Ontario launches project to let paramedics treat palliative patients on scene

Taxi and ride-hailing services receive 58 complaints since March

The City of Winnipeg has fielded 58 formal complaints about vehicle-for-hire operations since taking over industry oversight from the province in March.

According to freedom of information request results, the city mostly received complaints about taxi operations, and the two largest companies – Duffy’s Taxi and Unicity Taxi – were the main culprits.

From March 1, 2018 to July 13, 2018, the Winnipeg Parking Authority received 20 complaints about Duffy’s, mostly to do with driver road habits (five complaints), driver conduct (three), service refusal (three) or poor service (three), among other issues.

During the same period, Unicity had 19 complaints, five of them related to poor service and three about driver conduct, plus other misdeeds.

Province changes Thompson ‘Vaxport’ plan

The Manitoba government has changed its plans for a vaccination "super site" for the North — just days after it was announced — after local officials argued the original proposal was unworkable.

Some northern residents will still get their COVID-19 shots at Thompson's airport, but "Vaxport" will be less super than originally planned, providing injections only to residents of fly-in communities.

Most northern residents will get their shots at the Thompson Community Recreation Centre, which is centrally located in the city of about 13,000.

"This makes much more sense logistically, and for the citizens of Thompson," Mayor Colleen Smook said Thursday after touring the airport site, which is located 10 kilometres from the city and isn't serviced by public transportation.

Say What?! Sports guys travel to new destination

Say What?! is an email conversation between sports editor Steve Lyons and sports columnist Paul Wiecek. Look for us regularly but intermittently on the Free Press website.

Steve Lyons: Heya. How you doing? How’s 2020 treating you so far?

Few things to get us started:

Winnipeg novelist's latest offering a riveting fictional account of missionaries' plight

In 1955, five American missionary couples set out to evangelize the Waorani, an Indigenous people group of the Ecuadorian rainforest that had never had contact with the outside world. They dubbed their mission “Operation Auca.”

After a few months of airdropping gifts, the five men — Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Nate Saint, Ed McCully and Roger Youderian — opted to set up camp on a beach near a Waorani settlement. Just a few days later, they were all speared to death. Thanks to the swift arrival of a Life magazine photographer, the brutal conclusion to Operation Auca became global news.

In her new novel, Five Wives, Winnipeg writer Joan Thomas tells this story again.

“In the missionaries’ memoirs, ‘God’s leading’ explains almost every impulse,” Thomas writes in a postscript. “I set out to peer behind that, to explore in human terms actions that astonished me.”

SNC planned U.S. move if no deal: documents

OTTAWA - SNC-Lavalin warned federal prosecutors last fall about a possible plan to split the company in two, move its offices to the United States and eliminate its Canadian workforce if it didn't get a deal to avoid criminal prosecution, newly obtained documents show.

The documents, part of a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Canadian Press, describe something called "Plan B" — what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can't convince the government to grant a so-called remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.

Under that plan, SNC would move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,717, before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.

“The government of Canada needs to weigh the public interest impact of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin," the presentation reads.

Teemu Selanne living the good life in southern California

LAGUNA BEACH — He likes his coffee black. His steak “medium rare plus.” And he’s an extremely generous pour, especially when it comes to a Moscow mule.

His left knee is giving him all sorts of trouble these days, he’s admittedly almost always running behind schedule and his biggest pride and joy are his four children, who keep him and his wife Sirpa hopping with their numerous athletic pursuits.

He is Teemu Selanne, the beloved Winnipeg Jets legend who, you’ll be happy to know, is still living the good life just a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean in this little piece of southern California paradise.

Despite being nearly eight years removed from the end of a Hall of Fame hockey career, the Finnish Flash remains a big deal around here. That was clear as we sat down earlier this week for an exclusive chat inside “Selanne’s Steak Tavern” — a high-end eatery he owns that sits along the stunning Pacific Coast Highway.