Local news from Fort St. John, Taylor, Fort Nelson, Dawson Creek and the rest of Northeast B.C. Energeticcity.ca is your source for news and events! We are the only local news source with full-time staff working in Fort St. John.
The energy file continues to be dominated by protests and court cases, as the Federal Court of Appeal yesterday resumed a hearing which started last week and is expected to conclude on Thursday. This week environmental activists and organized labor are scheduled to present their arguments in opposition to the Northern Gateway Pipeline project. They’ve […]
TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays have made the cover of Sports Illustrated for the first time since 2005.
The Jays are on the front of the magazine's annual MLB playoff preview with designated hitter Edwin Encarnacion, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, pitcher David Price, catcher Russell Martin, right-fielder Jose Bautista and third baseman Josh Donaldson flanking manager John Gibbons under the headline "The New Jacks."
The issue hits newstands on Wednesday.
Being on the Sports Illustrated cover has been seen as a jinx for some although Michael Jordan did OK with his 50 covers.
Cleveland, Seattle, Kansas City and Washington were featured on SI's baseball season preview issue. Only the Royals made it to the post-season.
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Stephen Harper hit the hustings Tuesday morning touting a landmark trade deal, and new money to pay for any ill effects the agreement will have on the domestic auto sector.
The Conservative leader announced a $1-billion package to help the auto industry cope with the repercussions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, following a $4.3-billion package for dairy farmers.
The $1 billion Harper pledged would be spread in equal $100 million annual payments for 10 years, and is contingent on the Conservatives getting re-elected on Oct. 19. The dairy farmer pledge is for that funding to be spread over 15 years.
Under the program announced Tuesday, grants would be offered to companies that make firm commitments to build new auto assembly plants.
"The programs we have here are not compensation programs," Harper said. "They are incentive programs to attract this kind of investment into the sector and keep this kind of investment in the sector."
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the money is being used to "buy off favoured sectors" and "simply punish taxpayers" with unneeded spending.
The signing of the 12-country Pacific Rim pact dominated talk on the election trail Tuesday, as Harper's opponents raised questions about the deal, while auto workers protested outside Harper's event in Whitby, Ont.
Statistics Canada showed the country's trade deficit grew to $2.5 billion in August as exports posted their biggest decline since 2012 due to a sharp drop in oil prices.
However, exports of motor vehicles and parts rose 3.1 per cent to $7.8 billion due to a 4.5 per cent increase in exports of passenger cars and light trucks.
The International Monetary Fund cut its growth outlook for the Canadian economy on Tuesday to just 1.0 per cent for the year, due to the drop in oil prices and reduced investment in the energy sector.
The forecast is down from the IMF's expectation in July for Canadian growth of 1.5 per cent. The organization also lowered its Canadian outlook for 2016 to 1.7 per cent from 2.1 per cent.
Harper said the deal would be a much needed boost to the Canadian economy, and ultimately help the auto sector in the long-term by opening up international demand for locally-made products.
Speaking in Surrey, B.C., NDP Leader Tom Mulcair called on Harper to release the full text of the agreement before Canadians go to the polls on Oct. 19 so they can see how many jobs are at risk because of the trade deal. He called the deal a "Trojan Horse" to the Canadian dairy sector that would erode government protections on market access by foreign producers.
He said the money the Conservatives are promising to give to the auto sector was an admission that there will be job losses as a result of the trade deal.
"The best form of evidence is an admission," Mulcair said. "So what Stephen Harper is doing there is that he's admitting that he's going to be killing off tens of thousands of jobs in the auto sector. He's just admitted it by talking about that sort of compensation."
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said he wanted more information on the compensation packages designed to ease the transition for the auto sector to the deal's new tariff structure.
He also said Harper hadn't properly explained to Canadians how they would benefit from the trade deal.
"We have a prime minister that is happy to sign trade deals, but hasn't done a very good job on talking to Canadians about the kinds of benefits that come from trade," he said in Montreal.
Jordan Press, The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Ottawa quarterback Henry Burris, B.C quarterback Jonathon Jennings, and Lions defensive tackle Mic’hael Brooks are the CFL's top performers for Week 15.
Burris set a CFL record for pass completions in a single game on Thursday, when he threw 45-of-53 for 504 yards in a 39-17 home win over Montreal.
Burris eclipsed the previous record of 44 set by former Montreal Anthony Calvillo in 2008.
The win was Burris' 110th in the league, putting him in fourth place all-time among CFL quarterbacks.
Jennings scored five total touchdowns in the Lions' 46-20 home win over Saskatchewan on Saturday.
