the latest crime data. It rose from 1.86 homicides per 100,000 population in 2014 to 2.92 homicides per 100,000 population, a jump of 57 per cent. Notably, the increase was more evident among women than men. From 2014 to 2024, the rate of homicides involving women in rural areas increased 68 per cent (from 1.16 to 1.96 incidents per 100,000 women) compared with 50 per cent for men (from 2.55 to 3.83 incidents per 100,000 men). Women accounted for 57 of the 173 homicide victims in rural areas in 2024.

The rise in the homicide rate in rural areas is partly the result of the growing number of homicides attributable to organized crime or gangs, according to StatCan. In 2014, eight homicides (8.0 per cent of homicides) in rural areas were linked to organized crime or gangs. In 2024, this number rose to 23 (13.3 per cent). However, in 2024, this kind of homicide was still less likely in rural areas than urban areas, where 21 per cent of homicides were attributable to organized crime or gangs.

Assault is the most frequently reported violent crime by police in both rural and urban areas. Overall, police-reported rates of assault were higher in rural areas than in urban areas.

Further, police-reported sexual assaults are trending upward. From 2014 to 2024, the rate of sexual assault increased by 56 per cent in rural areas (from 79 to 124 incidents per 100,000 population) and by 55 per cent in urban areas (from 53 to 82 incidents per 100,000 population).

Crimes in rural areas are more likely to have been committed by someone known to the victim, such as an intimate partner. In 2024, police services serving rural populations reported 573 incidents of intimate partner violence per 100,000 population. That was almost double the rate recorded in urban areas (310 incidents per 100,000 population). And, says StatCan, this gap is widening.

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A Toronto plastic surgeon has been ordered to pay $21.5 million, plus $1 million in punitive damages, to former patients after an Ontario judge ruled that he violated their privacy by installing 24 cameras around his clinic, including in sensitive treatment areas.

The ruling came out of the common issues portion of a class action suit against Dr. Martin Jugenburg, best-known for performing breast augmentations, Brazilian butt lifts, and tummy tuck procedures.

The plaintiffs claimed that Jugenburg and his company were negligent in operating the video surveillance system, committing breach of fiduciary duty towards their patients, as well as a breach of trust and the tort of “intrusion upon seclusion” against the class of plaintiffs represented by the lawsuit.

According to the court, the cameras were located in areas where patients would expect privacy, including consultation, examination, and operating rooms and the post-operative recovery area. The small devices were attached to the ceiling in the room corners.

Photographs presented at the trial showed the cameras were not concealed, however the court noted they were in the ceiling and went unnoticed by most people.

The surveillance system was first exposed in a 2018 CBC Marketplace undercover investigation.

Marketplace contacted Ontario’s medical regulatory body, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), as well as the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) regarding the cameras. CPSO then went to the clinic, disabled the camera system and subsequently removed digital video recorders that contained footage from the camera system. It also started an investigation into Jugenburg’s conduct.

The IPC eventually released a decision that the clinic’s blanket use of surveillance cameras contravened the Personal Health Information Protection Act.

Prior to the CBC investigation, states the court decision, the only sign inside the clinic warning patients of surveillance cameras was obscured on a shelf in the clinic operating room. There were no signs anywhere else in the clinic, including the consultation or examination rooms where patients would be required to undress.

The class-action was begun in November 2019.

Justice Paul Schabas concluded that the defendants were negligent in operating the surveillance video system in private areas of the clinic without the knowledge or consent of patients.

“I find as well that it is appropriate to make an award of aggregate damages arising from the tort of intrusion upon seclusion totalling $21,500,000. I also find that it is appropriate to award $1,000,000 in punitive damages. As the other torts are dependent on proof of some actual harm, counsel shall confer and provide me with a proposed process to address individual claims for damages for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.”

The protection of patient confidentiality and medical records is an important public interest, Schabas said, and the evidence from patients about their medical treatment was that it was often “highly personal and intimate, disclosure of which would go beyond mere embarrassment.”

Schabas rejected Jugenburg’s defence that the cameras were installed as a general security measure. He found that Jugenburg’s evidence was neither “credible (nor) reliable.”

He also found that the clinic did not take any steps to inform patients about the surveillance cameras, and, further, that they were used exclusively to resolve disputes in Jugenburg’s favour.

While, the common-issues phase of the class action is finished, the judge said individual claims for aggravated damages related to mental distress and humiliation suffered by the plaintiffs can still be pursued.

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Astronomy is full of misnomers. The blue micromoon of May 30 will not be blue. Nor will it be particularly “micro” in size. It will, however, be the moon. Here’s what to know.

What is a blue moon?

