As the province enters spring seeding season, the Government of Saskatchewan says safety should be top of mind.

In a Monday news release, the government reminded farmers to follow safe practices in the field and when moving equipment on the roadways, while also reminding the public to stay alert and patient when sharing the road with farm equipment.

“The largest annual private investment in Saskatchewan is now underway as spring seeding begins,” Agriculture Minister David Marit said in the announcement. “During this busy time of year, I encourage everyone to stay safe and be mindful of farm equipment on roadways.”

The call for safety didn’t just end with physical risks, as the province also reminded farmers to also take care of their mental health.

“When stressed or fatigued, good decision-making is more difficult, and safety can slip,” said SaskAgMatters chair Cynthia Beck.

“Taking care of yourself is just as important as the farm work. Keep in mind, a farm’s number one asset is the people. A seeder cannot run itself. If the workload or life in general feels overwhelming, it is the perfect time to reach out for support and learn strategies to help manage.

“Producers and farm families are encouraged to contact the Farm Stress Line or SaskAgMatters for free mental health support.”

Since April 1, SaskAgMatters has assumed management of the provincial Farm Stress Line – a 24/7 confidential mental health service for producers.

SaskAgMatters also offers free counselling. Counsellors with the Farm Stress Line and SaskAgMatters both have prior agricultural training.

The Farm Stress Line can be accessed at 1-800-667-4442 and addresses concerns related to burnout, financial stress, family pressures, anxiety, depression or concern for others.

The program receives $200,000 per year from the federal and provincial governments through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

The man accused of manslaughter in connection to a killing in Turnor Lake Sask. last week is facing additional charges.

On Monday, Saskatchewan RCMP announced that Darian Montgrand from Turnor Lake had been charged with three counts of possessing a firearm or ammunition contrary to conditions and one count of unauthorized possession of a firearm.

Montgard was previously charged with one count of manslaughter.

On Friday, May 8, RCMP officers from Buffalo Narrows and La Loche responded to a report of an injured woman at a home in the community of Turnor Lake - located more than 580 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

Officers found the woman at the scene, where they arrested a man outside the home.

Paramedics responded and declared the woman dead at the scene. RCMP identified her as 21-year-old Shalayah Montgrand of Turnor Lake. Her family has been notified.

Darian Montgrand made his first appearance in Meadow Lake Provincial Court on Monday.

More than a dozen Saskatchewan communities remain under local states of emergency this week as flooding persists in the central and northern parts of the province.

In an update Monday, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) said 18 varying towns or villages, rural municipalities and Indigenous communities are still under states of emergency due to rising water levels.

“The SPSA is working with communities that are at risk of flooding, or are currently experiencing flooding conditions — providing resources and supports to several of the impacted communities,” said Jeff DeDekker, manager of communications, during a media briefing.

The number of emergency declarations has dropped down from Sunday’s total of 34.

Declaration are still in place for:

• Northern Hamlet of St. George’s Hill
• Resort Village of Chorney Beach
• Resort Village of Leslie Beach
• RM of Aberdeen
• RM of Barrier Valley
• RM of Big River
• RM of Buchanan
• RM of Buckland
• RM of Garden River
• RM of Invermay
• RM of Moose Range
• RM of Ponass Lake
• RM of Prairie Rose
• RM of St. Louis
• RM of Usborne
• RM of Wolverine
• Village of White Fox
• Sturgeon Lake First Nation

“The SPSA is in contact with each of these communities and is supporting multiple communities and rural areas with staff or equipment resources,” DeDekker added.

“The SPSA has supplied flooding response equipment to multiple communities across the province. We will continue to monitor all affected areas and provide updates as conditions evolve.”

The Water Security Agency (WSA) says snow pack melt remains the reason for the flood waters.

“In most essential areas, stream flows have peaked and are continuing to recede,” said Leah Clark, executive director of irrigation and economic development.

“Flows are expected to stay higher than normal over the next several days despite passing through those peaks.”

Clark added the WSA is monitoring conditions alongside Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) in attempt to figure out how long flooding may last.

However, it doesn’t appear that an end is in sight.

“While some areas have begun to recede, other basins have not yet reached their peak, including the north, where flows are continuing to rise,” Clark said. “Where there’s still snowpack. The late thaw higher than average snowpack combined with late spring snowstorms, continues to create significant runoff and flooding.”

“With the temperatures and the overnight lows above zero right now, we’re seeing pretty steady, steady snowmelt. The one thing that might change that is rain. When we get rain on snow, it does it does make that snowmelt a little bit more rapid,” she added.