Jennings threw for a career-high 364 yards and tossed four touchdown passes to three different receivers. He also caught a 21-yard touchdown pass from Austin Collie.
Brooks led the Lions defensively, recording two sacks, resulting in a total of 21 yards lost, and adding an interception.
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Stephen Harper hit the hustings Tuesday morning touting a landmark trade deal, and new money to pay for any ill effects the agreement will have on the domestic auto sector.
The Conservative leader announced a $1-billion package to help the auto industry cope with the repercussions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, after unveiling a similar $4.3-billion package for dairy farmers a day earlier.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the money is being used to "buy off favoured sectors" and "simply punish taxpayers" with unneeded spending.
The signing of the 12-country Pacific Rim pact dominated talk on the election trail Tuesday, as Harper's opponents raised questions about the deal, while auto workers protested outside Harper's event in Whitby, Ont.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair called on Harper to release the full text of the agreement before Canadians go to the polls on Oct. 19 so they can see how many jobs are at risk because of the trade deal.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says he wanted more information on the compensation packages designed to ease the transition for the auto sector to the deal's new tariff structure.
The Canadian Press
Five things to know about neutrinos:
What are they? Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles that make up the universe, but they're also among the least understood and for decades remained hypothetical. Neutrinos are minuscule and created in nuclear reactions, such as in the sun and the stars. They are similar to the electron, but they don't carry an electric charge. Because they're electrically neutral, they are unfazed by electromagnetic forces that act upon electrons.
What does affect them? Neutrinos are affected only by a "weak" sub-atomic force of much shorter range than electromagnetism, and are therefore able to pass through great distances in matter without being affected by it. If neutrinos have mass, they also interact gravitationally with other massive particles, but gravity is by far the weakest of the four known forces.
How many types of neutrinos are they? There are three types and they oscillate from one type to another, dispelling the long-held notion that neutrinos are massless. Neutrinos are so small that about a billion neutrinos pass through a human thumb every second.
What did Canada discover about neutrinos? In 2001, while working at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, Canadian Nobel Prize winner Arthur McDonald found that neutrinos coming from the sun didn't disappear — some just changed identities. He and Takaaki Kajita, a Japanese colleague with whom he shares the Nobel Prize, gave rise to the conclusion that neutrinos have mass.
Fun fact: Neutrino means "little neutral one" in Italian.
Source: The University of California, Arthur McDonald, Tony Noble
The Canadian Press
QUEBEC — The lawyer for former Quebec lieutenant-governor Lise Thibault has appeared in court today seeking permission to appeal her 18-month jail term for fraud and breach of trust.
Marc Labelle told Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Jacques J. Levesque that his client's case is unique, partly because she is 76, is confined to a wheelchair and has health problems, including anxiety attacks.
Labelle says the Quebec court judge who imposed the sentence should have taken those factors into consideration.
He also argues the judge should not have put the emphasis on making an example of Thibault just because of her position as the Queen's representative in Quebec.
The Crown argues the case is not that unique because many high-placed officials have been sent to prison for fraud and breach of trust. Marcel Guimont also says the detention facilities have been adapted to accommodate Thibault's needs.
Thibault, who has been incarcerated the last six nights, was charged two years after a 2007 report by the federal and provincial auditors general revealed she claimed more than $700,000 in improper expenses when she held the vice-regal post between 1997 and 2007.
In sentencing Thibault last Wednesday, Quebec court Judge Carol St-Cyr called her behaviour "highly reprehensible'' and part of a "culture of deceit.''
Her trial heard the money was spent on gifts, trips, parties, meals and skiing and golf lessons.
St-Cyr also ordered Thibault to reimburse $200,000 to Ottawa and $100,000 to Quebec.
Besides a four-year prison sentence for Thibault, the Crown was seeking the reimbursement of $430,000.
Thibault originally pleaded not guilty but switched pleas last December because, according to Labelle, she came to a better understanding of the evidence and the law.
She testified at the trial she had little to show financially for her time as vice-regal _ that a divorce ate into her savings and that she lived on a $30,000 pension.
St-Cyr also ruled against a pair of motions filed by Labelle, who argued the case should be dismissed because the accused benefited from royal immunity.
Labelle said that meant Thibault was not a civil servant and therefore could not face criminal charges.
The judge said that, according to constitutional law, the lieutenant-governor does not enjoy the same benefits as the Queen.
St-Cyr also noted that under the Constitution, the lieutenant-governor is a civil servant, adding such an affirmation is even posted on the lieutenant-governor's website.
