The province’s Natural Resources Department has confirmed 16 cases of rabies in red foxes since January, 12 of which were found in Labrador City and Wabush.

Prior to this year, the last confirmed case was in 2005.

But chief veterinary officer Dr. Hugh Whitney said it’s not only the number of cases that is worrisome, but also how widespread the disease is across Labrador.

“This one is quite a significant (outbreak),” said Whitney from his office in St. John’s. “There are few places left on our map that it hasn’t touched.”

“We have 15 cases, which is not a large number, but 15 cases over a very large geographic area suggests that it could really be 100 cases, could be 500 cases in reality.”

Whitney said that 10 people have been vaccinated for exposure to rabies this year for incidents ranging from bites to handling the carcasses.

“Rabies is a significant concern because… we have the added problem that it affects all mammals. It can get into dog populations. Dogs can affect people or foxes can attack people,” said Whitney, adding that the disease is preventable in humans, but needs to be identified.

Whitney, who has been the province’s chief veterinary officer for more than 26 years, said the disease’s seven-year absence is not unusual, as outbreaks run in cycles. But officials have little foresight, as a number of factors makes it difficult to predict when the next outbreak will happen.

The Arctic serves as a permanent reservoir for Canadian fox rabies, said Whitney. He said Arctic foxes bring the disease down into northern Quebec and Labrador and infect the region’s red foxes. If the red fox population is high and food is scarce, the diseased animals will start moving away from the woods and into communities, he said.

“So, for the years between 2005 and 2012… there could have very well have been an outbreak of rabies, but there wasn’t enough foxes around for the foxes to actually come to the communities and exhibit the outbreak,” said Whitney.

Whitney said public education is paramount when dealing with an outbreak, as little can be done to prevent or eradicate it.

“We cannot influence the wildlife populations, nor their movement,” said Whitney.

He said the disease has twice been quarantined on the island of Newfoundland, but the same is not possible for Labrador.

“We cannot get rid of it, that’s a reality in our wildlife populations.”

Whitney said the chances of rabies moving to other provinces this year is not likely, but not non-existent.

“Certainly we’ve seen nothing to suggest… that it’s going to go any further than northern Quebec and Labrador,” said Whitney.

Rabies starts almost 100 per cent of the time with a bite, Whitney explained. The virus then travels through the nervous system to the brain, causing the infected animal to become rabid or dumb, he said.

Whitney said the disease can last anywhere from two weeks to six months.

The minister says she will likely decide at midnight whether to table legislation when the House resumes Monday ordering about 4,800 workers at CP rail back to work.

She says with the Canadian economy still fragile, the country cannot afford a prolonged strike.

The strike, which began Wednesday, is not the only labour issue facing the Harper government this week.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley is facing growing pressures to make adjustments to new, stricter employment insurance rules unveiled last week.

While the opposition parties say they will fight the changes, the most concerning aspect for the government may be the long-term political impact in Atlantic Canada, where the changes bite the hardest.

The regional premiers have voiced their concerns with the changes, some warning about a possible political backlash.

But Thomas Adams, the State Department’s special co-ordinator for Haiti, told The Canadian Press that “realistic” estimate should not be seen as daunting to countries like Canada that are heavily invested in helping the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, still struggling after its devastating 2010 earthquake.

Nor should it deter investors, who are crucial to Haiti’s long-term recovery, Adams added, as long as the country builds credible democratic institutions.

“There is no reason why Haiti can’t become a middle income country. But because they’re starting so low, it’s going be to be 25-30 years even if they have good economic growth,” Adams said in an exclusive interview, after two days of meetings in Ottawa with various government officials.

“It’s not a quick fix. These problems in Haiti – their educational system, their health system, cholera, the infrastructure – these aren’t quick fixes,” he added.

“It’s good to be realistic. That’s not to say we’re not making progress each year … But overall, you’re not going to see a Haiti the way you’d like it for a while.”

Forty years ago, Haiti was slightly ahead of the Dominican Republic economically, said Adams, with 20 large American corporations setting up their Caribbean headquarters there. The two countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

Adams sees economic growth for Haiti in textiles, agriculture and tourism.

“Haiti needs private investment. All the donor money, as generous as it is – and I think Canada and a lot of countries have been very generous – isn’t enough to fix Haiti.”

The U.S. and Canada, said Adams, remain in lock-step when it comes to helping Haiti recover from the devastating January 2010 earthquake that left 300,000 dead and displaced 1.5 million. Canada has pledged more than $1 billion to Haiti, making it the second largest aid recipient after Afghanistan.

