A first limited shipment of bivalent COVID-19 vaccines has arrived in Ontario, Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said Thursday, as the province reported 74 more people died with the illness over the last week.
In a brief post on Twitter, Jones said the new doses will be offered to especially vulnerable people, like long-term care residents, and to frontline health-care workers.
"More information about when others can book appointments will be available in the coming days," Jones added.
She said last week the province has been working with public health units to make sure doses are ready to be administered once they receive them from the federal government.
Health Canada approved Moderna's updated vaccine earlier this month. It targets both the original virus and the Omicron variant BA.1 that emerged late last year and drove the largest wave of infection and hospitalization in the pandemic.
The most recent wave of the illness to hit Ontario — which started on June 19 and appears to have already crested — is being fuelled by other Omicron variants, BA. 4 and BA. 5, the province's chief medical officer has said.
While the new shot doesn't directly target dominant Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which the U.S. approved an updated shot for last week week, Pfizer recently submitted an application for Health Canada approval for its BA.4-5 vaccine Friday and Moderna is expected to soon.
Meanwhile, Public Health Ontario reported another 7,419 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province over the last week.
Some 1,248 people with the illness are currently in hospitals, three more than at the same time last week. Of those patients, 135 were being treated in intensive care, the same number as last Thursday. Forty-seven needed a ventilator to breathe.
The test positivity rate was 12.3 per cent, up from 11.3 per cent last week on roughly the same number of tests.
The additional deaths of people with COVID-19 over the last week push the province's official toll to 14,129.
Roblox users will soon be able to give their avatars facial expressions that mimic the player’s own, the platform announced today.
The update, announced today at the Roblox Developer Conference, will be available only to select creators on the platform for now, but is expected to be widely available to all Roblox users by early 2023.
Roblox, an online game platform on which people can either play games or create them, has 52.2 million users per day. The company’s initial demographic was minors, but in recent years it has become a popular destination for teens and young adults, and over half its users are now over 13. The rich, varied virtual worlds created on the site have been considered a precursor to what we might see and experience in the metaverse, with opportunities for connection with other people and personalized avatars that players can use across games.
The update is similar to the Apple iPhone’s Bitmoji, which uses depth sensing to measure and track head and facial movements. Previous avatars on Roblox have had expressions, but Bjorn Book-Larsson, vice president of product and avatars at Roblox, described them as “two-dimensional.”
The Roblox update would mean users could smile, wink, or scrunch their forehead, and their avatar would mimic them in real time. Eyes could scan, heads could shake, and eyebrows and ears could wiggle with the same results. And soon, Roblox says, users will be able to speak directly with other avatars as in other multiplayer video games. In short, the changes might blend our real-world human experience with that of the metaverse and make avatars more like ourselves—for better or worse.
Until early 2023, these updates will be kept within a tight circle of users and creators, which Book-Larsson says is meant to maintain “trust and safety.” “We expect the unexpected,” he says. Part of that lag is so that Roblox’s safety team can make sure expressions are safely deployed within its huge demographic of minor users. For example, Book-Larsson says, one option for a facial expression—sticking your tongue out—was scrapped because of its possible misuse as a sexual overture.
The slow rollout will also provide a chance to see how older users will take to their avatars’ ability to emote emoting. Book-Larsson says that the fastest-growing demographic of users is 17- to 24-year-olds, a cohort that has many social media and gaming platforms to choose from. The hope is that they will be “more engaged” with emotional avatars, Book-Larsson says, and in turn, spend more time on the platform.
One expert, however, says Roblox needs to be careful about how expressions are read across cultures. “Reading a smile as happy is a very Western stereotype,” says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist and the author of How Emotions Are Made. Since 44.7% of Roblox users live in non-Western countries, that’s a valid concern.
Book-Larsson says that smiles and other expressions communicating happiness are the most popular ones on Roblox now. But in some cultures, a smile can convey invitation or supplication. Even if two players are Western, they may experience a smile differently: perhaps menacingly, perhaps as sarcasm.
Book-Larsson says he recognizes these possible consequences of making avatars more expressive and emphasizes that it’s part of the reason why the rollout is so slow. And as Feldman Barrett points out, verbal communication is key to accurate emotional understanding. Book-Larsson says avatars will be able to do that via voice chat soon. “We want to make sure it’s safe,” he says. “We’re about to find out.”