The Canadian Press
The illustrious list of Nobel Prize winners features the names of 18 Canadians who have claimed honours in every field for which an award is granted. These include the man who discovered today's most common diabetes treatment, the woman hailed as the master of the contemporary short story, and most recently a Nova Scotia physicist partially credited with discovering neutrino oscillations. Here is a list of Canadian laureates as documented on the official Nobel Prize website:
1923: Frederick G. Banting, Nobel Prize in Medicine for the "discovery of insulin"
1949: William F. Giauque, Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures"
1957: former Prime Minister Lester Bowles Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize for his role in defusing the 1956 Suez crisis
1966: Charles B. Huggins, Nobel Prize in Medicine for "his discoveries concerning hormonal treatment of prostatic cancer"
1976: Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize in Literature for "the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work"
1981: David H. Hubel, Nobel Prize in Medicine for "discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system"
1983: Henry Taube, Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes"
1989: Sidney Altman, Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "discovery of catalytic properties of RNA
1990: Richard E. Taylor, Nobel Prize in Physics for "investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance
for the development of the quark model in particle physics"
1992: Rudolph A. Marcus, Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems"
1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, Nobel Prize in Physics for "the development of neutron spectroscopy"
1996: William Vickrey, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for "contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information"
1997: Myron S. Scholes, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for "a new method to determine the value of derivatives"
1999: Robert A. Mundell, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for "his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas"
2009: Willard S. Boyle, Nobel Prize in Physics for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit - the CCD sensor"
2011: Ralph M. Steinman, Nobel Prize in Medicine for "his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity"
2013: Alice Munro, Nobel Prize in Literature for being the "master of the contemporary short story"
2015: Arthur B. McDonald, Nobel Prize in Physics for "the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass"
(Source: Nobelprize.org)
The Canadian Press
SOMERSET WEST, South Africa — Oscar Pistorius' family criticized South African authorities on Tuesday for delays in deciding whether he should be released from jail and moved to house arrest, saying his rights were being "undermined" because of the publicity surrounding his case.
The family also reacted to parole officials' recommendation that the double-amputee runner undergo psychotherapy, saying he was already receiving "regular and ongoing" psychotherapy from both his personal and prison psychologists.
The Pistorius family spoke out in a written statement after his early release — which had been granted in June — was
"This experience leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that the public, political and media hype that was allowed to develop around Oscar's trial has undermined his right to be treated like any other prisoner," Pistorius' family said.
The family expressed concerns over the "legality" of
Pistorius was approved to be released on Aug. 21 after serving 10 months of his five-year manslaughter sentence for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. In a fairly common procedure in South Africa for offenders sentenced to five years or less, he would have been moved from jail after one-sixth of the sentence to serve the remainder under correctional supervision at home.
But the justice minister intervened two days before Pistorius was to leave jail and ordered a review on a legal technicality, saying the parole board met two months too early. After a seven-week delay, officials reviewing Pistorius' case on Monday sent it back to that original parole board to consider all over again.
"We cannot understand ... why the matter is now to be referred back to the parole board that has no reason to make a different decision from the one that was made in the first place," the Pistorius family said.
Gerald Imray, The Associated Press
SAINT-JEROME, Que. — An emergency technician has testified that Guy Turcotte told hospital officials a day after his children were stabbed to death that he wanted to die and that what he had done was terrible.
Marie-Pierre Chartrand says Turcotte arrived at the hospital a day after his children were killed in February 2009.
Chartrand told Turcotte's first-degree murder trial this morning that he asked to not be treated and to be allowed to die. The decision was made to treat him because she thought he was suicidal.
Turcotte, 43, is facing two counts of first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of Olivier, 5, and Anne-Sophie, 3.
The former cardiologist has pleaded not guilty but has admitted to causing the children's deaths.
Chartrand, who knew Turcotte because he worked at the same hospital in Saint-Jerome, says he was lucid although she had the impression he may have been slightly intoxicated.
"There was clear psychological distress," Chartrand said. "He was crying a lot and talking a lot."
On Monday, pathologist Andre Bourgault testified that Anne-Sophie's heart was pierced, while Olivier's hands had wounds.
"He tried to defend himself between four and seven times," said Bourgault, who has conducted more than 4,000 autopsies in his career.
He said Olivier was stabbed 27 times and Anne-Sophie 19 times. They had wounds to the stomach, the thorax and on their back.
Turcotte's trial will be curtailed this week as one juror has a medical appointment and another has to attend a wake and a funeral for a relative who passed away on the weekend.
It will sit all day on Tuesday as well as Wednesday morning.