That co-operation extends to co-ordinated messaging of Haiti’s political leaders, to break the political paralysis of the last year – a crisis that has raised serious questions about the country’s ability to stave off corruption and govern itself effectively.

That crisis appeared to ease earlier this month when President Michel Martelly swore in a new prime minister, Laurent Lamothe, whose predecessor resigned in February after barely four months on the job.

The turmoil rendered Haiti’s government rudderless and left billions of dollars of donor pledges in limbo.

“That’s pretty much over,” said Adams. “There’s a truce between the president and the parliament. It seems they’re willing to work together. The president has confidence in the new prime minister.”

With Lamothe confirmed, parliamentary amendments will pave the way for elections of senators and local officials, as well as paving the way for reforms of the court system, said Adams.

Throughout it all, the Canadian and U.S. governments have continued to “give co-ordinated messages on some sensitive topics.”

The underlying message can be boiled down to this: reign in the corruption and work together politically.

“That’s one of our constant messages,” Adams explained.

“We don’t say, if you’re not going to do X, Y, and Z we’re going to cut off all of your aid. But we do say, and Canada says, and everybody else says, over time businessmen and donors are going to go elsewhere if you’re not seen as making your best efforts to curb corruption to bring in the rule of the law and be democratic.

“I think they’re hearing that.”

Diane Ablonczy, Canada’s junior foreign affairs for the Americas, said Haitians are “crying out for leadership” so Canada is urging its leaders to step up and provide it.

“We are really urging the new government as its formed to emphasize and really roll up its sleeves and emphasize the need to deliver results for strong institutions in Haiti.”

Adams also lauded Canada’s former governor general, Haitian-born Michaelle Jean, as a key player in that co-ordinated communication effort with Haiti’s leadership.

Jean, now the UNESCO Special Envoy for Haiti, travels to Haiti again this week, for meetings will political leaders. She’ll also take part in events to highlight programs that help curb malnutrition and poverty.

Earlier this month, Jean laid bare her frustration with the pace of change in her native country during a recent speech in Ottawa to government officials and non-governmental organizations.

“The aid and handout system has become kind of a business model, a scheme used by some to wheel and deal as it generates opportunities for embezzlement and corruption,” Jean said the text posted on her website.

“It can’t go on like this.”

Adams said that’s the message the U.S., Canada and other allies continue to deliver to Haiti.

“We’re on the same message too. Again, cut the chaos,” he said. “That’s all we’re saying there: come on guys, let’s keep our eye on the ball here.”

With her home resting on a crest of granite and grass at the water’s edge, the longtime resident of Peggy’s Cove has enjoyed its breathtaking views since moving into the community at age 21.

But Dauphinee, whose family runs the cove’s restaurant, is worried about the fate of the light that has guided fishermen and sailors since 1868, and become a symbol of the region’s rich seafaring history.

She and the 35 people who live in the tiny shoreline community fear they could lose the beacon and see it replaced by a light pole after Ottawa deemed it and more than 500 other lighthouses surplus in 2010.

They and groups across the country have until Tuesday to file a petition with Parks Canada to have the surplus lighthouses declared heritage properties, which could spare their destruction and transfer them to private interests.

Dauphinee filed hers earlier this month, adding the Peggy’s Point light to the more than 250 lighthouses that had been petitioned by last week.

“It’s an icon — if it doesn’t represent Canada, it certainly represents Nova Scotia,” she said from her home, stressing that the loss of the lighthouse would have broad implications.

“It was a working fishing community and that’s becoming less and less because of the decline in the fishery. So, I have no idea what could happen to Peggy’s Cove if that lighthouse is eliminated too.”

Groups are fighting to save the lighthouses, which have become lucrative tourist attractions and emotional touchstones for communities even if they are used less as navigational aids.

The Fisheries Department has been getting out of the lighthouse business for decades, arguing that they are expensive to maintain, at times inaccessible and have been outpaced by technology.

Andrew Anderson of the real property management branch at Fisheries says the department has been transferring lighthouses to private groups for the last 20 years.

“Most people over the age of 12 have a device in their pocket that’s GPS enabled, so it’s generally accepted that the government doesn’t need to own these types of properties and structures in order to effectively deliver a navigational aid service,” he said.

“But we’re acutely aware that these are structures of tremendous historic importance and sentimental attachment to the communities.”

Some groups argue that Canadians have more than a sentimental connection to the lights, which acted as guideposts to mariners in the country’s earliest days.

