Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
Amid debate over health-care deal, foreign-trained doctors seize a chance to rethink restrictive contracts
Robert Myette spent years establishing himself as a pediatric nephrologist at an Ottawa hospital. But as soon as his training is over, he will be forced to stop his specialized work and find a new job in general pediatrics in another community for five years. If he doesn’t, he’ll face steep fines
Across Canada, some physicians who studied abroad chafe against provincial policies that are designed to help smaller communities – and threaten steep fines if they prefer to work in larger cities.
The debate over these contracts is heating up as Ottawa injects billions more into the country’s overstretched health care system, and hospitals even in the largest urban areas struggle with staffing shortages.
In Ontario, for example, the number of people without a family doctor rose significantly – to 2.2 million – during the first two years of the pandemic, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of how access to primary care is deteriorating in Canada’s most populous province.
A group of Ontario children’s hospitals and health organizations has asked the province for $371-million in the next budget to fix pediatric care, saying the funds are desperately needed to tackle surgical, clinical and diagnostic waiting lists.
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U.S. says it only recently discovered that China has been using spy balloons
The discovery of a string of mysterious airborne objects over Canada and the United States in recent days is partly the result of increased detection capabilities that NORAD put in place after the appearance of a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon last month, the White House says.
Sunday marked the fourth time in nine days that fighter jets were scrambled to fire on flying objects appearing unexpectedly in the air over North America. A U.S. F-16 shot down an object over Lake Huron, which Canadian Major-General Paul Prevost on Monday referred to as a “suspected balloon.”
In a briefing yesterday, the White House said that the Chinese military has been running a spy program using high-altitude balloons for several years, but that the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) did not pick up on it until relatively recently.
Explainer: What we know about the flying objects that were shot down
The latest developments in the deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria
Nine survivors were rescued from the rubble in Turkey, as focus of the aid effort shifted to helping people now struggling without shelter or enough food in the bitter cold. The death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria has climbed to more than 41,000.
Among the deceased is Samar Zora, a Canadian woman who was visiting Turkey. Her brother Saad, who travelled to Turkey with another brother, Muthana, to search for her, confirmed her body was found in the ruble of a collapsed building in the city of Antakya.
In Syria, gunmen stormed a hospital last night that is caring for a baby girl who was born under the rubble of her family’s earthquake-shattered home, a hospital official said. The official denied reports on social media that it was an attempt to kidnap the infant, whose parents and four siblings died in the disaster.
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Russian artillery batters Bakhmut: Russian forces bombarded front-line Ukrainian troops and towns in the eastern Donetsk region today in what appeared to be early salvoes of a new offensive, as Western allies met to weigh sending more arms to Kyiv for an expected counterattack.
U.S. inflation slows to 6.4 per cent: The pace of consumer price increases eased again in January compared with a year earlier, but inflationary pressures in the U.S. economy remain stubborn and are likely to fuel price spikes well into this year.
Restaurant Brands International shuffles ranks: The parent company of Tim Hortons is replacing its CEO, the second major leadership change in months as the fast-food chain seeks to boost its performance. COO Joshua Kobza, 36, will take the top job on March 1 from José Cil.
Nikki Haley to run for U.S. president: The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador has announced her candidacy for president, becoming the first major challenger to former president Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
State funeral for Hazel McCallion: The political force of nature who transformed Mississauga into one of Canada’s largest urban centres was remembered today as an icon who never stopped working to make a difference in the lives of those she served.
In photos: Images from the former Mississauga mayor’s state funeral
The casket of former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion arrives at the Paramount Fine Foods Centre for her state funeral in Mississauga, Ont., on Feb.14, 2023.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
MARKET WATCH
North American stock markets ended mixed today after U.S. consumer price data for January offered little to change expectations about the Federal Reserve’s path forward on interest rate hikes. Canada’s main stock index was largely unchanged as small gains in energy helped outweigh softness in financials and industrials.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 156.66 points or 0.46 per cent to 34,089.27, the S&P 500 slipped 1.16 points or 0.03 per cent to 4,136.13, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 68.36 points or 0.57 per cent to 11,960.15.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index gained 2.56 points or 0.01 per cent to end at 20,704.79. The loonie traded at 74.96 U.S. cents.
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TALKING POINTS
Israel’s legal reforms look awfully Canadian – and that’s not good
“At its heart is a proposal that will sound familiar to Canadians: one that would allow the Israeli parliament to override the [Supreme] Court’s decisions, upholding laws the Court had found were in violation of guarantees of rights under Israel’s proto-constitution, the Basic Laws. Or in other words, the notwithstanding clause.” - Andrew Coyne
The office romance has fallen victim to a new Victorianism
“If the new development were simply about bosses not lunging at their employees, then that’s fantastic. But instead, the parameters keep shifting, such that more and more consensual relationships are getting cast as questionable.” - Phoebe Maltz Bovy
LIVING BETTER
If you’re sitting on a huge amount of credit-card reward points, consider using them up this year, personal finance columnist Rob Carrick advises. The longer you stockpile your points, the more risk there is that today’s challenging conditions in the credit-card business start to affect reward programs for the worse. The list of steps card issuers could take to help their profitability include adding expiry dates for points and making the terms for redemptions of travel or merchandise less favourable.
TODAY’S LONG READ
Trees communicating via fungal networks has become a popular theory. These scientists say the evidence is scarce
Common mycorrhizal networks are made up of fungi, which spread their fine filaments through the earth and connect up with tree roots. Where things get contentious is the question of whether the fungi are also serving as go-betweens for information and resources between trees, and promoting seedling in the process.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
The idea that trees can exchange signals and resources through a hidden, underground communication system built out of fungus is among the most striking ecological concepts to emerge in a generation.
So compelling is the notion – associated with University of British Columbia ecologist Suzanne Simard among others – that it has leaped from the pages of scientific literature and found its way into a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a widely viewed TED Talk and the TV series Ted Lasso.
Now a trio of Canadian and U.S. scientists is making the case that all this talk about tree communication – popularly dubbed the “wood wide web” by researchers and writers – has gotten too loose. The metaphor is so far ahead of the data, they say, that it has become a source of misinformation rather than a reliable body of knowledge for guiding conservation. Read Ivan Semeniuk’s full story.
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