It's not all black and white: Canada-wide lack of referees hits Hockey N.L.
CBC
While organized hockey is back in full swing in Newfoundland and Labrador, there's a shortage of officials to make the calls in rural communities, says the province's governing body for the sport.
During the pandemic, the number of hockey referees has dropped across the country, with some provinces losing as much as 40 per cent of their officials, according to Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador.
In Newfoundland and Labrador the number dropped about 22 per cent, said Ed Flood, Hockey N.L.'s referee-in-chief.
"We lost about 200 of our 885 [referees]," Flood told CBC Radio's Newfoundland Morning.
"We're very consistent for this year as well — we've kind of hung on to the same numbers."
Leading up to the pandemic, Flood said, the number of officials in the province was actually growing.
But with the cancellations of organized sports at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, those numbers began to dwindle. Flood said a lot of experienced officials took the season off when sports finally did reopen again, citing the ups and downs of the pandemic, and how games were being played under public health orders.
"They may have found other things to do. Especially people who have been around some time, they have decided, 'Well, I'm not going to come back.' That has hurt us some," Flood said.
"We haven't had any cancellations, but we're having a really tough go in some areas, particularly small areas, to fill refereeing slots."
Flood said more games could be cancelled if leagues continue to lose officials — something that has already been happened in other provinces.
But, Flood said, some senior officials in the province have begun to return to the ice to fill the gap.
The Mount Pearl Minor Hockey Association (MPMHA) has also witnessed its share of losses — about 13 per cent — but COVID-19 isn't the only concern.
Paul Breen, referee in chief for MPMHA, told CBC News other factors are leading to officials continuing to leave the sport. Breen has been officiating in Mount Pearl and St. John's for 15 years.
"There's a downturn in the economy [that] has sort of affected some of our officials that are coming out of university or college. They're unable to secure employment so they're having to go away," Breen said.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.