VANCOUVER - A 30-year-old Ontario man has embarked on a cross-country campaign to raise money and awareness of mental illness in Canada.

Paulie O'Byrne left Victoria, B.C. on Saturday to start his campaign that will see him attempt to stickhandle with a ball and a hockey stick from coast to coast.

The London, Ont., man is raising funds for the not-for-profit organization "I'm 1in5," which is dedicated to the one in five Canadians affected by addiction, mental illness, trauma and victimization.

O'Byrne played competitive hockey for 14 years but suffered from clinical depression, anxiety, drug addiction, suicide attempts and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Supporters can also track O'Byrne's progress online via the I'm 1in5 website.

Officials expect the journey will end near the end of October in St. John's, N.L.

(BlackburnNews.com)

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MONTREAL - The Parti Quebecois leadership race is down to three candidates after the withdrawal of Pierre Cere.

In a news conference Sunday, Cere said he was dropping out after failing to raise a $10,000 payment he needed to stay in the race.

He described himself as "very proud and happy" with his campaign, and said he left without regrets.

"With fewer resources, we had a campaign that really carried," he said.

Cere encouraged his supporters to vote for either Martine Ouellet or Alexandre Cloutier in this week's leadership ballot, adding that he would vote for Ouellet.

The third candidate, Pierre Karl Peladeau, is the front-runner to succeed Pauline Marois as party leader.

Last week, Cere accused Peladeau of using angry words to intimidate himself and other candidates. Peladeau shrugged off the accusations, telling reporters in Quebec City that he sometimes gets passionate.

Cere said Sunday there was "nothing personal" in his decision to endorse Peladeau's rivals. Instead, he said his decision was motivated by concerns over what he described as Peladeau's conflict of interest arising from the fact Peladeau is the controlling shareholder of media company Quebecor.

"I don't think he is able to lead the Parti Quebecois at present," Cere said, adding that Peladeau had not put up sufficient firewalls to separate his interests.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Ouellet thanked Cere for his support.

"I want to congratulate Pierre and his team on a good campaign, and I thank him for his support of my candidature," she said.

Ouellet said she was confident of getting enough votes to force a second round of voting, which will happen if no candidate receives a margin of 50 per cent plus one.

Cloutier took to Twitter to congratulate Cere for the ideas and questions he brought to the PQ leadership campaign.

Party members will vote for a new leader beginning May 13, with the results of the first round expected after voting concludes Friday afternoon.

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Hilarious! Tom Mulcair interviews Tom Mulcair (@MarkCritch) #pgd15 #ndp #cdnpoli This is one great evening! pic.twitter.com/GFVIEFblB3

— Peter Julian (@MPJulian) May 10, 2015

Mark Critch makes a funny pretending to be Tom Mulcair #nerdprom #pgd15

A video posted by Amanda Christie Connolly (@amandacconn) on May 9, 2015 at 6:01pm PDT

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OTTAWA - The shroud of secrecy surrounding the residency requirement for Canadian senators just got a bit thicker.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has refused to answer repeated oral questions about the process he follows to ensure that an individual meets the constitutional residency requirement for appointment to the Senate.

So NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus figured his best chance at getting an answer lay in placing a written question on the order paper of the House of Commons — a procedural manoeuvre to which the government is obligated to give a detailed response.

No go.

Angus' question elicited this terse reply from Harper's parliamentary secretary, Paul Calandra: "The government does not comment on matters before the courts."

Calandra was referring to the fraud, bribery and breach of trust trial of Mike Duffy, where the suspended senator's qualifications to represent Prince Edward Island when he lived primarily in Ottawa is a pivotal issue.

"I was pretty shocked (by Calandra's response) because normally an order paper question is done without political interference, it's straight-up answers, the government has to respond," Angus said in an interview.

"They're actually interfering with the work of Parliament now in order to suppress something that should be a fairly straightforward answer."

The government's respect for the courts seems to be selective, Angus added, noting that Harper, his ministers and backbenchers have not been reluctant to comment on other matters before the courts, when it's suited their political interests.

