Crash brings train traffic to a standstill in West Perth
The collision happened Thursday on Perth Road 145, south of Perth Line 34.
Ontario Provincial Police said trains won't be able to travel through the area until the bridge is repaired.
Perth Line 145 will also be closed between Perth Line 34 and Perth Line 32 for at least one week.
OPP said there was no estimate for when the bridge will reopen and train traffic could resume.
A 47-year-old man from Stratford has been charged with careless driving.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Amid tariffs and falling sales, is Canada's EV mandate doomed?
Social Sharing With U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and light-duty vehicles continuing to batter the Canadian automobile industry, the CEOs of Canada's big three automakers are asking for a break. They met with Prime Minister Mark Carney this week to lobby for the elimination of the Liberal government's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. Maintaining it, they say, will cripple their companies and put thousands of jobs at risk. Carney cancelled Canada's digital services tax last weekend to keep trade negotiations going with the U.S. Could the ZEV mandate also be removed to help an auto industry bleeding from the trade war? And what would that mean for Carney politically if he did so? The mandate requires the number of new ZEVs sold in Canada to hit 20 per cent by next year, 60 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035 in order to help the country hit its emission-reduction targets. Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, who was at the meeting with Carney, said the electric vehicle mandate just can't be met as it stands. Kingston and other industry players say U.S. tariffs have led to a significant drop in the number of vehicles Canada exports, putting immense pressure on the industry. According to Statistics Canada, the number of light-duty vehicles exported to the U.S. in April was down 23 per cent over the previous year. Flavio Volpe, the president of Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, told CBC News that while Canada imports about $80 billion worth of automobiles and parts from the U.S. each year, it exports about 85 per cent of the light-duty vehicles that roll off the line. Many of those are plug-in hybrids or electric, but the market for those vehicles in the U.S. is declining just as it is in Canada. Killing the U.S. ZEV mandate In January, U.S. President Donald Trump eliminated his country's ZEV mandate that would have required half of all new vehicles to be electric by 2030. A White House statement said the mandate was scrapped in order to "promote consumer choice." The passage of Trump's "big, beautiful bill" further hit the U.S. ZEV market by killing the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit by the end of September. That credit was supposed to remain on the books until 2032. Canada had its own ZEV rebate. That program offered up to $5,000 toward the purchase of a new electric car and up to $2,500 on the purchase of a new plug-in hybrid. While it was supposed to stay in place until March, it was paused in January when it ran out of funding. In April, the sale of zero-emission vehicles in Canada sat at only 7.5 per cent — a 28.5 per cent decline over April 2024. With exports and sales down and no rebate in place, manufacturers say there is just not enough demand to hit the 20 per cent target next year. Competing concerns Christopher Cochrane, the chair of the University of Toronto's political science department, says Carney is wedged between his environmental ambition and the need for an industrial policy that will keep people employed and protect the auto industry. But if Carney decided he needed to end the EV mandate, Cochrane said, he might have a window of opportunity. "He has a coalition of people built not on any particular agreement with him, but built on a common disagreement with what they see as the main alternative — and that did give him the policy leeway to do things like get rid of the carbon tax," he said. But he said it isn't easy to navigate the environmental and economic concerns from within his own party. "The risk, longer term, is that he starts to erode and blow up that coalition," Cochrane said. "But right now I think he's still in pretty good shape." Fudging it Adam Chamberlin, an assistant professor in the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, said Carney likely doesn't want to frame any decision as the end of EV mandates. "So 2035 maybe becomes 2036 or 2037, and the other interim goals for 2030 become 2031 or 2032," Chamberlin said. "I think it's that kind of a fudge that we're going to see." Volpe says that just because the U.S. wants to abandon its EV ambitions, that doesn't mean Canada should follow suit. He says an electrified car market plays to Canada's strengths as a country with rich reserves of critical minerals, a sophisticated science and technology sector, a well-established supply chain and an ample supply of electricity. WATCH | Why experts think the future is still electric: Road to EV adoption: Why experts think the future is still electric 10 months ago Duration 5:47 Recent headlines have suggested that consumers are losing interest in electric vehicles, but a closer look at the trends tells a different story. CBC's Nisha Patel breaks down where we're at in the EV transition and why experts say the future is still electric. "The rest of the world continues down the march [of electrification] undaunted," Volpe said. "We need to make sure that as that [U.S.] market wakes up, we're first ones to access it." Volpe says any penalties for not meeting the ZEV mandate should be halted and it should be adjusted to better line up with "market realities." He wants the federal government to reintroduce the EV rebate and expand it to include conventional hybrids, which he said would build support for EVs. The government said it plans to introduce a new rebate program, but that hasn't happened yet. Volpe also wants the federal government to help identify the electric cars that Canadians want, and help factories retool to meet that demand.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Does anyone still clip coupons? Consumers want deals, but how they find them is shifting
