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One day after arock slideinBanff National Parkkilled a person and injured three others, rescue crews are set to resume search efforts for other potential victims north of Lake Louise, Alta., on Friday.

“Parks Canada wardens and RCMP remained on site overnight,” read a joint statement issued byParks Canadaand the RCMP on Friday morning. “Parks Canada visitor safety teams will continue working today with support from Canada Task Force Two (CAN-TF2), a national disaster response team.

“CAN-TF2 is conducting infrared flights, through their partners in the Calgary Police Service, in a continued effort to complete a thorough assessment.”

The statement added that a geotechnical engineer will also conduct a slope stability assessment.

Helicopters were seen flying over the area late Thursday to look for potential missing hikers.

Emergency crews were first called to an area near Bow Glacier Falls at about 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. The site of the slide is located about 37 kilometres north of Lake Louise along the Icefields Parkway.

Two victims of the slide were airlifted to hospitals, while another was taken to hospital by ground ambulance. First responders found one person already dead at the scene. Global News has learned that the person was Jutta Hinrichs.

Hinrichs’ friends told Global News she had just returned to Canada from Peru last Friday. They said she was an accomplished occupational therapist who had “a beautiful, caring soul with a huge smile and love of people and nature.”

Officials have said anyone who has not been able to account for loved ones believed to be in the area of the slide should contact Parks Canada.

“Bow Lake remains closed to all visitors,” officials said Friday, noting that a no-fly zone remains in place in the area to ensure public safety and to allow for emergency operations.

“Alpine Club of Canada guests staying at Bow Hut are safe. Visitors staying at Bow Hut will be able to exit on schedule via the usual route, which is unaffected and safe to travel. ”

The Icefields Parkway remains open but officials warned that there could be intermittent traffic disruptions in the area.

A Wasaga Beach man is facing multiple charges related to an assault deemedintimate partner violenceby Ontario Provincial Police.

On Monday, officers from the Collingwood and The Blue Mountains provincial police detachment responded to a disturbance at a location in Collingwood.

What started as a verbal dispute had escalated into a case of intimate partner violence, police say.

Officers say a male suspect assaulted a female, damaged her personal property, and was found in possession of a spring-assisted knife with a brass knuckle handle.

During the arrest, police say the individual resisted officers and damaged a police cruiser.

Officers allege the individual then uttered threats against an officer.

The man was then found to be in breach of existing prohibition orders and undertakings, police say.

A 35-year-old man from Wasaga Beach was arrested and charged with assault, uttering threats, mischief, unauthorized possession of a firearm, and failure to comply with a release order, among other charges.

The accused was held in custody pending a bail hearing at the Ontario court of justice in Barrie on Tuesday.

Police say no further details will be released to protect the victim and the integrity of the court process.

One of Winnipeg’s most-decorated professional athletes is coming home.

The Winnipeg Jets announced Friday morning that Jonathan Toews is returning to his hometown next NHL season and suiting up for the Jets on a one-year contract.

Toews, 37, who grew up in St. Vital, is known throughout the hockey world for his impeccable resume — which includes three Stanley Cups in five years as captain of the Chicago Blackhawks and international acclaim for Canada, earning two Olympic gold medals, a World Championship gold, World Cup of Hockey gold and two World Junior gold medals.

His trophy case includes Conn Smythe, Selke and Mark Messier Leadership awards.

“We are excited to add a proven winner like Jonathan Toews to the Winnipeg Jets,” general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff said.

“It will be a unique opportunity for Jonathan to play for his hometown team. His talent, drive and experience will be a great complement to our club. We will withhold further comment until July 1.”

Health issues caused Toews to step back from his 16-season career with the Blackhawks, with ailments including chronic inflammatory response syndrome and long COVID keeping him off the ice, although he had been actively working toward an NHL comeback in recent years.

“I’m grateful to be making my return to the NHL with the Winnipeg Jets,” he said.

“It’s very special to come home and play in front of my family and friends in Manitoba. The Jets have been on the rise over the last few seasons, and I’m eager to join the group and help however I can.”

Demand forelectric vehiclesaround the world appears to be on the decline, according to a recent survey from Shell that says cost and affordability are key concerns for buyers.

At the same time, the Canadian government confirmed this week that it is exploring a new consumer rebate for electric vehicles.

Statistics Canadareported that in the first quarter, or three months, of this year, 37,299 new zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) were registered, making up 8.7 per cent of all new motor vehicle registrations, down more than 23 per cent compared with one year prior.