There are two types of so-called blue moon. The older definition refers to the third full moon in a season that has four (rather than the usual three) full moons.

The newer and more common use of the term refers to the second full moon in a month. It dates back to an error in a 1946 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine , a publication you’d think would know better.

What is a micromoon?

Though the moon’s actual size never changes, its apparent size varies depending on where it is in its orbit when it’s fully illuminated.

A micromoon is at its apogee, or farthest point from Earth, about 407,000 kms away. A supermoon, in comparison, is at perigee, just 357,000 kms away. The difference between the two is about 14 per cent in size, and 30 per cent in brightness.

Is it blue?

Not really. However, in 1883 the volcano Krakatoa erupted and spread ash high into the atmosphere, filtering the light of the moon and turning it a somewhat blue-green hue.

More recent, though smaller, volcanic eruptions such as the 1983 eruption of El Chichon in Mexico and the eruptions of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991 have caused similar effects.

How rare are blue moons?

The phrase “once in a blue moon” refers to something very rare, but blue moons aren’t super-rare, averaging out to one every 33 months, or 41 times in a century.

That said, 2018 had a rare “double blue moon,” with a blue moon in January and another in March, plus no full moon in February — a so-called “black moon.” The next time that happens will be in 2037.

Seasonal blue moons are a little rarer, but they still happen every two to three years on average.

The next seasonal blue moon will be on May 20, 2027. The next twice-in-one-month blue moon will take place on New Year’s Eve, 2028. The next micro full moon is just a month away; June 29.

But the blue-micro combination won’t happen again until 2053.

How can I see it?

This is the easy part. The full moon will rise shortly after sunset on the evening of May 30, and it will be up all night. All you need are clear skies. As an added bonus, the bright star Arcturus will be just to one side of the full moon. It’s red. Honest!

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The grotesque global business of suicide poison seller Kenneth Law was laid bare in a Newmarket, Ont., courtroom on Friday as Law took a plea deal and admitted to criminally assisting 14 suicides after the Crown concluded it would be “impossible” to convict him of murder.

Details of nearly 100 suicides aided by his online shopping business, which sold poisonous chemicals and asphyxiation masks, were read into the record by a prosecutor.

These include the 14 Ontario deaths for which Law was previously charged with murder, and 79 from Britain, shared by British authorities on the condition they be used to inform and increase his sentence. The U.K. will not seek to prosecute Law over these deaths and regards these Ontario proceedings as the final criminal word, according to a statement Friday from the National Crime Agency. Sentencing is expected to be argued in September, to allow time for victim impact statements.

Judge Michelle Fuerst of the Superior Court of Justice found him guilty on each of 14 counts and entered convictions.

The victims include a 16 year-old-girl who was found dead by her father. They include a 21-year-old man who had stopped taking his depression medication and was found dead by his brother. One 25-year-old woman left a note saying, “Why would it be logical to suffer to the bitter end?” A 21-year-old Ontario man took the poison late at night, his family heard him vomiting, he asked to call 911, and then collapsed in his father’s arms. An 18-year-old man was found by his 14-year-old sister. One 34-year-old man was found in a rental car at BMO Field wearing an asphyxiation mask connected to a nitrogen tank, and he had previously made a donation to a charity for trauma for first responders. Most of the others took poison and were found in their homes, often their bedrooms, or hotel rooms. Many asked for help after taking the poison, including calling emergency services and disclosing what they had ingested.

Among the 79 British deaths, many had mental health problems, and some had previously made suicide attempts. Only a very few had terminal physiological illnesses. One woman was found by her young daughter slumped over the child’s dollhouse. A 21-year-old university student was found in his dormitory room by campus services after sending a message to his romantic partner: “Bye this is your fault.”

Many were university students in their 20s. “Just dump my body and forget about me,” said a note left by a university student. One victim’s mother had died of cancer three days before he took the poison. Many were found dead by campus security services or hotel cleaning staff.

But poison sold by Law also seems likely to have caused many more deaths even than these, given that he also admits shipping 1,209 packages to 41 countries around the world. Most contained the legal poison sodium nitrite, a curative agent for food that is also toxic in sufficient quantities, but some contained special masks that cause asphyxiation with nitrogen gas. Law himself said on a secretly recorded call by a journalist that people have also died from his products in the United States.

Law, 60, entered the prisoner’s box shortly after 10 a.m. wearing a dark blazer over a white shirt, tan trousers, no belt and a paunch, with his greying black hair cut short. He has been in custody since his arrest in 2023. With his legal team beside him, he stood to say “I plead guilty” 14 times to the registrar’s reading of the charges. He showed no emotion and spoke only to answer Judge Fuerst’s questions about whether he understands the consequences of his plea. He used his right hand to sign the agreed statement of facts held by his lawyer Matthew Gourlay.

