Canada’s premiers are expressing concern about the ongoing BC port strike, saying the longer the dispute continues, the chances of potential damage to international markets and customers increase. About 74 hundred dock workers at more than 30 ports have been on strike since July 1st, halting shipments in and out of about 30 ports in BC, including Canada’s largest, the Port of Vancouver. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, speaking at a news conference wrapping up the annual premiers gathering, says the strike is having wide-ranging impacts across many economic sectors, especially agriculture. Her comments came after Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan instructed a mediator on Tuesday to provide proposed settlement recommendations within 24 hours that he said he would forward to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada and the BC Maritime Employers Association.
Days of drought conditions and lightning strikes have sparked fires across the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako in the British Columbia Interior. Mark Parker, chair of the regional district spanning more than 70 thousand square kilometres, says the lightning and dry conditions have” compounded things immensely.” Parker says every corner of the region is dealing with dangerous conditions that continue to fuel fires and stretch resources thin. Conditions have caused at least 12 new evacuation orders or alerts across BC since Tuesday.
Defence lawyers for the man accused of murdering a 13 year old girl found dead in a Burnaby park have tried to cast doubt on the reliability of cellphone data that appear to locate the suspect in the vicinity of the killing. The trial has heard testimony over the past two weeks about cell phones associated with Ibrahim Ali and the girl — who cannot be identified due to a publication ban. A Rogers employee testified that a phone number police say was associated with a cellphone Ali was carrying when he was arrested had never had any contact with two phones whose Rogers accounts were paid for by the girl’s mother. The jury heard has that the night the teen went missing, the phone associated with the accused made calls that were connected through a cellphone tower near Central Park, where her body was later found.
A court in the Netherlands is expected to issue its sentencing conversion decision today for a Dutch man found guilty in the sextortion of a BC teenager. Last August, a BC Supreme Court jury convicted Aydin Coban of extortion, harassment, communication with a young person to commit a sexual offence and possession and distribution of child pornography. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in October, but the term is to be served in the Netherlands after he finishes an 11 year sentence for other crimes in August next year. The Canadian sentence is required to be converted into a period that conforms with Dutch law, and the ruling can be appealed in the Dutch Supreme Court.
The BC Prosecution Service says a charge of dangerous driving causing bodily harm has been approved against a BC Mountie. The incident is alleged to have happened in December 2021 in Delta. The service says the charge was approved by an experienced Crown counsel who has never had contact with the accused. The Highway Patrol officer’s first appearance is scheduled for next month in Surrey provincial court.
A BC man has been sentenced to nine years in prison for fatally shooting a woman in Surrey two years ago, and for an unrelated robbery two months earlier. The 26 year old pleaded guilty to manslaughter for killing a 20 year old sex worker in May 2021, and to a robbery and a weapons charge for holding up a poker game in Burnaby in March that same year. The man was sentenced to 12 years behind bars for the offences, which was reduced to nine years and 34 days after credit for time served. He has also been ordered to submit a DNA sample and received a lifetime firearms ban.