Average hourly wage in Canada now $34.95: StatCan
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were "partners in crime" in the sexual abuse of teenage girls, a prosecutor said Monday, while Maxwell's lawyers said she was being made a scapegoat for a man's bad behaviour as the British socialite's sex trafficking trial got underway in New York.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz said at the start of Maxwell's sex trafficking trial that the British socialite and Epstein enticed girls as young as 14 to engage in "so-called massages" in which sex abuse came to be seen as "casual and normal" after vulnerable victims were showered with money and gifts.
The prosecutor sought to make clear to a jury of 12 that there was no confusion about whether Maxwell, Epstein's longtime companion, was his puppet or accomplice.
She described Maxwell, 59, as central to Epstein's sex abuse scheme, which prosecutors say lasted over a decade.
"She was in on it from the start. The defendant and Epstein lured their victims with a promise of a bright future, only to sexually exploit them," Pomerantz said, as U.S. Attorney Damian Williams looked on from a spectator bench.
Maxwell "was involved in every detail of Epstein's life," the prosecutor said. "The defendant was the lady of the house."
Even after Maxwell and Epstein stopped being romantically involved, the pair "remained the best of friends," Pomerantz said.
She said Maxwell "helped normalize abusive sexual conduct" by making the teenagers feel safe and by taking them on shopping trips and asking them about their lives, their schools and their families.
The prosecutor spoke from an enclosed plastic see-through box that allowed her to take off her mask as Maxwell, in a cream-coloured sweater and black pants, at times wrote and passed notes to her lawyers.
When she finished, attorney Bobbi Sternheim said her client was a "scapegoat for a man who behaved badly," just like so many women all the way back to Adam and Eve.
"She's not Jeffrey Epstein. She's not like Jeffrey Epstein" or any of the powerful men, moguls and media giants who abuse women, Sternheim said.
She called Epstein "the proverbial elephant in the room."
"He is not visible, but he is consuming this entire courtroom and overflow courtrooms where other members of the public are viewing," she said.
Sternheim said the four women who would testify that Maxwell recruited them to be sexually abused were suffering from quarter-century-old memories and the influence of lawyers who guided them to get money from a fund set up by Epstein's estate after his August 2019 suicide in a Manhattan federal jail as he awaited his own sex trafficking trial.
The lawyer said "accusers have shaken the money tree, and millions of dollars have fallen their way."
The openings set the scene for a six-week trial that Maxwell settled into with frequent gazes at her sister in the front row of a spectator section diminished in space by coronavirus restrictions.
Maxwell — who once dated the financier — is accused of acting as Epstein's chief enabler, recruiting and grooming young girls for him to abuse. The charges against her stem from the allegations of four women who say she and Epstein victimized them as teens from 1994 to 2004.
Pomerantz said the abuse occurred at Epstein's homes, including his estate in Palm Beach, Fla.; his posh Manhattan townhouse; a Santa Fe, N.M., ranch; a Paris apartment; and a luxury estate in the Virgin Islands.
The government's first witness was Lawrence Paul Visoski Jr., who worked for Epstein starting in the 1990s as a pilot on the private jets that shuttled Epstein, Maxwell and others between his various homes.
A prosecutor had Visoski start by describing the layout of the New York residence that he regularly visited to pick up luggage and do other chores. He was to return to the stand Tuesday.
Authorities charged Maxwell in July 2020, arresting her after tracking her to a US$1 million New Hampshire estate where she had been holed up during the coronavirus pandemic.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denies wrongdoing. She has been jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest, calling the claims against her "absolute rubbish." Maxwell's lawyers and family say she was Epstein's pawn, now paying "a blood price" to satisfy public desire to see someone held accountable for his crimes.
The wealthy, Oxford-educated Maxwell is the daughter of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991 after falling off his yacht — named the Lady Ghislaine — near the Canary Islands. Robert Maxwell, whose holdings at the time included the New York Daily News, was facing allegations that he had illegally looted his businesses' pension funds.
Ghislaine Maxwell holds U.S., British and French citizenships and was repeatedly denied bail in the runup to her trial.
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
A 4.2-magnitude earthquake was recorded west of Vancouver Island early Friday morning.
Andy Kim's 'Rock Me Gently' is marking a major milestone, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.
Oprah Winfrey said on Thursday evening that she has long played a role in promoting unhealthy and unrealistic diets.
A southwestern Ontario woman has received an $8,400 bill from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., after she refused to put her mother in a nursing home she hated -- and she says she has no intention of paying it.
Toronto police say a man who allegedly attempted to access Drake’s Bridle Path property was taken to hospital on Thursday after an altercation with security guards.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.