A tournament-style voting bracket and details of the designs were revealed at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

The new designs will all include the slogan “Strong and Free,” which is Alberta’s motto.

“The motto’s inclusion on the licence plate will also serve as a nod to Canada’s national anthem and Alberta’s position as a strong and sovereign province within a united Canada,” Premier Danielle Smith said.

Residents can visit a page on the province’s website and vote for their favourite design until Nov. 5.

The design options feature different landscapes and some feature pumpjacks and cowboys.

“The images are more than decoration and they are a celebration of Alberta’s natural beauty and our shared identity,” Smith said.

“They are things we think about when we close our eyes and think of Alberta and what it means to be Albertan.”

Both Smith and Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally faced questions at the news conference about whether the inclusion of the motto was politically motivated, with reporters noting the slogan is used on the official United Conservative Party website.

“It’s our provincial motto. Let’s not be shy about it,” Nally said.

“It’s also in the [national] anthem, and let’s remember that when the King of England was here a few months ago doing the throne speech in Ottawa, he mentioned the words strong and free. So there is no political ideology that owns the corner on strong and free.”

Smith said the motto is “neutral language,” and that it was odd that the slogan wasn’t already being used on the plates.

Nally said his ministry did not receive additional funds to overhaul the provincial licence plate design. He said the cost is being absorbed by his current budget.

Nally said he expected the “implementation costs” of the new plates to be anywhere between $25,000 and $50,000.

Alberta’s current licence plate design, which says “Wild Rose Country,” has been used for decades and features the provincial flower. All the new designs Albertans can vote for still feature a wild rose.

In a news release issued Wednesday, the province said any Albertan who wants to replace their current plate with one featuring the new design when it’s released can voluntarily pay a $28 fee to do so.

“Alternatively, Albertans could obtain a new plate on their vehicle registration renewal date at no additional cost,” the news release said. “Motorists may also continue using the previous licence plate once the new licence plate is brought onboard, provided it is still in good condition.”

The league has been at 32 teams since Seattle entered for the 2021-22 season. There are groups who aspire to have franchises in Atlanta and Houston, among other places.

“There is, and continues to be, interest from lots of places,” Bettman said from New York. “But none of it has reached the level that we need to focus on at this point.”

Asked if the door could be opened on the expansion front at the next board meeting in December in Colorado Springs, Colo., Bettman said that’s not for the NHL to decide.

“If somebody knocks on the door, we’ll peek around to see who’s knocking and then decide what to do with it,” Bettman said.

Among other topics, Bettman expressed concern about the construction timeline of the main hockey arena in Milan for the upcoming Olympics and said it’s up to the International Olympic Committee.

“We are constrained in what we can and can’t do, request and demand and if it reached a certain point, we’ll have to deal with it,” Bettman said. “But I’m not speculating, and we’ve been constantly assured by the IOC and the [International Ice Hockey Federation] that it will be OK.”

The salary cap is seeing record increases this year and over the following two as revenues are skyrocketing. Bettman flatly denied buzz that had been going around about the cap being more than $104 million US next season.

“There’s no change,” Bettman. “I know there’s a rumour going around that we’re in discussions about the cap. That’s absolutely, categorically untrue. There have been no discussions. It is what we’ve already agreed to.”

Bettman opened his chat with reporters saying there was no news to report.

“Basically, it’s a nuts and bolts meeting,” Bettman said. “Nothing too dramatic.”

Governors — a mix of owners, team presidents, general managers and other executives — got updates on the state of the league, hockey operations and officiating and efforts to grow the game internationally.

Bettman said he had nothing to share on the sale process involving the Pittsburgh Penguins.

As planning continues for the 2028 World Cup of Hockey, deputy commissioner Bill Daly said he expects 18 cities in North America and 10 in Europe to bid to host part of the event.

Asked about his future running the NHL, the 73-year-old Bettman said: “I’m here, and I’m not planning on going anywhere for a while. And I don’t know what a while is.”

The suspension was for failure to meet participant e-learning and consent requirements, the CCES said Wednesday in a statement.

The Canadian Centre For Ethics in Sport took on the management of safe sport in Canada from the shuttered Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner on April 1, when it became the CCES’s job to manage and investigate complaints and reports of abuse and maltreatment in sport.

