The British Columbia government is moving to curtail lawyers and legal costs in the public auto insurance system by severely limiting injured people's ability to sue at-fault drivers or the auto insurer after a crash. The government says legislation will be introduced in the coming weeks that will lower premiums at the Insurance Corporation of B.C. by about 20 per cent, an average of $400 in savings per driver. At the same time, maximum care and treatment benefits for anyone injured in a crash would increase to at least $7.5 million, and those benefits will be available to every B.C. driver w

Victoria police say a woman is in custody after a break-and-enter call set off the evacuation of an apartment building and a four-hour standoff. Police say they were called to a business when an alarm was set off early this morning and officers spotted a woman leaving the scene over a rooftop. They say the woman then broke into a nearby apartment building, pulled the fire alarm, discharged an extinguisher and then barricaded herself inside a suite. When negotiations failed, police say officers used a loud distraction device to make the arrest and she now faces the possibility of multiple char

Two more presumptive cases of the novel coronavirus have been diagnosed in British Columbia. Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer, says a man and woman, both visitors from China's Hubei province, have been confirmed to have the illness. Henry says the visitors are linked to a woman who was diagnosed earlier this week in the Vancouver area. She says officials are confident one of the newly diagnosed people is the source of the novel coronavirus in that household. Henry says that source is a young, healthy man who had a very mild illness and didn't seek medical attention. B.C. wi

A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has rejected a request for an injunction against Uber and Lyft pending a legal challenge against the approval of ride-hailing services in Metro Vancouver. Justice Veronica Jackson says the Vancouver Taxi Association failed to establish that an independent regulator used an uneven playing field in allowing the two companies to operate as of Jan. 23. She says the association's argument over irreparable harm to the industry was ``scant at best'' and included anecdotal evidence from one taxi driver, without any details of how many hours he'd worked over six

Canada has secured second charter flight out of Wuhan, set to leave next week. The federal government has chartered a second flight to bring Canadians home from the centre of the new coronavirus outbreak next week. Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says that second flight is scheduled to leave Wuhan on Feb. 10 and arrive in Canada the next day. People have already begun boarding the first flight that will soon take some Canadians out of Wuhan, a city under quarantine in central China. Champagne says some of the 211 people who were on the passenger list for that flight, whic

The Transportation Safety Board says it is ready to compile its report about a fatal train derailment near the Alberta-British Columbia boundary last year. A Canadian Pacific Railway grain train was stopped on a mountain slope near Field, B-C last February when it began moving and plummeted off a bridge. A conductor, engineer and trainee were killed. The safety agency says only the 13 cars and tail-end locomotive that remained on the track were recovered for examination. No data could be retrieved from the recorder in the lead locomotive because it was too damaged.

Harry Bains, Minister of Labour, has appointed Amanda Rogers and Vince Ready as special mediators in the eight-month collective bargaining dispute between Western Forest Products and the United Steelworkers Local 1-1937."This dispute has taken a huge toll on workers and their families as well as the entire coastal forestry community.We want to see everyone get back on the job," Bains said."As Minister of Labour, I have decided to appoint special mediators Ready and Rogers with additional powers under the Labour Relations Code to help the parties reach an agreement as soon as possible."The par

Two more Canadians have been confirmed infected with the novel coronavirus but they are not home, instead they are on a cruise ship off Japan. The pair were among the 10 people who tested positive after 10 initial cases were confirmed earlier in the week. The ship has since been quarantined and will likely remain so for two weeks. The cruise line says it will continue to fully co-operate with and follow the instructions of global medical authorities and the Japanese government.

The legal battle over ride-hailing in Surrey intensified Monday as Uber asked the B.C. Supreme Court to block the city from ticketing its drivers, accusing Mayor Doug McCallum of blocking a provincially approved service through “unlawful” bylaw enforcement. Uber’s lawyer, Michael Feder, told the court that Surrey has been fining drivers $500 per day for operating without a city business licence, even though the Passenger Transportation Board (PTB) authorized ride-hailing in Metro Vancouver nearly two weeks ago. “Drivers are being deterred from working under the threat of financial pena