For instance, Harper called it "offensive" to cover one's face while taking the oath of citizenship even as his government launched an appeal of a court ruling allowing a woman to wear a niqab during the citizenship ceremony.

Just last week, Conservatives conveyed their disappointment that a judge had rejected the government's bid to keep convicted terrorist Omar Khadr behind bars.

The Constitution requires that a senator be resident in the province he or she is appointed to represent.

In his written question, Angus asked about the procedure followed for each of the 59 Senate appointments made by Harper, not singling out or even mentioning Duffy.

He asked if the government verified that each individual met the residency requirement and, if so, to explain precisely how that verification was done. And he asked the government to produce details of each senator's residency verification.

The government's brushoff follows the Senate's refusal last week to allow an internal review of senators' residency to be entered into evidence at Duffy's trial. The upper house has claimed parliamentary privilege to prevent the report being made public but that has been challenged by Duffy's lawyer.

Other documents filed in court last week suggest that top Conservative senators worked behind the scenes with Harper's office to kill the internal residency review, prompting senior Senate administrators to threaten legal action if the report was not released.

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TORONTO - Pan Am Games organizers are replacing thousands of shirts for volunteers after discovering the logos may wear away after washing.

In an email to The Canadian Press, spokesman Kevin Dove says nearly 60,000 polo shirts were ordered for volunteers.

The garments were produced in China by Canadian affordable apparel brand Joe Fresh.

Dove says the "minor wear" was first noted on April 28 after a paid staffer at the Uniform Distribution and Accreditation Centre washed the uniform.

He says this prompted further testing and the decision to update the logo on all of the polo shirts.

Dove says the new shirts will be delivered as soon as possible.

More than 23,000 volunteers are expected to take part in the Games.

Toronto and the surrounding area will play host to the Pan Am Games from July 10 to 26.

The Parapan American Games run from Aug. 7 to 15.

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OTTAWA - Alcohol, politics, risque jokes and sometimes even real news —it's all been on the menu for the parliamentary press gallery dinner since at least the 1870s.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May finds herself in interesting company as one of the revellers over the years whose remarks have grabbed headlines.

May apologized for her remarks at Saturday's dinner, which closed with her saying that convicted terrorist Omar Khadr had "more class than the whole f---ing cabinet." A stunned crowd watched as a shoeless Transport Minister Lisa Raitt coaxed May offstage.

But as far as major news goes, May pales in comparison to other incidents in the gallery annals. A few events at gallery dinners marked watersheds in Canadian politics.

The origins of the dinner date back at least to the early 1870s, with references in some newspapers to Sir John A. Macdonald attending.

A Toronto Evening Star recounts how in the 1880s the former mayor of Ottawa Charles Mackintosh, once the gallery president, showed up in full regalia including a ceremonial ball and chain.

"The dinner committee held a hurried consultation and decided that the ball and chain was too reminiscent of slave-driving," reads the article. "So Mr. Mackintosh was gently, but firmly, escorted outside."

The all-male crowd back then sang and played music, recited poetry and drank of course. Sir Wilfrid Laurier is said to have attended starting in 1886, along with contemporaries such as Robert Borden, John Thompson and Mackenzie Bowell.

"As he sat down, he said, 'With great pleasure I drink the health of the Canadian Parliament as revised and improved by the press gallery'," former gallery member M.O. Hammond wrote of Laurier's speech in 1906.

Charles Lynch, the late political columnist, recalled in his autobiography the dinner of 1948, when then-prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King made a startling announcement in the presence of then-governor general Viscount Alexander and the full gallery.

"Willie rose to his feet — and announced his retirement, to the great consternation of his listeners, all of whom were deeply into the sauce and unprepared for a news development of these proportions late on a Saturday night and at an off-the-record dinner," Lynch wrote.

The 1963 dinner was held two nights before the government of John Diefenbaker was defeated. A major controversy was swirling over Diefenbaker's refusal to accept U.S. nuclear weapons on Canadian soil and the gallery staged a withering skit about the PM and his cabinet.