The CCES said it had been working with Cricket Canada since then toward adopting the Canadian Safe Sport Program, which included participants completing a mandatory 40-minute e-learning module and signing a consent form, in order for participants to understand their rights and responsibilities under the safe sport program.

“The necessary requirements have not yet been fulfilled,” the CCES said in a statement, adding that both Cricket Canada and Sport Canada were notified.

“Without these foundational requirements, the CCES may be unable to process safe sport reports involving individuals from these organizations. These obligations are in place to protect all participants and to reinforce the collective responsibility of the sport community in upholding safe sport standards.”

Cricket players no longer have access to CCES reporting mechanisms or protections, and must contact Cricket Canada for options, the CCES said.

If the outstanding obligations are fulfilled, the CCES indicated it will reinstate the national sport organization in the Canadian Safe Sport Program and will make that information public.

Cricket Canada didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

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Despite some strong language I’ve used in the past, I don’t believe that weight loss apps are inherently evil. At the same time, you’re putting a whole lot of trust into this kind of app, and that can go poorly. You’re depending on it to tell you how many calories you need, to accurately tell you how many calories you’re eating and burning, to calculate how many calories you need in the first place, and to effectively motivate you toward healthy goals so you can see healthy results. You’re trusting an app to be a calculator, a coach, and a confidante. So, how do you decide which weight loss app is the right one for you?

Both Noom and MyFitnessPal are heavyweights in the fitness tracking arena. I’ve used both over the years to various results, and I can confidently report firsthand the pros and cons of each. Here’s what to know to decide which app deserves a place on your home screen, depending on how exactly you want to reach your goals.

Different weight loss philosophies

MyFitnessPal is the household name of calorie-counting apps, and it’s certainly designed to have mass appeal. It’s essentially a sophisticated food diary that helps you stay within your calorie budget through pretty straightforward tracking. There’s no hand-holding or psychological deep dives—just data, goals, and accountability through numbers.

Noom, on the other hand, positions itself as a psychology-based weight loss program that aims to change your relationship with food through behavioral science, daily lessons, and cognitive strategies. The idea here is to be less about restriction and more about understanding why you eat what you eat. If you’re someone who has always struggled with an overly simplistic “calories in, calories out” approach to weight loss, then Noom’s philosophy is a blessing. Then again, how “anti-diet” can a diet app really be? Let’s keep digging in.

Pricing

If your deciding factor is less about your philosophy and more about your wallet, here’s what to know. 

MyFitnessPal offers a genuinely functional free version that includes basic food tracking, exercise logging, and access to its massive food database. If you’re willing to live without some bells and whistles, you can use MyFitnessPal indefinitely without paying a dime. The Premium version costs $79.99 per year or $19.99 per month, which gets you features like barcode scanning, meal scanning, custom macros, intermittent fasting tracking, and an ad-free experience. There’s another tier, Premium+, for $99.99 per year or $24.99 per month, where you get everything in Premium plus a meal planner.

Noom takes a subscription-only approach with no free version beyond a 14-day trial period. Pricing varies based on commitment length, typically starting around $42-70 per month for shorter subscriptions, with the 12-month plan bringing the monthly cost down to approximately $17.42 per month. The most common entry point is a four-month subscription at $169 (about $42.25/month).

Winner: MyFitnessPal for budget-conscious users; Noom’s lowest monthly rate requires a long-term commitment.

User interface

MyFitnessPal features a clean, straightforward interface focused on data entry. The home screen displays your calorie budget, macronutrients, and a simple diary for logging meals and exercise. It’s efficient and no-nonsense—perfect if you want to log your lunch and move on with your day. However, I can see why some users find it clinical and uninspiring, to say the least.

Noom offers a more colorful, engaging interface with multiple sections including food logging, lessons, group chat, and progress tracking. The app uses its signature color-coding system (green, yellow, red) to categorize foods based on calorie density. While this makes the app feel more interactive, and perhaps even game-like, it also means more screen time. Noom acknowledges you’ll spend about 15 minutes per day in the app, and there are plenty of animations to keep you around. Some users might find this engaging; I find it insidious. Remember, Noom doesn’t actually transcend the classic “calories = bad” formula here. It just color-codes it.

Here’s a screenshot of MyFitnessPal on the left and Noom on the right; you can pretty quickly see which one is more straightforward calorie-tracking, and which one is more about “psychology.” 

