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Newsstand: May 8, 2015
It's been a big week in Canada: most recently, today marks former teenaged Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr's first full day of freedom in more than 12 years. Meanwhile in Ontario, teachers' strikes are heating up, a woman is charged with fraud for collecting donations to help her fight an illness she doesn't have, and Dean Blundell is once again enjoying airwave success.
Parents and the provincial government know Ontario’s elementary school teachers are planning a province-wide strike that starts Monday, but don’t yet know what the nature of it will be: a full strike closing schools and keeping kids at home, or a “work-to-rule” strike wherein teachers stick to regulations on things like work hours and duties, gumming up the smooth functioning of the school. The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario will announce today what to expect from the strike. Legislation enacted since the last teachers’ strike requires the federation to give five days’ notice, but they circumvented that rule by refusing to announce what type of strike it would be. “We do not take strike action lightly and have been pushed into such action as a result of unrealistic and concession bargaining demands tabled by the Liberal government and the Ontario Public School Board Association,” wrote ETFO president Sam Hammond in a Thursday statement.
A Burlington woman is in legal trouble after allegedly lying about having a rare and severe neurological disorder in order to raise money from strangers. Cynthia Smith had raised $126,594 on her GoFundMe page as of Thursday, though the fundraising goal was set at $1.6 million. She’s facing charges of defrauding the public of more than $5,000.
After being fired from 102.1 The Edge in 2014 over homophobic remarks made on-air, Dean Blundell has been back on the radio for two months now. He took over Sportsnet 590 The Fan’s “Brady and Walker” old timeslot with his “Blundell & Co,” and his show increased its share of target audience 18-to-49-year-old males from March to April, and outpaced rival sportscaster Mike Richards’ show “Mike Richards in the Morning.”