The resources that police forces in Nova Scotia need to protect the public — and how they'll pay for those resources — will soon be finalized through new standards, in a major shift from years of informal agreements that RCMP leaders say have become a "drain."
The way that policing is structured and delivered in the province has come up several times at the Mass Casualty Commission leading the public inquiry into the Nova Scotia mass shooting of April 2020.
But the leaders of some municipal police forces say there's a lot at stake if the new standards include paying the RCMP for specialized services, like major crime, canine, or forensic identification teams — services the Mounties have always provided at no charge.
"If you were to have a murder in this town, it can quickly go into the millions of dollars. You would cripple the town, you would absolutely cripple the police department," Julia Cecchetto, the retired Kentville police chief, said in a commission interview last August.
How tracking services started
Throughout the inquiry, senior RCMP officials have explained details of the services provided to the province, as well as the value of those services.
Nova Scotia's former commanding officer, Lee Bergerman, recently told the commission that the force started tracking the requests for specialized services from municipal police agencies in January 2021 because "every year we started off with a deficit."
Chief Supt. Darren Campbell, the former support services officer for Nova Scotia, has told the inquiry these services are "very expensive" as they require highly trained officers that are often diverted from other front-line duties, sometimes for hours or days at a time.
According to a tracking document released through the inquiry, the RCMP logged 84 requests for help from municipal police forces between January and December 2021. The municipalities that made the most requests were Amherst with 26, and New Glasgow with 16 — but each of the 10 municipal services, with the exception of Annapolis Royal, requested help at least once.
(CBC)
The most frequently requested service, by far, is forensic identification, which was requested 54 times in 2021.
Chief Supt. Chris Leather, the former RCMP criminal operations officer in Nova Scotia, testified in July that those requests can require officers to travel several hours "to fingerprint paper bags and windows" for shoplifting and other low-level property crimes.
Leather said this is both a "significant waste" of a highly trained officer and demonstrates the need for those municipal agencies to have their own general duty members trained to process crime scenes.
Municipalities sometimes rejected
Since the RCMP started tracking service requests, some municipal forces have told the commission they've either been refused those special services or made to wait days. Three of the municipal requests for service were "rejected," according to the RCMP tracking document.
"If we had a homicide or if we had a serious barricaded person requiring the Emergency Response Team, people would eventually show up," said current Kentville Police Chief Jim Butler.
"But it's the mid-levels, you know things like the robbery we had, looking for a dog. I knew not to call [forensic identification] because they weren't going to come, we knew."
As a result, several municipal police chiefs have said they now rely on neighbouring municipal forces that may have more resources.
Campbell said that in the Northeast Nova RCMP district, which covers multiple counties in the northern mainland of the province, about 25 per cent of the four-person forensic identification team's time was being spent on requests from municipal agencies.
"So there is a drain there," Campbell said.
The RCMP's forensic identification unit on Downey Road in North Preston following the death of a 20-year-old man in 2016. (Anjuli Patil/CBC)
Campbell noted that the RCMP had no way to recoup those costs because the Mounties can't bill municipalities directly. Instead, they collect money from the province for the services they provide municipalities, communities or counties of various sizes under the Provincial Police Services Agreement (PPSA) or Municipal Policing Service Agreement (MPSA).
But, Campbell and Bergerman said because municipalities with their own police forces aren't a part of the PPSA, the Mounties have always just absorbed the cost of these special services into their own budget.
After decades of this informal arrangement there is "now an assumption that the RCMP is required, or responsible for, providing those specialised services to all municipalities," Hayley Crichton, executive director of public safety and security with the provincial Justice Department, said in a January interview with the commission.
"There's a significant reliance on our few key resources by municipal police," Crichton said.
However, Leather has said there's no legal obligation for the RCMP to provide these services to municipal agencies — and the province agrees.
RCMP Supt. Darren Campbell was the support services officer at the time of the April 2020 shootings, the third-highest ranking Mountie in Nova Scotia. (CBC)
In a briefing note for the justice minister updated last January, provincial justice department lawyer Barbara Kerr said there was no "legal requirement" for RCMP to assist any municipal agency under either the PPSA or the Police Act.