Credit: Meredith Dietz

Winner: MyFitnessPal for quick loggers; Noom for those who want an engaging daily experience.

Food database and logging accuracy

MyFitnessPal has an extensive food database, with a huge caveat. This database is largely user-generated, which is both a blessing and a curse—you can find virtually anything, but accuracy can vary wildly. Premium users get barcode scanning and meal scanning features for faster logging.

Noom claims a database of 3.7+ million food items, though users frequently report accuracy issues. The app focuses more on its color-coding system than precise nutritional breakdowns. While you can scan barcodes and log food, the database isn’t as robust or reliable as MyFitnessPal’s according to user reports.

Winner: MyFitnessPal.

Recipe logging and meal planning

MyFitnessPal allows you to create custom recipes and save your favorite meals for quick logging. You can input all ingredients, specify servings, and the app calculates nutritional information per serving. It’s a beloved feature for home cooks. The Premium version offers curated meal plans.

Noom allows recipe creation, but the feature isn’t as refined or user-friendly as MyFitnessPal’s. Again, Noom focuses less on meal planning specifics and more on teaching you to make better choices instinctively through educational content.

Winner: MyFitnessPal.

Education and behavior change

MyFitnessPal is the world’s default calorie tracker. It provides basic nutritional insights and tracks your progress over time, but it doesn’t offer structured education or behavioral coaching. You’re expected to know what to do with the data you’re collecting.

This is where Noom differentiates itself with claims of being more than just a diet app. It’s built around daily psychology-based lessons that teach you about nutrition, habit formation, emotional eating, and cognitive behavioral techniques. You’ll complete a 10-minute quiz at the start to personalize your program, then receive articles and interactive content daily. It might not be for me, but I personally know many users find this educational approach more sustainable than simple calorie counting. Depending on your subscription, you may also get access to a personal coach and group support.

Winner: Noom.

Exercise tracking and integration

MyFitnessPal easily syncs with fitness apps and wearables (Fitbit, Apple Health, Garmin, Strava, etc.) and adjusts your calorie budget based on activity. You can manually log workouts or let your devices do the work.

Noom includes basic exercise tracking and syncs with some popular apps and devices, but it’s not the app’s primary focus. Noom encourages physical activity but emphasizes that weight loss is primarily driven by food choices.

Winner: MyFitnessPal.

Community and support

MyFitnessPal offers community forums where users can connect, share tips, and support each other. It’s a helpful resource, but feels somewhat disconnected from the core app experience.

Noom integrates community support directly into the app through group chats where you can interact with others on similar timelines. Higher-tier subscriptions include one-on-one coaching, which can provide personalized guidance and accountability.

Winner: Noom for integrated support; MyFitnessPal for self-directed community seekers.

The bottom line

There’s no universal winner here—it depends entirely on your needs, budget, and learning style.

Choose MyFitnessPal if you want a free or budget-friendly option, already understand nutrition basics, and prefer straightforward calorie tracking. It’s perfect for people who are self-motivated, enjoy analyzing data, and want freedom without forced education.

Choose Noom if you’re seeking more than just a food diary—if you want to understand the psychology behind your eating habits and build lasting behavior change. Yes, it’s significantly more expensive, but if you haven’t had success with traditional calorie counting, you’re paying for structured education, coaching options, and a comprehensive program rather than just a tracking tool.

For many people, the decision comes down to this: Do you need someone to teach you how to fish, or do you already know how and just need a good fishing rod? MyFitnessPal is the rod. Noom is the fishing instructor who’ll teach you techniques and check in on your progress.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Heath MacDonald was on hand for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday in front of a cooler filled with porterhouse, New York prime and other cuts of Alberta beef at a Costco in an upscale suburb just beyond the western edge of Mexico City. 

“Days like today open the doors for the future and we’ll just see this grow, without a doubt,” said MacDonald, in an interview with CBC News following the event. 

“The partnership is there, you can see it, you can sense it and you can feel it.” 

The recent agreement between JBS Canada and Costco Mexico is already seeing about 20,000 tonnes of beef, processed in Brooks, Alta., sent to 41 Costcos across Mexico. 

Salvador Hernandez, director for JBS Mexico, said the Costco deal has provided Canadian beef a “new frontier” in a market dominated by U.S. beef. 

