Prairie Update – CP

Source: The Canadian Press – Broadcast wire
Feb 12, 2016

(Alta-Basketball-Discrimination)

A young Calgary man says a First Nations basketball organization’s decision to bar him from a tournament in northern British Columbia is discriminatory.

Twenty-year-old Josiah Wilson says he is a status Indian who was adopted from Haiti as a baby and is a member of the Heiltsuk Nation in Bella Bella, B.C.

Wilson says he played for a junior aboriginal team for two years and was about to enter his third All Native Basketball Tournament with an intermediate men’s team this week but was told he could no longer play.

His father, Dan Wilson, says a tournament committee claims his son lacks the aboriginal bloodlines to participate and that he will be filing a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. (The Canadian Press)

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(Alta-Taxis-Vs-Uber)

No talking politics or religion, free gum and water, and maybe a red rose for customers on Valentine’s Day.

Those are some of the suggestions the United Cabbies Association of Edmonton is making for taxi drivers to try and lure customers back from Uber.

The ride-sharing service becomes legal in Edmonton on March 1st, and taxi companies have come up with a 10-point plan aimed at improving taxi service.

It includes welcoming customers with a smile, opening and closing doors for them, keeping cars clean, and not talking on the phone while customers are in the cab, or making the call brief and in English. (CTV Edmonton)

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(Mba-Enumerator-Fired)

Elections Manitoba has fired an enumerator after discovering he is a sex offender.

Elections Manitoba spokeswoman Alison Mitchell says a female member of the public reported the enumerator to the agency.

The agency investigated and fired the enumerator, who had been hired Feb. 3 as a temporary worker.

Mitchell says the rules require that all workers sign an oath stating they are legally qualified to act in the capacity for which they have been hired. (Winnipeg Free Press)

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(Mba-Senior-Slain)

A man accused of killing and sexually assaulting a Winnipeg woman says he didn’t kill her but found her body in the trunk of her car.

Thomas Brine, who is 29, is charged with first-degree murder in the 2011 death of 73-year-old Elizabeth Lafantaisie, who the Crown says was the victim of a random attack in a parking garage.

Court has been told sperm found on an internal swab taken from Lafantaisie matched Brine’s D-N-A.

A pathologist testified earlier in the trial that Lafantaisie was strangled and also had broken bones in her leg and neck. (CJOB)

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(Sask-La-Loche-School)

The mayor of the northern Saskatchewan community where four people were killed and seven injured in a mass shooting says he has rethought his suggestion the town’s high school be torn down.

La Loche Mayor Kevin Janvier says when he made the comments last month, he and most people in town were still in shock.

Two brothers were killed in a home in the community before the gunman went to the high school and shot nine people, killing a teacher and a teacher’s aide.

Janvier suggested in the days after the tragedy that the school should be demolished to help in the healing process.

But he now says education needs to remain the top priority and it wouldn’t help to stall things by trying to build a new school. (CKOM)

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(Sask-Private-Liquor)

A public policy think-tank says the Saskatchewan government will lose revenue if it goes through with a plan to privatize liquor sales.

A report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says privatization would drain 115 million dollars from the province’s bankbook over the next five years

Report author David Campanella says wholesale liquor costs have been increasing an average of six per cent a year _ a major cost the government would face which isn’t included in the privatization proposal.

Don McMorris, minister responsible for the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority, says the information in the report is wrong. He says the government will still sell liquor to stores at the price the government decides, so no revenue will be lost. (CKRM)

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(Prairie Update by The Canadian Press)

(The Canadian Press)