Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
As health-care workers and advocates continue to sound the alarm on Canada’s collapsing health-care system, the Canadian Medical Association’s (CMA) newly appointed president says it’s not too late to fix the issue.
“There's a lot of opportunity to make a big difference and even though things are collapsing. We can fix things if we work together,” Dr. Alika Lafontaine told CTV’s Your Morning on Sept. 22.
Lafontaine, who is the first CMA president of Cree, Anishinaabe, Metis and Pacific Islander ancestry, says his background has helped him focus on issues for BIPOC, who are often overlooked in the health-care system.
“Being First Nation, Metis and Pacific Islander has all shaped the way that I see patients and I think it helps me to create space and see things that people might not always see,” he said.
Along with his brother, Lafontaine created the app ‘Safe Space,’ made for Indigenous patients in B.C. to anonymously report racism experienced in health-care settings. He said initiatives like these can help part of Canada’s health crisis.
The CMA recently came out with a report highlighting the current funding for health-care services on all government levels. Across the board, provinces and territories share the same priorities including workforce recruitment, reducing surgical backlog, accessible health care for all communities and innovative solutions, such as virtual care.
“One of the things about health is you don't really think about it unless you need it,” he said. “For those of us who are in the midst of it, we see what's happening and when patients come in to receive care, they realize that it takes a lot longer and sometimes they can't even get to the places that they need to get in order to get into the system.”
Lafontaine says this has been an ongoing issue as staff shortages continue to affect hospitals across the country. Statistics Canada reported a rise in job vacancies within the health-care sector in the first quarter of 2022, with vacancies increasing by more than 90 per cent compared to 2020 data.
To fix this issue, Lafontaine says governments on all levels need to prioritize not only training for new health workers and initiatives to keep current staff, but create an easier path for foreign workers to become certified in Canada.
“One of the things that I often see when working in emergency situations is people get overwhelmed and so they just get paralyzed with thinking about what they could do,” he said. “We just need to start walking forward, doing the things that we know will work and things will eventually start to fit back together.”
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration.
Montreal police are facing pressure to move in and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University campus on Thursday, as a growing number of universities across this country grapple with the tough decision of how to handle the protests.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
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Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.