“Today marks a significant milestone, not just for JBS, but the entire North American beef supply chain,” he said.

It took about a year for JBS Canada to land the deal, which involved bringing Costco Mexico officials to visit the processing plant in Brooks, accoring to Claudia Herrera-Blanc, senior director for Mexico and Latin America for the industry group Canada Beef. 

“Costco is the standard of quality in Mexico. We had been looking for this for a long time and Costco finally opened the doors,” said Herrera-Blanc.

Fresh, boneless beef is Canada’s fourth-largest export to Mexico and is covered by the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). 

Alberta prime joins other Canadian products on Costco Mexico shelves, including maple syrup, rolled oats, ice wine and chicken nuggets. An official with the Costco store that was the site of the beef announcement said that about $60,000 US (or $84,000 Cdn) worth of Canadian products were sold each week at the store.

Wednesday’s announcement was the second beef-related win for Canadian producers since MacDonald landed for a week of meetings in Mexico. 

Following a meeting Tuesday between MacDonald and Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development Julio Berdegué Sacristán, the Mexican cabinet announced that his country would also be lifting its roughly 18-month-long ban on imports of Canadian pet foods made with bovine meal.

“I told the minister that at any time, we will accept the protocol to facilitate the importation of pet food so Mexican families can feed their little animals with Canadian foods of very high quality,” said Berdegué Sacristán.

Mexico does not produce enough pet food to meet domestic demand. Mexico imported about $402.7 million worth of pet food in 2024. Canada currently has a market share of about 0.5 per cent in the country, according to Agriculture Canada data.

MacDonald said discussions with his Mexican counterpart also included introducing digital phytosanitary certificates to avoid any snags in the trade of organic products like wheat and canola.

“It could have major effects on how quickly we can trade,” he said. 

Phytosanitary certificates are provided by the exporting country to the importing country to ensure organic products are free of disease and meet the importing country’s regulations.

“People want to do business and they want to build relationships, they want to diversify,” said MacDonald. 

MacDonald is in Mexico for a series of meetings, including a trip to the city of Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, until Friday. 

The two grand prize winners and 19 category winners were announced Wednesday by the Natural History Museum in London, which has put on the competition for 61 years. 

South African wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever earned the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year with Ghost Town Visitor, a night-time photo of a brown hyena among the ruins of an abandoned mining diamond mining town in Kolmanskop, Namibia. The species passes through there en route to the Namib Desert coast to hunt cape fur seal pups.

Van den Heever spotted the tracks of the rarest hyena in the world at Kolmanskop a decade ago, and dreamed of capturing this scene. He talked to a local security guard, who said the animals came by about every four to six weeks. “Every single time I visited the ghost town I’d set up camera traps in the hope of success,” he recalled in his description of the photo. “It took me 10 years to finally get this one single image of a brown hyena in the most perfect frame imaginable. I was ecstatic.”

Andrea Dominizi of Italy won the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year title with “After the Destruction.” It’s a closeup of a longhorn beetle on a mossy log overlooking an abandoned machine from a logging operation in the Lepini Mountains of central Italy. 

Nanaimo, B.C. photographer Shane Gross, who won the competition’s grand title last year, was the only Canadian category winner in 2025, capturing “Animals in their Environment”, with his photo Like an Eel out of Water.

Gross said he took the photo while on assignment for the non-profit Save Our Seas Foundation at D’Arros Island in the Seychelles archipelago in Africa. The island was recently established as a “no-take” marine protected area, where no fishing or even collection of seashells is allowed.

The goal was to document the changes before and after protection, the impact of restoration to replace coconut plantations with native vegetation, and the work of scientists to monitor the changes.

While the area is rich in wildlife such as sharks, manta rays, nesting sea turtles, seabirds and even giant tortoises that are being reintroduced, Gross recognized that these animals have been widely photographed.

So when he first arrived, he asked scientists to show him something unique. They pointed him to peppered moray eels slithering across the shore to scavenge dead fish that had washed up at low tide.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s something I’ve never seen before,'” he recalled, and set about capturing the small eels, which are no more than two fingers thick. The animals ended up being extremely shy, and it took him nearly the entire expedition to get the shot he wanted.

