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Several Police Chiefs in Ontario have lobbied to change provincial rules that govern payment to suspended employees. Photo: CC Dave Conner.
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Suspended police still make sunshine list

The Ottawa Police Service spent more than half a million dollars in salaries on suspended officers last year, according to the sunshine list, a database that lists all of the public servants in Ontario that make over $100,000 a year.

“At what point do we stop?” said Ottawa Police Service’s executive officer, Inspector Chris Rheaume, in an interview with the CBC. “They’re appealing and appealing and at what point is enough enough.”

Rheaume said that Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau has been lobbying alongside several other Chiefs of Police in Ontario for a change in the provincial rules.

The current Ontario Police Services Act states that officers must continue to receive their salaries unless they are sentenced to jail.

—Dongjiao Wang

Oldest living person may be woman from Quebec

Cecilia Laurent, 120 years old and a Haitian immigrant may be the oldest person alive. Laurent currently lives in Laval, Quebec, and arrived in Canada after the Haitian earthquake in 2010.

Guinness World Records is currently validating the claim, according to the CBC. If Laurent’s age is accurate, she’s only two years younger than the oldest living person to date, a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment who died in 1997.

Laurent’s family told the CBC that her advanced age is due to constant prayer, cartoons and an all-natural diet.

However, Laurent still has something she wants to accomplish. She wants to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and ask him to help her two great-grandsons in Haiti come to visit her in Canada.

—David Campion-Smith

Warm weather puts a damper on Winterlude

Thanks to warmer temperatures in Ottawa, a number of fixtures of the celebrated Winterlude festival have been closed.

The Rideau Canal Skateway has been closed along with the snowflake kingdom at Jacques Cartier park, and many of the ice sculptures are off-limits or covered in tarps to protect them from sunlight.

Despite the warm weather, the National Capital Commission (NCC) isn’t worried. “We’ve been doing this for such a long time that we’re used to this and we have measures that we put in place to make sure that we protect our sites as much as possible,” said Katherine Cyr, an NCC spokeswoman, in an interview with the CBC.

Winterlude ends on Feb. 15.

—Eric Davidson