Sam Goldstein is a 2025 graduate of the Seneca Polytechnic journalism program. Sam’s great passions are for history, politics, and food. Born and raised in Toronto, he works as a multimedia journalist in Thunder Bay. You can reach him at goldsteins@radioabl.ca.
Longlac residents will soon be saying goodbye to their local Confederation College campus, as the college plans to move its Greenstone area Campus to Geraldton Composite High School.
With the college’s Longlac building lease expiring, it determined that moving to Geraldton would offer greater post-secondary access to the region.
In a statement, the college explained that many learners at the Longlac campus commuted from Geraldton and other communities in the area, justifying the move.
“Relocating to Geraldton supports a more sustainable model, improves access to post-secondary education, and helps ensure our programming meets the region’s evolving workforce needs,” said Confederation College President Michelle Salo.
The Geraldton campus is expected to open in September.
A group of anonymous donors has gifted $5 million to the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) University to create a Circle for Indigenous Health Research and Innovation.
The Circle is meant to support Indigenous-led work in medicine to respond to “longstanding calls for indigenous leadership in health research, policy, and medical education,” according to a release published by NOSM.
NOSM frames the Circle as a way to foment collaboration in research to improve Indigenous health equity.
The Circle plans to host an Indigenous Health Gathering this year to bring together Indigenous leaders, Elders, health-care providers, researchers, and students for knowledge-sharing and establishing priorities.
As Canadians discuss whether the new Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit is sufficient, a newly announced government strategy is flying under the radar.
The federal government is planning a new National Food Security Strategy, announced alongside the upped GST rebate, to increase and improve domestic food production.
Amidst a debate over rising food costs, Minister for Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu credits climate change as an overlooked cause of food inflation.
“The drought out west meant that farmers had to reduce the size of their herds. Coffee is produced in regions that are under extreme drought. An avian flu has meant that many herds have had to be culled,” she says.
But Hajdu also acknowledges that declining competition and increased consolidation of Canada’s grocery industry are complicating the fight for cheaper food, and making it more difficult for farmers to find buyers for their products.
She says the strategy will include “measures to implement things like unit price labelling, and support the work of the Competition Bureau to monitor and enforce competition in the market.”
Hajdu also frames the food security strategy as a move to protect Canadian sovereignty: “How can we do a better job making sure that we can grow the food that we need here in Canada, and that we actually sell around the world to feed hungry populations in all sorts of countries?”
Alongside the new strategy is greater relief for Canadian food banks with a $20 million Local Food Infrastructure Fund.
“Food banks have been saying they need a better infrastructure nationally,” Hajdu explains.
But a national strategy for food security could take years to fully implement, and a growing number of Canadians need relief for rising food costs in the meantime — hence the GST rebates.
“It’s not meant to pay for a person’s entire year’s worth of groceries. What it’s meant to do is address the inflation that people are experiencing in the price of the food,” Hajdu offers.
The Artemis II mission, which will launch three Americans and one Canadian around the moon on a ten-day voyage, has been delayed until early March due to a liquid Hydrogen fuel leak.
The mission was slated for February 8, but has now been pushed to the next launch window of March 6 to 11.
The leak was discovered during a “wet dress rehearsal,” when NASA takes the rocket through every stage of the launch process, including fueling and loading the crew, only stopping in the last few minutes before the rocket would liftoff during the real deal.
Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Director of Space Exploration Development Jamie Sevigny says the rehearsal did its job.
“The point of those wet dress rehearsals is really to test everything and to make sure everything is going as planned, and thanks to that, they were able to find some little issues.”
Sevigny says the delay will “give the engineers time to take a look at the data, assess it, analyze it, so that we can have another stab before the second launch opportunity.”
A Canadian space milestone
The Artemis II mission marks the first time since 1972’s Apollo 17, the last moon mission, that a human will venture beyond “Low Earth Orbit,” and fly around the moon.
CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen is the prime Canadian crew member on the mission, which will make him the first Canadian to voyage to the moon.
“He’s also going to make Canada the second country to send a human around the moon,” says Sevigny, “So this is pretty big.”
CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, participates in a NASA news conference on Aug. 8, 2023, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Cropped, via NASA/Kim Shiflett)
Sevigny says the long-running partnership between the CSA and NASA got a Canadian onto the mission.
But she says the most important part was “our contribution of the Canadarm 3, which is a next-generation advanced autonomous robotic system.”
Canada contributed the first-generation Canadarm robotic arm to the Space Shuttle in its heyday, and the second-generation arm to the International Space Station.
The new model robotic arm will eventually be used in the Lunar Gateway, a planned space station orbiting the moon to be built by a large coalition of countries, and meant to support future manned moon missions.
Returning to the moon
The Artemis II is meant to be the first in a series of lunar missions, all building towards a prolonged human presence beyond Low Earth Orbit and eventually towards other planets.
