Grandparent scam: London, Ont., senior beats fraudsters not once, but twice
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
A new survey suggests the vast majority of Canadians have concerns about the state of the health-care system, particularly in Atlantic provinces where hospitals have struggled to maintain emergency services for months.
Leger and The Association for Canadian Studies surveyed 1,554 Canadian adults over a two-day period in January.
Doctors, nurses and patient advocacy groups have been frantically waving red flags about the crisis unfolding in Canadian hospitals since the pandemic began, when intensive care units and emergency rooms were flooded with patients.
Since then, the already burnt-out workforce has steadily declined, leaving fewer health workers to cope with waves of flu and other respiratory illnesses at the end of last year.
About 86 per cent of people surveyed across the country said they are worried about the state of health care, compared to 94 per cent of those surveyed in Atlantic Canada.
The people surveyed were slightly more concerned about the state of health care if they reported receiving care in the last year.
People in Eastern Canada also worry about the quality of care they'll get if they need to go to an emergency room: 81 per cent say they're concerned, compared to 67 per cent of Canadians overall.
The labour shortage in that part of the country has repeatedly caused temporary emergency room closures, forcing patients to travel farther for the care they urgently need.
In Nova Scotia, those closures mainly happened in rural hospitals, a government report issued late last year shows.
Countrywide, 90 per cent of rural survey respondents reported concern about the state of health care.
Overall, 54 per cent of Canadians characterize the quality of their provincial health system as good or very good, while 43 per cent say it is poor or very poor.
Canadians' assessments of their public health-care systems are rather dim when compared to the answers of 1,005 Americans surveyed, 74 per cent of whom graded their own health system as good or very good.
As provincial and territorial governments try to work through surgical and diagnostic backlogs that accumulated over the course of the pandemic, some have turned to private clinics to ease the load. The move has created a polarized debate about private delivery of public health care.
Of Canadian respondents to the survey, 53 per cent said they do not want to see more privatization in their provincial health-care systems.
As the federal government negotiates with provinces to pay a larger share of the bill for health-care services, 69 per cent of Canadians who responded to the survey said their provincial governments were not putting enough money into the system.
The survey cannot be assigned a margin of error because online polls are not considered truly random samples.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2023.
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
The deaths of four people on a farm near the Saskatchewan village of Neudorf have been confirmed a murder-suicide.
The Canada Revenue Agency announced Thursday it will not require 'bare trust' reporting from Canadians that it introduced for the 2024 tax season, just four days before the April 2 deadline.
The Parole Board of Canada has granted full parole to one of three men convicted in the brutal murders of three McDonald's restaurant workers in Cape Breton more than 30 years ago.
Calgary police shut down a number of bridges into and out of the downtown core as officers dealt with a distraught individual. The incident lasted almost 20 hours.
Ontario released its annual sunshine list Thursday afternoon, noting that the largest year-over-year increases were in hospitals, municipalities, and post-secondary sectors.
Genetic analysis has shed light on a long-standing mystery surrounding the fates of U.S. President George Washington's younger brother Samuel and his kin.
A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party's relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is officially selling a copy of the Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, 'God Bless the USA.' But the concept of a Bible covered in the American flag has raised concern among religious circles.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.