“Hearken to your plea as the court hath recorded it,” the registrar said, before detailing it.

Behind him in the gallery, victim family members sat with solemn faces, some in tears, others with pained expressions or closed eyes, or sharing comforting embraces.

An agreed statement of facts indicates that from 2020 to his 2023 arrest, he received approximately $300,000 from this business, roughly equally through Shopify and PayPal.

His online material said he would not sell to minors, and that he enforced a minimum age of 25, and court has heard that customers would occasionally send images of government issued identification to prove details of their identities. But the Ontario cases include two children, and there are more in the British list, including an autistic 14-year-old boy who obtained the poison under a pseudonym.

A publication ban prohibits identifying the minor Ontario victims.

The province originally wanted to charge Law with murder, which could have made him one of the most prolific Canadian murderers ever. But the underlying jurisprudence changed unexpectedly.

“The law in Ontario no longer makes a murder prosecution viable in this case,” said Crown prosecutor Peter Westgate.

He said the Ontario Court of Appeal reviewed the case of a nurse who had tried to murder her mother and daughter, and in its reasons, described a “standard of causation” under which a voluntary suicide can be charged as a murder by someone else. “The court’s analysis of that standard made a murder prosecution impossible.”

In effect, the only way to charge Law with murder would be if he had overborn the free will of his victims before they consumed his poison.

The Supreme Court of Canada reviewed that decision in turn, and overturned the outcome but did not interfere with the description of this standard of causation. This remains “binding,” Westgate said, and so there is no longer a reasonable prospect of convicting Law of murder. On that analysis, the Crown had no choice but to drop the murder charges.

An agreed statement of facts describes how Law, a former engineer and business executive, started his suicide kit business during the pandemic. He used the alias “Greenberg” to anonymously promote his business on a web forum called Sanctioned Suicide, and direct its users to his retail websites. He had come to the attention of law enforcement before. In 2022, a police officer from the U.K. told him his packaging had been found at the scene of a suicide, and Law said he was “surprised and saddened” as it was intended to be used for deli meats, and that he intends to stop selling sodium nitrite “as soon as our inventory is depleted.”

The 50 gram packages of sodium nitrite sold by Law included instructions that refer to its primary intended industrial use in curing hams and other meats. They do not refer to human ingestion for suicide.

Law would also offer consultation phone calls for $150 to address customer questions and concerns, and he sent documentation saying he was not engaged in “solicitation” and his business “will be held harmless for the end use of its products.”

Law came to the attention of Canadian police after The Times of London conducted a sting on Law, having tracked his business to a post office box in Mississauga. Court heard the journalist James Beal’s recording of a preliminary phone call and the in-person interview when he managed to stake out Law at the post office.

The recording left no doubt Law knew what he was selling the poison for. He said he had been doing it for more than two years. He said he has sent “literally hundreds” of packages to the U.K., and many were used to cause death.

“I want to end my life,” Beal told him, but claimed to be nervous about taking the right amount.

Twenty-five grams diluted in water, Law said. “Sodium nitrite can take around 40 minutes, thereabouts, in terms of you know, death, and there is a high probability if you don’t take some anti-emetics, that there will be nausea and vomiting. So not 100 per cent peaceful, I can’t guarantee you that.”

Law described the physical symptoms of nausea, pale and blue tinged skin, but claimed the risk of long term organ damage in the case of survival was low. Many of the victim details in the agreed statement of facts refer to vomit being found near the deceased.

In the event of interception by law enforcement, Law’s advice was to claim to be an “aspiring chef” who wants to cure some bacon.

He called sodium nitrite the “budgetary choice,” and said a more “peaceful” but expensive option is a nitrogen asphyxiation mask. The agreed statement of facts suggests the sodium nitrite cost about $80 for a 50 gram package, and the mask system cost a few hundred.

“You do have the right to life and obviously to death too,” Law said on the journalist’s recording.

He said the pandemic led many people to reflect, “What’s the whole point in life?”

Both Law and the Crown agree he made these statements to Beal, but disagree on his motivations. His “true motivation” will be discussed at sentencing, the agreed statement says.

Search warrant photographs showed shelves of packaged products in his Toronto area home after his arrest.

Police also found a will by Law, evidently made out after The Times sting because he referred to the journalist’s “zeal.” He claimed in the will to have been helping people alleviate their pain “while making a small modest profit.”

The parties likewise do not agree what can be concluded from this statement, and will be argued in September at the sentencing hearing.

Assisting suicide has a maximum prison term of 14 years under Canadian law.

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