Why Canada isn't ready to talk about ‘3-parent’ babies

A British parliamentary decision to approve a controversial fertility procedure that would produce so-called "three-parent babies" has captured the imagination of people who believe it could save lives.

But experts say that a fear about "designer babies" and the strict laws that govern reproductive technology in Canada have had a chilling effect on any discussion here about the procedure.

"I think part of the problem is that potential punishments are so severe that it scares people off," says Sara Cohen, a Toronto fertility lawyer.

"There's no conversation about this, there's none," Cohen said. "We're talking about a really significant topic medically. I think at the very least we should be having a conversation about it."

On Feb. 3, the U.K. parliament voted in favour of allowing clinical trials for Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT), which would prevent mothers who carry a specific type of Mitochondrial disease from passing it on to their newborns.

Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a medical professor at McMaster University in Hamilton and an expert on the disease, says the decision gives hope to mothers who carry it.

"These women have a potentially fatal disease," Tarnopolsky says. "They essentially have a Sword of Damocles hanging over their head with this disorder, where if they have a fairly high burden of the disorder, they are likely to pass it on to every subsequent offspring."

The two MRT procedures

Mitochondrial disease refers to a group of disorders affecting the mitochondria, which are tiny structures located within almost all cells of the body. The mitochondria act as the powerhouse of the cell by converting food and oxygen into energy.

According to MitoCanada, an organization that supports Canadians who suffer from the disease, 1 in 5,000 people have some form of it.

Treatment for the disease is limited and no known cure exists. Most children who have the disease do not live longer than their mid-teens.

The cause of the disease is a genetic mutation in the mitochondria itself. The mutation causes the mitochondria to stop producing energy, and when mitochondria cannot produce energy, cells fail and in turn the body's organs can fail, causing death.

Since 2008, scientists in the U.K. have researched two procedures to prevent this mutation from being passed on to newborns.​

One procedure involves removing the nucleus from an embryo containing the mutated mitochondria and transferring it to a donor embryo containing healthy mitochondria. The embryo is then implanted in the mother's uterus.

This graphic shows an embryo repair procedure where the DNA, or nucleus, of the embryo comes from the parents, while the cell and mitochondria come from the female donor. (CBC)

The other procedure is similar but involves transferring the nucleus from the mother's unfertilized egg to a donor's egg containing healthy mitochondria.​ The embryo is then fertilized and implanted in the mother's uterus.

This graphic shows how the DNA, or nucleus, of the mother's egg can be put into the egg of the female donor, who has healthy mitochondria. This creates an egg with the mother's DNA that is free of mitochondrial disease. (CBC)

​

Babies born from this procedure inherit 99.9 per cent of their DNA from the parents, with the other 0.1 per cent coming from the donor, according to a report from the U.K.-based think tank Wellcome Trust.

Legal concerns

At present, MRT remains illegal in Canada, under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.

Passed in 2004, the legislation states no person can knowingly "alter the genome of a cell of a human being or in vitro embryo such that the alteration is capable of being transmitted to descendants."

It also states that any person found guilty of breaking the law can face fines of up to $500,000, or a jail sentence of up to 10 years, or both.

Because of this, many in Canada's scientific community want to take a wait-and-see approach with the British ruling, says Dr. Neal Mahutte, president of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society.

"Let's see what the results show in the next five to 10 years," Mahutte said. "At some point, people might be confident enough to say, 'Well, maybe we should start doing that in other countries.'"

Mahutte does believe that most fertility clinics in Canada would want the government to review the legislation as a whole. He says research in the field has evolved rapidly since 2004 and some other aspects of the legislation may also need updating.

Mahutte also says that some difficulty exists in communicating this to Health Canada, the ministry responsible for administering the legislation. This is partly because the ministry has been slow to reorganize ever since being given responsibility for the legislation in 2012.

"It's still very difficult to put forth any questions when they come up," Mahutte said.

The 'designer baby' fears

A specific ethical concern may also explain why the topic receives little discussion.

According to Health Canada's website, altering the genetic code of an embryo was made illegal to prevent so-called "designer babies." This term refers to babies created to have "specific genetic traits that the intended parent(s) consider to be desirable."

Video: MRT procedure

'3-parent' fertility treatment2:45

"I think the reality of what they're doing in the U.K. is so far removed from that," Mahutte says. "The mitochondrial DNA do not code for any traits at all."

Cohen feels that government tried to calm public fears that science would one day give parents the option of creating designer babies by outlawing any altering of the genetic code.

"We legislated before we were even there," Cohen said. "We legislated in concern of the potential of the worst possible science-fiction outcome that could exist one day."

Although provisions of the legislation may have discouraged debate on MRT, Tarnopolsky believes a dialogue about it will eventually begin in Canada.

"When a sophisticated first-world country like the U.K. deems this appropriate to move forward, I see no reason why that dialogue should not be open, and open soon, in Canada."

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Greyhound bus killer Vince Li gets unsupervised passes

The man who beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba in 2008 has been granted more freedoms from the hospital where he is living, this time in the form of unsupervised day passes to visit Winnipeg.

Tim McLean, 22, was stabbed and beheaded by Li aboard a Greyhound bus near Portage La Prairie, Man., on July 30, 2008. (Family photo)

The Manitoba Review Board, which released its decision on Friday afternoon, also said it may consider eventually allowing Li to live in a group home.

The review board said Li must continue to live at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre or at the PsychHealth unit at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre. As well, he must continue taking his medication.

However, Li will be granted day passes to visit Winnipeg unsupervised as long as he carries a working cellphone with him — both for his own safety and that of the public.

Li has been staying at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre since he was found not criminally responsible for stabbing and beheading Tim McLean, a 22-year-old carnival worker, aboard a Greyhound bus in July 2008.

The prospect of Li getting more freedom horrifies McLean's mother, Carol de Delley, who wants Li and other offenders declared not criminally responsible to be kept in custody.

This 2013 photo shows a memorial to McLean near the location where the Greyhound bus stopped on the Trans-Canada Highway outside Portage la Prairie, Man. (Carol de Delley/Facebook)

"I need for Vince Li and people like him to remain in a locked facility where they can make sure that they get their medications, where they are being treated for their illness. They're treated with compassion, but the rest of public is kept safe," de Delley told CBC News on Friday night.

"That's what I need to move forward, carry on. I'll never get my son back regardless of what I do, or what I've done already."

But Chris Summerville, chief executive officer of the Schizophrenic Society of Canada, says Li has been a model patient who is soft-spoken, humble, remorseful for what he did and determined to stay on his schizophrenia medication.

Summerville, who visits Li regularly in Selkirk, said Li deserves a chance to get on with his life.

Psychiatrist noted 'profound improvement'

Li and McLean were strangers when they sat next to each other on a bus ride to Winnipeg from Edmonton on July 30, 2008. Li's attack was unprovoked — he said he heard voices telling him to kill McLean.

In an 2012 interview with Summerville, Li said he had believed he was chosen by God to save people from an alien attack and later understood the voices he heard as schizophrenia.

Psychiatrist Dr. Steven Kremer told the review board at a hearing earlier this week that Li has had no hallucinations in over a year, he takes his medication, and he has had "profound improvement" in his mental status.

Various assessment tools show he is of low risk to re-engage in violence, Kremer added.

Should Li be transferred to a group home, staff there would ensure he continued the medication necessary to manage his schizophrenia, the doctor said.

In its decision, the review board said after it receives further reports on Li's progress, as well as a detailed community living plan, it may "consider and approve an increase in pass privileges, including an extended pass to reside at a Level V group home in the community, subject to any further conditions deemed necessary and appropriate by the board."

When Li's case was reviewed by the board last year, he was granted unsupervised outings from the Selkirk Mental Health Centre into the nearby city of Selkirk, just north of Winnipeg, and nearby communities and beaches.

It was the first time Li was allowed on his own in public since the Greyhound incident.

'This is not real freedom'

In the past year, Li was also granted passes to Winnipeg for up to a full day, but they were supervised excursions. The new decision allows him to visit the Manitoba capital unsupervised.

Summerville said he fears it may be risky for Li to be on the streets of Winnipeg by himself.

"This is not real freedom. I don't consider it freedom because he will be in bondage to public sentiment, public prejudice," he said.

He added that Li has encountered public backlash and even threats during previous day trips.

"We hope that nothing negative will come of this," Summerville said.

"But when you read the blogs and the tweets … there are a lot of people who would wish that he would just disappear from the face of this Earth."

Li's release 'unacceptable,' says Winnipeg MP 

Shelley Glover, MP for Saint Boniface, reiterated that Vince Li beheaded a man before expressing dissatisfaction with the Manitoba Review Board's decision.

"It is unacceptable that dangerous and violent offenders are released into our communities, when they pose a threat to society," Glover said in a statement.

"We made changes to the Not Criminally Responsible Act to ensure that dangerous offenders at risk of re-offending are kept behind bars, where they belong."