For some, it's a ritual — sitting down with that week's flyers and clipping out coupons for the best deals. For others, it's a lifestyle. Couponing entered the lexicon in the 1950s, and then came Extreme Couponing, the popular 2010 U.S. television show that ran for four seasons. And for many, it's a necessity. The majority of Canadians are actively seeking ways to save on food costs, including using more coupons, according to a 2024 report from the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. But as a wave of reports shows a decline in coupon distribution and redemption, and amid the increasing use of AI to hunt down deals, is couponing in danger of becoming a lost art? Changes in the coupon landscape "I think it's that the type of couponing is changing," said Kathleen Cassidy, who runs the popular social media couponing account Living on a Loonie. Cassidy, who lives in Toronto, regularly posts deals and couponing tips to her hundreds of thousands of followers across social media. "We're seeing a lot more couponing entering the digital sphere. It's more of the cash-back apps, the digital coupons, the loyalty points," Cassidy told CBC News. Yet coupon use, both physical and digital, has been declining in the U.S. since the 1990s and fell by over 50 per cent between 2006 and 2019, according to a new study in the Journal of Political Economy. U.S. marketers distributed just 50 billion coupons in 2024, compared to 330 billion in 2010, according to data compiled by marketing and commercial-printing services company RRD for the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, traffic to U.S. retail websites via generative AI jumped 1,200 per cent in February compared to six months earlier, according to a March report from Adobe. While Adobe added the traffic was "modest" compared to other channels like paid search or email, its "growth has been notable — doubling every two months since September 2024." The company also surveyed 5,000 U.S. consumers for its report, and found 39 per cent used AI for online shopping. Of those, 43 per cent said they used AI to seek deals. The evolutions of coupons Coupons date back to at least 1887, when Coca-Cola started distributing them as a way to boost the drink's profile, according to the History Channel. They've since evolved from those traditional newspaper clippings with in-store redemption, according to a report from Snipp, a promotions tech company. The 1990s saw the rise of digital discount codes, email promotions and printable coupons, the report says, and the COVID-19 pandemic caused digital coupons to surpass physical ones. The problem, however, is that the landscape for digital deals is currently "overcrowded," according to the report. And that may be why consumers are increasingly using AI to cut through the noise, said Tripat Gill, an associate economics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. WATCH | The rise of the Canadian coupon clippers (From 2011): Rise of the Coupon Clippers 14 years ago Duration 5:53 Gill said using AI reduces "search cost," or the time and effort people spend searching for products. AI services are marketed as incredibly intelligent and competent, so it makes sense for consumers to try using them to find discounts, said Matthew Guzdial, an assistant computing science professor at the University of Alberta. But there's a problem, the experts agree: "Unfortunately, it doesn't really work," Guzdial said. 'Life-changing shopping hack' TikTok is full of Gen Z consumers sharing how AI has helped them save money, from coupon codes and hunting down the best deals, to budgeting help. "My life-changing shopping hack was when I saw a girl on my [for you page] say she uses ChatGPT for discount codes," one TikToker wrote alongside a video in May. AI can offer a discreet way for consumers to seek out cost-saving tips, says Guzdial, but the models are often wrong. Coupons change regularly, and AI models at this point don't have the ability to verify if a code found in their training data from months or years ago is still valid, he said. In most cases, a chatbot can't even search the web as part of an answer, Guzdial said. Gill says that when it comes to shopping research, how helpful AI can be depends on how narrow and focused you are in your prompt. For instance, Gill says he recently asked Shopping GPT (a feature within ChatGPT) for help finding a digital camera for his teen daughter that cost under $100. It provided him with three links, two of which led him to products that weren't even cameras. But had he asked, "Find me a pink-coloured digital camera for a teen girl for under $100 from Amazon," the results would have been more reliable, he added. Can AI hunt down deals? As an informal test, CBC News asked ChatGPT if it could find a discount code for Old Navy Canada. It quickly pulled up a code for 20 per cent off. However, when CBC attempted to apply the code, it was "invalid or or expired." The same thing happened with the next three codes ChatGPT pulled up, as well as with the codes provided by CouponGPTs, an AI-powered coupon finding tool. Next, CBC asked ChatGPT if it could find a discount for a slow cooker. It suggested the Chefman stainless steel slow cooker from Giant Tiger for 50 per cent off. But CBC couldn't locate that deal, or even that slow cooker, on Giant Tiger's website. On closer inspection, the link ChatGPT cited as a reference was from a Nov. 23, 2014 entry on the Smart Canucks blog. Cassidy, the Toronto coupon influencer, says she hasn't tried AI to find deals. But she's not looking through paper flyers, either. She uses the Flipp app to look through digital flyers every week, which she cross-references with different cash-back apps and digital coupons. "You used to see a lot of physical coupons ... whether they were in flyers or inserts or at the stores on products," Cassidy said. "There still are physical coupons out there, but there maybe aren't as many available as there used to be."