Lynch recounts that then-defence minister Doug Harkness decided that night to resign from cabinet the next day, "sealing the fate of the government."

"Never again will I attend your dinner!" Diefenbaker thundered, according to former Toronto Telegram reporter Peter Dempson.

Four years later, Diefenbaker would tell a special gallery dinner held in his honour that he was leaving politics.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau attended the dinners with little joy and began snubbing them in 1981. In 1984, he claimed in the Commons to have been misquoted in a story, and said "it's another reason I don't want to go to the God damn press gallery dinner."

A major part of the angst for leaders and governors general is that they are expected to deliver a speech with a tricky alchemy of humour that is at once self-deprecating, au courant and ribald. The dinners went on the record about 20 years ago, making the task even tougher.

The late gallery reporter and political aide Tom Van Dusen wrote that former governor general Jeanne Sauve, "did an imitation of the Queen, little girl voice and all, which some found inappropriate."

Former Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe stopped attending the dinners after reporters threw buns at him during his flat, overly political speeches.

Former governor general Michaelle Jean also gave the dinners a pass after a tongue-in-cheek speech in 2005 created an uproar in Quebec. She joked about then-Parti Quebecois leader Andre Boisclair's former cocaine use, saying "he always follows the party line."

Gov. Gen. David Johnston, bucking tradition, has never attended the dinner.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has boycotted the event since his party formed government in 2006, but was more game as opposition leader. He once appeared on stage wearing a Darth Vader helmet and doing a decent impression of the renegade jedi.

"The stories about what happens before, during and after gallery dinners have become legion," Dempson wrote.

"Most of them are true."

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OTTAWA - An independent report on Canada's war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant says the threat posed by extremists is real, but perhaps exaggerated, while the Harper government ignores other important political concerns.

An analysis by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, says the horrific violence meted out by extremists is just the latest expression of Sunni alienation in Iraq, something which few Canadians can relate to.

Thomas Juneau, an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, says Canada's endorsement of air strikes and the training of local security forces will not be enough to defeat the Islamic State.

He says the Harper government has not been clear about its policy towards Shiite and Sunni reconciliation and has little influence in Baghdad without an embassy there.

The report comes just over a week after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a whirlwind visit to Iraq, where he met Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and delivered $167 million in humanitarian aid and military equipment.

Without a political process in place, Juneau says, the collapse of the Islamic State would lead likely lead to the emergence of a new, potentially more threatening, reaction from disenfranchised Sunnis.

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pei tourism ads prove that pei is indeed an exciting place, at least for this guy #DontLookDown #comeplayonhisisland pic.twitter.com/gNIPbOLcyw

— Jessica Gauthier (@themommagoat) May 7, 2015

This is our PEI tourism guide cover. Tell me if you can spot the problem! :-) Hint, the guy is really happy. :-) pic.twitter.com/46NxCzWr20

— Eddie (@hutch1717) May 10, 2015

That promo picture for PEI Tourism is misleading, being Majorly Horned Up On PEI is a lot less fun than they let on

— One Great Guy (@flattery_sucks) May 11, 2015

Today @MinRonaAmbrose & @LaureenHarper announced $100K for @ImmunizedotCa in honour of #PrincessCharlotte's birth. pic.twitter.com/mc7bj8DLO8

— CPhA/APhC (@CPhAAPhC) May 12, 2015

As #princesscharlotte was born during #nationalimmunizationweek it's fitting that the gift goes to support immunization #vaccineswork

— CHEO Hospital Ottawa (@CHEOhospital) May 12, 2015

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OTTAWA - The federal New Democrats pressed the Conservatives on Tuesday for a definite commitment to eliminate the federal tax on feminine hygiene products after all parties voted in favour of a motion to do so.

Support from the Tories came after female Conservative MPs told their caucus that if they didn't support the motion, the women wouldn't show up for Monday night's vote, The Canadian Press has learned.

But it's unclear if that show of force will extend to the New Democrats latest demand — that the budget implementation bill currently before the House of Commons be amended so the tax can be removed immediately.