The Canadian Press
NEW YORK — Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday in the trial of a professional basketball player charged with resisting arrest and other crimes during a confrontation with police officers outside a trendy Manhattan nightclub in April.
The Atlanta Hawks' Thabo Sefolosha, who suffered a season-ending leg fracture in the struggle, has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which also include
A jury was picked Monday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
The case stems from an early morning struggle outside the 1Oak Club in Chelsea shortly after the stabbing of Indiana Pacers forward Chris Copeland, his girlfriend and another woman. It was then that the 30-year-old guard-forward ignored six orders to move away from the crime scene, charged at an officer and then flailed his arms and twisted his legs while being placed under arrest, according to a criminal complaint.
During jury selection, Spiro said that while his client, a black Swiss national, may have been "mouthy" and "fresh" in his dealings with officers after the stabbing, no crime had been committed. He also suggested race played a role in his client's arrest by a white officer.
"Are you all willing to understand that we're all swayed at some level by implicit racial biases?" he asked potential jurors.
Six police officers will be called as witnesses for the prosecution, an assistant district attorney, Francesca Bartolomey, said Monday. Spiro had sought to review the personnel records of five of the officers involved, but the judge, Robert Mandelbaum, denied that motion.
Charges against another Hawks player involved in the confrontation, Pero Antic, were dropped.
___
This story has been corrected to show the judge's surname is Mandelbaum, not Mandelbau.
Jake Pearson, The Associated Press
PEMBROKE, Ont. — A man charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the separate slayings of three women in an area west of Ottawa has had his case put over until Nov. 2.
Basil Borutski had a brief court hearing Monday in Pembroke, Ont.
Borutski faces first-degree murder charges in the deaths of 36-year-old Anastasia Kuzyk, 48-year-old Nathalie Warmerdam, and 66-year-old Carol Culleton.
The bodies of the women — all three were reportedly his former girlfriends — who were reportedly his former were found within hours of each other on Sept. 22.
The 57-year-old was arrested after a manhunt that kept the village of Wilno, Ont., under lockdown for several hours.
He has a criminal history that includes a conviction for assaulting Kuzyk in December 2013. He was released from jail last December and placed on two years probation.
In 2012, Borutski was accused of assaulting Warmerdam, and also accused of threatening to hurt one of her family members and to kill a family pet.
Court documents say he was convicted of making threats and breaking a door while he lived with Warmerdam but the Crown did not proceed with the assault charge.
The Canadian Press
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version contained an incorrect date for when the homicides happened.
VIENNA — The wife of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has joined a small group of protesters in front of the Saudi Embassy in Vienna to demand his release.
Ensaf Haidar and a few dozen other demonstrators chanted "Stop torture!" and Free Raif!" in Tuesday's protest, which was organized by Amnesty International.
Haidar, who lives in Quebec with the couple's three children, is on a European tour to push for the release of her husband.
Badawi is serving a 10-year sentence after being convicted of breaking Saudi Arabia's technology laws and insulting Islamic religious figures through his blog.
He also was sentenced to 1,000 lashes over 20 weekly sessions and fined $266,000.
The flogging has been suspended since Badawi received 50 lashes in January.
The Associated Press
SAINT JOHN, N.B. — A forensic identification officer who collected more than 560 pieces of forensic evidence is testifying for the fourth day at the second-degree murder trial of Dennis Oland.
Oland is accused of killing his father Richard Oland in his office in Saint John, N.B., on July 6, 2011.
Sgt. Mark Smith of the Saint John Police Force described for the Court of Queen's Bench today where he collected various DNA samples in the office three days later.
He says he found blood splatter almost a metre from where the body was found.
Smith says he also checked the washroom outside Oland's office and found a stained piece of paper towel in the garbage and it tested positive for blood.
Smith says other police officers had been using that washroom for the previous two days.
Asked by the Crown if that concerned him, Smith said it did but he continued his search.
The Canadian Press
STOCKHOLM — Arthur McDonald — a professor emeritus at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., and the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in northern Ontario — is a co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on tiny particles called neutrinos.
McDonald and Japanese scientist Takaaki Kajita were cited for the discovery of neutrino oscillations and their contributions to experiments showing that neutrinos change identities.
"The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the award early Tuesday.
McDonald, who spoke to reporters by phone from his home in Kingston immediately after the prize was announced, said being named by the committee is a "very daunting experience, needless to say."
"Fortunately, I have many colleagues as well who share this prize with me."
McDonald said they have put in a "tremendous amount of work" and that he benefited from having a "very friendly collaboration among scientists from Canada, the United States, Britain, and Portugal."
