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Four people, including two children, are still missing after a catastrophic rainfall in Nova Scotia over the weekend. There were more than 200 millimetres of rain in 24 hours in parts of the province, with damages possibly amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said Sunday night that the province’s request for disaster financial assistance has been approved, which will help cover uninsurable costs.
An intense search continued all weekend for the four missing people, who were lost after rushing waters caused by torrential rains engulfed the vehicles in which they were travelling. On Sunday, divers searched murky floodwaters in a field in the Brooklyn area of West Hants, 65 kilometres northwest of Halifax, where the people were reported missing in separate incidents on Saturday.
About 500 to 600 people remained evacuated Sunday afternoon, as 2,000 were still left without power. Water levels were still high in some areas. Nineteen bridges were damaged and six others were destroyed in the storm, and 50 roads were washed out.
Extensive flooding covers an area after the heaviest rain to hit Nova Scotia in more than 50 years.TYLER FORD/Reuters
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What we know about the retired RCMP officer charged with conducting foreign interference for China
On July 20, William Majcher was arrested in Vancouver by the RCMP, days after arriving from Hong Kong. He is accused of conducting foreign interference on behalf of China, and due to appear in court on July 25. Majcher allegedly “contributed to the Chinese government’s efforts to identify and intimidate an individual outside the scope of Canadian law.” The Globe and Mail spoke to friends and acquaintances of Majcher in Hong Kong and Canada, and reviewed corporate documents as well as Majcher’s past interviews, uncovering more of his background.
Majcher moved to Hong Kong in 2006, drawing on his financial and policing experience to establish himself as a highly respected corporate investigator. He spoke openly in 2019 about being involved in “Project Dragon,” an effort by Beijing to “recover millions of dollars in alleged ‘hot money’ taken out of the country.” According to a biography of Majcher from a Hong Kong-based speakers bureau, he worked for “a number of Chinese state-owned and non-state-owned enterprise clients.”
In 2015 Majcher said he was a “a big fan” of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crackdown, but seemed to acknowledge that criminality often wasn’t the overriding focus of that crackdown, as investigators began targeting dissidents and critics of the state overseas. He said “when they start zeroing in on individuals, it’s because those individuals have been identified as potentially being a threat to the political or social stability of China.” He also appeared to acknowledge the shifting environment around his work in a podcast interview last year, saying it was not always clear who the good guys and bad guys were. James Griffiths dives deeper here.
Ontario spending on private nursing agencies quadrupled since COVID-19, data show
The amount of money Ontario hospitals pay private nursing agencies has quadrupled since the first year of the pandemic. The 78 Ontario hospitals that rely on private staffing agencies together spent more than $168.3-million in public funds on for-profit nursing agencies in the first three quarters alone of last year. That is a 341-per-cent increase over the $38.1-million hospitals spent on agency nurses in all of 2020-21.
The data reflect the burnout among health care workers who are retiring, switching to part-time schedules or leaving the public sector for private staffing agencies, as well as the staffing agencies’ increased rates. In the wake of COVID-19, which worsened the working conditions in hospitals and made the demand for nurses go up, private agencies increased the rates they paid nurses and charged hospitals. They also convinced hospitals to offer agency nurses more predictable schedules.
According to documents from the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) exclusively shared with The Globe, the average actual cost per hour of an agency RN for hospitals almost doubled to $140.47 last year from $74.38 in 2020-21. (The actual cost includes the amount paid to the nurse and the agency’s share.) The top rate last year for a full-time ONA nurse employed directly by a hospital was $49.02 an hour, plus benefits and a pension.
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Also on our radar
ArriveCan revelations: After it was revealed last year that the cost of the ArriveCan app had climbed to $54-million, officials at Public Services and Procurement Canada expressed frustration at the Canada Border Services Agency’s lack of information sharing amid weeks of finger-pointing and turmoil.
Spain’s election: Spain may be facing political gridlock and possibly a new election, but a national ballot produced one result that will be welcomed across the capitals of Europe: a far-right party aiming to get its hands on the levers of power was thwarted.
Doug Ford’s Greenbelt housing plan: It will take years and cost millions to build the piping and roads needed to convert the land at the centrepiece of Doug Ford’s Greenbelt development plan to housing, according to local officials.
Food insecurity: Children and teens living in households without adequate access to food make more doctor and emergency-department visits and are admitted to hospital for mental-health issues more often than their peers with a reliable source of food, according to a new study.
Morning markets
Markets await rate decisions: World stocks struggled on Monday, with weak business activity data and an inconclusive election result in Spain weighing on sentiment in Europe ahead of a central bank-packed week for markets. Around 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 0.08 per cent. Germany’s DAX added 0.17 per cent while France’s CAC 40 lost 0.13 per cent. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei rose 1.23 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 2.13 per cent. New York futures were slightly higher. The Canadian dollar was up at 75.83 US cents.
What everyone’s talking about
E-bikes and the future of transit
“Beyond poor manners, the crackdown on e-bikes speaks to a larger failure of GO Transit to imagine the future of commuting. An agency that has long assumed its passengers would drive to the station should be encouraging people who arrive by bike, including by letting them bring their wheels on board. Why doesn’t every GO train include a special car equipped to carry bikes?” - The Editorial Board
The pain, the gain: Why did it take so long for the world to accept the dangers of OxyContin?
“I’ve often wondered how a public-health crisis that could have been contained instead turned into an inferno. It would be easy to blame all the broken lives on the Sacklers, who continue to insist they did nothing wrong – but that would be too simple. An army of allies and enablers also planted seeds that turned OxyContin into the gateway drug of the opioid epidemic.” - Barry Meier
Today’s editorial cartoon
David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
Living better
A well-travelled menu for airplanes and road trips
Travel is back but food prices are up – that goes for groceries and takeout. To avoid wasting the food in your fridge while also breaking the bank on airport food, Julie Van Rosendaal gives you some ideas, including how to make:
- Easy-to-pack sesame noodles
- A pressed sandwich to go
- Anything-goes sushi
Moment in time: Archive Monday
Erik Schack [Erik Christensen]/The Globe and Mail
Chinese newspapers in Canada
For nearly as long as there has been mass migration from China and elsewhere, there have been newspapers to keep diasporic communities connected with their home countries and each other. News media consumed by new Canadians typically contain a different mix than The Globe and Mail: a combination of translated material from domestic sources, stories repurposed from abroad and local reporting – like having feet in two worlds. In Canada, two of the earliest Chinese newspapers that have been substantially archived (as a part of Simon Fraser University’s digitized newspapers collection) are the Vancouver-based Tai Hon Kong Bo (or The Chinese Times), first printed in 1907, and Shing Wah Daily News from Toronto, first printed in 1922. Shing Wah, the largest Chinese newspaper in North America, was a publication of the nationalist Kuomintang party and known for its pro-nationalist views. As communism rose and overtook government in China, the paper’s influence waned over time. It eventually published a last issue on Sept. 29, 1990. Today, the Canada Science and Technology Museum holds an important piece of history in its archive: the metal typeset for the front page of Shing Wah, dated Sept. 8, 1978. Cliff Lee
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