"Everyone in this House agrees that this $36 million tax grab on women is unfair," NDP MP Irene Mathyssen said Tuesday.

"I'm very grateful there is unanimous agreement that we need change, now the Conservatives need to put that commitment into action."

The New Democrats have been trying since 2004 to get a bill passed to exempt feminine hygiene products from the federal goods and services tax.

The problem with the tax, opponents argue, is that it's discriminatory — only women pay it for a product they can't live without. At the same time, things such as wedding cakes or Viagra evade the levy.

MPs said the Conservatives had considered doing something about it in the past and the issue gained new traction during pre-budget consultations thanks to an online petition campaign launched in January.

But the campaign gained momentum and national attention at the same time the government was in the midst of a frantic rewrite of the federal budget to account for the drop in oil revenues.

Dropping the tax meant finding $36 million a year somewhere else at a time when the government was pledged to balance the budget even as revenues fell.

Supporters in the Tory caucus were told to wait.

With the issue in the spotlight, the New Democrats decided to devote one of their opposition days in the Commons to force a debate, rather than wait for their private members' bill to come up for a vote.

Behind caucus doors, Conservative women declared there was no way they could vote against ending the tax and it was time to force the issue.

It didn't hurt that motion only said the tax should be repealed and didn't hold the government to a deadline.

Thus far, the Conservatives have said only that they'll address the tax in a future budget.

But getting caucus on board also required a little education, several female MPs said, speaking on the condition of anonymity as they aren't generally allowed to discuss what happens in caucus meetings.

They said many male colleagues had never contemplated the issue posed by a tax on items only women use and just didn't see it as something that needed to be dealt with.

It took leadership by women and even some men in caucus to get everyone behind the vote, Kellie Leitch, minister for the status of women, said in an interview.

"What I find with my caucus mates, when you lay out the facts, people judge things on the facts," she said.

"And that's exactly what happened."

Follow @StephanieLevitz on Twitter

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GATINEAU, Que. - The NDP would restore funding for abortion and family planning to Canada's keynote development initiative which promotes maternal, newborn and child health.

That pledge comes in a speech by NDP Leader Tom Mulcair which introduces some foreign policy planks for the Official Opposition.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made helping newborns and young mothers in the developing world his signature aid priority, committing more than $6 billion to the initiative between 2010 and 2020.

But the initiative has sparked major criticism — including from the respected medical journal, The Lancet — because the Conservatives will not allow any money to go towards projects that include abortion.

Mulcair says the NDP would reverse that policy and make funds available for family planning, reproductive and sexual health and access to abortion services.

He also repeated a promise to meet the United Nations development spending goal of 0.7 per cent of GDP.

The most recent analysis by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said Canada's overall level of aid spending has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade.

The OECD pegged Canada's 2014 aid spending at 0.24 per cent of GDP, well below the UN target. In 2010-11, Canadian foreign aid stood at 0.34 per cent of GDP.

The United Kingdom, by comparison, has hit the 0.7 per cent target two years in a row.

Canada has never reached the goal, coming closest in the mid-1970s under the Pierre Trudeau Liberals when the level reached above 0.5 per cent of GDP.

Stephen Brown, a University of Ottawa aid expert, said that to reach the 0.7 per cent of GDP target, aid spending would have to rise to $13.9 billion a year.

Brown said such an increase is possible.

"The only thing preventing the Canadian government from reaching the 0.7 target is the lack of political will," he said.

"The U.K.'s Conservative-led coalition reached that level last year, despite a fiscal situation far worse than Canada's."

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SASKATOON - A group of Newfoundland nuns tried but failed Tuesday to get the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan to conduct an independent review of its operations in Western Sahara.

The Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland, along with Meritus Mutual Funds, submitted a motion at the company's annual general meeting asking that it conduct and make public an independent assessment of its human rights responsibilities in the area.

The motion failed to pass.

PotashCorp (TSX:POT) buys phosphate rock from a Moroccan state-owned mine that is located in the contested region of Western Sahara.

