Ontario health worker groups want mandatory COVID shots for health-care workers

Blockade halts rail traffic west of Winnipeg

RM OF HEADINGLEY — It was a satisfying sight for Harrison Powder: a freight train stopped, hundreds of metres up the track from a blockade erected by a group of demonstrators.

Powder was among a group of 10 along a windswept country road, about 25 kilometres west of Winnipeg, protesting RCMP enforcement of a court-ordered injunction in northern British Columbia and the arrests of community leaders from Wet’suwet’en Nation.

A spokesman for CN Rail said train movements on the line stopped Wednesday because of the blockade.

“Canada should remember this, so should the RCMP and industry the next time they go invading Indigenous territory trying to force a pipeline through,” said Powder, a member of Bigstone Cree Nation in Alberta, and a Winnipeg resident. “They should remember what happened here with this incident, because it can happen again.”

We don’t vote like our lives depend on it

There’s an old saw — we get the government we deserve. It assumes active participation in our elections, full and fair media coverage from which voters can learn and a set of viable, capable candidates from which we can choose.

Arguably, those conditions did not apply this time around in Winnipeg. Our voter turnout was just 38 per cent and Mayor Scott Gillingham’s victory came from just 15 per cent of Winnipeg’s eligible voters. Two supposedly serious competitors embroiled themselves — by choice — in juvenile mudslinging and offered scattered, chaotic policy platforms.

A fourth contender surged from behind in the closing weeks of the campaign — and Noah Redden had spent most of the campaign being thought of as one of the pack of gadflies that emerge to run every time there’s a mayoralty campaign here. Yet he virtually tied Kevin Klein for second place. Had Redden been treated during the campaign as a viable candidate (he was the only one to publish online a detailed, thought-through policy platform), who knows what would have happened?

Absorb those facts.

Track records keep falling in fast Tokyo Games

Sweden’s Madelene Sagstrom grabbed the first-round lead with a five-under-par round of 66, the conversation mostly revolved around the 42 C conditions in Tokyo.

A list of Olympians to follow on social media

TOKYO (AP) — With the Olympics starting Friday, athletes from around the world are in Tokyo, most of them restricted to training and their hotels because of virus protocols. Still, they are posting photos and videos of their travel and preparations for the Games.

A list of 50 Olympic athletes, sorted by sport, to follow on social media, with links to their Instagram accounts.

3-ON-3 BASKETBALL

ARCHERY

Another embarrassing loss: Arniel

RALEIGH — No sticks were smashed. No walls punched. And nary a naughty word was uttered.

Instead, the Winnipeg Jets filed off the ice here at Lenovo Center on Sunday afternoon much like they’d just played the preceding game against the Carolina Hurricanes — with no emotion, no passion, no urgency.

You’d have thought yet another loss, this one in truly humiliating fashion and a ninth consecutive overall, might have triggered something.

Anything.

Health worker groups want vax required for sector

TORONTO - Two groups representing Ontario's physicians and registered nurses are calling for the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination of the province's health-care workers, a policy Premier Doug Ford has said he will not support.

The Ontario Medical Association and the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario made the calls on Friday, the day after Ford said he wouldn't mandate the vaccine for workers in any industry.

"Vaccines are the best way to control the spread of COVID-19, and remain an essential component in protecting our patients, families and friends," OMA president Dr. Adam Kassam said in a statement.

"As a front-line doctor who is fully vaccinated, I am proud to stand with my physician colleagues who continue to advocate for full vaccination of all those eligible."