In the news today, April 24

Voters in P.E.I. have shed their century-old embrace of the Island’s two-party system, electing a Tory minority government and handing the upstart Green party official Opposition status for the first time. With all polls reporting Tuesday, the Tories won 12 seats, the Greens held nine, and the incumbent Liberals, led by Premier Wade MacLauchlan, had won five. The Greens had led in opinion polls since August, prompting speculation they could be poised to form Canada’s first Green government.

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INQUIRY STARTS FOR SLAIN ALBERTA RCMP OFFICER

The widow of an Edmonton-area RCMP officer slain on duty hopes politicians take seriously any recommendations from a fatality inquiry into her husband’s death. The inquiry into the 2015 shooting of Constable David Wynn is to begin this morning. Wynn was shot while investigating a stolen truck parked outside a casino in St. Albert. The man who shot him, Shawn Rehn, was out on bail facing 15 charge, including weapons offences. An RCMP auxiliary constable was also wounded in the shooting, and there have been changes in how the force uses those civilians.

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DATA SUGGESTS NO SPIKE IN HIGH DRIVING CHARGES

A survey of police departments by The Canadian Press suggests no major rise or fall in drug-impaired driving charges in the six months since cannabis was legalized. Police departments in Edmonton and Vancouver say it’s been “business as usual” with similar rates of enforcement, while R-C-M-P in Newfoundland say they have charged about half as many people with drug-impaired driving since legalization compared with the same time period a year ago. R-C-M-P in Alberta were among the only departments to report an increase, with 58 charges — up from 32 over the same six months last year. Many departments say it’s too early to release data and national figures are not yet available.

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PLANT MASKING POT ODOUR AROUND EDMONTON AIRPORT

A skunky smell greeting travellers at Edmonton’s airport doesn’t mean stinky critters are running lose in the area. The scent is coming from the Edmonton International Airport’s new neighbour — Aurora Sky — which produces more than 100-thousand kilograms of cannabis per year. Aurora Cannabis, the company that operates the grow facility, is going to great lengths to mitigate any pot odour wafting over to the airport. Since the completion of the facility in January, the company has introduced two new exhaust units for deodorization, added 800 air filters throughout processing areas and more than 13-hundred pocket filters throughout the grow bays.

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SUGAR SHACKS GO VEGAN IN MEAT-LOVING QUEBEC

Sugar shacks are a vegan’s nightmare. The cabanes a sucre, as French-Canadians call the backwoods repositories of Quebec culinary tradition, have evolved from humble huts where sap is boiled down to maple syrup into feasting houses churning out meat by the tray-full. Glazed ham, sausages, meat pies, scrambled eggs and pork rinds are all standard fare atop their communal tables, baked into the definition of the term. No longer. Fuelled by growing health and ethical concerns and culinary creativity, shifting eating habits have seen vegetarian and vegan dishes mushroom at cabanes a sucre across Quebec, along with a few pure vegan sugar shacks — heresy in recent times.

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ALSO IN THE NEWS:

— Constitutional arguments will be heard in the case of Lorne Grabher, whose surname-personalized licence plate was revoked because it was deemed offensive to women.

— Abdulahai Hasan Sharif to return to court with a new lawyer on five charges of attempted murder. An Edmonton police officer was stabbed outside a football game and four pedestrians were hit by a man driving a U-Haul truck in October 2017. The judge ordered Sharif to find a new lawyer ahead of a court date on April 9.

— Fatality inquiry into the deaths of Const. David Wynn and Shawn Rehn. Rehn was out on bail when he shot Wynn in a casino. He then shot himself in a nearby home.

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The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

In the news today, April 24

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