As of this week, the province has not billed any municipal agency for RCMP services.
Although Crichton said most provinces have formalized how and when municipal forces pay for RCMP services through memorandums of understanding (MOU), those have fallen by the wayside in Nova Scotia.
Campbell said in a commission interview that the lack of MOUs is "awful" and stood out to him when he arrived in Nova Scotia. But others have told the commission that is simply how things have always been done in the province.
Bill Moore, public safety project lead at the Halifax Regional Municipality and former deputy chief of Halifax Regional Police, said in a panel Thursday that it was a "collegial approach."
"There was not a lot of formality in relation to interoperability between agencies. Most was done by a smile and a handshake. Some even said some of the decisions were made on the golf course," Moore said.
Confusion among chiefs
Many municipal chiefs in the province have echoed Moore's impression during their interviews with the commission.
In his June testimony before the inquiry, Truro Police Chief Dave MacNeil agreed that the chiefs assumed the province was paying the RCMP for special service requests under the PPSA because all Nova Scotians pay provincial taxes for the provincial police force — "whether you have your own police or not."
MacNeil said while municipal chiefs are at the table with RCMP and the province to figure out a way forward on payment, "there's a cloud looming … it's kind of an unknown right now."
Amherst Police Chief Dwayne Pike said in a January commission interview he's now looking for a formal MOU with Truro police for use of their canine unit and forensic identification team, including payment, "because of the concern whether or not the RCMP might be able to supply those things for us when we need it."
The question of how municipalities with their own forces will pay for RCMP special services is tied to ongoing work on updating policing standards.
The standards, which Crichton said in a commission interview were last updated in 2003, set a "minimum base requirement" that all agencies must meet across the province and cover things like canine units, exhibits, training and more.
Hayley Crichton, a senior official with the Nova Scotia Department of Justice, participates in a roundtable dealing with emergency communications within agencies at the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April 18/19, 2020, in Truro, N.S. on June 23, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan)
The province has attempted to update the standards for years, but Crichton said it wasn't until April 2021 that the Justice Department established two committees including people from municipal forces, RCMP, government and police boards to finally wrap them up.
On Thursday, the department said the standards are expected to be finished by the end of March 2023. They will be presented to the justice minister for review, with approved standards eventually becoming regulations under the Police Act.
In a commission panel Thursday, Chief Butler of the Kentville Police said these discussions of standards and who delivers services get to the heart of what Nova Scotians expect from their police.
"It's certainly normal for an agency like the size of Kentville to wonder will we exist 10 years from now? Or should we exist 10 years from now?" Butler said.
Councils could pay more
Councillors and mayors who spoke with CBC about this issue of special services said they hadn't been following the commission conversation closely, but they will keep an eye on how new standards could affect their budgets.
"It certainly could be a driver in costs, which you know any municipality is not looking forward to. But I guess the bottom line — you have to do what's fair when you require services," New Glasgow Mayor Nancy Dicks said this week.
Both Dicks and Amherst Mayor David Kogon said that although policing represents a major portion of their municipal budgets, there would never be a consideration not to call in the RCMP or another force in order to save money.
"The safety of our constituents is foremost. And so … we meet that demand every year through the taxes that we raise," Kogon said Thursday.
Kogon pointed out that any new cost agreement should go both ways, and ensure the Mounties pay when they use municipal services like Amherst's major crime unit team. The chiefs of Halifax and Truro police have already told the commission they currently send their canine units or special services to RCMP requests, at no cost.
The United States will boost its stockpile of at-home COVID-19 tests, ordering more than 100 million tests from domestic manufacturers, the White House said on Thursday, but warned it was a short-term solution.
U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked Congress for more pandemic money. It said last week it would request US$22.4 billion in emergency funding for COVID-19 relief ahead of a potential case surge in autumn.
"The Administration is acting, within its limited funding, to increase the supply of at-home COVID-19 tests in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) by purchasing over 100 million additional at-home, rapid tests from domestic manufacturers," the White House said in a statement.
The administration has warned it would be unable to provide enough tests, vaccines and treatments without more funding. Thursday's announcement comes a week after it suspended orders of free tests from its COVIDTests.gov website as of Sept. 2.