The Sisters of Mercy have expressed concern that the human rights of the Sahrawi people, who live in Western Sahara, have been violated by the Moroccan government.

However, PotashCorp public relations director Randy Burton said the company has obtained legal opinions from two law firms that show the phosphate mine, run by state-owned firm OCP, S.A. benefits the local people.

"Our primary concern is to ensure that there is local benefit and in recent years the benefit has been improving," Burton said in a telephone interview. "The mine that we are buying potash from employs a large number of Sahrawi people, something in the order of 60 per cent."

Burton said KPMG independently completed the study showing local economic benefits, but that PotashCorp doesn't have the right to release the study to the public.

The nuns submitted a similar proposal at Agrium Inc.'s annual general meeting last week, where accounts of the meeting showed it apparently received only 12 per cent support.

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OTTAWA - The federal election is still five months away, but the Liberals and the Conservatives are already exchanging blows over their duelling promises of family tax relief.

Last week, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau introduced a family-friendly plan — part of the backbone of the party's forthcoming campaign platform — that seeks to stake a claim squarely on the populist, low-tax territory coveted by the Tories.

So the Conservatives are countering with an offensive designed to blow holes in the math behind the Liberal child-benefit proposal — a plan that abandons Stephen Harper's universal child care benefit.

The Tories have released updated government numbers that appear to indicate a $900-million shortfall in Liberal projections for next year — a result, the Conservatives say, of the Liberal failure to account for the benefit's taxable status.

The Liberals insist any revenue lost as a result of ditching the universal child care benefit has been accounted for, and say they used publicly available figures to cost their family plan and to reach their inflation assumptions.

In an email, Trudeau spokeswoman Kate Purchase said the Finance Department numbers "are underestimating" the cost of an existing program that would be replaced by the Liberal plan.

It's an early preview of what are sure to be countless rhetorical skirmishes over economic assumptions, estimates and calculations that will erupt on the pre-campaign trail between now and the fall election, scheduled for Oct. 19.

During question period Tuesday, Trudeau repeated the Liberal accusation that the Harper government's family measures unfairly benefit the most wealthy Canadian families.

"Fairness means helping those who need help the most, so why not cancel those tax breaks and benefits that go to the wealthiest Canadians?" Trudeau asked.

The Liberals would scrap important programs, Harper retorted, before taking a swipe at Trudeau's arithmetic.

"Even after he takes all those things away, his numbers still don't add up."

Harper also said the Liberals want to get rid of the programs like income splitting for seniors and tax-free savings accounts, neither of which is true, Trudeau said after question period.

"I think it's obvious that the Conservatives are once again making things up to try and throw mud and see what sticks."

Since the Liberal plan was introduced last week, the Conservatives have criticized their rivals for announcing such a big-ticket promise without explaining how they would pay for part of it.

Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre has called the gap the "$2-billion hole."

The Liberals say their child benefit would cost the federal treasury $4 billion a year — paid for, in part, by ditching the Conservatives' $2-billion income-splitting measure. As for the other $2 billion, the Liberals say they'll reveal the source of that money when they release their full campaign platform.

During a separate exchange during question period Tuesday, Poilievre took visible delight in pointing out that the Liberals had indeed made a subtle change in the way they are presenting their numbers.

In defending their position, the Liberals said the Conservative child care benefit would be worth $7 billion, taking into account the foregone government revenue. The combined cost of the existing child tax benefit and national child benefit supplement was pegged at $11 billion.

One of the charts in the printed Liberal material, however, showed the breakdown as $8 billion and $10 billion. A new, updated chart now only shows the combined cost of all those programs at $18 billion.

The Liberals called the change a design decision that simplified the chart, insisting the $18-billion calculation for the programs remained consistent.

Poilievre, however, begged to differ.

"They have actually changed the bar graph in that plan only one week after introducing it," he crowed, brandishing the relevant page of the Liberal document. "They are still billions of dollars short."

Follow @AndyBlatchford on Twitter

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