The Saskatchewan Highway Hotline adds flood waters continue to impact highway conditions across the province.

This includes the collapse of three bridges on provincial highways in which the ministry has already erected temporary structures.

Officials encourage motorists to check the Highway Hotline prior to travel for the latest on provincial conditions and where potential washouts are occurring.

A 32-year-old man from Ohio faces charges related to the online luring of a Manitoba child.

Cortney Arden Wise III of Wadsworth, Ohio was arrested by special agents from U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Cleveland after he allegedly groomed a 10-year-old Manitoba child on social media by convincing her to send explicit photos.

“The details of this case are disturbing,” said Cpl. Emmie Clements of the Manitoba RCMP’s Integrated Child Exploitation Unit.

Manitoba RCMP began investigating in December 2025 after a family member reported the message exchanges to police.

They allege the suspect pretended to be a teenager and interacted with the child on both social media and through text messaging.

The suspect convinced the girl to send images and videos of herself to him, and he did the same.

Police in the U.S. seized the suspect’s electronic devices and found evidence of the communication between Wise III and the Manitoba girl.

Wise III has been charged by U.S. officials with:

1. Sexual exploitation of children
2. Receipt of visual depictions of real minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct
3. Possession of child pornography

He remains in custody in Ohio. U.S. officials also believed the suspect may have victimized other children and are continuing to investigate.

RCMP confirmed Wise III is not facing any charges in Canada at this time.

“This incident was a terrible reminder of the dangers that lurk on the internet, especially for children and teenagers,” Cpl. Clements said. “It only takes a few moments for bad actors to make contact with their next victims.”

Canada’s national tipline seeing increase in reports

Cybertip.ca, operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, serves as Canada’s national tipline for reporting the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

According to Lindsay Lobb, who works with the centre, reports involving online luring submitted through the tipline have tripled over the past five years.

In 2020, approximately 750 reports were filed. By 2025, that number had surged to more than 3,300.

“What we know is that much of this is attributed to adults being allowed to intercept their children in largely unregulated spaces,” said Lobb, who is the director of operations for the support services team at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. “We know that more needs to be done.”

According to Statistics Canada, police services across the country reported nearly 17,000 incidents of online child sexual exploitation in 2024.

The rate of these incidents has also risen 347 per cent since 2014.

However, Lobb says the age of victims is decreasing.

“We are seeing children as young as 10 and 11 report to us. On average, we are typically seeing more between 13 and 15 years old, but as accessibility increases, the age of the children is trending downwards,” she said.

She added that parents and children need better access to education, prevention tools, and support resources.

Popular platforms being used to harm children

The case comes only weeks after Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s government is considering restrictions on youth access to social media and AI chatbot platforms, with enforcement aimed at major tech companies.

Lobb supports stronger regulation, saying platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok continue to be linked to reports made through Cybertip.ca.

“They have been allowed to create spaces that are unsafe for children. They’ve been allowed to create those with no regulation and oversight,” she said.

But tech analyst Carmi Levy argues these bans alone will not stop online predators, saying they will always find other alternatives to reach out to victims.

“If you ban one technology, they will work around it and find some other way to find victims,” he said.

“That is the way this technology always works. You literally cannot turn off the internet for kids. Predators will always find a way.”

Levy says parents should always know what tools or platforms their children are using.

“That doesn’t just include classic tools like social media apps and artificial intelligence. Increasingly, it can also include gaming platforms or even music platforms that incorporate social media features into them,” he said.

Sara Austin echoes those statements.

“We need to be educated and informed as parents,” Austin, the Founder and CEO of Children Canada First said. “That’s not to say that we need to be cyber security experts and to know all the things, but we need to be having conversations with our kids from the very early years on how to be safe online.”

“We need to be monitoring those devices and ensuring that they are set up with proper parental controls.”

Austin also said it’s important for parents to be talking to their children about the dangers of online harms on a regular basis.

For more information about the risks of online luring, you can visit Cybertip.ca.

Within 90 minutes of an Amber Alert being issued for two missing children in northwestern B.C. overnight, Mounties said the pair was found safe and two people were taken into custody.

In a news release Monday, Terrace RCMP said the twins are now “in care” after they were found in a suspect vehicle in the Burns Lake area.

Mounties were notified that the siblings had been taken by someone late on Sunday night. The Amber Alert was issued in the early hours Monday, after investigators determined the children to be in “immediate danger.”

RCMP said tips came in soon after, helping officers safely track down the children.