The next flight will be the first time the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and the Orion crew capsule fly with a human crew.
The Orion will carry its four-person crew around the moon on a “fly-by” over ten days before returning to Earth, gathering data on the function and performance of the vehicle in preparation for Artemis III, which plans to land humans on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program.
A map of the Artemis II mission plan. (Via the NASA press kit.)
To prepare the Orion for its next missions, the crew will test out its ability to manoeuvre.
“They’ll be doing simulations of proximity docking, so they’ll be turning around the Orion spacecraft, looking at the previous stage and seeing if they can line up with it properly,” explains Sevigny. “They’re really setting up for the next Artemis III mission, making sure that everything’s functioning properly.
The mission will also take advantage of the chance to conduct scientific experiments on human health in space, and practice emergency procedures and crew safety drills.
“They’re trying to jam in a whole pile of things within the limited time that they have for the mission,” Sevingy says.
While the Artemis II mission is not guaranteed to launch in the March window, NASA plans to launch by April 6.
After nearly two weeks of deliberations, city councillors convened on Tuesday to ratify the proposed 2026 municipal operating budget.
This year’s proposed $412 million tax-supported operating budget calls for hiring new city employees, funding new programs to support the city’s growth plan, and transit improvements aimed at making the bus service more reliable.
City staff successfully managed to cap city service budget increases at 2.6 per cent this year, but plan to raise property taxes by 4 per cent before growth.
Services that the administration cannot directly control, including the Thunder Bay District Health Unit (TBDHU), the Thunder Bay Police Service (TBPS), and the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board (TBDSSAB), are raising their budgets above the 2.6 per cent target, which the city is using as a justification for raising the tax rate above their goal.
In a meeting on January 26, at the second of four meetings discussing the budget, councillors Rajni Agarwal and Mark Bentz questioned the hiring of 57 new Full-time equivalent (FTE) employees.
Many of the new hires will be employed in two upcoming security and safety-based pilot programs: the Mobile Safety and Security Response Pilot, focused on safer transit rides, and the Downtown Community Safety Ambassador Program, focused on working with businesses in the city’s north and south side downtown cores.
Councillor Bentz wondered aloud what so many new safety personnel could mean for the city: “We continue to hire security guards. Every place has a security guard. We’ve got police being hired… ambassadors, people monitoring. Are we heading towards a police state?”
City Manager John Collin rejected the label, placing blame on the opioid crisis as a challenge municipalities didn’t have to worry about just a few decades ago.
City Manager John Collin speaks during a City Council meeting. (Sam Goldstein/January 28, 2026)
“We are seeing policing costs across the board increase substantially in all municipalities, and we do see most municipalities exploring other options to enhance safety and security, because, quite frankly, in some cases, you don’t need a fully qualified police officer at a fairly expensive wage rate,” he explained.
Among the larger city expenses to come under scrutiny were Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) costs, paid out for city service members who are injured on the job.
City staff determined that the most expensive cost is for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which affects many paramedics and firefighters.
Prevention is one of the focal points of the administration for reducing WSIB costs, with Collin pointing to “slips, trips, and falls” as the primary focus of a revamped safety program.
Collin says the city is “going in the right direction with this,” as WSIB costs are expected to come down 15 per cent compared to last year.
Shane Muir, Chief of Superior North EMS, came before council to offer context on WSIB costs for city paramedics.
He explained that the EMS service has developed wellness services for paramedics in partnership with NWO Psychology Services, which he framed as “one of the most robust wellness programs in the province… It’s been spotlighted by our provincial services as a model to follow, something that we’re very proud of.”
Muir believes the paramedic service’s WSIB costs will go down in the future, arguing that much of the WSIB costs come from historical insurance claims, from before the new wellness programming was developed.
Election costs also came under the microscope during deliberations.
The city uses a reserve fund for its municipal elections, and plans to up its yearly contribution to the reserve by $100,000 per year.
The 2026 election was expected to cost $600,000 when the fund was established, but the expectation is now that it will cost $750,000.
City Clerk Krista Power attributed most of the rising costs to online voting, which has become increasingly relevant as an accessibility tool for those who have difficulty voting.
“There’s additional security measures. There’s additional requirements for accessibility. And staff wages increase every four years as well, and we need staff to run our elections,” she added.
At the meeting on January 28, the third of four, councillors questioned the Thunder Bay Public Library’s (TBPL) increased budget.
Mayor Ken Boshcoff wondered whether the rise of digital services, such as e-books, might lead to decreased costs, but TBPL CEO Richard Togman dashed those hopes.
“There’s no cost savings there,” Togman explained. “In fact, it’s a budgetary issue that we have to manage. It’s significantly more expensive to provide e-resources.”
