News

They may not want to, but when nurses on P.E.I. get asked to work on their days off or to stay late, they often do. “It’s our own personal guilt sometimes, where we feel if we don’t come in, there’ll be no one to help out,” said Barbara Brookins, president of the P.E.I. Nurses Union. “So we pick up, and agree to pick up more than we should.” In fact, according to Statistics Canada, a higher percentage of nurses worked overtime on P.E.I. than in any other province in Canada in July. Thirty-three per cent of P.E.I. nurses — one in three — worked overtime during the reference week for Statistics Canada’s labour force survey, which was released on Friday. Nationally, 25 per cent, or one in four, worked overtime. On average, P.E.I. nurses worked 2.5 hours of overtime in the reference week...

Bette Norman packed up and moved away from her hometown of Sydney, N.S., nearly five decades ago. Like many people who grew up in Cape Breton’s Whitney Pier neighbourhood, Norman and her husband headed to Ontario in the 1970s in search of steady work following the area’s industrial decline. “We always said we would keep coming back,” Norman said. “Seeing old faces, the love that everybody has for the community. It’s just a different world here.”    One of the ways Norman’s family has stayed rooted within Whitney Pier is through the Sydney-Toronto reunion that is now running until Aug. 6. The gathering, held every five years, was dreamed up by former Whitney Pier resident Jerome Moe after he moved to Toronto. Among the Sydney-Toronto reunion activities that we...

New Brunswick has 109 new cases of COVID-19 and 63 people in hospital with the virus, 27 of them in intensive care. The fourth wave is “hitting our province very hard,” Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell said Tuesday, after the province surpassed 1,000 active cases for the first time Monday, and now stands at 1,092. A surge in new infections like this hasn’t happened before and will likely continue for “some time,” she said, noting it will take roughly a week for the two-week circuit breaker, which began Friday night in the “hot zones,” to take effect. The province’s focus now is on the infections that develop into more serious illness and lead to hospitalizations and deaths. People who are unvaccinated are 18 times more likely to become seriously ill if they contra...

Following its Annual Wage Review 2021-22, the Australian Fair Work Commission (FWC) made two important announcements regarding the National Minimum Wage and the award minimum wage in Australia. In this article we will take a look at what was defined about the two topics, and how this will affect work visa holders and, more in general, the obtainment of an Australian work visa. 1. Announcements from the Australian Fair Work Commission Following the announcement of June 15, 2022, the Fair Work Commission (FWC), Australia’s workplace tribunal, will now issue draft determinations and orders about how their decision affects awards (legal documents that outline the minimum pay rates and conditions of employment for category of workers). The FWC will then update the pay rates for each award....

I have a lot of sympathy for the prime minister’s position. It would not matter if it was the Labor prime minister or another prime minister. I think we ask a lot of our prime ministers … We expect them to govern the country effectively. That is fine. They volunteer for this job, I know, but I think we can make some allowances. If we are in any other country, I do not think we would have this debate. The fact that our prime minister quarantines for two weeks when he returns from overseas is actually quite unusual by world standards. You do not find foreign heads of government returning to their countries, even if the rest of the population has to quarantine, and then having to do the same thing. The prime minister clearly spent time with family, came back, there was no health risk and th...

For the first time, a state in Australia will be “living with Covid,” says Sky News host Sharri Markson. “90 per cent of residents in New South Wales have now had one vaccination dose and 72.8 per cent are fully vaccinated,” she said. “And cases are at their lowest in months, with 477 infections and six deaths. “It comes as the state finally opens up tomorrow.”