“The B.C. Amber Alert system worked exactly as intended, and because of that, these children were located quickly and safely,” Staff Sgt. Michael Bourguignon said in the release. “We are incredibly grateful for the public’s immediate attention and willingness to assist. Their vigilance helped ensure a swift and safe resolution.”

Mounties added that the investigation remains ongoing and more information will be released when it is appropriate.

A Southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, and has resigned from her city position, officials said Monday.

Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favourable to Beijing, without prior notification to the U.S. government as required by law.

The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected on a rotating basis.

City manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a news release that no city finances or staff were involved.

“We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022,” he said.

Federal officials said she has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

According to her plea agreement, Wang and a colleague, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, worked on behalf of government officials for the People’s Republic of China from the end of 2020 to 2022 to promote their interests by promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the U.S. Sun is serving a four-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to the same charge last October. He was also listed in campaign filings as the treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election campaign.

Wang and Sun operated the news website U.S. News Center, aimed at the Chinese American community, and were instructed by Chinese government officials to post pro-PRC content on it.

Wang has also communicated with John Chen, who also pleaded guilty to being an agent for the Chinese government and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Wang is expected to appear in federal court Monday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and plead guilty in the coming weeks.

Arcadia is located about 13 miles (21 kilometres) northeast of Los Angeles. The city of about 53,000 is majority Asian and has a high concentration of Chinese residents.

An Ottawa kidney transplant patient says he’s speaking out because his insurance company is refusing to pay for a brand-name drug he’s been on for years in favour of a generic version, despite a doctor’s note saying it could lead to organ rejection.

“I don’t feel that it is warranted or fair of an insurance company to ask me to go against my doctor’s wishes and to also say if you insist on (following) your doctor’s wishes, we won’t cover it,” said Shad Zekry, who received a kidney from his wife in 2023.

Zekry takes Advagraf, the brand name of the drug tacrolimus, every day. It’s used to help prevent organ rejection.

His insurance plan with the federal government had reimbursed the cost for the last three years until April.

“They said, ‘No, there is a generic medicine,’ and there really isn’t for this formulation,” said Zekry. “When I told my physicians, they said, ‘Do not switch.’”

Zekry’s doctor says there’s no benefit to switching and that it can put patients at risk.

“There are very few medications that fall into that narrow therapeutic index, but anti-rejection medications are one of them,” said Dr. David Massicotte-Azarniouch, a nephrologist at the Ottawa Hospital and Zekry’s doctor.

It means even small changes can cause the appropriate dose to be ineffective or toxic.

“It’s not that generics are bad, it’s just that in this case, for this medication, you want to keep as much as possible patients on the same brand of medication to avoid that variability,” said Massicotte-Azarniouch, adding his advice would be the same if there was a request to switch between two generic medications.

In a letter to Zekry, Canada Life wrote: “reimbursement at the brand-name cost can only be approved if an adverse reaction to the lowest-cost alternative drug has occurred or is expected to occur.”

Zekry’s doctor filled out a “request for brand-name prescription drug coverage” form required by Canada Life that states Zekry needs to continue on the brand name because there’s a risk of organ rejection with a generic. Despite that, the request was denied by Canada Life.

“As plan sponsor, the Government of Canada’s Public Service Health Care Plan Authority determines what is covered under their benefits plan. Canada Life administers all claims in compliance with the Government of Canada’s Public Service Health Care Plan Directive,” a Canada Life spokesperson wrote in a statement.

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat said its plan “limits the reimbursement of a brand-name drug to the lowest-cost alternative drug available,” adding a doctor can submit the brand name coverage request form to Canada Life “for review by their medical experts to determine eligibility for reimbursement of the brand-name drug,” which Zekry had done and was rejected.

Zekry said he plans to appeal the decision.

The Government of Saskatchewan and the Pharmacy Association of Saskatchewan (PAS) have developed a three-year agreement with the aim of sustaining pharmacies, optimizing scope and modernizing programs.

The new Pharmacy Proprietor Agreement funds services like the dispensing of medications as well as minor ailment diagnosis and treatment.

It is a part of the province’s Patients First Health Care Plan.

“Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians and assistants put patients first by delivering high quality care in more than 100 communities across the province,” Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill said in a news release Tuesday.

“As one of the most widely and readily available access points for primary care, pharmacies play a key role in ensuring patients receive the right care in the right place at the right time.”