Togman also mentioned that the library has seen growing demand for its services.
“There’s still really very strong and growing demand for people in this community to physically come into the branches, and we definitely need the staff to be able to accommodate that demand,” he added.
TPBL intends to double its security contingent, from two to four security guards.
The library has had to deal with rising security and safety challenges since the COVID-19 Pandemic, including violent incidents and even one assault on a staff member.
Councillor Brian Hamilton questioned whether hiring new security staff was quantifiably a benefit.
Since the library’s first two security guards were hired, Togman says there has been a 50 per cent decrease in incidents, and an even larger decrease in violent incidents.
Beyond just decreasing incidence rates, he also says both library staff and members of the public report feeling safer and more comfortable in the downtown library branches.
The TBDHU, TBPS, and TBDSSAB, being services whose budgets the city cannot directly control, earned greater interest from City Councillors at budget proceedings.
The TBPS proposed a 9.1 per cent budget increase, which earned the most skepticism from some city councillors.
Councillor Trevor Giertuga proposed a motion to send the budget back for police to take a second look, but Council was split down the middle, and his motion ultimately failed in a 6-6 tie.
On Tuesday, City Council re-litigated their motion to send the budget back.
While Councillor Trevor Giertuga continued to frame the vote as a way to send the budget back, Councillor Mark Bentz, who also supported the vote, defined it more as a way to send a message to the province that continued police budget increases are unsustainable.
“It’s not taking this to an arbitration or anything. It’s a symbolic pushback saying we really have to start doing things differently,” Bentz explained. “What we will see if things don’t start changing, and this is across the province, is that police services are gonna start eating into municipal services.”
Councillor Kristen Oliver was absent during the first motion to send back the budget, but opposed the re-vote on Tuesday.
Councillor Kristen Oliver speaks during a City Council meeting. (Sam Goldstein/February 3, 2026)
Though Oliver was a former TBPS board member, she held some criticisms in agreement with many councillors in opposition to the police budget.
“It is not palatable. It is not sustainable. We cannot continue this way for years to come,” she said.
But Oliver still believed the budget needed to be passed: “But I think at this point, the police services need support. The community wants to see policing.”
The re-vote on the motion to send the police budget back for reconsideration failed, with 7 councillors voting NO and 6 councillors voting YES.
Councillors Dominic Pasqualino, Kristen Oliver, Brian Hamilton, Andrew Foulds, Kasey Etreni, Shelby Ch’ng, and Albert Aiello voted NO to the motion.
Councillors Michael Zussino, Greg Johnsen, Trevor Giertuga, Mark Bentz, Rajni Agarwal, and Mayor Ken Boshcoff voted YES to the motion.
With the police budget accepted, City Council then voted to ratify the operating budget, voting in favour with a 12-1 vote.
Councillor Trevor Giertuga was the sole dissenting vote.
Mayor Ken Boshcoff will not declare a State of Emergency on Homelessness, but he is calling for a meeting with the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) and the Fort William First Nation (FWFN).
The two First Nations called on the city on January 23, as a polar vortex brought temperatures down to minus 40 degrees Celsius, to declare a State of Emergency.
“This crisis has gone on long enough. There will be people sleeping outside tonight as the temperatures reach dangerous levels,” the statement said. “People are dying in the streets, in public parks, in bus shelters. We need to be honest and call this what it is: an emergency.”
But in a response, the mayor has argued that the city is already taking all the necessary steps to address homelessness and extreme weather.
Mayor Boshcoff pointed to the city’s planned temporary shelter village, which will begin construction in the spring, as an example of a measure the city is taking to deal with the homelessness crisis.
A collision between a commercial vehicle and a passenger vehicle on Saturday has tragically resulted in three deaths.
Members of the James Bay detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) report that a 36-year-old man from Kenora, a 36-year-old woman from Greenstone, and a 57-year-old man from Constance Lake were all pronounced dead at the scene of the collision.
The event took place on Saturday, January 31, at about 6 p.m. on Highway 11 near McCoig Township, west of Hearst.
Highway 11 was closed between Hearst and Longlac for a significant period of time over the weekend while OPP officers investigated.
The OPP is asking anyone who may have relevant dashcam footage or who may have witnessed the event to reach out at 1-888-310-1122.
Tips can also be submitted to Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477 or online.
Members of the Schreiber detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) are charging a 62-year-old man from Caledon with stunt driving, after he was caught driving more than 40 kilometres over the speed limit.
The incident took place on January 29 around 7:30 p.m. on Highway 17 near Terrace Bay.
Using LIDAR to measure speed, OPP officers determined that the man was driving at just over 100 km/h in a 60 km/h zone.
The accused has had his driver’s license suspended for 30 days, and his vehicle impounded for 14 days.
He will face the Ontario Court of Justice in Nipigon on May 11, 2026.