For the month of April, the latest update from Statistics Canada, EV sales accounted for just over 7.5 per cent of all vehicles sold in Canada.

New data shows that overall, consumers who haven’t bought an EV already say it’s primarily due to the costs of purchasing and owning one for the long term.

Shell Global released the results of a surveyon Tuesday showing falling demand for electric vehicles, especially in Europe and the United States, with affordability the main reason cited, along with charging network reliability.

Meanwhile, the report shows that more than two-thirds of current electric vehicle owners reported feeling less worried about charging concerns than a year prior, and nearly three-quarters say the options and availability of public charging points have improved.

Although the Shell Global survey did not poll Canadians, there are consistent findings in other recent reports that did.

An AutoTrader surveyconducted in 2024 found that non-owners in Canada are hesitant to purchase an electric vehicle due to “limited travel range/distance, inadequate availability of charging stations, higher purchasing costs, and the belief that EVs are unsuitable for cold weather.”

“Overall, while almost half of non-EV owners are open to buying an EV for their next vehicle, interest in EVs has declined for the second year in a row,” Tiffany Ding, director of Insights and Intelligence at AutoTrader, said last year.

AutoTrader also confirmed at the time that there was a direct correlation between lower gas prices and lower demand for electric vehicles, and vice versa.

In early 2022, demand for electric vehicles peakedworldwide as the price of traditional gasoline spiked and consumers sought alternatives.

This was in addition tostrained supply chains, which made traditional gas-powered vehicles more expensive along with other products, and a lack of preparedness for the change in consumer demands made it harder for car companies to keep up.

By the end of 2022, things changed direction as supply chains caught up with demand, and affordability started to take a toll on households amid high inflation and rising interest rates.

The AutoTrader survey found that drivers instead were looking more and more to hybrid options, including plug-in hybrids, which offer the benefits of both a gas engine and electric by not relying as much or at all on a charging network and consuming less traditional gasoline overall.

Prices have also been gradually declining for some electric vehicles, so it is possible car companies are taking note of a drop in demand and cost concerns.

In some cases, this has also meantdelaying plans for expanding EV production.

According toRates.ca, the average price for a new EV in Canada as of December 2024 was $70,682, which is down 7.8 per cent from a year earlier, while used options averaged $42,045, a drop of 18.4 per cent from 2024.

Canadians can currently purchase some of the cheaper electric vehicle options brand new, starting at roughly $40,000. There is also the cost of charging, which may include the purchase and installation of a home charger, vehicle maintenance specific to electric vehicles, as well as depreciation over time, which differs compared with some gas-powered versions.

AutoTrader’sprice index for the first quarter of 2025pinned the national average price for a new vehicle at $65,564 — down almost three per cent year over year — and the national average price for a used vehicle at $36,823, a drop of 2.2 per cent year over year.

Responding to reporters on Tuesday outside the House of Commons, Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin said “there will be a consumer rebate,” with few other details given for now.

“Will it be named, iZEV? That I can’t tell you,” Dabrusin said when asked by reporters earlier this week about a future rebate program for EVs.

This followed a meeting in which the Opposition Conservatives called forcurrent electric vehicle mandatesto be scrapped, including the Trudeau government’s goal to have all new consumer passenger vehicles and light trucks sold in Canada be zero-emission by 2035, citing concerns about the Canadian auto sector andU.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.

As of now, Canada and the United States have imposed on each other a 25 per cent tariff on all automotive imports that do not comply with the current North American trade deal known as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).

Canadian auto makers and other industry leaders also support ending these mandates, suggesting that the lack of consumer rebates or other incentives makes these goals unrealistic and a “policy failure.”

The iZev, or Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles, program was launched by the federal government in 2019 but ran out of funding by January of this year. Dabrusin’s comments suggest it will be replaced with a new strategy aimed at making EVs more affordable for some Canadians.

The iZev was intended to act in addition to provincial electric vehicle rebates where available.

Previously, the iZEV program offered up to $5,000 off the cost of a new electric vehicle, and over the nearly six-year life span, it cost the federal government nearly $3 billion.

In a moment that caused both sides of theHouse of Commonsto erupt into laughter, Prime MinisterMark Carneymistakenly gave his own title to Speaker of the House of Commons Francis Scarpaleggia.

Carney, who was answering a question from the opposition during question period in the House of Commons on Tuesday, started his answer by addressing the Speaker, as required by House of Commons rules, which state all questions and responses must be directed through the Speaker.

