Tenth NewsWatch – CP

Source: The Canadian Press – Broadcast wire
Nov 4, 2015

Justin Trudeau will govern with a bigger-than-expected 30-member cabinet.

That doesn’t include the additional roles he is taking on as the minister of intergovernmental affairs and the minister of youth.

Trudeau has put some veteran M-Ps in key roles — tapping Stephane Dion as his foreign affairs minister and Ralph Goodale to serve as the new public safety minister.

Some rookie M-Ps have landed top ministerial positions, with millionaire Toronto businessman Bill Morneau named finance minister and Jody Wilson-Raybould taking over the portfolios of justice and attorney general. (10)

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(Quebec-Police-Abuse)

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard has named lawyer Fannie Lafontaine to act as an independent observer as Montreal police investigate allegations of assault, sexual misconduct and other abuses of power against eight provincial police officers.

All eight officers work out of the detachment in Val-d’Or.

Couillard met with the chiefs of the Assembly of the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador in Montreal today and says his government will address relations between First Nations and police forces. (10)

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(Valeant-Pharmaceuticals)

A U-S Senate committee is requesting information on drug pricing from Quebec-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals and three other drug companies.

The request comes in the wake of several high-profile prescription drug price hikes.

There’s been a huge outcry over some of those increases, most notably the move by Turing Pharmaceuticals to raise the price of a drug that combats a deadly parasitic infection by five-thousand per cent after obtaining the rights to it. (10)

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(Ont-Deficit) (Audio: 78)

Ontario’s budget watchdog is sounding the alarm about the impact of slower economic growth.

Stephen LeClair warns there is a significant risk Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government won’t balance the books by 2017-18 as promised.

The financial accountability officer predicts slower economic growth will lead to as much as a one-billion-dollar drop in revenue in the current fiscal year. (10)

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(Europe-Migrants)

Hungarian prosecutors have accepted a request from Austria and are taking over the criminal case in which 71 refugees were found dead in the back of a truck in Austria.

Four Bulgarian men and one Afghan were arrested in Hungary in connection with the deaths.

The 71 bodies, many still unidentified, were discovered August 27th in a refrigerated truck parked in the safety lane of the main Budapest-to-Vienna highway. (10)

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(Britain-JK-Rowling)

Harry Potter author J-K Rowling says she has written part of a new children’s book, which she really loves.

Rowling tells the B-B-C she has not abandoned children’s fiction, even though she is now busy writing detective novels under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

Her agent says work on the children’s book continues and there is no publication date yet. (10)

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(NewsWatch by Dawn Kelly)

(The Canadian Press)

INDEX: NATIONAL