No link found between deaths, plasma donations: Health Canada

Health Canada says it has found no linkage between the plasma donation process and the deaths of two Manitoba donors.

The federal regulator began its assessment following the deaths on Oct. 25 and Jan. 30 at two Grifols Plasma Donation Centres. The Spain-based company operates two for-profit paid plasma centres in Winnipeg on Taylor Avenue and Innovation Drive.

Health Canada spokesperson Mark Johnson says it visited the Winnipeg locations and identified areas of “non-compliance” in accordance with federal regulations. Grifols was required to provide a “corrective and preventative action plan” which Johnson says is currently under review.

Plasma centres in Calgary (December) and Regina (January), and Grifols’s head office in Oakville, Ont., (January) were also inspected.

Tom Wilson never stopped giving to the game of hockey

Tom Wilson was never a big hockey star on the ice, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone more committed to helping build the game in this province.

Wilson grew up on Garfield Street in the West End and strapped on his first pair of skates as a child. As a youngster, he played minor hockey at Isaac Brock Community Centre and later at Orioles Community Centre, where he won a city championship in 1955.

By his late teens he had hung up his blades as a player, but it wasn’t long before he was drawn back into the game. In 1971 he began refereeing and a short time later started coaching community club hockey, including his son Jeffrey’s team. He was also recruited to pitch in with everything from timekeeping to refereeing to overseeing disciplinary hearings for players.

Where Wilson really left his mark was behind the scenes. He served three terms as the president of Hockey Manitoba, the official governing body for amateur hockey in the province, where he also contributed as treasurer. Twice he was presented the Hockey Manitoba Volunteer of the Year Award (2000 and 2008). He was also a recipient of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association’s Meritorious Service Award.

Scammers leave Winnipeg woman penniless

A Winnipeg woman was forced to rely on her 91-year-old mother to pay her rent after scammers claiming to be from a bank left her penniless.

Lisa Taron, 62, who lives on a fixed income in subsidized seniors housing, is out thousands of dollars after scammers were able to get into her bank account and clean it out before she could get it stopped.

Now, Taron is warning others about how she was scammed, because if it hadn’t been for her elderly mom, she would be on the street.

“This left me crushed. No money for rent, food, medication, bus pass. I had to borrow money from my 91-year-old mother who keeps asking me, now, when she is getting her money back. What would I have done without the bank of mom?” she said.

Shared Health lacks data to predict future staffing needs

Shared Health — which is tasked with planning future health-care staffing requirements in Manitoba— has no “responsive records” to show workforce modelling or a forecast of future staffing needs.

That lack of data, the result of a freedom of information request, perpetuates labour shortages and harms patients, critics say.

Noah Schulz, provincial director of the Manitoba Health Coalition, deemed Shared Health’s response to the request “really frustrating.”

“They say, ‘We are working on a HHR plan.’ That should be already done,” he said.

Convicted mail bomber loses parole-denial appeal

Convicted mail bomber Guido Amsel has lost his fight for full parole, after his appeal for release was shot down by the Parole Board of Canada.

In 2018, Amsel received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years for the attempted murders of his ex-wife Iris Amsel and lawyers Maria Mitousis and George Orle in 2015 by mailing explosives to them. One of the bombs, placed inside a hand-held tape recorder with instructions to press the “play” button, exploded in Mitousis’s office, resulting in the loss of her right hand.

He was also sentenced to 12 years minus time served for an earlier attempt to murder his ex-wife in 2013.

He was 59 years old in August, when he appeared before the board to argue for full parole. Had it been granted, he would have been released from federal custody and deported to Germany, where he was born and lived for decades.

Judge delays sentencing for hockey coach convicted of sexually assaulting player

Sentencing for a former youth hockey coach guilty of repeatedly sexually abusing one of her players for more than a year has been delayed a second time.