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
People getting divorced are setting up gift registries. Don't roll your eyes just yet
When Stacey Slager's marriage ended, a colleague suggested she start a divorce registry: a list of items that friends and family could get her as gifts, to help her start over. "I never had a wedding registry when I got married because my ex-husband and I both had been living on our own and didn't need very much," said Slager, whose 14-year marriage ended in 2023. "But when it came time to get divorced, we were separating a household and he got some things like the vacuum cleaner. And I was going to need those kinds of things," she told The Current. Slager had been living in the U.S. for more than a decade, but the split prompted her to move home to Vancouver Island. Needing both somewhere to live and a new job, she started a Google document and shared it with the people in her life, asking for help. "There were things like a can opener and a cutting board. I got most of the things on my list thanks to everybody giving me their hand-me-downs," she said. While divorce rates have steadily declined in Canada, the cost of doing so can run into thousands of dollars in legal fees (or even tens of thousands in complex, contested cases). Coupled with the costing of living and housing crises, many people struggle with the expense of starting out solo. Some of Slager's friends went off-list and threw in extra items, and a friend's father even gave her furniture. She estimates the value of what she received came to around $15,000 — money she simply didn't have at the time. "Having people offer me things and also asking me what I needed was extremely important," she said. While Slager created her own list, there are companies that offer divorce registries, a service that may be met with a few eyerolls. Some single people point out that their big life events aren't celebrated or supported in the same way, especially when they're already shouldering high costs on a single income. Olivia Howell, who runs a divorce registry based in New York, says that criticism is missing the point. "It's not about celebrating their divorce. It's about supporting them through a life transition," said Howell, who co-founded Fresh Starts. "Giving your friend a new shower curtain or a new toothbrush holder is going to cost you $12 and it's going to mean the world to them," she said. House was 'like a ghost town' Howell started her company four years ago after her own divorce, when her ex-husband moved out and took his belongings with him. "I remember distinctly looking around my house and it was like a ghost town … everything else that was left was from my wedding registry or monogrammed," she said. "It was very hard to heal with that emptiness around me." Her company now offers bundles of items based on budgets, ranging from $99 to $500 US, as well as packages for kitting out specific rooms, like a kitchen or child's bedroom. Her website also connects people with experts on the divorce process, from lawyers and financial experts to counsellors and parenting coaches. She said there are privacy measures in place to protect women who may be fleeing abuse or domestic violence, and some people use the site for other life events, such as a job loss. Howell said one of the most stressful parts of her divorce was figuring out if she could afford to stay in their family home, or would need to move and switch her son's school. "I felt like I was screwing up his whole life and our whole life, and it was just really scary," she said. WATCH | Who gets the pet in a divorce? Changing laws have a say: Who gets the pet in a divorce? Changing laws have a say 1 year ago Duration 1:53 When a mortgage advisor walked her through everything and confirmed she was making just enough to keep the house, she "cried the joyful tears" and knew things would be OK, she said. Eva Sachs, a divorce financial specialist based in Toronto, says that even when a divorce isn't contested, the process can be very complicated. "Our lives are complicated today. We have a house, we may have a cottage, we've got investments, we may have a business, we got pensions," she said. Disentangling all of those complex financial relationships is expensive, she said. Sachs hadn't heard of divorce registries, but says she thinks it's an interesting idea. She regularly sees expenses rack up for her clients, especially if one partner needs to find alternative accommodation but stay close to their kids. She said clients often want to get through the process as quickly as possible, but sometimes it takes time and space to figure out what their goals really are. They may come to her initially saying they want to keep the house, no matter what. But as they discuss financial realities and emotions settle, many will come to realize that they're "actually excited about the opportunities of moving on and starting fresh," she said. 'A lot of men are in the same position' Howell said while the majority of Fresh Starts' clients are millennial women (some studies show women suffer more than men financially following divorce), men use the service, too. "A lot of men are in the same position [that] a lot of women are in. They don't have anything when they start out," she said. "But culturally, a lot of men are told to not ask for help or support, and so it's very hard for them to [reach out]." She thinks that's part of a wider stigma and shame around marriages ending, and hopes her company can remind people of a simple truth: divorce happens. "We move on. We deal with it. It's not going to be fun, but it's going to happen and we're going to support people who are going through it," she said. That support isn't just financial, she added. "When you can fill your home with the items from the people who love and support you, it actually helps bolster your confidence and … make bigger, bolder decisions in life." Slager, who moved back to Canada after her own divorce, said she couldn't have managed without the "tremendous support from my friends that were generous and non-judgmental and just absolutely there for me." When she looks around her home, she feels tempted to add little plaques to all the things that friends gave to help her get back on her feet. "The couch and loveseat came from Andrew and Jocelyn, and the dresser came from Burgl's dad," she said.