The new agreement came into effect May 1, 2026 and provides a total funding increase of $13.8 million. The investment constitutes a 5.4 per cent increase for pharmacy sustainability and a 3.7 per cent increase for scope optimization and service enhancement – representing a 9.1 per cent total increase.

The deal will have a phased implementation over the three-year term.

“Expanding the scope of practice for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians fills in some of the gaps in healthcare, particularly in rural, small-town Saskatchewan,” PAS CEO Michael Fougere told CTV News.

“It really does improve access to health care, and the quality of health care, for people.”

The contract further expands strep throat and ear infection services, allowing broader availability and timely access to care in the community.

Additionally, there is an expansion of the Saskatchewan Medication Assessment Program to more residents and commitments to support minor ailment prescribing by pharmacists. There is also an expansion to chronic disease management services by pharmacy professionals.

The Government of Saskatchewan and PAS will also work collaboratively to review and modernize policy to improve patient access to care.

Fougere says 75 pharmacies across the province will see an expanded scope of practice, but he hopes more will join the program.

“[Pharmacists] can do a lot,” he emphasized. “I’m pleased the government recognizes that in their patients-first strategy, they recognize pharmacists being able to do just exactly that.”

Fougere again emphasized the program’s benefits to small towns and rural areas.

“These services I’m talking about provide quality care, where [they] can be diagnosing and providing support for patients where they would not otherwise have that,” he added.

PAS hopes to see scope expansion grow to allow pharmacists more allowance within the health-care sector, including in aiding with chronic disease and medication management for varying conditions.

The government says there are more than 1,400 practising pharmacists and pharmacy technicians working in 433 licensed community pharmacies across Saskatchewan.

EVO Radio Network – Scheduled Maintenance Notice

EVO Radio will be conducting a network-wide server migration and infrastructure update beginning Saturday, January 17, 2026 at 3:00 AM, with work expected to be completed by Sunday, January 18, 2026 at 8:00 PM.

During this maintenance window, the following services may be temporarily offline or intermittently inaccessible at various points:

Websites

• https://z1035.evoradio.ca/

• https://979thecowboy.evoradio.ca/

• https://101therockhound.evoradio.ca/

• https://887thegoat.evoradio.ca/

• https://advertiseraccess.evoradio.ca/

• https://vipclub.evoradio.ca/

• https://evomcorp.com/

• https://djspinderella.evomcorp.com/

Live Broadcasting

• Z103.5

• 979 The Cowboy

• 101 The Rockhound

• Classic 88.7 The Goat

Stream Relay Network

• All Stream Relay services will be unavailable during the migration.

Because this update involves server transfers, database installations, and name server changes, exact downtime periods cannot be guaranteed. Individual service interruptions may vary, with some components taking up to several hours to complete.

Our support and technical teams will work to keep all stations and websites online for as long as possible and will restore services immediately as each system becomes available. Broadcast services and station websites will be prioritized, followed by additional network services.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we complete these upgrades, which are designed to improve performance, reliability, and long-term stability across the EVO Radio Network.

Thank you for your continued support,
EVO Radio Network

🎉 Update Completed Successfully! 🎉

We are thrilled to announce that our scheduled network update has been completed without any issues! 🚀 All our broadcast stations, streams, and websites are now fully operational and running better than ever.

What’s New?

Here’s what you can expect from this update:
✅ Improved Audio Player – No more interruptions or cutting off! Enjoy seamless streaming on our websites.
✅ Enhanced Stream Stability – Our radio streams are now more reliable than ever.
✅ Upgraded Security & Quality – Improved protection and enhanced broadcast quality for an unmatched listening experience.

Fully Operational Services:

🎵 Stations:

• Z103.5 – https://z1035.evoradio.ca/
• 979 The Cowboy – https://979thecowboy.evoradio.ca/
• 101 The Rockhound – https://101therockhound.evoradio.ca/
• Classic 88.7 The Goat – https://887thegoat.evoradio.ca/

🌐 Websites:

• EVO Radio Advertiser Access – https://advertiseraccess.evoradio.ca/
• EVO Media Corporation – https://evomcorp.com/
• DJ Spinderella – https://djspinderella.evomcorp.com/

Experiencing Issues?

While everything is running smoothly on our end, we’re here to help if you encounter any issues. If you’re having trouble with our broadcasts or websites, please report the issue to us immediately so we can address it.

📧 Contact Us:

If you have having any issues please reach out to us on our websites!

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this process. We’re committed to providing you with the best listening experience possible and appreciate your support!

🎧 Happy Listening!
The EVO Radio & EVO Media Corporation Team