Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair addressed lawyers and jurists at Concordia University last year on the impact of Quebec’s Bill 96. (Photo: Martin C. Barry, Laval News)
Martin C. Barry
Although it may sound like somewhat of a cliché, ‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire’ might be the expression that best describes the overall mood last year.
After nearly three years of living through the Covid pandemic, a lot of people probably expected they’d be going from a bad situation towards some improvement.
But what with galloping inflation, shaky investment markets and new wars threatening to destabilize the world, 2023 turned into a year when it was hard to believe things would ever get back to normal.
January 2023
Storm fiasco galvanized demands for better air passenger rights
[31-01 p 3] Were you among the thousands of people from across Canada whose travel plans were overturned just before the Christmas season last year when airlines postponed or cancelled flights as a major storm wreaked havoc across Canada and the U.S.?
While Air Canada and other airlines got caught up in the ensuing mess, if anything it was Canadian low-cost carrier Sunwing that got hit with the most flack.
Gabor Lukacs, founder of the independent non-profit Air Passenger Rights group, took issue with Sunwing’s and the other airlines’ claims they were caught off-guard by the pre-Christmas weather disruption. “That’s the airlines’ story that there was a storm,” he said during an interview with Newsfirst Multimedia.
In police and local crime news, an alleged fraud artist from Laval was facing more than 30 charges in Atlantic Canada after allegedly taking part in a scheme to cheat senior citizens while posing as a police officer, a lawyer or a bail bondsman. Omar Zanfi, 24, from Laval was arrested in Moncton NB. It was alleged he defrauded 15 seniors in Nova Scotia using the so-called “grandparent scam.”
In a talk at Concordia University in January last year, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair said that in an election he expected later in 2023, Quebec’s Anglophone community should “express clearly what its views are” on the Trudeau government’s Bill C-13, as well as on “the abject failure” by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal Justice Minister David Lametti “to do anything to defend” the constitutional rights of Anglo Quebecers.
“I can tell you that if you want a result, let people who want your vote know that you’re dissatisfied with what they’ve done so far,” Mulcair said.