A regulatory announcement is good news for area residents who still rely on rabbit ears to watch TV.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is strongly discouraging networks from pulling the plug on over-the-air broadcasting.
“The CRTC heard from many Canadians who did not wish to lose access to free over-the-air television,” said the regulator in a news release issued earlier this year. “It has therefore put broadcasters on notice that should they decide to shut down their over-the-air transmitters, they will lose the regulatory privileges that come with over-the-air transmission.”
Those privileges, the CRTC noted, include a channel’s mandatory inclusion in basic cable and satellite packages. It also includes a channel’s ability to insert its own commercials into programs being shown on another channel at the same time.
Flin Flon area residents can still pick up CTV using an antenna. It is the only over-the-air channel still available in the region following CBC’s withdrawal in 2012.
At the time, CBC did not face the threat of disciplinary action that CTV now faces.
In 2009, CTV announced it would turn off its northern Manitoba transmitters on Sept. 1 of that year but later committed to keeping them on.
In northern Manitoba, CTV is also available over the air in Snow Lake, The Pas and Thompson.
Flood outlook
The Manitoba government forecasts a “minor to moderate” flood risk this year in the northern parts of the province.
A government news release issued last week stated that spring run-off has not yet started in the northern and northwest regions as temperatures continued below freezing.
“The risk of ice jam-related flooding is mostly low, with the exception of the Saskatchewan River at The Pas and Carrot River as the spring melt is just underway,” said the release.
While the Saskatchewan and Carrot rivers have substantial snow on the ground
that has not melted, the release said winter precipitation records and soil moisture before freeze-up were near normal and the run-off potential is near normal.
Nuclear opposition
Creighton wasn’t alone in facing opposition to the concept of nuclear waste storage.
“Nuclear is in the news, making some residents of Northern Ontario nervous,” Mary Katherine Keown wrote in Ontario’s Sudbury Star newspaper last week.
Keown referred to an anti-nuclear-waste Facebook group in Elliot Lake, one of nine communities still involved in a learning process with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO).
One Ontario opponent, Ed Burt, told Keown that NWMO is “pushing the debt load on some future generation” and taking advantage of communities with weak economies.
But Elliot Lake mayor Dan Marchisella told Keown his community has “a responsibility” to engage with NWMO given that the community was once “the uranium capital of the world.”
NWMO withdrew from Creighton last month after concluding the region’s geology could not safely accommodate an underground nuclear-waste repository.
Tan ban
Saskatchewan plans to develop regulations that will ban the use of indoor tanning beds by youth the age of 18.
The regulations are expected to be finalized in time for implementation this summer.
“Our young people are particularly vulnerable to the effects of indoor tanning, and this is one way we can help them lower their risk of melanoma,” Health Minister Dustin Duncan said.
Duncan said the province has learned much by carefully monitoring developments on the issue across the country, and that Saskatchewan’s regulations will be crafted to take other jurisdictions’ experiences into consideration.
The regulatory development process will include opportunities for consultation with interested stakeholders.
In late 2014, Manitoba announced its intention to ban minors from commercial tanning beds, citing the increased risk of skin cancer.
Reserve mourns
The northern Manitoba reserve of Shamattawa is mourning the suicides of four young people over the past six weeks.
CBC reports that two young men killed themselves in February while two young women took their own lives around mid-March.
“We are at the stage where we can’t wait until the next victim,” Grand Chief David Harper of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO), which represents northern reserves, told the network.
Harper is calling for more support services for the reserve, which has about 1,000 residents.
Churchill MP Niki Ashton, who represents Shamattawa in Ottawa, told CBC the federal government must provide more assistance to the community.