Glover closed the statement by saying her heart goes out to Tim McLean's family.

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Astronaut Chris Hadfield's flight suit found in thrift store

A flight suit once worn by astronaut Chris Hadfield is apparently now the property of a Toronto doctor who found it in — of all places — a local thrift store. 

"I thought, wow, what is a flight suit like that doing up there?" Dr. Julielynn Wong told CBC News, recalling how she stumbled upon the bright blue jumpsuit in one of the many second-hand stores on Queen Street West. 

Then she saw the name stitched on the left-hand side: Chris Hadfield.  

"My jaw just dropped. I said, 'I can't believe it.'" 

She says she bought it for $40, marked down from $80.

The suit looks just like the one the former commander of the International Space Station is seen wearing on the back cover of his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. 

Dr. Julielynn Wong, right, poses in the flight suit once worn by astronaut Chris Hadfield, which she found in a Toronto thrift store. (Emily Chung/CBC, CBC)

​Hadfield rose to fame during his stint aboard the ISS — capturing the public's attention with pictures and short videos which included a zero-gravity performance of the David Bowie song Space Oddity. He retired from the Canadian Space Agency in 2013. 

Wong is Facebook friends with Hadfield, so she sent a picture of the suit she had bought and they exchanged messages. 

"He started asking questions. He said, 'Well, does it have a puncture marks in the badge?'" 

It did. And other details also matched up. Hadfield said it was, indeed, his old suit. 

"That's a mystery to me as to how it got there," he wrote.

The flight suit matched Hadfield's description and a photo on his book's back cover. (CBC)

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Veterans will need to verify lost limbs every 3 years, instead of annually

Veterans will now have 6 months to hand in veterans independence program renewal paperwork

The Canadian Press Posted: Feb 27, 2015 10:41 PM ET Last Updated: Feb 27, 2015 10:41 PM ET

A wounded soldier who lost both legs in Afghanistan and has had to prove to Veterans Affairs every year that he still needs a wheelchair, will now only have to go through the experience every three years.

The change in policy was quietly announced in the House of Commons by Pierre Lemieux, parliamentary secretary to the veterans minister.

In addition, Lemieux told opposition parties that veterans who are required to complete these renewals under the veterans independence program will have six months to hand in the paperwork, considerably longer than under the current system.

Paul Franklin, who was a master corporal when he lost his legs in a 2006 roadside bombing in Kandahar, has long complained about the veterans system and its annual review.

He says he was well looked after at National Defence, but has faced a bureaucratic nightmare since retiring almost six years ago and coming under the veterans department.

His plight caused a political sensation and even drew the attention of comedian Rick Mercer, who devoted a rant to the subject.

Comments on this story are moderated according to our Submission Guidelines. Comments are welcome while open. We reserve the right to close comments at any time.

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Note: The CBC does not necessarily endorse any of the views posted. By submitting your comments, you acknowledge that CBC has the right to reproduce, broadcast and publicize those comments or any part thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please note that comments are moderated and published according to our submission guidelines.

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Was Ottawa shooter's Parliament Hill attack his Plan B?

As MPs debate a major piece of anti-terrorism legislation presented partly as a response to the Oct. 22 shootings on Parliament Hill, Canadians still know relatively little about what lay behind that attack.

Certainly, the federal government seems content to have a certain view of gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's motivations prevail: that he was a conventional jihadi terrorist inspired by, and perhaps in direct communication with, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS.

One key piece of evidence that might clear up some of the questions about Zehaf-Bibeau's thinking is a video he recorded before his death.

Initially, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson said the video would "certainly someday be released," and that he was inclined to do so "as soon as possible."

A few weeks later, his view had changed. "We may look at releasing some aspects of the transcript of the video. But I don't know that we will be releasing the video," Paulson said in November.

Now, a committee of MPs has invited Paulson to testify about the video's contents at his earliest convenience.

What do we know?

A day after the attack, Paulson mused about the gunman's motivation.

"I think the passport figured prominently in his motives. I'm not inside his head, but I think the passport was central to what was driving him."

Paulson's words have been echoed by a number of other people who knew Zehaf-Bibeau. They paint a picture of a man who was considering two mutually exclusive plans of action. One was a plan of emigration and the start of a new life; the other, an attack on Parliament that would surely have ended any hope of leaving the country.

Logic dictates that Zehaf-Bibeau could only carry out one of those two plans.

Interviews with people who spoke with him in the weeks before he shot and killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial suggest the attack was in fact his Plan B, one he began to put in motion on Oct. 2, 20 days before he finally carried it out.

The passport failure

Oct. 2 is the day Zehaf-Bibeau arrived in Ottawa from Vancouver. Tellingly, before even finding a place to stay, he went straight to the Libyan embassy to apply for a passport.

Yousef Furgani, chargé d'affaires at the Libyan Embassy in Ottawa, met Zehaf-Bibeau on Oct. 2 when he walked in and asked to renew his expired Libyan passport. (CBC photo)

"He said he had family in Libya," Yousef Furgani, first secretary of the Libyan Embassy, told CBC News in October. "He said he missed them, and he wanted to go back and live there."

Zehaf-Bibeau had told many people over the years about his desire to emigrate to Libya, where he had gone to live as a teenager with his father following his parents' separation.

At least as far back as 2007, when Zehaf-Bibeau worked building tunnels in Squamish, B.C., Libya was on his mind. His foreman in Squamish remembers: "He said he wanted to settle down there and find a wife."

Zehaf-Bibeau was also already showing signs of interest in jihadi ideology, sharing videos of Taliban attacks on his cellphone, although his co-workers didn't take him too seriously.

The fact that much of Libya is now under the control of Islamist militias — and even a Libyan franchise of ISIS — may suggest it's all a moot point. Today, an aspiring jihadi might find Libya almost as attractive as Syria, where the RCMP initially, and incorrectly, suggested Zehaf-Bibeau was planning to travel.

But Zehaf-Bibeau's Libyan longings predated the arrival of jihadi groups in Libya. He seems to have been no less interested in moving there when the country was under the control of the Ghadhafi family.

Escape from addiction

According to people who spoke with Zehaf-Bibeau, Libya seems to have become more than just the happy land of his youth — it was also a potential refuge from a worsening crack addiction.

Years before the Parliament Hill attack, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau told co-workers in Squamish, B.C., about his desire to move to Libya, and even began to wear the clothes of a Libyan tribal sheik.

After his arrival in Ottawa, he befriended Libyan-born Abdelkarim Abubakir, telling him the same thing he had told others at the shelter he frequented in Vancouver.

"He just wanted to go out from here, because the temptation from the drug is very strong, and he cannot resist it. That's his weakness. He wanted to go to Libya, he said," Abubakir told CBC News.

"So that's why he tell me, 'I have a passport to be accepted, and I hope it's going to be accepted,' but then it was otherwise. So I think that's why he did it, because his hope was to get out of here."

Abubakir says Zehaf-Bibeau kept his plan to attack Parliament entirely to himself. But Abubakir now believes the idea was already formed when Zehaf-Bibeau arrived in Ottawa. "That was in his head, too," he says, "but only if he couldn't get the passport."

It didn't take long after Zehaf-Bibeau was rejected at the Libyan embassy to move on to Plan B — the attack that would shock the nation. Less than 48 hours after the Libyans turned him away, Zehaf-Bibeau was captured on surveillance cameras taking a tour of Parliament Hill.

Mixed motives

While politicians and the public have debated whether Zehaf-Bibeau was motivated more by ideology or by personal issues, the real answer may be both.

People who knew him have left little doubt that he supported jihadi groups openly and vocally.

But one thing is clear: as late as Oct. 2, Zehaf-Bibeau was pursuing a personal ambition that, had it succeeded, would have made the attack on Parliament Hill impossible.

Unlike their counterparts in France and Australia, the RCMP have been extremely tight-lipped about their investigation into recent terrorist attacks.

But when Paulson spoke 30 hours after the attack, he had already seen Zehaf-Bibeau's video and knew quite a bit about his movements. Tellingly, he did not say that Zehaf-Bibeau came to the nation's capital in order to stage an attack on Parliament.

"He was in town to deal with a passport issue," said Paulson.

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Instalment loans the new high-interest danger for consumers

At a time when she should be approaching her golden years, 57-year-old grandmother Helen Parry is instead supporting two adult children on a wage that hasn't increased in eight years.

"Cost of living rises but the pay doesn't and the utilities and everything goes up … so it gets harder each year," Parry says.

Last year, with bills piling up, Parry, who lives in Brampton, Ont., asked her bank for a loan but was turned down because of bad credit.  

Instalment loans, which are relatively new to Canada, carry rates of interest that can be considered extreme. Offered by companies such as easyfinancial Services Ltd., the loans carry an effective annual interest rate of almost 60 per cent. (CBC)

She turned to a company called easyfinancial Services Ltd. 