He said that group will help him "enjoy the moment" when he has a chance to speak with them.
McDonald said there was a "eureka moment" when they were able to see that neutrinos were able to change from one type to another in travelling from the sun to the Earth.
"Neutrinos are among the fundamental particles (which) we do not know how to subdivide any further. Therefore, their position within the models of physics at the most fundamental level is very important," he said.
"When you do not know whether they have mass, it's otherwise difficult to understand how to incorporate them into those theories that give us a more complete understanding of the world of physics at the most fundamental level. Discovering this property helps us tremendously in this regard."
McDonald, 72, is a native of Sydney, N.S., who studied at Dalhousie University in Halifax in the mid-60s and later at the California Institute of Technology. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006.
McDonald and Kajita, who is the director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and professor at the University of Tokyo, will split the prize money, the equivalent of about $1.3 million Cdn (8 million Swedish kronor).
Kajita seemed flummoxed at a news conference organized by his university. "My mind has gone completely blank," he said after taking the stage. "I don't know what to say."
After getting his composure back, he stressed that many people had contributed to his work, and that there was much work still to do.
"The universe where we live in is still full of unknowns," he said. "A major discovery cannot be achieved in a day or two. It takes a lot of people and a long time. I would like to see young people try to join our pursuit of mystery solving."
Neutrinos are minuscule particles created in nuclear reactions, such as in the sun and the stars.
For decades the neutrino remained a hypothetical particle until American researchers proved that it was real in 1956.
There are three kinds, or
Kajita showed in 1998 that neutrinos captured at the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan underwent a metamorphosis in the atmosphere, the academy said.
Three years later, in Canada, while working at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, McDonald found that neutrinos coming from the sun also switched identities.
"A far-reaching conclusion of the experiments is that the neutrino, for a long time considered to be massless, must have mass," the academy said.
McDonald said that scientists would still like to know the actual masses of the various forms of neutrino. And experiments are looking at whether there are other types of neutrinos beyond the three clearly observed.
The idea that neutrinos could transform from one type into another was first put forward by the Italian physicist Bruno Pontecorvo in the late 1950s, but scientists' understanding of the process was rather vague until Kajita announced his discovery in 1998, said Antonio Ereditato, director of the Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
"This was a big shock because he proved in a statistically significant manner ... that neutrinos oscillate," said Ereditato. "Then Art McDonald explored another channel using solar neutrinos. It came after Kajita but he also proved neutrino oscillation in another channel. The two deserved this award."
Neutrinos are the second most abundant particles in the universe after photons, "so any property of neutrinos can have dramatic repercussions on the life of the universe and on its evolution," he said. "This is really one of the milestones in our understanding of nature."
The University of Tokyo said in a statement congratulating Kajita that he was one of the students of 2002 Nobel physics winner Masatoshi Koshiba, who also has contributed to Japan's neutrino research.
On Monday the Nobel Prize in medicine went to scientists from Japan, the U.S. and China who discovered drugs that are now used to fight malaria and other tropical diseases.
The prize announcements continue with chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award next Monday.
Each winner will also get a diploma and a gold medal at the prize ceremony on Dec. 10.
— By Alan Black in Toronto with files from the Associated Press
The Canadian Press
NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. — A buffalo roamed onto a highway in the Niagara region today and died after being hit by two cars.
Police say three buffaloes got loose from a nearby farm and one made its way onto the QEW around 6 a.m. in Niagara Falls, Ont.
Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt says two drivers sustained minor injuries in the crash.
He says the buffaloes have been on the run for a few days.
Schmidt says two remain loose and asked drivers to keep an eye out for a "big, black thing" on the road.
The Canadian Press
STOCKHOLM — Canada's Arthur McDonald and Takaaki Kajita of Japan have won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the two researchers had made key contributions to experiments showing that neutrinos change identities.
"The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe," the academy said.
Kajita is director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and professor at the University of Tokyo.
McDonald is a professor emeritus at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.
The winners will split about $960,000 in prize money.
Each winner also gets a diploma and a gold medal at the prize ceremony on Dec. 10.
The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — A 73-year-old woman is dead following a fire Tuesday morning in an apartment building in northwest Montreal.
Firefighters were called to the building in the Pierrefonds district just before 2 a.m. and evacuated hundreds of people.
The woman's body was found in her apartment, where the fire started, possibly due to a lit cigarette.
There was no one else in the apartment and the fire was quickly extinguished.
No one was injured during the evacuation and residents were later allowed to return to their units.
The Canadian Press