In English, MPs typically refer to a man serving in the role of Speaker as “Mr. Speaker,” while in French, they direct questions and answers through “Monsieur le président.”

“Mr. Prime Minister,” Carney began instead.

Immediately realizing his gaffe, Carney put his finger up and said, “Sorry!”

A smiling Carney pointed at himself while MPs from both sides of the House erupted in laughter.

“Battlefield promotion there,” Carney said, also laughing.

Correcting himself, Carney continued, calling Scarpaleggia “Mr. Speaker.”

When Dr. Kate Runkle was head of the pediatrics department atKelowna General Hospital(KGH) between 2019 and 2021, she says she constantly pushed for changes to the pediatric staffing and service model.

“I did presentations at the highest levels that I could to advocate change,” Runkle told Global News.

However, Runkle says those calls for changes to Interior Health (IH) administration continually fell on deaf ears.

“It was like screaming underwater, like we just didn’t get anywhere,” Runkle said.

The unsuccessful pleas from pediatricians working at the hospital started in 2019.

Feeling unheard and devalued for several years, according to Runkle,  pediatricians began to resign.

In 2023 alone, seven pediatricians handed in their resignations. Runkle was one of them.

“At a certain point, it just became unsafe,” Runkle said. “I use the analogy of working at a construction site and if you are alerting your staff and your boss about unsafe work conditions over and over again and you’re not being heard — I mean, you would quit. You would go somewhere else.”

The unsafe conditions Runkle is referring to is the physical layout of the five different areas that all too often, a single pediatrician has to provide coverage in.

“In simplest terms, imagine you are working in a space that is five separate areas,” she said. “These areas are physically in different buildings in the hospital. They’re on different floors. They’re physically separated from each other, and in each of those spaces, is the potential for a critically-ill child or newborn.”

Those spaces include labour and delivery, the pediatrics unit, neonatal intensive care unit, the emergency department and the adult ICU,  where critically-ill children are placed given the lack of a pediatric ICU at KGH.

Runkle says being in different areas at once is impossible, prompting physicians to make very difficult decisions on which child will receive their limited care.

“Not only does there need to be a complete shift in the way that we provide service at Kelowna General Hospital, but in a way that the administration responds to our concerns before we can move forward,” she said.

While the resignations did cause occasional disruptions of pediatric services, on May 26, they resulted in the closure of the entire pediatric ward for at least six weeks.

IH has said the decision was a difficult one to make but necessary to protect pediatric coverage for critical services, such as high-risk deliveries.

Among the changes that pediatricians have long called for is a staffing model that has at least two pediatricians on shift 24/7.

“We started advocating for double coverage. We actually voluntarily split ourselves in half in 2015 to allow for two people on during the day to cover both the neonatal side and the pediatric side in the hospital. So we did that on our own volition,” Runkle said. “We started advocating to completely split the services for 24 hours a day, starting in 2019.”

Instead of looking back internally at how the situation was managed and why those concerns expressed by doctors weren’t taken seriously, both B.C.’s health minister, Josie Osborne, and IH CEO Susan Brown have repeatedly blamed the crisis on the current global doctor shortage.

“In a time of a global shortage of physicians and a shortage of pediatricians….they have made a difficult decision to close the pediatric facility,” Osborne said at a unrelated news conference on May 22 when asked about the situation by Global News.

Brown also continues to blame the crisis on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In 2019, some of the pediatric doctors came forward with some concerns about some resources they wanted to see and some planning started but then of course the pandemic came into play,” Brown told Global News in a Zoom interview on June 5.

Brown is set to retire in December.

The B.C. Conservatives have called on her resignation to fast-track a leadership transition to get a new CEO in place sooner to tackle the crisis.

Brown, however, continues to be backed by Osborne and the chair of  the IH board of directors, Dr. Robert Halpenny.

In an email to Global News on Wednesday, IH stated one new pediatrician is slated to start working at the hospital this summer with two more expected to join in September.

But as Kelowna’s population grows, so does the number of pediatric patients and complex medical cases, which will require a lot more resources and a bolstered delivery model to meet the growing needs.

“That’s been one of the biggest challenges for us on the ground, is that there are just more kids in Kelowna, and therefore more kids who are getting severely, severely sick,” Runkle said. “We are not keeping up.”

As IH looks ahead at a leadership transition with Brown’s end-of-year retirement, Runkle and her colleagues hope whoever takes over makes pediatric care in Kelowna a priority.