Barry MacDonald, president of the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society, said his group will file petitions for about 50 of the province’s 150 lighthouses. Another 21 have been independently petitioned.

MacDonald said he’s optimistic they will be able to save many of the smaller structures, but that larger ones could be lost because of a lack of funding to maintain them.

Groups or individuals would have to take on the cost of caring for a lighthouse if ownership is transferred — an expensive proposition for small, rural communities that are home to many of the structures.

MacDonald says historic lights, like those in Louisbourg, George’s Island and Sambro — the oldest operating light in North and South America as it dates back to 1758 — could be allowed to crumble into the ground.

“This is the probably the single most important architectural form we have left in the country,” he said.

“These buildings were erected when the country was literally being settled and it was the waterways that people used to settle this country. … They were integral to the founding of this country.”

Bill Rompkey, a former senator who led a committee that recommended lighthouses not be de-staffed, agrees and stresses that they serve as a very real aid to seafarers and pilots who rely on them for weather and directional guidance.

“It’s part of the coastal soul, it’s part of the coastal spirit,” he said. “Some of them are quite striking, especially the older ones, and all of that will be lost if you simply go with a light on a stick.”

Groups must also submit a business plan to Fisheries by 2015 for a lighthouse to complete the designation under the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act.

That may not be an issue for Peggy’s Cove if the province comes through on a bid to acquire the light, which attracts 500,000 visitors a year.

Tourism Minister Percy Paris says he is continuing talks with Ottawa to hammer out a deal to assume ownership of it.

“We want to end up in possession of that light,” he said late last week, as they hash out legal, environmental and surveying issues before ownership is transferred.

“It’s one of the most photographed places in North America … so I think that tells you how much we value the Peggy’s Cove light.”

The couple died Friday after a blaze broke out at a Hawkesbury seniors’ home. The local fire chief confirmed there were no sprinklers in the facility.

The deaths happened the same day a coroner’s inquest into a fatal 2009 fire at an Orillia, Ont., retirement home — which didn’t have sprinklers either — released its recommendations.

The coroner’s report called for retroactive installation of sprinklers in facilities for vulnerable people like retirement homes — a recommendation the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs wants implemented as soon as possible.

It’s the fourth inquest since 1980, when 25 seniors perished in a Mississauga home, said Jim Jessop, chairman of the association’s fire prevention committee.

Jessop, who fought another fatal blaze five years ago in Niagara Falls, said he can’t believe that nothing has been done to prevent more deaths.

“After witnessing senior citizens that are frail and were scared and were covered in smoke being carried down ladders at our fire in 2008 at the retirement home, it is just morally reprehensible and criminally negligent for this not to be done,” he said.

There have been 48 deaths since 1980, Jessop said, adding the government must act now.

“We don’t know what to say anymore or what to do,” he said. “We don’t know why the government has taken so long.

“And certainly the question has to be begged: if this had been school children and schools, would we still be waiting 30 years later to retroactively install sprinklers in schools?”

In April, the government announced a “technical consultation” to identify fire safety improvements in residences for seniors, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. One of the key areas for improvement include the installation of automatic sprinklers and other fire safety retrofits.

But the review is expected to take a year to complete and that’s too long, said Jessop, who is also Niagara Falls’ deputy fire chief.

“The issue of retroactively installing sprinklers in these types of facilities — retirement homes and nursing homes — has been studied to death,” he said.

The association wants the review to be expedited and its results implemented before the end of the year.

Niagara Falls and Orillia now require sprinklers in retirement homes, Jessop said. The association is asking fire chiefs across the province to inspect seniors homes in their area and test the evacuation plans.

If it appears that the plans aren’t sufficient, the association is asking the chiefs to either order the homes to increase staffing at night — which they have the right to do under the Ontario fire code — or ask the homes to install sprinklers.

Some may argue that installing sprinklers is cost-prohibitive, he said, but that’s not true.

“At the end of the day, if that is going to be the defence, then what cost are we putting on the lives of senior citizens in these homes?” Jessop said.

Any nursing or retirement home built after 1997 must have sprinklers, but those built before that year aren’t required to install them, he said. There are about 4,000 such homes in Ontario.

Friday’s fire at the Place Mont-Roc home, about 100 kilometres east of Ottawa, forced nearly 90 residents to evacuate.

The cause of the blaze, which broke out on the third floor of the facility, is unknown and the Ontario Fire Marshal has been called in, said Hawkesbury Fire Chief Ghislain Pigeon.

The retirement home had been inspected in recent months and was up to code, he added. A sprinkler system was not part of building requirements.

