Doug Ford calls early election for Feb. 27, less than a month away
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Local
CBC: The Ottawa Carleton District School Board is currently facing its fifth deficit.
The board is trying to trim expenses, but the increased cost of living and decrease in enrolments is causing their budget to experience a $15- to 17-million shortfall, according to the board’s chief financial officer.
Students are also increasingly requiring support with emotional regulation within the classroom, and investments in educational assistants are eating away at schools’ finances.
Now the OCDSB is paying about $30 million a year on substitute teachers, up some $12 million from pre-pandemic days.
Board chair Lynn Scott hopes the government will do more to support schools during this financial crisis.
National
Toronto Star: Premier Doug Ford called an early election, which is scheduled to take place in under a month on Feb. 27.
Ford met with Lieutenant Governor Edith Dumont to discuss the dissolution of Ontario’s parliament.
The opposition leaders are concerned that the money spent on the “unnecessary election” will take away from controlling the tariff dilemma, preventing unemployment and keeping the economy from crashing.
They estimate billions of dollars will be needed to recover from Trump’s threats, so spending $150 to $175 million on an election may rob the government of that safety net.
International
The Canadian Press: President Donald Trump signed an order to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender troops on Jan. 27, in hopes to ban them from serving in the military.
This is not the first time Trump has tried to go through with this motion.
He also attempted to ban transgender troops seven years ago in his first term as president, but was overturned by former president Joe Biden and several legal roadblocks.
Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign, the groups who fought for transgender rights the first time around, are threatening to sue Trump again.
Trump also ordered troops who had left or been kicked out of the military due to refusing the COVID-19 vaccines to be reinstated.
His intentions are to “restore them to their former rank with full pay.” The requirements for military entry will remain the same.