"I was relieved because, you know, I didn't have any other option at the time." 

She got a loan of $3,100 to be paid back over 18 months. But in doing so, Parry dove into one the fastest growing — and potentially most expensive — types of debt in Canada.

They're called Instalment loans. They are, in a nutshell, unsecured, high-interest, subprime, short-term loans.

A hidden-camera investigation by CBC Marketplace is helping expose just how costly these loans can be.

Unlike payday loans, which are usually for a few hundred dollars and repaid in a few weeks, instalment loans allow you to borrow up to $15,000 with repayment periods of up to three years.

But like payday loans, instalment loans are aimed at the same general market: people with bad debts and poor credit.  They often have lower incomes, are struggling to get by and are less sophisticated financially.

In fact, some purveyors of instalment loans are literally setting up shop in many of the same depressed neighbourhoods once populated by payday lenders.

A slippery slope

Easyfinancial Services Ltd. is taking over 47 retail locations across Canada from The Cash Store, an Edmonton-based payday lender that went out of business after it was barred from making new loans in Ontario because of rules limiting interest charges.

Helen Parry borrowed $5,100 from easyfinancial Services, to be paid back over three years. But according to the terms of the loan, including interest and insurance, she would have ended up repaying $13,400. (CBC)

While not as high as payday loans, instalment loans also carry rates of interest that can be considered extreme.

Take Parry. A few months after she got her original loan, she got a call from easyfinancial offering her more money with a longer repayment period. Parry agreed and ended up with a $5,100 loan to be repaid over 36 months. Her semimonthly payment was $186.82, which includes an optional loan-protection Insurance payment of $55.97.

Parry's loan agreement has the total cost of borrowing expressed as an annual percentage rate (APR) of 46.96 per cent. 

But Peter Gorham, an actuary who provides certification on criminal rates of interest, calculated Parry's effective annual interest rate to be 57.12 per cent.

"The criminal interest rate is anything over 60 per cent," says Gorham. "They're very close."

Easyfinancial told Parry the total obligation for the term of the loan would be $9,521.90. But under the Consumer Protection Act, easyfinancial only has to include the principal plus interest in the cost-of-borrowing disclosure.

If you include the insurance payment, by the end of 36 months, Parry would have repaid a total of more than $13,400. 

Legally, insurance payments aren't included in interest calculations,but if you were to take those into account, Gorham says, the effective annual interest rate would be 120.3 per cent.

Customers often don't understand

A former easyfinancial employee, who did not want her identity revealed, told Marketplace easyfinancial's customers often don't comprehend the cost of borrowing.

Marketplace investigated how up-front easyfinancial Services is about the real costs of its loans. Instalment loans are one of the fastest growing kinds of debt in Canada. (CBC)

"I don't think anyone really understood. All they wanted was the money and they wanted it quick. And then you pay and you pay and you pay and you pay," says the former employee.

She says sales reps, who receive a commission, would call customers offering more money.

"You wouldn't finish paying off your first loan but you've made so many payments, now you qualify for more money. So you would add to that loan. Then you just roll it over."

She says it bothered her so much, she quit.

"I would come home every day very depressed. Like, just felt like we were stealing from people."

In a statement to Marketplace, easyfinancial executive vice-president Jason Mullins said "Ninety-five per cent of our customers rate their experience with easyfinancial as good or excellent. Your story is relying on a few negative anecdotal examples that represent a small number of our customers."

A debt trap

Debt counsellors, though, say high interest rates and refinancing options like those offered by easyfinancial can be devastating.

"For many people, they get stuck in this cycle not for just years but decades," says Scott Hannah, president and CEO of Credit Counselling Society.

Instalment loans have been around in the U.S. for decades but they are relatively new to Canada. 

And yet, Equifax, a credit monitoring company, says instalment loans are the second fastest growing type of debt in Canada, behind only auto loans. Instalment loans now account for a total of $132 billion owed, or 8.7 per cent of Canada's total debt distribution.

The vast majority of that is held by the big banks.

Alternative lenders say their share of the instalment loan business is about $2.5 billion in Canada.

Numbers game

Vancouver-based Urloan, one of those lenders, was offering on its website a $15,000 loan payable in 36 monthly instalments of $858.80.

"I analyzed that loan and determined that the effective annual interest rate that's contained in that particular arrangement is 71.26 per cent," actuary Jay Jeffrey says.

Urloan says that was a mistake.  

​"The ​calculator on our website is definitely wrong," says Ali Pourdad, president and CEO of Creditloans Canada Financing Ltd., the parent company of Urloan. "I think you discovered a much higher payment than we actually charge."

Pourdad says Urloan's loans have an APR of 46.9 per cent, which he says equates to an effective annual interest rate of 58.5 per cent, just below the legal limit of 60 per cent.

"Yeah, they're high," says Pourdad.

"Unfortunately, we have to charge these rates. It's nothing to do with 59.9, 59.8, it's the fact that we're taking an immense amount of risk. And also, we have to borrow at higher rates because we're a high-risk lender."

Other options

Pourdad says his company is helping people who wouldn't qualify for a bank loan, by getting them out of financial trouble through consolidating debt.

​"They're going from not paying bills to paying them off. That's where we come in," says Pourdad.

But critics say consolidating debts into one — often higher-interest — loan is not usually the best way to go.

"If they fall behind on these loans, the consolidation loans, it's just like falling behind on any other loan, you'll eventually be pursued for the balance and get calls from collection agencies," says John Lawford, of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

It's better, Lawford says, to go to a credit counselling service, which can often negotiate a lower interest rate. 

That's what Parry did. 

Unable to make the payments on her loan from easyfinancial, she went to Credit Canada Debt Solutions. 

They got her a new interest rate for her instalment loan: 9.99 per cent. 

That, she says, is a rate she can afford. 

---

Watch the Marketplace investigation into Uneasy Money Friday at 8 p.m. on CBC Television.

If you have a consumer issue, contact aaron.saltzman@cbc.ca

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3 Canadian Coast Guard communication centres closing in B.C.

The federal government is moving ahead with plans to close three Canadian Coast Guard communications centres on the West Coast.

A member of the Canadian Coast Guard sits in the Marine Communications and Traffic Service operation in Iqaluit in 2009. (Andy Clark/Reuters)

According to union spokesperson Scott Hodge, staff received notices last week confirming the closures.

The Tofino centre will close April 21, Vancouver's — at 555 West Hastings Street — will cease operations May 6 and the Comox centre will shut down sometime in early 2016.

The closures are part of a plan announced in 2012 to reorganize Coast Guard operations, including the controversial closure of the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station.

Altogether 10 communication centres will be shut down across Canada, leaving a total of 12 nationwide.

The marine communication centres are responsible for listening for distress calls and guiding ships, much like air traffic controllers at airports.

On the West Coast the communications operations will be consolidated at upgraded centres in Victoria and Prince Rupert.

Unifor Local 2182 spokesperson Scott Hodge said he's worried about what this means for monitoring Burrard Inlet.

"In Vancouver for instance, the traffic centre is located on the harbour. They have radar coverage in most of the harbour. There are blind spots in the radar, but when you view out the window you can see the entire harbour," he said.

"Once the centres move to Victoria, that'll be lost."

Staff at the Comox and Vancouver centre will be transferred to Victoria, while staff at the Tofino centre will be transferred to Prince Rupert.

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2 bodies pulled from charred house ruins during search for 2 children

Two bodies were found this morning in the charred ruins of a house in the small western Quebec community of Gracefield, but police said it's too early to tell if they're the two-year-old girl and four-year-old boy who are unaccounted for after a Thursday fire.

A man, a woman and a child were taken to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation and shock after the fire at their home on Eloi Lachapelle Street around 3:30 p.m. ET. Their injuries are not considered life threatening, police said.

The house was destroyed.

Police said the two bodies were too badly burned to identify. Autopsies will be conducted.

The evening of the fire, Gracefield Mayor Joanne Poulin was among members of the small community who gathered near the scene of the blaze.

"It's tragic," Poulin said. "For a small community like us, it's not easy for everybody."

Gracefield is about 90 kilometres north of downtown Ottawa.

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Anti-terrorism bill allows withholding of key information on security certificates

Immigration experts say the sweeping anti-terrorism bill would give the government — and its spy agency, CSIS — new power to withhold information in cases where suspects are held on security certificates.

The changes are included in Bill C-51's amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which have received little attention to date.

Security certificates allow the government to detain and deport permanent residents or foreign nationals considered to be a security threat using secret evidence that the accused is not allowed to see. 

The bill states the government would only be required to disclose material that's "relevant to grounds of inadmissibility stated in the [security] certificate."

That contradicts key Supreme Court rulings on what the Crown must provide to the special advocates of people being held on the controversial certificates, say lawyers who have acted as special advocates.

"That [change] gives CSIS the power to decide what part of the file is going to be disclosed, and what part of the file is not going to be disclosed," says immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman.