"While insufficient to adequately replenish our existing stockpile of at-home tests, this procurement will help meet some testing needs in the months ahead and will put us in a better position to manage a potential increase in testing demand this fall and winter," the White House said of the new tests.
It did not say if ordering from COVIDTests.gov, through which 600 million tests have been delivered, would resume as a result. It said last week that orders through the website would resume if Congress provides funding.
The administration is also launching a telehealth "Test to Treat" program that will allow people in 15 rural and high-risk communities to get tests delivered to their homes, use telehealth to consult a clinician, and get antiviral treatments prescribed and delivered if necessary at no cost, it said.
There are currently 2,800 "Test to Treat" sites where people can be tested at a pharmacy and immediately receive free pills if they test positive.
Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub and Susan Heavey in WashingtonEditing by Matthew Lewis
The 2022 NFL season kicks off Thursday with an anticipated matchup between the star-studded Buffalo Bills and defending Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams.
A new year of football means fresh opportunities to beat the bookmakers, so with that in mind, here’s an overview of the main futures markets for the upcoming NFL campaign.
Editor's Note: Gambling problems aren't only about losing money. They occur on a continuum, and can affect a person's whole life. To learn more about developing a healthy relationship to gambling, and to find resources for support, click here.
SUPER BOWL LVII ODDS & WIN TOTALS
THE FAVOURITES Buffalo Bills +600 (win total over/under 11.5)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers +700 (win total over/under 11.5)
Kansas City Chiefs +1000 (win total over/under 10.5)
Los Angeles Rams +1100 (win total over/under 10.5)
Green Bay Packers +1200 (win total over/under 10.5)
Los Angeles Chargers +1400 (win total over/under 10.0)
Bills vs. Bucs is the chalk Super Bowl matchup as the only teams with listed win totals of 11.5 and odds shorter than 10/1 to win it all. At one point when some actually believed Tom Brady had retired from football back in February, the Bucs had some serious value (upwards of +2500 depending on the sportsbook) but with No. 12 predictably returning to a strong Bucs team that value is long gone.
This top tier features the past three Super Bowl champions and three of the past four MVPs, including reigning back-to-back winner Aaron Rodgers. How will Green Bay’s superstar adapt to a receiving corps full of question marks after the departure of Davante Adams, though?
The Chargers, like the Bills, are a team on the rise still aiming to reach the same stratosphere their L.A. counterparts did one season ago. Justin Herbert on his rookie contract surrounded by a bevy of offensive weapons and an improved defence has the Chargers seeing plenty of action on the futures market.
CAN THEY COMPETE WITH TEAMS ABOVE? San Francisco 49ers +1500 (win total over/under 9.5)
Denver Broncos +1500 (win total over/under 9.5)
Baltimore Ravens +1800 (win total over/under 10.5)
Cincinnati Bengals +1800 (win total over/under 9.5)
Dallas Cowboys +2200 (win total over/under 9.5)
Philadelphia Eagles +2200 (win total over/under 9.5)
Indianapolis Colts +2500 (win total over/under 9.5)
Will Joe Burrow and the Bengals be able to replicate the success from last season? The 2018 Patriots are the only team since the Bills teams of the early 1990s to advance to a Super Bowl the year after losing the big game. Lamar Jackson, who some forget is younger than Burrow, is only two years removed from his MVP season and poised for a big year.
The Broncos and Colts acquired proven starting QBs in the hopes of putting those rosters over the top, while Trey Lance takes over in San Francisco. Jalen Hurts and the Eagles don’t garner the same type of attention as Dak Prescott’s Cowboys, however expectations are rising in Philly following an off-season full of blockbuster moves.
DARK HORSE CONTENDERS Cleveland Browns +2800 (win total over/under 8.5)
Arizona Cardinals +3000 (win total over/under 8.5)
Tennessee Titans +3000 (win total over/under 9.5)
Las Vegas Raiders +3300 (win total over/under 8.5)
New Orleans Saints +3500 (win total over/under 8.5)
Miami Dolphins +3500 (win total over/under 8.5)
New England Patriots +3500 (win total over/under 8.5)
Minnesota Vikings +4000 (win total over/under 9.5)
There’s a ton of potential value here, although these teams have been too inconsistent the past couple seasons to get a good read on. The Dolphins have a new coach known for his creativity whose working with Tua Tagovailoa and a revamped offence. The Saints have plenty of roster depth and an influx of starters returning from injury and/or joining the team in the off-season. Minnesota’s price jumps off the page, same with New Orleans. Neither team is favoured to win their division but both clubs looked quality in training camp.