Gross said the eels often found fish bigger than themselves, and lacking arms, had trouble biting off chunks. Some would fold themselves into knots or rely on each other for leverage. He was taken by the fishes’ remarkable ability to see and smell their prey both above and below the water.

He hopes the photo will allow viewers to admire an animal that’s “not on most people’s radar.”

Many marine protected areas do allow fishing, he said, and are often established to protect specific species such as sharks or sea turtles. He thinks that’s not good enough: “Species need an ecosystem to live in.” While on D’Arros Island, he observed inter-reliance and connectedness of species that lived there; for example, seabirds that hunt fish at sea, and then bring those nutrients over land, fertilizing plants with their guano. 

A no-take marine protected area takes this into account and “protects everything, top to bottom,” he said, including animals we don’t think of, such as eels.

The winning photos are among 100 chosen from over 60,000 entries that will be showcased in an exhibition that opens at the Natural History Museum in London this Friday. 

Canadians can see them in person at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto Nov. 8, 2025 to March 29, 2026.

Now, 90 years later, there is a fresh push for Sampson to be officially exonerated. 

Sampson was an African Nova Scotian man who served in the No. 2 Construction Battalion during the First World War. He was convicted after supposedly signing a confession admitting that he killed two young white boys. But lawyer David Steeves said there’s something odd about that signature.  

The confession was signed with an X, he said, which is how people who could not write would sign. However, there are documents showing that Sampson could sign using his whole name, and he had learned to read and write while serving in the military. 

“He learned how to read and write 14 years before he was arrested,” Steeves told CBC Radio’s Information Morning Nova Scotia.

Steeves says Sampson’s military discharge and marriage documents were signed using his full name.

“The X on that confession looked very troubling.”

He said a forensic document examiner concluded that the same person who wrote the body of the supposed confession is the same person who wrote the X. Steeves’s theory is that it wasn’t Sampson who wrote that confession. 

“[Police] wanted, I think, an answer for a horrible crime. But at the time, crime had been racialized and such a horrible crime was often placed on members of the Black community in Halifax,” he said.

Lance Sampson, the great-great-grandson of Daniel Sampson, filed an application for a criminal conviction review on March 7, 2025, the 90th anniversary of Daniel Sampson’s death. The case is now before the federal justice minister and the Criminal Conviction Review Group.

“I am happy to honour my ancestors in this way. And thankful to be represented by David Steeves, who has dedicated 20 years of his life to this case,” said Lance Sampson, known in the music world as Aquakultre, wrote in a Facebook post.

Steeves said racism “absolutely” played a role in how the case was handled nearly a century ago.

Sampson was judged by an all-white jury. Steeves explained that back then, jurors in Halifax came from 10 specific polling districts in the city’s downtown and South End. Among other criteria, they were required to have a certain income.

“I have looked at the tax rolls at the time in Halifax and there were members of the community in the North End, specifically African Nova Scotians, who had sufficient assets who could have sat on a jury at that time,” he said.

“But there were no African Nova Scotians or Black jurors at all.”

He said there are more than 15 pieces of new evidence that point to serious problems with the case against Sampson.

“There are multiple examples of officers lying on the stand. There are documents that were never produced. There are witnesses for the Crown whose evidence shifted multiple times. They were completely unreliable, and yet none of this was ever available to Daniel’s defence lawyer,” he said.

In fact, Steeves isn’t convinced the boys were killed in a violent act. He believes the two children died after being hit by a train while picking berries near the tracks.

“It’s a terrible thing,” he said. “But to then assign guilt to someone who wasn’t even in the area is horrific and terrible and it’s a massive miscarriage of justice.”

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Nate Horner says there still a major divide between what the union representing striking teachers is asking for and what the government is willing to spend.

The provincewide strike, affecting about 750,000 students across 2,500 schools, entered its seventh day Wednesday.

A new contract proposal from the Alberta Teachers’ Association was the subject of a bargaining meeting Tuesday, the first since its 51,000 teachers walked off the job Oct. 6.

Horner, in an interview with Corus Radio host Shaye Ganam, said the union “shot for the moon” with its latest proposal, as it would require almost $2 billion more in spending than the government had set aside for a deal.

“In that sense, I’m sure that their membership would be pleased with this ask,” Horner said Wednesday.

