editor, Author at Monitor Telegram

EQAO Results Show $60-Million Strategy Hasn’t Made Ontario Students Any Better At Math

August 30, 2017

TORONTO — Math test scores among public elementary school students in Ontario have not improved — in some cases they have decreased slightly — despite a $60-million “renewed math strategy” the government had hoped would help solve the problem.

The latest results of the province’s standardized tests — conducted by the Education Quality and Accountability Office — show that only half of Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in math, unchanged from the previous year. In 2013, about 57 per cent of Grade 6 students met the standard.

Immigration Canada ‘breaking the law,’ when denying some disabled applicants, say legal experts

August 29, 2017

Families looking to become Canadian permanent residents are being unfairly rejected by immigration officials, say legal experts, and in some cases the federal government may be breaking the law.

The consequence can be devastating for families trying to move to Canada.

The issue involves the government’s failure to provide specific cost estimates in “procedural fairness letters” given to people who could be denied due to so-called “medical inadmissibility.”

Solitary confinement violates charter right to life, liberty, security: lawyer

August 28, 2017

VANCOUVER — Solitary confinement is a cruel and inhumane punishment with “truly horrific” consequences including severe psychological harm and suicide, a lawyer said Monday in arguing the law allowing the practice in Canada must be struck down.

Joe Arvay, representing the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of Canada, delivered closing arguments in B.C. Supreme Court in a legal challenge of the use of indefinite isolation in prisons.

Health-care, harm reduction workers call on Ontario to declare opioid emergency

August 28, 2017

TORONTO — More than 700 doctors, nurses, harm reduction workers and academics are calling on Ontario to declare opioid overdoses and deaths an emergency, as British Columbia did last year.

The front-line workers delivered an open letter Monday to Premier Kathleen Wynne, saying limited resources and poor data are preventing them from responding properly to a disturbing and sustained increase in overdoses.

“The consequences have been clear: lives lost, families destroyed and harm reduction and healthcare worker burnout,” they write.

Predators targeting Canada’s seniors with fraud, scams

August 27, 2017

“Hey, are you ready to make 10,000 to 15,000 dollars a month?” cried the pitchman bubbling with enthusiasm, “… a fast and easy way to make millions from home.”

I flicked off my radio. I thought: You’ve got to be kidding. I was in the depths of gathering research on financial abuse of seniors, and I had become sensitive to the smell of scam. To top it off, this commercial was on a classical radio program geared to an audience of seniors.

What do doctors really have to fear from the feds’ tax crackdown?

August 25, 2017

Among the most insistent critics of the recent proposals by Finance Minister Bill Morneau to tighten up the use of private companies to avoid taxes have been Canada’s doctors.

Canadians generally do not begrudge doctors their above-average incomes. They spend many years training for their jobs, and then sometimes literally hold our lives in their hands. Still, valid questions remain about how much they make and how much tax they pay. Despite some claims, are doctors really in the middle class?

Some treatment centers accused of keeping addicts hooked for insurance dollars

August 25, 2017

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The Reflections treatment center looked like just the place for Michelle Holley’s youngest daughter to kick heroin. Instead, as with dozens of other Florida substance abuse treatment facilities, the owner was more interested in defrauding insurance companies by keeping addicts hooked, her family says.

“It looked fine. They were saying all the right things to me. I could not help my child so I trusted them to help my child,” Holley said.

Instead, the center refused to give 19-year-old Jaime Holley her prescription medicine when she left, forcing her to use illegal drugs to avoid acute withdrawal symptoms, her mother said. She died of a heroin overdose last November. “Right to my face they lied to me, and I believed them.”

Average Canadians pay 42.5 per cent of their income in taxes: report

August 24, 2017

Canadians pay a whopping 42.5 per cent of their income in taxes, according to a new report by the Fraser Institute.

An average family with an income of about $83,000 paid roughly $35,000 in taxes last year, the Vancouver, B.C.-based think-tank calculated. That overall tax bill accounts for federal, provincial and local taxes, including income, payroll, sales and property taxes.

By comparison, a typical Canadian household used only 37 per cent of its income on basic necessities, according to the report. Spending on housing (including rent and mortgage payments), food and clothing amounted to $31,000 for the typical family.

Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $417M in trial over talc cancer risks

August 23, 2017

A California jury on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $417 million US to a woman who claimed she developed ovarian cancer after using the company’s talc-based products like Johnson’s Baby Powder for feminine hygiene.

The Los Angeles Superior Court jury’s verdict in favour of California resident Eva Echeverria was the largest yet in lawsuits alleging J&J failed to adequately warn consumers about the cancer risks of its talc-based products.

Study questions why thousands with developmental disabilities are prescribed antipsychotics

August 23, 2017

Thousands of people with Down syndrome, autism and other developmental disabilities are being prescribed anti-psychotic medication by Ontario doctors despite a lack of evidence that the drugs actually help them, a new study has found.

Researchers with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences have called for “guidelines and training around antipsychotic prescribing and monitoring” for doctors, pharmacists and care home staff after finding that nearly 40 per cent of people with developmental disabilities were prescribed antipsychotic drugs at some point over a six-year period.