"It will significantly alter the balance and the fairness of the procedure, a balance the Supreme Court has been very careful to craft."

Harkat, Charkaoui rulings pushed disclosure

In 2014, Waldman argued before the Supreme Court in the case of Mohamed Harkat, which yielded the latest in a string of Supreme Court rulings on security certificates.

'The problem with [C-51] is that it removes one of the only tools that the special advocates have for challenging the reliability of the secret evidence.'— Lorne Waldman, immigration lawyer

In the Harkat case, as well as two prior rulings on the case of Adil Charkaoui, the Supreme Court upheld the certificates as constitutional, but sought to define a balance between the government and the defence lawyer for the accused, known as a special advocate.

In the case of Charkaoui, the court ruled the government must share all its information with the special advocate.

Waldman says the top court was also swayed by the Federal Court case of Hassan Almrei, another person detained for years on a security certificate. In his 2009 ruling, Justice Richard Mosely was highly critical of the government, saying the secret evidence later released to the special advocates contradicted the main evidence offered by CSIS in a public hearing.

The Almrei case in particular demonstrated that special advocates need access to all the information held by CSIS officials, Waldman says, not just what the spy agency chooses to reveal. And he says the new bill is an attempt to wind back the clock on the landmark Charkaoui ruling.

"The problem with [the new bill] is that it removes one of the only tools that the special advocates have for challenging the reliability of the secret evidence."

Toronto lawyer Paul Cavalluzzo served as one of the special advocates for Harkat. He says that in that case, the federal court found the government gave misleading information, which was only discovered after all the evidence was disclosed to special advocates.

Cavalluzzo adds that the top court ruled the government was too quick to hide information.

"As the Supreme Court of Canada said in the Harkat case, the government constantly over-asserts its national security privileges," he says. 

"There's got to be very serious questions raised as to why they want to give less disclosure to the special advocates. Particularly in light of the fact that CSIS is now going to be engaged in far more disruptive behaviour than they have in the past."

A spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety said in an email that some of the amendments to the bill "are consistent with the Supreme Court's 2014 ruling in the Harkat case."

The spokesperson added that the government must sometimes rely on classified information in the case of security certificates, and that information "must be protected if its public disclosure would be injurious to national security or would endanger the safety of any person."

C-51 gives government new powers to appeal

Bill C-51 gives CSIS new powers to intervene in suspected terrorist activity, a departure from its previous role as gatherer of intelligence.

Cavalluzzo says the changes to security certificates in C-51 will undoubtedly lead to another court challenge.

"The present security certificate process is precarious as it is," he says. "To make it even [more unfair], in my view, is going to lead to constitutional challenges that will likely be successful."

Waldman adds that C-51 goes even further in muddying the waters around security certificates.

That's because of a provision that allows the government to appeal a judge's order to disclose information to the special advocate.

"So now they have the option of going to the Federal Court of Appeal, and asking the Federal Court of Appeal to review the decision to disclose."

Waldman argues this could bog down the proceedings even further, and says an equivalent power of appeal is not being granted to the special advocate.

He says that places the special advocate in an unequal position with regard to the process.

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Transgender rights bill gutted by 'transphobic' Senate amendments

Advocates for Canadian transgender rights legislation were set back and frustrated with what they say is a "transphobic" Senate committee amendment that limits the effectiveness of the bill.

NDP MP Randall Garrison's private member's bill, C-279, seeks to fight hate crimes against transgender individuals by adding gender identity provisions to both the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act.  

Randall Garrison, the LGBT critic for the NDP, introduced private member's legislation to strengthen anti-discrimination protections against the transgender community. (ndp.ca)

"We still want to support the bill, because it's important for the trans community, but if it's going to have the amendment in it that restricts our use of washrooms and public facilities... no," said Amanda Ryan from the advocacy group Gender Mosaic.

"It's a bad bill with that amendment in it. We want to fight as hard as we can to have that removed," she told CBC News Network's Power & Politics on Thursday.

The bill passed in the House of Commons almost two years ago, thanks to 18 votes from a divided Conservative caucus. Even cabinet ministers were split on the issue.

On Wednesday at the Senate committee finally tasked with reviewing the legislation, Conservative Senator Don Plett introduced three amendments. 

Garrison told reporters he didn't have a problem with two of them:

• One is a tactical amendment to make it correspond to other legislation, like C-13, the Tories' cyberbullying legislation.
• The other removes a definition for gender identity not included in his original bill, but added by Commons Conservatives to clarify its application before passage. 

The third amendment, however, exempts places like prisons, crisis centres, and public washrooms and change rooms from the bill's provisions. That, Garrison says, is "transphobic."

Washrooms controversial

Public gender-specific bathrooms can be difficult for transgender individuals who may not only find them awkward, but who could also experience harassment or even violence as a result of not fitting in with the idea of acceptable gender roles.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal supports adding transgender identity to federal anti-discrimination legislation to promote acceptance and tolerance.

'We aren't a man in a dress. We are women.'- Amanda Ryan

While some MPs argued that the transgender community was is already protected on the basis of sex and disability, the tribunal favours more explicit legal protection.

Critics of the bill dubbed it "the bathroom bill," warning that pedophiles could be protected when they lurked in public bathrooms. They also feared abused women would not feel comfortable among transgender individuals who had biologically male characteristics.

Senator Don Plett introduced three amendments to C-279 on Wednesday, one of which exempts public washrooms and change rooms from the legislation's protections. (Parliament of Canada)

Before the Commons vote in 2013, Conservative MP Rob Anders tabled a petition "on behalf of thousands," saying "these constituents feel that it is the duty of the House of Commons to protect and safeguard our children from any exposure and harm that would come from giving a man access to women's public washroom facilities."

Plett said this week that "this was the major issue raised with us from concerned citizens across the country, most importantly from the operator of an abused women's shelter on a First Nations reserve.

"This is no way hinders human rights protection for the transgendered community. They will still be a recognized group under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and will not be able to face discrimination," the senator said.

'It's insulting'

"I believe that there's a small group of senators who are trying to kill the bill, and the Senate Conservative leadership is allowing them to do so," Garrison told reporters in advance.

When the bill's amendments carried at the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee Wednesday, supporters of transgender rights walked out. 

Ryan, who does outreach for transgender rights, told Power & Politics she has been in women's shelters talking to both clients and staff about how to interact, and it's simply not true that a problem exists.

Conservative MP Rob Anders said a private member's bill by NDP MP Randall Garrison's to protect the rights of transgender Canadians is a bathroom bill, adding that its goal was giving men access to women's washrooms. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

"A transwoman is a woman. That's a point that has been missed in a lot of these conversations," Ryan told host Evan Solomon. "We aren't a man in a dress. We are women. We were born with the wrong biological parts but we try to act and behave as women."

Ryan said hearing senators like Plett refer to transgender individuals like herself as "biological males" may be technically correct, "but it's insulting."

"There's no recognition of who we are. They've done no homework to find out who a transgendered person is," she said.

The bill now returns to the full Senate for final votes. It's possible the committee's amendments would be rejected at the report stage or third reading of the bill in the Senate, but such rejections are rare.

The legislation then returns to the House, where it may not come up for consideration until late spring. The House can accept or reject the Senate's amendments.

With the fast-diminishing time available in this Parliament before an expected general election, it appears unlikely the bill will pass all the necessary stages in both chambers.

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In the Conservative war on terror, the first casualty is Parliament: Chris Hall

Fresh from limiting the parliamentary debate, at second reading, on its proposed anti-terror law, the government is now resisting opposition calls for an extensive review of Bill C-51 by the Commons committee on public safety and national security.

"This bill is strongly supported by Canadians," Stephen Harper argued this week during Question Period, "and I encourage the committee to study it as quickly as possible in order to adopt these measures to help Canadian security during the life of this Parliament."

What the prime minister bases his judgment of public support on isn't clear, though one opinion poll has suggested four out of five Canadians are in favour of giving Canada's spy agency and police broad new powers.

But public support, no matter how it's measured, is no substitute for public scrutiny.

The government's bill proposes to give Canada's spy agency broad new powers to disrupt suspected terrorist plots, to allow government departments to share private information more widely, and to allow suspects to be detained without charge for longer periods.

But critics say that these new powers, and overly broad definitions in the proposed law, represent a threat to Canadians' rights, without any commensurate increase in parliamentary or third-party oversight.

An election winner?

The Conservatives, on the other hand, say Canada has to respond to the October attacks in Canada that killed two Canadian soldiers, and to view these incidents as part of a trend that has seen brazen attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, and the arrest Thursday of alleged ISIS conspirators in New York City.

But that's only one of the motives. The party also considers public security a winning issue for them heading into an election, so much so that the government is determined to push this bill through with a minimum of parliamentary scrutiny and review.

