Canada puts its nuclear pride on the block

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Friday, December 18, 2009 – Globe and Mail
BILL CURRY, KAREN HOWLETT AND ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

OTTAWA and TORONTO — Stephen Harper travelled the world pitching Canada’s “state-of-the-art” – and state-owned – nuclear reactor technology, but finding no takers at home or abroad and facing record budget deficits, the Prime Minister is selling off the Crown-owned Candus.

The Harper government confirmed yesterday it is calling for bids on the reactor wing of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.

With interest coming from a mix of foreign and domestic firms, opposition critics say they’re concerned technology created at public expense is at risk of leaving the country.

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Painkiller deaths double in Ontario

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Tuesday, December 8, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Painkillers are causing twice the number of overdose deaths they were two decades ago, a new study has revealed. And most of those who died obtained the medications through a doctor’s prescription and had seen a physician within the last month of their life.

The increase mirrors a dramatic rise in prescriptions for oxycodone. The potent opiate, found in OxyContin and Percocet, has proliferated in an epidemic of chronic pain turning Canadians into a nation of pill-poppers – using more prescription opioids per capita than any country but the United States and Belgium.

It’s an indication that many doctors have underestimated the power and complexity of prescription opioids, and their ability to harm as well as help, said Irfan Dhalla, a doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the report’s primary author.

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Cities taking the lead on climate change

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Saturday, December 5, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

They can talk about the environment at a United Nations summit, but the action is at your local recycling depot and bus stop, and in your water taps, light bulbs and street-side bike stands. That’s why the real show during the Copenhagen talks might be on the sidelines – at a parallel summit of cities. And there, Canadians are at the forefront.

Cities argue that in an urbanizing world where at least half of emissions are created in municipalities, they are best suited to fight climate change. Just give them the resources and clout.

“We want to show the international community that cities are acting,” says Martha Delgado Peralta, environment minister for Mexico City, once the most polluted municipality in the world.

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New $1.2-billion reactor needed for isotopes, Ottawa told

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Friday, December 4, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Canada has been told to act swiftly and aggressively by building a new billion-dollar multipurpose reactor to secure its isotope supply for the next several decades and to prevent another global isotope shortage.

An expert-panel report commissioned by the federal Department of Natural Resources also recommended adopting supplementary production methods. The panel convened in June in the midst of a global shortage of the radioactive material and as Ottawa was musing about getting out of the isotope-producing business.

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Chalk River workers want to run nuclear facility

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Tuesday, December 1, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

As the fate of Canada’s nuclear industry hangs in the limbo of unreleased government-commissioned reports, workers at the Chalk River reactor are taking matters into their own hands.

Fearing a looming, but still vague, restructuring of the Crown corporation that operates the reactor, they’ve submitted their own proposal to Ottawa – an ambitious plan that would see Chalk River independent of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s reactor business and become a nuclear research giant in its own right.

“The silence” from Natural Resources Canada, says Gordon Tapp, president of Chalk River Technicians and Technologists, “is deafening.”

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Ontario cracking down on prescription pill abuse

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Friday, November 20, 2009 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

In the face of Canada’s growing pill problem, Ontario is moving to change the way opioids are prescribed and monitored.

New regulations to be put in place in the coming months would crack down on prescription abuse and set new benchmarks for how these pills should be doled out in an attempt to deal with the growing numbers of people getting hooked on painkillers across the country.

Addiction experts say the changes are badly needed and should have come a decade ago.

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Canada, you need an intervention

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Saturday, November 14, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Janey Nagle wasn’t looking for kicks when she began courting a drug habit. The Percocets her doctor prescribed were the only thing that could take away the excruciating pain that lingered a decade after a car accident threw her into a windshield with such force that her face left an imprint in the glass.

For the first two years, the painkillers did the trick. The Perth, Ont., mother of four was able to work and look after her family. But after a while she couldn’t get through the day without the pills’ euphoric effect, and that demanded higher and higher doses.

Fearful her doctor would cut her off, Ms. Nagle looked elsewhere. She spent hundreds of dollars a day on prescription drugs bought off the street, primarily from friends and acquaintances. She photocopied her prescriptions and filled each one repeatedly at pharmacies around Perth, Kingston and Smiths Falls.

“It was a horrible, panicked feeling every morning when I woke up,” says Ms. Nagle, now 43. She remembers the daily dilemma: “How am I going to get them? Where am I going to get the money?”

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Private-clinic patients jump the line for flu shot

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Monday, November 2, 2009 – Globe and Mail
KAREN HOWLETT, ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND DAWN WALTON

TORONTO and CALGARY — Patients at private medical clinics in at least two provinces have jumped the queue for H1N1 vaccine during a nationwide shortage of the flu shot, rekindling a debate about the perils of two-tier health care in Canada.

Copeman Healthcare, a private clinic in Vancouver that charges patients annual membership fees of $3,900 in the first year, has already received its first shipment of H1N1 vaccine and is hoping for more soon, said chief operating officer Chris Nedelmann.

Medcan, a clinic in downtown Toronto that charges just under $2,000 for a head-to-toe checkup, received 3,000 doses last Friday, enough for 8 per cent of its patients.

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Tab to keep Khadr out of Canada: $1.3-million and counting

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Friday, October 30, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

The federal government has racked up a tab of more than $1.3-million in legal fees in its continuing bid to keep Canadian Omar Khadr out of the country. And as its latest appeal of a judge’s order to repatriate the Toronto-born Mr. Khadr is set to go to court next month, the bills are likely to keep piling up.

Mr. Khadr, who was 15 when he was detained after a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan, has been held in Guantanamo Bay ever since on five charges, the most serious of which is for the killing of U.S. Sergeant Chris Speer.

In a written statement released earlier this week, the Justice Department stated it has spent a total of $1,335,342.37 on legal fees in relation to Mr. Khadr’s case.

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‘Vandal’ from outer space

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Saturday, October 17, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

GRIMSBY, ONT. — The oldest thing Tony Garchinski, his mother, Yvonne or anyone else on the planet has ever touched fell with such force it cracked the windshield on the family’s Nissan SUV, skidded across the hood and dented their garage door before landing on the ground, breaking into five fragments.

Ms. Garchinski did the only logical thing: She called the police, assuming the odd-looking bit of rock was tossed at the car by a local vandal.

The cops couldn’t do much. They collected information and filed a report, and wondered out loud why the supposed pranksters had bothered to smash in the front windshield, but not the rear.

But 30-year-old Mr. Garchinski, who came across the damage when he went out for a Saturday-morning smoke three weeks ago today, held on to the strange item.

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