He also said it’s likely the government will table back-to-work legislation later this month when the legislative assembly returns.

“If this is still going when we start session on (Oct. 27), I’m assuming we will look to try to get kids back in school quickly,” he said.

“I know the parties have left it open to continue to talk, but we’re somewhat running out of time here.”

He said the government’s spending cap for a contract is $2.6 billion, which would be spread out over four years.

“I was hoping for something that was a little more reasonable in the realm that we’ve already worked on over the last year,” the minister said.

Horner said the union’s proposal boils down to a bigger salary bump than the government previously offered and action on classroom issues, including caps on class sizes.

The last offer from the government, overwhelmingly rejected in a vote by teachers late last month, included a 12 per cent pay raise over four years and a government promise to hire 3,000 more educators to address overcrowded classrooms.

Horner said the province won’t budge on salaries, saying its last offer was “extremely fair” and in line with recent contracts the province has signed with other public sector unions.

“I don’t think there’s much room there,” he said.

The union wasn’t immediately able to respond to questions about the minister’s comments.

A spokesperson for the union said no further meeting dates have been scheduled and the two sides are “considering their options.”

Horner later said in a statement that the government would like to get back to the bargaining table this week.

“The ATA and their members need to be prepared to come to a clear, concrete solution rooted in reality,” he said.

The ATA is holding a news conference at 1 p.m. MT.

His son, Evatt Merchant, confirmed that the 81-year-old died at his home in Regina on Thanksgiving Monday, Oct. 13.

A funeral is scheduled to be held in Regina next week.

Merchant’s illustrious legal career began after he was admitted to the Saskatchewan bar in 1968.

He was later admitted to the Alberta bar in 1976 and the British Columbia bar the following year.

He eventually formed his own law firm, Merchant Law Group, which now has offices in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

He was elected as an MLA in the riding of Regina Wascana in 1975. He served in the role under the banner of the Liberal Party of Saskatchewan until 1978.

Gord Kurski was Merchant’s friend and lawyer. He said he believes Merchant had an entrepreneurial spirit that helped him launch his career in class-action lawsuits.

“He was first out of the gate and had an opportunity to have a whole bunch of interesting litigation — some of it which turned out to be very lucrative for him,” Kurski told host Peter Mills on CBC Radio’s The 306.

That specialty would help Merchant become known as Canada’s class-action king because of the large settlements he won for his clients.

Merchant is likely best known for his firm’s representation of former students of residential schools in a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government.

The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement was reached in 2006, with the Canadian government agreeing to pay nearly $2 billion, one the largest class-action settlements in Canadian history.

More recently, his firm represented plaintiffs who sued Ticketmaster and reached a $6-million settlement that was finalized earlier this year.

Merchant was no stranger to controversy during his lengthy career in the courtroom.

He once represented fellow MLA Colin Thatcher in a protracted custody battle with ex-wife JoAnn Wilson over the pair’s daughter.

Merchant was convicted of criminal mischief for his role in attempting to have Thatcher’s daughter turned over to him after Wilson was killed. Thatcher was eventually convicted of murder in Wilson’s death.

While Merchant’s biggest success may have been with the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, it almost led to the suspension of the high-profile lawyer.

In October 2020, the Law Society of Saskatchewan gave Merchant an eight-month suspension after he sent a letter pressuring a residential school survivor to use her settlement money to pay unrelated legal bills.

The suspension was eventually stayed by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal after Merchant appealed the decision, successfully arguing the law society’s adjudicator misapprehended the law.

The Law Society of Saskatchewan has found Merchant guilty of conduct unbecoming a lawyer multiple times over the course of his career.

In more recent years, Merchant, whose spouse is former Liberal senator Pana Merchant, was identified in the Offshore Leaks published in 2013.

Records showed that Tony Merchant put $1.7 million in offshore tax havens while he was battling with the Canada Revenue Agency over his taxes.

Kuski said Merchant dealt with controversy like “water off a duck’s back,” noting the lawyer was undaunted by authority.

Kuski said Merchant was likely the most well-known lawyer in the province — everyone had a story about him — and that means his death will change the legal landscape in Saskatchewan.

“He was front and centre in our profession for many, many years and it’s going to be far less interesting without him,” said Kuski.

Merchant is survived by his wife Pana and his three sons, all of whom followed their father’s path into law.