As CBC News reported on Wednesday, the government is offering just three days for the committee to hear from witnesses, with one of those days devoted exclusively to questioning Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and department officials.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair has criticized Bill C-51 for vague wording, which he says leaves the door open to spying on political opponents. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

The New Democrats and Liberals want much more time for witnesses. And will press their case again today when the committee meets to arrange a schedule.

"We're talking about the most significant changes to security legislation in this country since 2001," NDP Leader Tom Mulcair told reporters on Wednesday.

"Critical flaws are being revealed by security experts across the country every single day. It is reckless and irresponsible to ram it through without a full and proper study."

For the Conservatives, more witnesses equates to more criticism, and the possibility that the public support Harper talked about might begin to erode.

Getting it right

The alternative view is that the more public scrutiny, the more likely the government is to get a significant piece of this legislation right, which is to ensure that the appropriate balance is struck between security and individual liberties.

And there are no shortage of examples to support that view.

The most obvious is the 2001 review of the original anti-terrorism law introduced after the 9/11 attacks by the then Liberal government of Jean Chretien.

The Commons justice committee met 19 times between Oct. 18 and Nov. 26, 2001 to review the bill. A special committee of the Senate began parallel hearings, wrapping up on Dec. 6.

Both committees met twice-daily at one point to ensure the politicians — and public — heard from as many witnesses as possible.

Wayne MacKay, a constitutional law professor at Dalhousie University, appeared before both committees in 2001. He says the extensive testimony helped the government of the day refine the legislation.

"The more alternative views you hear, the better the legislation will be," MacKay said in an interview Wednesday. "This is another very significant piece of legislation and it's worthy of a detailed review."

With an election coming, the Canadian flag will be in demand. Here, Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes an announcement regarding tax cuts in Surrey, B.C., earlier this month. (The Canadian Press)

Don Stuart is a criminal law professor at Queen's University in Kingston. He also appeared before both committees in 2001, and says the Conservatives' approach to its anti-terror bill speaks more to political imperatives than security needs.

"The longer you go at committee, the more you hear opposing voices."

Lessons from the past

Stuart says there are elements of Bill C-51 that he believes are redundant, such as the new offence of promoting terrorism, or too vague, including the definition of terrorist activity.

In 2001, the Liberals accepted amendments to impose a five-year limit on the extraordinary new powers of preventative arrest and investigative hearings.

That bill, in its final form, withstood judicial scrutiny far better than either the U.S. Patriot Act or Britain's Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.

This time, though, the Conservatives are showing no similar willingness to entertain amendments, even though that kind of obstinance has caused them political embarrassment before.

In 2011, the government tried to introduce a series of amendments to a mammoth crime bill at the last moment, amendments their own MPs had voted down earlier at committee simply because they had been proposed by Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.

It turned out the government actually agreed with Cotler's efforts and, proving imitation is the least sincere form of legislation, they copied nearly word for word Cotler's proposals to strengthen the right of victims to sue foreign states that supported or committed terrorist acts.

Here, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau delivers a speech during an event in Mississauga, Ont., on Feb. 15. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

It didn't work. The government's amendments were ruled out of order by House Speaker Andrew Scheer because they came too late in the legislative process.

In the end, the bill had to be amended in the Senate, and ended up mirroring what Cotler had proposed much earlier.

It's unlikely the Conservatives will now apply these past lessons as they push ahead with Bill C-51.

As the prime minister said, the goal is to have the new security measures in place before the House rises in June. Alongside a campaign message firmly embedded in the minds of voters before they head to the polls in October.

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SAD no longer: Brilliant light cure for seasonal disorder

"As soon as December came around, I was moody, I always wanted to cry, I was feeling suicidal", says Grace Kaiche. "I slept a lot and didn't want to leave the house and I couldn't get most of my work done."  

Kaiche has been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. At 26, she had suffered from SAD for two winters before discovering what for her has been a miracle cure.

SAD is a seasonal depression that hits a small portion of the population of the Northern Hemisphere, disproportionately women, during the darker winter months.

Up to four per cent of Canadians,or as many as 140,000 people, are clinically depressed during the winter, says Dr. Robert Levitan, a psychiatrist at the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto.

Levitan says 80 per cent of SAD sufferers are women between the ages of 18 and 45. About half of those would have this severe form of seasonal depression. Canadian winters can affect up 15 per cent of people with a milder form of SAD known as subsyndromal SAD. The rest of us might silently suffer through a case of what's commonly called the winter blues or winter blahs.

Dr. Robert Levitan, a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, recommends light therapy to combat SAD. (Manmeet Ahluwalia/CBC)

For those who are clinically depressed, Levitan has been prescribing light therapy based on his many years of research – and for Grace Kaiche, the results are brilliant.

Every morning now she sits for half an hour in front of her high-intensity ultraviolet-filtered bright-light unit on loan from CAMH. Eight weeks after first trying bright-light therapy she says, "It literally rescued me. It really surprised me that a light box could make such a big difference in my life."

'This light is like magic'

Kaiche adds, "From the very first day I felt a change. I've started going to the gym again.  Now I get excited to use the light therapy because I know that my energy level will increase and my negative thoughts will disappear."  

She adds, "This light is like magic."

When Kaiche became so depressed in winter, she would not have guessed that her lethargic mood might have been a survival tactic of our evolutionary past.

Levitan and other scientists who study mood disorders believe that SAD really is a vestige of our cave-dwelling ancestors.  

"We think that Seasonal Affective Disorder is something in our genes from our past and in modern society it becomes a nuisance at best, and in severe cases quite a serious problem that requires urgent treatment."

He explains: "Conserving energy and protecting ourselves during the ice age when food resources would have been sparse used to be very adaptive and helpful to our ancestors, especially women in their child-bearing years."

But how could something that once helped humans survive through long harsh winters become a debilitating disorder for some people today?

Levitan, who is also a University of Toronto professor and a light therapy pioneer in Canada, says,  "We're prolonging our work day far beyond where nature would permit it."

The mood change has to do with our circadian rhythms, he says. 

"We are affected by having to remain productive in the decreased hours of sunlight. In our distant past we'd be hibernating", says Levitan. "We really are just animals."

Suicidal thoughts

Kaiche was feeling more and more like acting on her suicidal thoughts when she went to her family doctor, who prescribed an anti-depressant.

"I was worried about the side effects of mood-altering drugs," says Kaiche, but she tried them anyway and found they didn't really work for her.

Then she found Levitan and his clinic at CAMH. Kaiche became a subject in an ongoing study about light therapy and winter depression.  

Her experience with light therapy is backed up through scientific research. Levitan was co-author of a large study that found "over time the chance of responding to light was exactly the same as responding to medications." 

The study also found light therapy tended to work immediately, with fewer adverse side effects.

Levitan says that by April or May the longer daylight hours usually will help patients feel completely normal again.

During Kaiche's last session, Levitan advises her to monitor her progress. "I think it's just a matter of continuing through the winter, probably until the end of March or so, and then starting again next fall and you should be fine."

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Big data trend now being applied to managing human resources

A growing number of human resources executives are starting to dig deep into computerized statistical data on employees, to make decisions regarding salaries, promotions, and even benefit programs.

It's a trend that excites some and worries others.

Andrew Martin, who oversees human resources at the Joey chain of restaurants, which operates 30 locations in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Washington State, believes the use of so-called "people analytics" is great for companies and for employees.   

"Have you seen the movie Moneyball?" Martin asks, referring to the 2011 film that starred Brad Pitt as the general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, who pioneered a statistical approach to choosing players.  

Instead of baseball's RBI's or earned run averages, HR departments track data such as absenteeism, salaries, sales figures, and are increasingly looking at ways to attach numbers to qualitative measures that come from performance reviews and assessments from colleagues.  

"It's brilliant," Martin says of his favourite movie. "And you know, people say it's complicated, you can't reduce people decisions to black and white. It's not really true. Performance is performance."

Some won't like it

Business ethics professor Chris MacDonald is on the other side of the issue, questioning the use of statistics for decisions about people's place and success in the workplace.

'If that measurement process becomes demoralizing for staff, you've shot yourself in the foot.'- Chris MacDonald, Rogers School of Management

"Statistics have their uses, but you don't want a number to sum up the whole employee- employer relationship," says MacDonald, who works at Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Management.

"It may well be a self-defeating mechanism if you're trying to manage people by being incredibly precise by measuring their performance. If that measurement process becomes demoralizing for staff, you've shot yourself in the foot."

So called "big data" techniques have been embraced quickly by sales, finance and marketing departments eager to exploit trends that will help generate more revenue for their organizations. The move towards harnessing computer power has been slower in areas that don't generate profit, such as the personnel department. But that's beginning to change.

Numbers tell the story

"I was in a meeting several weeks ago in San Francisco and we had eight PhD statisticians, engineers, and computer scientists together, all working on people analytics for their companies," Josh Bersin wrote in Forbes Magazine recently. Bersin is one of the best-known American consultants on this trend.

