Montreal Encourages The Hiring Of Newcomers, Guilty Plea To Oil Leak In Saskatchewan, Canadian Women Rescued In Ghana

Ahmad Moujtahed

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LOCAL

Mayor Valerie Plante announced earlier this week that the city of Montreal will launch a public awareness campaign to encourage employers to hire newcomers.

The campaign will ensure the development of an inclusive organizational culture across the city; a step which would lead to inclusive non-discriminatory hiring practices.

The $1.6-million program, funded under an agreement with the provincial immigration department, will bring together business leaders from small, medium and large companies, to implement inclusive hiring strategies in the business community.

The city organized a workshop in the multimedia district west of Old Montreal to discuss the reasons behind the exclusion of immigrants from the job market in Montreal and to come up with suggestions for the awareness campaign.  

NATIONAL

Calgary-based Husky Energy Inc has recently pleaded guilty to permitting the spill of 225,000 litres of diluted heavy oil to the North Saskatchewan River near Maidstone, Saskatchewan in July 2016; a leak which fouled the source of drinking water for thousands of people.

The Crown withdrew other charges against Husky, including not immediately notifying authorities and not taking immediate remedies to prevent or counteract the effects of the spill.

The damaged pipeline was allowed to restart in October 2016 after being repaired and inspected. The company carried out a cleanup which recovered 90 percent of the oil.

However according to a victim impact statement filed recently by three Indigenous communities, the cleanup was inadequate and incomplete. Birds, fish, and wildlife still suffer the effects of oil contamination, and as a result Indigenous communities have lost traditional use of their land.

INTERNATIONAL

Two Canadian women were rescued by Ghanaian Police on June 12 after being abducted from the Royal Golf Club in the city of Kumasi, Ghana early last week.

Ghana’s information ministry says national security operatives completed the rescue mission in the country’s south-central Ashanti region. The ministry also revealed the identities of the suspects. One of the suspects may have been linked to a separate kidnapping case involving multiple Ghanaian girls.

The two women, aged 19 and 20 had been volunteering for the charity Youth Challenge International before they were kidnapped.

Global Affairs Canada says it’s providing assistance to the two women and their families, but did not provide any further details due to privacy concerns.