Salomon Bashir was on trial last month, accused of the second-degree murder of Everton Frost, 23, when Justice Giulia Gambacorta issued the stay of what was supposed to be a month-long jury trial, despite protests from the Crown. 

She said that in her ruling Sept. 22, assistant Crown attorneys Michael Dean and Steve Kim, as well as Hamilton police, “approached the prosecution with apathy and a continued negligence” that jeopardized Bashir’s right to a fair trial. 

Two key missteps, Gambacorta said, were when Dean and Kim failed to disclose crucial DNA and cellphone tower evidence to the defence ahead of the trial. That meant Bashir’s lawyers had no time to prepare their response. 

“This pattern of repeated indifference contravenes those notions of fundamental fairness and undermines the integrity of the judicial process rising to the level of an abuse of process,” the justice said. 

She said the Crown’s conduct met the bar for a judicial stay, “an extremely rare remedy reserved only for the clearest of cases.”

Hamilton police arrested a then 20-year-old Bashir in the summer of 2023 and charged him in the shooting death of Frost. 

The young men had met two weeks before Frost died from gunshot wounds on Dec. 11, 2022, police said.

Bashir was held in custody while the court process unfolded and the lawyers prepared for trial. 

Last January, however, Hamilton police received a new piece of evidence in the form of a “DNA hit notification.”

They had a match for one of the DNA samples found on a blue surgical mask the Crown believed was worn by the murder suspect, Gambacorta said. Police recovered the mask on train tracks, along with a bullet and gun, all believed to be thrown there by the shooter after fleeing the scene.  

While Bashir’s DNA was already determined not to be on the mask, the new match was for Frost’s brother, Gambacorta said. 

The police, “long in possession” of the new DNA evidence, did not notify the Crown’s office about the new DNA evidence until April 8 and didn’t alert the defence, said Gambacorta. 

It wasn’t until the second day of Bashir’s trial that the Crown handed over the evidence to his lawyers. 

“The record is devoid of any explanation of how such critical evidence could remain undisclosed,” said Gambacorta.  

Police did not respond to CBC Hamilton’s request for comment. 

The Crown also had cellphone tower data, which it would’ve tried to use to connect Bashir to the area at the time of the shooting. This evidence was “complex” and needed to be explained to the jury through a cellphone tower map — obtained through service providers — and an expert witness, said Gambacorta. 

But the Crown didn’t inform the defence it would in fact be calling three expert witnesses, until the eve of trial. They also didn’t begin the process of getting the map until after the trial began. 

After these mistakes came to light, the defence applied to stay the proceedings. The Crown opposed it, asking for the judge to declare a mistrial and schedule a new trial instead. The Crown argued the mistakes were “inadvertent” and could be dealt with in advance of a new trial.

But Gambacorta ruled the Crown’s conduct met the high bar for a judicial stay. She also noted Bashir had been in pretrial custody for over 26 months and rebooking the trial for sometime in 2026 would violate his right for the case to be heard within a reasonable time. 

“Especially where an offender is incarcerated pending trial, I find this record so troublesome that having a trial will leave the impression that the justice system condones or tolerates this type of conduct,” Gambacorta said. 

The last time a murder charge was stayed due to an abuse of process in Ontario was likely over 20 years ago, said defence lawyers Laura Giordano and Ian McCuaig in a statement. 

They said they were particularly troubled by “the apparent lack of interest” shown by the Crown’s office in the outcome.

“To our knowledge, there has been no public effort by the Crown’s office to investigate or address the ‘indifferent’ and ‘lackadaisical attitude’ displayed by the Crown in this case, especially in a case involving the most serious offence of murder,” the defence said, quoting from the judge’s ruling.

The Ministry of the Attorney General, which oversees Ontario Crown attorneys, did not respond to a request for comment on whether there has been any action taken to avoid a similar outcome in the future.

Bashir, who has always said he was innocent, was looking forward to having a fair trial, said Giordano and McCuaig.

“Mr. Bashir was deprived of this opportunity, as was society,” they said. 

The judge’s decision was necessary, they said, to “uphold the public’s confidence in the judicial system.” 

“While the community should be outraged by the police and Crown conduct and attitude in this proceeding, the community can also take comfort in her honour’s protection of all Canadians’ fair trial rights, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.