Cleveland will be an interesting team to follow this season for many reasons. Notice the low win total paired with a comparatively short Super Bowl price? There’s a clear correlation there with the fact Deshaun Watson will miss more than half the season while serving his suspension. If the team can remain in playoff contention, the thinking is they’d hit peak potential and be a dangerous playoff team if/when Watson returns and plays like he did in Houston.
LONGSHOTS & BASEMENT DWELLERS Washington Commanders +6600 (win total over/under 8.5)
Carolina Panthers +6600 (win total over/under 6.5)
Pittsburgh Steelers +8000 (win total over/under 7.5)
New York Giants +8000 (win total over/under 7.5)
Seattle Seahawks +8000 (win total over/under 5.5)
Detroit Lions +10000 (win total over/under 6.5)
Jacksonville Jaguars +10000 (win total over/under 6.5)
Chicago Bears +10000 (win total over/under 5.5)
New York Jets +12500 (win total over/under 5.5)
Atlanta Falcons +12500 (win total over/under 4.5)
Houston Texans +17500 (win total over/under 4.5)
If any teams from this bottom tier go on an unexpected Bengals-like run it’ll most likely be Detroit, Jacksonville or perhaps the Jets once Zach Wilson returns from his knee injury. Those three teams are on clear upwards trajectories, while the odds also indicate the Texans, Falcons, Bears and Seahawks are projected to be near the bottom of the standings most of the season. The silver lining to a poor regular-season record this year is the fact there’s two stud QBs near the top the 2023 draft class in Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud.
DIVISION TITLE ODDS & PLAYOFF CHANCES
AFC EAST Bills -230 (make playoffs: -500 | miss playoffs: +360)
Dolphins +400 (make playoffs: +130 | miss playoffs: -160)
Patriots +500 (make playoffs: +160 | miss playoffs: -190)
Jets +2200 (make playoffs: +625 | miss playoffs: -1000)
Buffalo is the chalk pick for the Super Bowl so naturally they’re also expected handle business within their division for a third consecutive season. The Bills were a unanimous pick to come out on top of the AFC East this season, according to our Sportsnet NFL predictions panel.
AFC NORTH Ravens +140 (make playoffs: -160 | miss playoffs: +130)
Bengals +170 (make playoffs: -150 | miss playoffs: +120)
Browns +360 (make playoffs: N/A | miss playoffs: N/A)
Steelers +850 (make playoffs: +290 | miss playoffs: -380)
The Bengals shocked the league a year ago by exceeding expectations and earning a trip to a Super Bowl. Cleveland has one of the best offensive lines in the NFL but Deshaun Watson won’t debut for the Browns until at least Week 13 hence the absence of odds there. The quarterbacks will be interesting to watch in Pittsburgh with buzz growing around rookie Kenny Pickett, who’ll start the year on the bench. The Steelers don’t often go multiple seasons without winning a division title but how different will the post-Big Ben era be?
AFC SOUTH Colts -140 (make playoffs: -170 | miss playoffs: +140)
Titans +150 (make playoffs: -115 | miss playoffs: -115)
Jaguars +800 (make playoffs: +450 | miss playoffs: -650)
Texans +2800 (make playoffs: +1425 | miss playoffs: -3000)
Houston has longer odds to make the playoffs than half a dozen teams have to win the Super Bowl. Suffice it to say expectation are low for the Texans…but keep in mind that could mean the public will blindly disregard them, especially early in the season. Don’t let Davis Mills and a low win projection blind you. Houston will be feisty. The Titans have enjoyed six consecutive winning seasons plus two AFC South titles in a row and they’ve outplayed the Colts in recent years. Trevor Lawrence is no longer playing in the shadow of Urban Meyer, which could bode trouble for the rest of the division.