Human resources managers are debating whether a data-led performance measurement fits with their company culture. (Reuters)

​

In an interview with CBC News from his office in Oakland, Bersin says the use of hard data can actually make the workplace more fair.

"We all have biases based on our experience. You're basically relying on a data set that you personally experienced that may be not 100 per cent relevant. When you look at data, you take emotion out of it."

Martin says the Joey restaurant chain has used data to design a more fair way to pay its chefs and general managers. Previously, salaries were based on net sales, which are often related more to location than to employee performance.

"People naturally want to fluff up the people they like, and they start talking about how great they are, or how pretty their girlfriend is. When you grab the actual numbers, it's stopped people in their tracks. They weren't expecting that," he says.

The chain measures a variety of indicators for its chefs and general managers. Restaurant cleanliness, wait times, and revenue growth, along with assessments given by other employees, are used to determine a ranking.

Martin says he intends to expand the system to other job categories, boiling a collection of scores down to just one number.

"For me, you can look at a whole whack of numbers but it gets lost until you can bring it down to one number," he explains.

I'm more than a number

Many Canadians could find it offensive to have themselves and their value to their employer reduced to a single number. And there's also the matter of what's acceptable in our culture, says Dr. Seonaid Charlesworth of Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions. She works primarily with senior executives, using an algorithm to assign numbers to a range of leadership abilities.

'What's the unit of measure for initiative? Or enthusiasm? It doesn't exist'- Jerry Gaertner, Managed Analytic Services

"I've done a lot of work in the U.S., and when I returned to Canada I was shocked at the number of leaders who felt it would be counter-cultural to look at whether people had different abilities, and to make decisions about who to hire, promote or invest in, based on their underlying ability. They had a sense people were different but didn't want to go there for fear of disengaging the broader group," Charlesworth says from her office in Edmonton.

"In the U.S., they have the mistaken notion everyone is equal. In Canada, we have the mistaken notion we can force everyone to be equal," she added.

Analytics present a raft of limitations, says Jerry Gaertner, a professor of computer science who is also the co-owner of an analytics company. "What's the unit of measure for initiative? Or enthusiasm? It doesn't exist," he points out. He also says it's next to impossible to remove bias, even by using numbers.

"The data remains has to be interpreted by a person and any time you get a person interpreting data you get bias. The data shows you a pattern. You still need to identify what the pattern says and how to use it."

Air Miles joins the trend

But that hasn't discouraged LoyaltyOne, the company that runs the popular Air Miles program. The firm uses analytics to attract and keep "top talent," according to vice-president of talent management Diane Dowsett. She says that by pulling data on the source of referrals, and linking that to how the new employees performed in the job, she was able to see that the best hires had been referred by people already working at LoyaltyOne. The next step was simple.

"We increased our employee referral incentive program," she explains. "Because we run Air Miles, we can offer a substantial amount of Air Miles as a reward." The dollar value of these rewards ranges from $2,000 to $10,000, depending on the level of specialty involved in the job.  

Bersin compares worry about people analytics to the fear that developed almost 10 years ago when consumers first learned of "cookies," the packets of data that track your destinations on the internet.  

"We were all worried because we thought Google or Facebook would hurt us," he says. "But really all they did was make their sites more useful. Now Amazon recommends things I actually want. I think that's what is going to happen in HR. Analytics will really help business managers do a much better job of hiring the right people and managing their workforce in a better way so they have a better place to work."

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Ontario's new sex ed curriculum 'the most up-to-date' in the country

Come September, teachers across Ontario can sit down with their students with a revamped sexual-education curriculum that finally brings the province up to date with the rest of the country and no longer leaves them "in the dark."

Ontario's curriculum hadn't been renewed since 1998, making it the oldest in Canada. Ontario is the only province that hadn't made updates since the millennium.

Alex McKay of the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada said the new program is a "significant move" toward bringing Ontario in line with some of the other provinces in providing sexual-health education "that young people not only need, but have a right to have access to."

"And because the new education curriculum is just being released now, in terms of its inclusion of currently relevant topics such as consent, sexting and so forth, it'll be the most up-to-date curriculum in the country," McKay said. 

'Issues like gender identity, like lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans sexualities, sexual activity amongst young people — these are all hard conversations for all teachers to have.'- Jen Gilbert, of York University's faculty of education

Other key components of the new curriculum include education about sharing explicit content online, sexual orientation and gender identity.

"The curriculum is going to help teachers feel supported as they talk with young people about sexual health," said Jen Gilbert, graduate program director at York University's faculty of education.

"When the introduction of the new curriculum a few years ago was cancelled, I think that teachers have felt a little bit alone and in the dark about what they can and can't talk about and also not feeling like they had a lot of resources to address the contemporary realities of young people's lives," she said.

Not just the 'plumbing' of sex

The new curriculum mandates that students in Grade 4 be taught the risks associated with communications technology, including sharing sexual photos or personal information and cyberbullying, and strategies to use the technologies safely.

Grade 5 students get a bit more in-depth on what's appropriate in relationships. "Sharing private sexual photos or posting sexual comments online is unacceptable and also illegal," the curriculum says.

A rebooted sexual-education curriculum, however, may not necessarily make for easy teaching. Experts caution that there are still a number of hurdles.

Demonstrators gather in front of Queen's Park in Toronto on Feb. 24 to protest against Ontario's new sex education curriculum. Education Minister Liz Sandals said the government won't back down in the face of criticism. (Darren Calabrese/Canadian Press)

Miriam Kaufman, a pediatrician and head of adolescent medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, said the broader aspects of sexual health are harder to teach than "the plumbing," or mechanics of sexual intercourse.

"And we no longer have the resources in public health for every classroom to have a public health nurse come to do sex-health education, which is too bad because they have a lot of skill," said Kaufman, who has also taught sexual health on a volunteer basis for Grade 5 and 6 classes in schools in Ontario.

Carolyn Temertzoglou, a health and physical education instructor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, said "prompts," or example dialogues between teachers and students, can guide an elementary generalist teacher who may have minimal training in the subject. As it stands, she said, the number of hours of teacher training for elementary health and physical education varies from 12 to 36 across the province.

"Clearly more time is needed to provide more comprehensive teacher training to prepare beginning teachers to teach these sensitive and challenging topics," she wrote in an email to CBC News.

Balance with positive sex messaging

Novice teachers, yes, but York University's Gilbert said current teachers need a chance to talk about the possibilities of the new curriculum as well —  to broach worries and hesitations in a supportive, professional learning environment. That also helps teachers develop strategies among themselves, she said, before they're asked to discuss the material with children and youth.

"Issues like gender identity, like lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans sexualities, sexual activity amongst young people — these are all hard conversations for all teachers to have," she said.

'I have this absolute conviction that the vast majority, if not all, parents would like their children to grow up to be sexually healthy adults.'- Miriam Kaufman, pediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children

Sex education has to be more than just a curriculum document, a single class or unit, Gilbert said, and actually become part of the conversation in schools with young people.

McKay, of the education council, wants sex education, which he said focuses on problem prevention, to take another step.

"We need to make sure that that's balanced off with a positive message that recognizes that sexuality and sexual health are important, positive aspects of who we are as human beings and they are a central and positive aspect of good healthy relationships," he said.

"People who are taught about that balance will be able to go forward in life feeling much more empowered to take action to promote their sexual health, as compared to someone who has only been bombarded with negative messages about all the problems associated with sexuality."

Kids are ready

With the Institute of Catholic Education, which works on behalf of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario, on board with the curriculum, and Education Minister Liz Sandals standing firm, the new program is here to stay — even in the face of rallies hosted by distressed parents and ardent opponents.

"People think about the kind of bad sex ed that they probably had in high school and they think about that being delivered to little children and obviously that's not what's going to happen," said the Hospital for Sick Children's Kaufman.

"I have this absolute conviction that the vast majority, if not all, parents would like their children to grow up to be sexually healthy adults. They don't want their kids to have all kinds of hang-ups and hate their bodies and expose themselves to risk because they don't understand about sexuality. I really don't think that's what parents want."

Perhaps what's most important to keep in mind is that students are ready.

"Kids are asking all kinds of questions about their bodies, about gender, about what they see out there in the world," said Kaufman.

"They will mainly respond positively. I think the kids who respond the most negatively are the ones who need it the most."

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Has budget for Parks Canada gone up, as Aglukkaq claims?

With park operating seasons curtailed and bands of volunteers clearing trails on their own in the winter, the Conservative government has faced questions about its commitment to the national parks system.

In 2012, the government declared it would cut the agency's $631-million budget by $29.2 million over three years.

Parks Canada responded by saying it would "align its season, hours of operation, and services to better reflect patterns of visitation."

Most parks went to a three-season model.

Last week, however, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq told the Commons that the "overall budget has increased by 26 per cent."

She said that was in addition to $391 million in funds for park roads announced in the 2014 budget.