“There needs to be a champion within the administration who is making a long term plan for pediatric service delivery in Kelowna…that includes vision for the future,” Runkle said.

Manitoba RCMP say they believe a double homicide in Victoria Beach early Friday morning was targeted.

Officers were called to a scene on Hampton Road around 2 a.m., where they found the bodies of a 29-year-old Winnipeg man and a 41-year-old woman from the Manitoba community.

Police said they believe the suspect, reportedly driving a white truck, headed south on Highway 59 before police arrived.

“We know that this incident occurring in such a small community will be concerning to many,” RCMP Sgt. Evan Wilcox said in a statement Friday.

“We want to reassure residents as well as cottagers who may be heading up to that area this weekend, that these murders appear to be targeted, and at this time we believe risk to public safety is low.”

Wilcox, with the Mounties’ major crime services, said more information will be provided as it becomes available.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Powerview RCMP detachment at 204-367-8728 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.

In every book lies a new adventure.

Ten-year-old Surena has a stack of books to check out from the Okanagan Regional Library that will take him to outer space and back.

“I like to read science, space and some graphic novels,” said Surena.

Alongside his Grade 4 class from the Balsam School, Surena is signing up for the library’s Summer Reading Club, with goals bigger than his stack of books.

His classmates, strewn throughout the library, all had their noses in books on the second last day of school before summer vacation.

Their teacher, Graham Gregson, says that since getting their students involved in the summer reading program, they have noticed a considerable difference when they return in September.

“There’s a concept called the ‘summer slide,’ which involves a little bit of academic loss if students aren’t working on their literacy skills,” said Gregson.

“The summer reading club offers that opportunity to keep kids engaged in literacy in a fun way.”

Nine-year-old Sequoia is planning her summer vacation, one book at a time.

The students make up a small number of the young readers joining this year’s Summer Reading Club, which begins on June 23.

“In 2024, we broke all of our records of participation from previous years,” said Danielle Hubbard, CEO of Okanagan Regional Library. “We had over 8,000 kids go through the program, and we had almost 30,000 kids and parents come to our programs.”

They hope to beat that number this year as young readers explore the world with every page turned.

Police in Windsor, Ont., are investigating after an officer fatally shot a dog during a call Thursday afternoon.

Just after 2 p.m., officers responded to a report of a man in crisis on the 2800 block of Tecumseh Road West.

According to police, the man resisted arrest, assaulted one officer and threatened to kill another when officers arrived. Police used a stun gun to try to gain control of the situation.

During the incident, police say the man ordered his pitbull mix to attack the officers. The dog bit at least one officer.

After non-lethal efforts failed to stop the attack, police shot the animal.

A 45-year-old man was taken into custody under the Mental Health Act and also arrested on several charges, including assaulting a police officer, uttering threats to cause death and failing to comply with a release order.

No other injuries were reported. The investigation remains ongoing.

Leslie Sparks never imagined she would be in this position.

More than a year after her son, Tyrell Beals, was killed in the community of North Preston, outside Halifax, she is still searching for answers.

“My son’s gone; I have no answers. He leaves behind a beautiful family, friends, loved ones, his beautiful kids, who were crying all the time (asking), ‘Nanny, when’s Daddy waking up?'” she said.

“And I’ve been waiting. It’s been a year now, and I’ve never gotten that RCMP visit.”

The 36-year-old died after an altercation on the night of May 8, 2024 on Downey Road.

At the time, officers said they found Beals, who lived in the nearby community of Westphal, suffering from gunshot wounds.

After performing first aid, they say they rushed him to Dartmouth General Hospital.

But Sparks says that when she arrived at the hospital to find her son unconscious, she didn’t see any evidence he had been shot.

“The police just telling me, ‘Oh, he got shot here, he got shot here.’ I saw no bullet-holes on my son. So what am I, a blind mother?” she said.

“I want to see accountability. Like if there were mistakes made on the scene. I’m a mother, I need to know these things.”

Beals died shortly after, and Sparks says he was rushed out of the hospital room before family could say goodbye.

“We need to be treated equal. We were kicked out of the hospital. Why, why?”

Sparks says her son was a brave, kind and generous soul who cared deeply about others. But now his spirit will have to live on in memory.

“You know he wrote his own songs and rapped them out, and I listen to them and they break me down,” Sparks said.

‘They break me down but they’re amazing. (He was) a father, a rapper, a pillar to our family. I had a beautiful son.”

For more on this story, watch the video above.