AFC WEST Chiefs +160 (make playoffs: -220 | miss playoffs: +175)
Chargers +225 (make playoffs: -170 | miss playoffs: +140)
Broncos +260 (make playoffs: -150 | miss playoffs: +120)
Raiders +650 (make playoffs: +165 | miss playoffs: -200)
It is conceivable all four teams finish the season with a winning record and overall it would be a legitimate shock if at least two teams within the stacked division made the post-season. Kansas City has finished above .500 in every year of the Andy Reid era and are looking to win their seventh straight AFC West title.
NFC EAST Cowboys +140 (make playoffs: -220 | miss playoffs: +175)
Eagles +150 (make playoffs: -200 | miss playoffs: +165)
Giants +500 (make playoffs: +210 | miss playoffs: -260)
Commanders +800 (make playoffs: +165 | miss playoffs: -200)
The Giants and Commanders will do their darndest to compete but it’s again looking like a two-team race this year. With the NFC getting weaker overall this summer, the Eagles have begun to emerge as a popular dark horse to come out of the conference.
NFC NORTH Packers -200 (make playoffs: -450 | miss playoffs: +330)
Vikings +275 (make playoffs: -130 | miss playoffs: +100)
Lions +900 (make playoffs: +425 | miss playoffs: -600)
Bears +1200 (make playoffs: +275 | miss playoffs: -550)
Green Bay has finished with 13 wins and a division crown in each year under head coach Matt LaFleur. This year’s edition of the team could be powered more by its solid defence, instead of Rodgers to carry the team.
NFC SOUTH Buccaneers -300 (make playoffs: -700 | miss playoffs: +475)
Saints +350 (make playoffs: +120 | miss playoffs: -150)
Panthers +1000 (make playoffs: +450 | miss playoffs: -650)
Falcons +2500 (make playoffs: +625 | miss playoffs: -1000)
Tampa is the biggest favourite to win their division and are the chalkiest projected playoff team. Atlanta is in a rebuild and have basically zero playoff aspirations this year. The same can’t be said for Carolina, though, and Baker Mayfield is a proven winner when healthy; Christian McCaffrey is also back healthy. New Orleans is a strong contender to return to the post-season despite those plus-money odds.
NFC WEST Rams +130 (make playoffs: -250 | miss playoffs: +205)
49ers +170 (make playoffs: -220 | miss playoffs: +175)
Cardinals +333 (make playoffs: +110 | miss playoffs: -140)
Seahawks +1400 (make playoffs: +450 | miss playoffs: -650)
Trey Lance’s transition to being the 49ers starter will largely determine how competitive the top of the division will be. If he doesn’t live up to the hype, it’ll remain the defending champ’s division to lose.
MVP ODDS
FRONTRUNNERS Josh Allen +600 | Patrick Mahomes +750 | Tom Brady +800 | Aaron Rodgers +900 | Justin Herbert +900 | Joe Burrow +1200 | Dak Prescott +1300 | Matthew Stafford +1400 | Russell Wilson +1400 | Kyler Murray +2000 | Lamar Jackson +2000 | Jalen Hurts +2500 | Derek Carr +2500 | Trey Lance +2800
A quarterback has been named MVP in each of the past nine seasons so it’s no surprise to see the frontrunners comprised exclusively of starting pivots. Rodgers (x4), Brady (x3), Jackson and Mahomes are all past winners.
Derrick Henry +4000 | Trevor Lawrence +4000 | Jonathan Taylor +5000 | Cooper Kupp +5000 | Kirk Cousins +5000 | Mac Jones +5000 | Tua Tagovailoa +5000 | Mitchell Trubisky +6000 | Matt Ryan +8000 | Deebo Samuel +8000 | Baker Mayfield +8000 | Jameis Winston +8000 | Carson Wentz +8000
The 27 players above are the only MVP candidates with listed odds shorter than 100/1.
Davante Adams (+10000) and Ja'Marr Chase (+12500) have the best odds among wide receivers once you get past Cooper Kupp and Deebo Samuel. After that there’s Stefon Diggs, Justin Jefferson, Michael Pittman, Tyreek Hill, D.K. Metcalf and Devonta Smith are each listed at +15000, however a WR has never won the award.
Cousins, Tagovailoa and Winston each boasts strong value and all have plenty of weapons on offence, including some of the most talented WRs in the NFL. This is also where you begin to see the skill position players like RBs Henry and Taylor and the defending Super Bowl MVP Kupp. Adrian Peterson in 2012 was the most recent non-QB to be named league MVP.