Is Aglukkaq correct — the agency's budget has gone up, despite the cuts?

Spoiler alert: The Canadian Press Baloney Meter is a dispassionate examination of political statements culminating in a ranking of accuracy on a scale of "no baloney" to "full of baloney" (complete methodology below).

This one earns a rating of "some baloney."

Here's why.

THE FACTS

There are different ways of looking at a department's budget.

The first is to consider how much money was available for Parks Canada to spend in a given fiscal year.

Put another way, how much did Parliament approve for the agency to spend? In the main budgetary estimates released this week, the government said it intends to spend $737 million on Parks Canada this year, the increase mainly due to money earmarked for fixing highways and bridges.

How much the agency will actually spend won't be known until next year.

Every year, going back a decade, that amount has turned out to be less than the amount available.

The budget the agency was approved to spend in 2014-15 was $800 million.

Compared to the amount promised this year, that would indicate a decrease this year of approximately 7.8 per cent.

If however, we compared the amount the agency actually spent last year ($671,387,496) with what the government is proposing, there would be an increase of 9.8 per cent.

This comparison is problematic — it does not allow for inflation, and again lacks the critical element of what the agency will actually spend.

What about the government's overall budgetary record and Parks Canada? The year before the government took power — 2005-06 — Parks Canada spent $535 million of its approved budget.

In the 2014-15 fiscal year, Parks Canada reports spending of $671 million.

In straight dollars, that's a 25.4 per cent increase — essentially what Aglukkaq claimed.

Taking inflation into account with the Bank of Canada's inflation calculator, the increase looks more like 8.4 per cent between 2005 and 2014.

There are some other factors to consider when talking about Parks Canada's budget, particularly whether the department's responsibilities are expanding.

While the budget has effectively gone up by 8.4 per cent over a decade, it has also taken on major new projects.

Agency must move money around to balance needs

The development of Toronto's Rouge National Urban Park, for instance, will require approximately $14 million every year until 2022.

The government hived off $6.3 million from the Parks Canada budget in 2014-15 to the Trans Canada Trail Foundation, an outside charitable organization.

Parks Canada has also said that of its $15 billion in buildings, almost half are in "poor to very poor condition."

It must move money around as it balances the need for safeguarding those assets with delivering other programs.

All of this helps to explain why winter services in many parks have not been reinstated, even as the budget technically increases.

Eric Hebert-Daly, national executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, said the group has seen a gradual reduction in how much the agency spends on environmental monitoring as it juggles its budget.

"It was a world-leading system up until recently, and it's been really scaled back significantly," Hebert-Daly said.

"The preventative care for parks is going to be significantly reduced if your monitoring capabilities are not as strong."

THE VERDICT

It is difficult to come to the conclusion that the budget has increased over last year without knowing how much the agency will actually wind up spending.

But Aglukkaq is correct that the budget has gone up, when compared to its level in 2005-06, even when taking into consideration inflation.

Still, a major new park project, and infrastructure in dire straits inside the system, means that an increased budget and cuts are not mutually exclusive inside Parks Canada — hence Aglukkaq's use of the word "overall" budget.

For these reasons, her claim that the Parks Canada budget has increased by 26 per cent contains "some baloney."

Methodology

The Baloney Meter is a project of The Canadian Press that examines the level of accuracy in statements made by politicians. Each claim is researched and assigned a rating based on the following scale:

• No baloney — the statement is completely accurate.
• A little baloney — the statement is mostly accurate but more information is required.
• Some baloney — the statement is partly accurate but important details are missing.
• A lot of baloney — the statement is mostly inaccurate but contains elements of truth.
• Full of baloney — the statement is completely inaccurate.

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Polls suggest Liberals, Conservatives still neck and neck: Éric Grenier

The wintry chill over Ottawa has been accompanied by a freeze in national voting intentions, as the Liberals and Conservatives remain stuck in a close race, according to recent polls.

Justin Trudeau's Liberals continue to hold a narrow lead over the Conservatives, with the support of about 34 per cent of Canadians against 33 per cent for the Tories, according to ThreeHundredEight.com's latest poll averages. The New Democrats stand in third place with 19 per cent support.

The Greens and Bloc Québécois follow with seven and five per cent support, respectively.

The Liberals and Conservatives have been steady in the polls, with the Liberals averaging between 33 and 34 per cent since the beginning of January and the Conservatives between 32 and 34 per cent since the beginning of December. In the last 15 polls conducted in the country, the Liberals and Conservatives have each led in seven, with one putting the two parties in a tie.

Thomas Mulcair's New Democrats have been slipping, as the party had been polling at 21 to 23 per cent between November and January. In particular, the NDP has lost support among male voters in recent weeks to the benefit of the Liberals.

With these levels of support, the Conservatives could win between 126 and 164 seats, putting them still below the majority target of 170 seats, if an election were held today. The Liberals could win between 107 and 145 seats. Because there is a fair degree of overlap between the two parties, both could reasonably expect to win in a snap vote, but Stephen Harper's Conservatives would be narrowly favoured to come out ahead in the seat count.

The New Democrats could win between 47 and 77 seats, with the Greens on pace to capture two and the Bloc winning between one and eight seats.

The Conservatives continue to hold substantial leads in their traditional strongholds, with 53 per cent support in Alberta and 43 per cent in the Prairie provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Liberals are in second place in both regions with 23 and 31 per cent, respectively. The New Democrats are polling in third with 14 per cent in Alberta and 17 per cent in the Prairies.

The Liberals have a comfortable lead of their own in Atlantic Canada, where they are polling at around 51 per cent support. The Conservatives trail with 22 per cent, with the NDP not far behind at 18 per cent.

The contests in the battleground provinces of Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia appear much more heated.

The Liberals are ahead in British Columbia with about 33 per cent support, with the Conservatives behind at 29 per cent and the NDP at 22 per cent.

The polls have been notably consistent in the province, with the Liberals leading in the last six. This is unusual considering the three-way race and the relatively smaller sample sizes in B.C., but the drop in the NDP's support may be easing the way for the Liberals. In the last seven polls, the party has registered between 17 and 22 per cent support, compared with a range between 21 and 30 per cent in the previous seven surveys. Support for the Greens, at 13 per cent, also put a dent in the NDP.

In Ontario, the Liberals and Conservatives are mired in the tightest race in the country. The Liberals currently have about 38 per cent support, with the Conservatives at 37 per cent. Since mid-December, the gap between the two in the poll average has never exceeded 1.5 points, and in the last 10 polls, the Liberals have led in six and the Conservatives in four.

The New Democrats are struggling with an average of 17 per cent support in Ontario. They have been stagnating in the province for some time, registering under 20 per cent support in 28 of the last 36 polls stretching back to July 2014.

The Liberals narrowly lead in Quebec, with an average of 29 per cent to 26 per cent for the New Democrats (though with a lead among francophones, the NDP has a comfortable edge on the number of seats it could win). Despite the close margin, the Liberals have led in eight of the last 10 polls.

But the race in Quebec has been four-headed, with only two of the 12 most recent polls giving any party more than 33 per cent support. Behind the Liberals and NDP, the Conservatives stand at 21 per cent and the Bloc Québécois at 19 per cent. The Bloc is floundering, registering between 17 and 19 per cent in nine of the last 10 polls — and under 18 per cent in six.

There is some debate over whether the Conservatives are truly making serious inroads in Quebec, with some polls showing much more modest increases than others. But five of the six polling companies that have polled since the beginning of 2015 have recorded growth for the Tories in the province since the end of last year. Nevertheless, there are some signs the Conservative surge may have levelled off or even receded.

At the heart of the disagreement over the Conservatives' standing in Quebec is methodology. The party has averaged 23 per cent in interactive voice response polls (which are conducted over the phone) so far in 2015, compared to 17 per cent in online polls.

There is no question, however, that the national race remains effectively tied between the Liberals and Conservatives. Arguably, this would give the two parties an incentive to play it safe. Instead, the jockeying of recent weeks — anti-terrorism legislation, identity politics and Eve Adams's floor-crossing — suggest they are doing anything but.

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ThreeHundredEight.com's vote and seat projection model aggregates all publicly released polls, weighing them by sample size, date, and the polling firm's accuracy record. Upper and lower ranges are based on how polls have performed in other recent elections. The seat projection model makes individual projections for all ridings in the country, based on regional shifts in support since the 2011 election and taking into account other factors such as incumbency. The projections are subject to the margins of error of the opinion polls included in the model, as well as the unpredictable nature of politics at the riding level. The polls included in the model vary in size, date, and method, and have not been individually verified by the CBC. You can read the full methodology here.

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Stephen Harper, Mohamed Fahmy and the unmade phone call

The opposition continues to hammer away at Prime Minister Stephen Harper over his apparent refusal to directly intervene in the plight of Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who is on trial in Egypt.

Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair asked Harper about the case twice in question period Tuesday.

