Friday, June 25, 2010

Dramatic footage showing aftermath of tornado in Midland, Ontario




TORONTO, June 25, 2010 /Canada NewsWire/ - Insurance Bureau of Canada captured dramatic footage showing the devastation caused by a tornado that struck the town of Midland, Ontario on Wednesday, June 23. IBC immediately sent its Community Assistance Mobile Pavilion (CAMP) unit to Midland to offer insurance-related information to residents affected by the tornado.

About Insurance Bureau of Canada


Insurance Bureau of Canada is the national industry association representing Canada's private home, car and business insurers. Its member companies represent 90% of the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market in Canada. The P&C insurance industry employs over 110,000 Canadians, pays more than $6 billion in taxes to the federal, provincial and municipal governments, and has a total premium base of $39 billion.


Saturday, June 19, 2010

Council of Canadians commends UN Right to Water Resolution





NEW YORK, June 18, 2010 /Canada NewsWire Telbec/ - The Council of Canadians was at the United Nations yesterday to support the historic presentation of a resolution on the right to water and sanitation and welcomed Bolivian Ambassador Pablo Solon's promotion of this initiative at the UN General Assembly.

But the Council of Canadians was disturbed to hear that inside a closed-meeting Canadian officials proved themselves once again the greatest obstacle to a resolution that would recognize the right to water and sanitation for the 1.2 billion people without access to clean water and the 2.6 billion without access to basic sanitation.

"We are shamed and outraged by the Harper government's position on this issue," said Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians. "Canadians clearly do not support the denial of these fundamental rights and we condemn this obstructionism which harms the opportunity for progress when so many of the world's most vulnerable people continue to suffer."


Barlow and Anil Naidoo, organizer for the Council of Canadians Blue Planet Project, were also in New York to brief the Group of 77 on water. At the briefing, the Group of 77 chairman, Ambassador al-Saidi of Yemen, announced his support for this resolution as did other influential G-77 countries.

Naidoo said,

"For years, in other UN processes, we have seen Canada obstruct progress on the human right to water. Now the issue is at the General Assembly. If Canadians do not let this government know blocking progress on the human right to water is not acceptable, Canada will be known as the country that blocked the human right to water, a stain that will not easily disappear."


Barlow adds,

"We are overdue for water to be acknowledged as a global priority, passing this resolution would send a strong signal that before the Millennium Development Goal review in September and before the next Earth Summit in 2012, that we are committed as a global community to address the suffering caused by the global water crisis."


She also highlighted this message for the prime minister,

"The right to water and sanitation is clearly an issue related to maternal health. A G20 agenda on maternal health without support for the right to water is a sham."


The next informal consultation on this issue is Wednesday, June 23rd and then in July. Unless it is blocked at the consultation phase, the resolution in its final form will go to the United Nations General Assembly and with its passage there the human right to water and sanitation would be officially recognized by the United Nations.


Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Words Reflect Our Culture



TORONTO, June 8, 2010 /Canada NewsWire/ - We all know that the words toque, poutine and, of course, eh are words rarely used outside of Canada but there are a lot more than you may realize including:

beaver fever (n) Canad. - an infectious disease caused by drinking water that has been contaminated by wildlife

flipper pie (n) Canad. - a Newfoundland pie with a filling of cooked seal flippers

garburator (n) Canad. - a garbage disposal unit installed as part of a kitchen sink

humidex (n) Canad. - a system of measuring discomfort showing the combined effect of humidity and temperature word origin C20: from humid +(in)dex

These words alone exemplify how unique we are as Canadians and why it's essential to have a dictionary that reflects those qualities. Just as importantly, dictionaries act as a record of our language and its constant evolution.

To celebrate the launch of the COLLINS CANADIAN DICTIONARY, HarperCollins and The Globe and Mail are launching The Thousand-Word Short Story Contest. Send us 1,000 words and don't miss your chance to be published in Canada's leading newspaper this summer. The only hitch to this short story contest? You've got to include at least 10 from a list of 40 Canadian words in your work to qualify.

Submissions, which must be in by Canada Day, will be read by a committee and the finalists will be chosen by a panel of judges consisting of:

Tish Cohen, best-selling author of Town House and The Truth About Delilah Blue
Martin Levin, esteemed Books Editor of The Globe and Mail
Iris Tupholme, Publisher of HarperCollins Canada Ltd.

The winning submission will be published in The Globe and Mail. For more details about the contest and to submit your story, visit www.collinscanadadictionary.ca.

With more than 175 years of experience in dictionary publishing, Collins is trusted and relied on by users all over the world. All Collins dictionaries are based on the Collins corpus - a four-billion word corpus of written and spoken English, updated every month, that shows how language is really used today. Among others, Canadian sources include The Globe and Mail, CBC transcripts, and Canadian books of fiction and non-fiction.