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Quebec
Accommodate diplomas: report
QUEBEC CITY — The long-running debate over Quebec's so-called "reasonable accommodation" of immigrants came to an end last month with the release of the final report of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. Among the complaints heard by the commission during the months of hearings was the government's and professional associations' failure to recognize foreign credentials, such as medical licences. The final report recommends the government work to redress that problem.
New Brunswick
Pharmacists to write scripts
FREDERICTON — New Brunswick pharmacists will soon be permitted to prescribe drugs to patients with diagnoses from their physicians, announced Health Minister Michael Murphy last month after promising the government's support for legislation. New Brunswick's decision follows a similar move by Alberta, which became the first province to allow pharmacists to renew and initiate certain prescriptions in April. Ontario, BC, Nova Scotia and PEI are all considering similar laws.
Prince Edward Island
MDs sued for staying mum
CHARLOTTETOWN — A PEI woman has filed two lawsuits against four Charlottetown physicians and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for failing to warn her husband before a psychiatric patient killed him two years ago, reported The Guardian in early June. According to the claim, Arnold Wayne Sanderson, who's serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, repeatedly told the physicians he wanted to kill Shawn Smith.
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Nova Scotia
MP boils over on lobster warning
YARMOUTH — Liberal health critic and former Fisheries Minister Robert Thibault, of West Nova, took offence last month after federal Health Minister Tony Clement's office warned Canadians not to eat more than two lobsters' worth of the green part of the lobster, called a tomalley, because it could contain potentially deadly paralytic shellfish poison. "It's a very, very remote risk," Mr Thibault fumed during a health committee meeting, reported the Yarmouth County Vanguard, "but you may be putting a billion-dollar industry at risk in coastal Atlantic Canada."
Newfoundland
New money buoys pathology
ST JOHN'S — Pathologists in Newfoundland got a gigantic pay raise in May, and the move is paying off for the embattled province. Danny Williams's government, which is at the centre of an ongoing inquiry into a disastrous pathology error scandal, boosted wages by $73,000 and added lots of extra incentives, making the province's pathologists among the highest paid in the country. As a result, one of the two pathologists who recently resigned has changed his mind, and two new pathologists have been recruited to start next month.
The North
Feds pony up for drug treatment
KUUJJUAQ, QC — Two weeks after a Nunavik addictions and mental health centre director committed suicide, Health Canada pledged $30.5 million in new funding over the next five years for First Nations and Inuit addiction treatment under the National Anti-Drug Strategy. Kuujjuaq treatment workers were being counselled last month after the loss of treatment centre director and former Iqaluit Deputy Mayor Annie Gordon.
Compiled by Sam Solomon
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