(Betting odds via Bet365 as of Wednesday and subject to change)
A leaked presentation reveals a recommendation to significantly increase the number of Codiac Regional RCMP officers policing the Moncton area.
The Codiac Regional Policing Authority has recommended adding 25 officers to the 147 it has now, as well an additional 18 civilian staff. The authority oversees the force that polices Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview.
The recommendation follows rising concern about public safety and a study looking at whether to switch to another police force for the Moncton area.
The proposal is expected to be presented publicly at the authority's Sept. 15 board meeting and would require approval by the three municipal councils during budget deliberations this fall.
Don Moore, the policing authority board chair, declined to comment on the specifics before next week's meeting.
Don Moore, chair of the Codiac Regional Policing Authority board, says 'budget options' are being prepared related to the recommendation. (Shane Magee/CBC)
Moore said the policing authority is preparing different "budget options" for consideration by the communities.
Mayors of Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview wouldn't comment Wednesday.
The recommendation was made at an Aug. 10 tri-community council meeting. The secretive meetings bring together council and staff from the three communities for discussions of common issues, though the public is barred from attending.
The recommendation calls for 10 more members of a community policing unit, 10 officers to revive the area's disbanded traffic unit and to increase visibility, and five focused on drug and property crimes.
The presentation says the civilians would include three court personnel, five investigation assistants, two analysts, three front desk/information processors, two communications positions, and three positions at the operational communications centre which takes calls from the public and talk to officers.
The total cost of adding 43 positions was not given.
In July, Moncton council was told a single officer and their equipment costs $183,000, meaning 25 more officers would cost about $4.58 million.
The policing authority's 2022 budget was $39.2 million, with about 70.7 per cent covered by Moncton, 18.3 per cent by Dieppe and the remainder by Riverview.
The number of officers has routinely been raised as an issue by Moncton Deputy Mayor Bryan Butler.
"We need more police officers," Butler said July 18.
He made the comments during a meeting on a public safety plan hat recommended more RCMP officers in neighbourhoods following a series of community meetings in Moncton's west end.
About 80 people attended a meeting in the Harrison Trimble High School auditorium in June where recommendations to address crime in Moncton's west end were outlined, including more RCMP officers in neighbourhoods. (Shane Magee/CBC)
The policing authority's recommendation to increase staffing stemmed from consultations that began last year with more than 80 individuals and organizations in the region as part of developing a new strategic plan.
Moncton-based marketing and communications firm Portfolio Solutions carried out the consultations and produced a report.
The report says common concerns include a lack of visibility of police officers, perceptions officers no longer respond to property crime, and lack of communication. There is also a concern about vigilante justice.
"In summary, the stakeholders engaged for this exercise believe strongly that the current police service in Greater Moncton lacks the visibility and community connectedness required to adequately deliver the policing services that residents and businesses are looking for," the report says.
Drugs, homelessness, mental health concerns
Organizations consulted indicated the rising safety and security issues are due to increased drug availability, a growing homeless population, and a growing challenge with mental health problems.
"Others added that there is an impression that, even when RCMP come to a situation dealing with homeless or mental health challenged individuals, nothing happens and there is no followup," the report states.
The consultant's report says anecdotes were given about businesses and residents that have stopped reporting problems to RCMP because police seem "uninterested in dealing with the situation or they just don't care."
Training at Depot, the RCMP's training centre in Saskatchewan, was temporarily halted during the early phase of the pandemic. (Rob Kruk/CBC)
It's unclear how readily the RCMP will be able to fill the Mountie positions if the recommendation is approved.
Early in the pandemic, RCMP temporarily halted training at its Depot centre in Saskatchewan.
Manitoba's justice minister last month wrote a letter to the federal minister of public safety, who oversees the RCMP, expressing concern about vacant RCMP positions in that province.
"Recent information provided by the RCMP suggests that over the next two years it is unlikely that the number of new recruits will be sufficient to fill even retirement vacancies," the letter posted on Twitter states.
Moore, the Codiac authority board chair, said he believes the RCMP would be able to fill new positions if they are approved.
He said the New Brunswick RCMP commanding officer has told him and the three mayors that half the positions could be filled within three months, with the rest filled within a year as is contractually required.