"Has the prime minister of Canada spoken with President el-Sissi of Egypt about getting Mr. Fahmy back to his home in Canada?" asked Mulcair, pointing out that Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott spoke to the Egyptian president on a number of occasions on behalf of an Australian journalist involved in the same case (who was subsequently released).

"We've raised this at all levels and will continue to do so in the ways that we believe are effective," answered Harper.

"So it's a no," retorted Mulcair, before moving onto another line of questioning.

Mulcair presses Harper on Fahmy1:57

Fahmy was arrested and jailed in Cairo on Dec. 29, 2013, along with two other Al-Jazeera English colleagues. They were covering protests against the ouster of then president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Australian, Peter Greste, was eventually deported home.

Fahmy was accused of broadcasting "false news" and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been declared a terrorist group. He spent 411 days in jail before being released on bail last week to face a retrial.

Calls for a direct appeal

Whether Harper has spoken to el-Sissi remains unclear, though there are indications he has written letters to the Egyptian president about Fahmy's predicament. 

Fahmy's case is just the latest case of a Canadian or dual citizen whose situation abroad has led to loud calls for Harper's intervention. But in the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, for example, the prime minister has remained reticent about any involvement on his part.

But why would Harper be so reluctant to reveal what he has done, leaving the impression of a leader who doesn't care about Canadians in trouble abroad?

The opposition only has theories.

"Maybe he has a lack of confidence in his relationship with these leaders or he is just not interested in doing that," said NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Marc Garneau notes things have changed since Fahmy was first arrested.

"The excuse that Fahmy was a dual citizen was valid until he was no longer a dual citizen," said Garneau. Fahmy gave up his Egyptian passport at the beginning of the month in hopes of being immediately deported to Canada. That didn't happen.

Garneau is at a loss to understand why the prime minister hasn't followed the Australian prime minister's example, because, he said, all other options have been exhausted.

But other observers aren't so sure.

"I never quite believe everything I read. There's always another shoe that's going to fall somewhere," said Keith Beardsley, a former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to Harper. 

Because there are such large gaps in the publicly available information about cases like Fahmy's, it is hard to know what goes into Harper's calculations, he said. The prime minister is briefed by diplomatic and security officials about these types of incidents and much of what he hears is classified.

"There's going to be all sorts of stuff in there that you and I would have no clue about. And some of it could be, if you go to high profile, what are the negative consequences for the guy over there?" said Beardsley.

On top of that, Beardsley added, Harper isn't a micro-manager when it comes to issues with foreign governments.

Ferry de Kerckhove agrees with Beardsley on that point. 

Hand's-off approach

"It's in keeping with his kind of a low-key approach to those kinds of issues. Leaving others to do their jobs," said the former Canadian ambassador to Egypt, who has also acted as Harper's sherpa at the Francophonie summit.

In Fahmy's case, according to de Kerckhove, his dual citizenship complicated matters and reduced Harper's influence.

"He probably doesn't want to get involved in the nitty-gritty of an issue in which there's not much to gain, because he knows at the end of the day that the system of the country involved will prevail over whatever he may be saying," he argued.

And now that the impediment of dual citizenship is gone?

"I think maybe there's a sense that [Harper] respects, however wacko it may be, the justice system of another country," said de Kerckhove.

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Spy agency monitors millions of Canadian emails to government

Canada's electronic spy agency collects millions of emails from Canadians and stores them for "days to months" while trying to filter out malware and other attacks on government computer networks, CBC News has learned.

A top-secret document written by Communications Security Establishment (CSE) analysts sheds new light on the scope of the agency's domestic email collection as part of its mandate to protect government computers.

CBC analyzed the document in collaboration with U.S. news site The Intercept, which obtained it from U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Canada's electronic spy agency watched visits to government websites and collected about 400,000 emails to the government every day, storing some of the data for years, according to the 2010 document. Today's volume is likely much higher given online traffic growth.

Common online activities involving the government include Canadians filing their taxes, writing to members of Parliament and applying for passports.

The program to protect government servers from hackers, criminals and enemy states is raising questions about the breadth of the collection, the length of retention and how the information could be shared with police and spy partners in other countries.

Chris Parsons, an internet security expert with the Toronto-based internet think tank Citizen Lab who viewed the document, said there are legitimate purposes for the agency to monitor your communications with the government.

"But you should be able to communicate with your government without the fear that what you say … could come back to haunt you in unexpected ways," says Parsons.

"When we collect huge volumes, it's not just used to track bad guys. It goes into data stores for years or months at a time and then it can be used at any point in the future."

CSE says "specific communications" are examined if they are "suspected to relate to a cyberthreat that could harm government of Canada systems and networks."

Metadata kept 'months to years'

The surveillance service vacuums in about 400,000 emails to and from the government every day and then scans them using a tool called PonyExpress to look for any suspicious links or attachments, according to the top-secret document.

On mobile? Click here for the CSE document

That automated system sifts through them and detects about 400 potentially suspect emails each day — about 146,000 a year. That system sends alerts to CSE analysts, who then can take a closer look at the email to see if it poses any threat.

Only about four emails per day — about 1,460 a year — are serious enough to warrant CSE security analysts contacting the government departments potentially affected.

"It's pretty clear that's there's a very wide catchment of information coming into [CSE]," said Micheal Vonn, policy director at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

CSE holds on to emails for "days to months," while metadata -- the details about who sent it, when and where -- is kept for "months to years," according to the document. The agency also records metadata about visits to government websites.

Under the Criminal Code, CSE is barred from targeting the content of Canadians' emails and phone calls, but it gets special ministerial exemptions when protecting government IT infrastructure.

The agency refused to provide specifics about the amount of email and metadata collected, and when they are deleted, insisting such information "could assist those who want to conduct malicious cyberactivity against government networks."

IT security analysts at CSE only use and retain information "necessary and relevant to identify, isolate or prevent harm to government of Canada computer networks or systems," the agency told CBC News in a written statement. Data that poses no threat or is not relevant to that goal "cannot be used or retained, and is deleted."

Civil liberties lawyer Vonn argues that there's "much more" Canadians should be told about the agency's collection of their data, such as how long it's held, without putting national security at risk.

"It's distressing that we have to find [details] out in dribs and drabs as opposed to having the appropriate discussion nationally and democratically.

"If we're going to have trust that our agencies are acting responsibly, we need as much light shone on the architecture, the laws and the rules, as possible," said Vonn.

Length of retention an 'utter mystery'

Cybersecurity experts say storing emails and data helps IT security analysts fix vulnerabilities.

CSE, under its mandate to protect federal government computer networks, vacuums up emails sent to and from the government and monitors website traffic, looking for malware and intrusions. (Canadian Press)

"Sometimes when they discover something they want to go back and check if this was the beginning or first of this particular kind of attack, so the data is actually very useful to them," said Queen's University computing professor David Skillicorn.

Still, documents suggest some of the data can be held as long as decades or even indefinitely.

CSE, under its cyberdefence mandate, is allowed to hold on to personal information — email addresses, IP addresses and other identifiers — for up to 30 years, then transfer it to Library and Archives Canada, according to the agency's own description of its databanks in the federal Info Source publication.

Vonn says it's "an utter mystery" why the government would need to retain personal information of those implicated in a potential cyberthreat for that long.

80 million probes a day

Skillicorn says the documents illustrate the great skill with which CSE is protecting both government websites and email traffic.

"I was impressed by the level of sophistication and cleverness and thoughtfulness," said Skillicorn. "It really does try to do everything that's possible to do in some very, very clever ways."

CSE says it's trying to set up defences because government networks are probed up to 80 million times a day by hackers looking for network vulnerabilities.

Skillicorn says most of those probes involve automated attempts equivalent to harmless mosquito bites, with only a tiny fraction meriting action.

Canada's economic activities, international roles and technology know-how make it an attractive target for cyberattacks by other countries, criminals and hackers.

On mobile? Click here for CSE's response

A single breach in the government's online armour can leave it vulnerable, with the potential that a wealth of sensitive data could end up in the wrong hands.

Soon after the 2010 top-secret presentation, several key federal departments — including the finance department and Treasury Board — suffered major attacks by hackers that forced them offline.

More recently, Canada Revenue Agency shut down in 2014 during income-tax season when a hacker broke into the site via a security bug known as Heartbleed.

Still, Vonn says while government cybersecurity is essential, citizens' level of trust in the post-Snowden era remains low, with many Canadians concerned about CSE activities.

"Accountability is central to understanding how this is keeping us safer and not in fact endangering our cybersecurity, our liberty, our ability to dissent."

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CBC is working with U.S. news site The Intercept to shed light on Canada-related files in the cache of documents obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The CBC News team — Dave Seglins, Amber Hildebrandt and Michael Pereira —collaborated with The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher to analyze the documents.

For a complete list of the past stories done by CBC on the Snowden revelations, see our topics page. Contact us via email by clicking on our respective names or search for our PGP keys here.

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