The June 2009 blaze at Orillia’s Muskoka Heights Retirement Residence killed four people and left six elderly residents critically injured — a toll fire officials called needless.

Several of the 39 recommendations made by the coroner’s inquest were related to automatic sprinklers and the retrofitting of such sprinklers in retirement homes and assisted living centres.

The jury recommended that smoke detectors be installed in all sleeping rooms, and automatic door closers and hold open devices be installed throughout the facilities.

The jurors also recommended that all fire departments should develop and implement regular mock evacuation programs for retirement residences.

Halifax Regional Police say Corey Duane Lucas, 36, died after being shot in an apartment at 2711 Clifton Street around 8:40 p.m.

A second man, also in his 30s, was taken to hospital, but is expected to recover from his injuries.

Police are searching for two men between the ages of 20 and 30 in connection with the homicide.

Officers say the suspects were seen fleeing the apartment building on foot towards St. Albans Street and were both described as wearing athletic clothing.

Police say investigators have determined the incident is drug-related.

Police say officers were called to O’Connell Drive in Corner Brook around noon on Saturday following reports of an unresponsive man lying in the street.

The man was taken to the hospital, but police say he was dead upon arrival.

Police have not release the victim’s identity.

An autopsy will be conducted on Monday.

(VOCM)

The Cole Harbour RCMP say the crash happened on Ridding Road in Eastern Passage.

Police say Bodo Trenholm, 52, died when the Honda Odyssey van he was driving left the road and crashed into a ditch.

The Mounties say the victim was the only occupant of the vehicle.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation.

Halifax Regional Police say three men were walking in the area of Creighton Street just before midnight when they heard gun shots.

Police say one man was shot in the back and the group fled the area.

Investigators say the 19-year-old victim was found lying in the area of Charles and Gottingen streets and was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

This is the third shooting in Halifax since Thursday.

Shots were fired on nearby Clifton Street Friday night, killing one man and injuring another.

On Thursday afternoon, a man was injured after he was shot on Quinpool Road.

For the second time in a year, the company is expected to announce it’s laying off a major chunk of its workforce, perhaps as early as this week.

A RIM spokesperson wouldn’t comment on published reports, which suggested the cuts could range anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000.

One veteran tech analyst said roughly 5,000 employees will be cut in phases over the next six months in almost every area of the company. The sole exception, predicted the analyst, would be anyone working on BB10 or the qnx software it’s based on.

After RIM’s most recent quarterly earnings, where the company announced a loss of $125 million, CEO Thorsten Heins suggested that RIM needed a shift.

“It is now very clear to me that substantial change is what RIM needs,” said Heins, who also spoke of improving efficiency in the production process and supply chain, in particular, in an effort to save $1 billion by the end of 2013.

With some estimates suggesting RIM’s share of the worldwide smart phone market could drop below 5 per cent this year, axing well over 10 per cent of the company’s global workforce of 16,500 is crucial, say analysts and investors.

“I think they need to come down to 12,000,” said activist investor Vic Alboini, president and CEO of Jaguar Financial, who agitated for the removal of former co-chairs and co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. Lazaridis is currently vice-chair; he and Balsillie stepped down in January as co-chairs and co-CEOs.

One source close to the company told Reuters news agency the impending layoffs could hit as many as 6,000 people and affect RIM’s legal, marketing, sales, operations, and human resources divisions.

“The strategic question is: are you accelerating into a better future or shrinking to a niche operation,” said the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the job cuts.

The company needs to buy itself some breathing room before the launch of phones running its long-awaited BB10 operating system, expected to be released some time in the fall, says analyst Kevin Dede of Auriga USA.

“It makes absolute and perfect sense to make cuts. There are going to be a few quarters until BB10 is launched, then it’s going to be a few quarters to roll out BB10 to all the regions where it will matter,” said Dede, who added it has likely taken Heins this long to figure out just where to cut after taking over in January.

If the company streamlines the number of phones it offers, it could easily cut engineering and manufacturing staff, suggested Dede. BB10 phones will likely remain the company’s high-end offering once they’re launched. But on phones running the current BlackBerry 7 or BlackBerry 7.1, there’s no need to have scores of models as they do now.

“If I were them, I’d have maybe two phones on BlackBerry 7 and two phones on BB10. The entry level, cost-effective ones, and the high end. There’s no need to have more than that,” said Dede, who pointed to similar steps by Steve Jobs when he rejoined Apple in the early 1990s.

“They were all over the place. He was able to cut it right down,” Dede said.