Woodstock to hold support session after toddler's death at horse racing track
The Town of Woodstock is seen in New Brunswick on June 18, 2025. (Nick Moore/CTV Atlantic)
A community support session is scheduled for Wednesday evening in Woodstock, N.B., following the death of a toddler at the town's horse racing track this past weekend.
The support session will be held at the AYR Motor Centre from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the facility's lower-level Rotary Room.
A social media post from the Town of Woodstock says Wednesday's support session, which will offer both one-on-one and group conversations with mental health professionals, is open to everybody.
The session will also include resources and information for people to take home, as well as guidance on where to access additional support.
According to both the Woodstock Police Force and the Atlantic Provinces Harness Racing Commission, a three-year-old child was struck by a starting gate at the Connell Park Raceway on Saturday around 1:20 p.m.
The child was taken to the River Valley Hospital, where they succumbed to their injuries.
The incident happened during a live race. Woodstock police are calling the incident a 'tragic accident' but are not confirming the circumstances surrounding how the child was struck.
On Wednesday, Woodstock Police Deputy Chief Simon Watts said the investigation was still ongoing.
The Atlantic Provinces Harness Racing Commission (APHRC) is also conducting an internal review of the incident.
For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
17 minutes ago
- CTV News
SUV rolls into lake, injuring 5 on Vancouver Island: RCMP
Mounties in Port Alberni say five people managed to escape a vehicle after it rolled into Sproat Lake early Sunday. Around 12:22 a.m., the SUV went off the Taylor Main Forest Service Road and 'rolled multiple times down an embankment and into the lake,' according to police. The occupants, four men and one woman, got out of the car and met paramedics on the road, police said, adding they all suffered 'some injuries' but are expected to recover. 'Officers are still investigating the collision but do believe alcohol to be a factor,' RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Brett Urano said in a news release. 'If anyone has more information or has yet to speak with officers, please contact the Port Alberni RCMP at 250-723-2424 and quote file 2025-6092.'
CTV News
32 minutes ago
- CTV News
Vancouver police report back on allegation of arrest quotas on Downtown Eastside
Arrest quotas are not in place as part of a crime crackdown on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside but 'performance measures do exist,' according to a report presented to the police board. In March, a complaint from someone identifying as an officer with the Vancouver Police Department alleged that 'arbitrary' quotas for daily drug arrests were being set as part of 'Task Force Barrage.' A heavily redacted version of the complaint was published, and it refers to an email from 'management' sent that 'set an expectation that each team working there would arrest (redacted) on drug charges.' The complainant was concerned that this would undermine officers' discretion, saying 'I don't think this is legal or right.' B.C.'s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner ordered the board to take action, which it did by asking for an internally produced report. Supt. Matt Hardy drafted the report and presented the findings at last Thursday's meeting. In it, he acknowledged the email the complaint referenced did exist, and did include specific numbers. 'Ideally, we'd like 2-3 drug arrests and charges a day,' the email said, according to the report. When the task force launched and beat officers were being trained, 'there was no available performance measure as to what a reasonable arrest and charge goal would be for a shift,' according to Harty's report. 'The Staff Sgt. is setting a performance measure the purpose of which is educating everyone as to what a reasonable outcome would be during a shift.' A performance measure is 'aspirational' whereas a quota is mandatory and attached to consequences – both positive and negative – for employees, Harty told the board when presenting his report. 'The VPD does not set open or hidden quotas. The VPD does set performance measures…Quotas are rigid and have formal and informal employee rewards and punishments attached potentially leading to significant ethical issues and possible police deviance,' he said. 'Quotas also negatively impact marginalized communities through disproportionate enforcement.' Officers deployed as part of Task Force Barrage – like all officers – are still expected to use their discretion, Harty continued. 'The bottom line is that the VPD expects all members to only arrest and recommend charges when they have reasonable grounds based on lawful authority and have taken everything into consideration for each set of unique circumstances – while being mindful of proportionality and using diversion where appropriate,' he told the board. Keeping those criteria in mind, officers 'should arrest and recommend charges for as many drug traffickers as they can within each shift,' Harty continued, referring to the work of the task force which he said targets 'mid-to-high level' traffickers and not drug users. None of the board had any questions for Harty, and the recommendation to conclude the complaint passed unanimously. In addition to Harty's report, the meeting package contained a letter from University of British Columbia law professor Benjamin Perrin. In it, he urges the board to order an external review of the complaint. 'Given the well-documented tendency of police leadership to deny quota systems while they operate informally within departments, and considering the particular vulnerability of the Downtown Eastside community—especially its Indigenous residents—a thorough and vigorous independent investigation is essential to determine the truth and restore public confidence,' he wrote. 'Simply put, the police investigating themselves is insufficient.' Perrin's letter was referenced at the meeting but not discussed, and the board said the professor will be advised of the outcome.
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Scammers are impersonating finance experts to steal millions – and the real ones are struggling to stop it
Last week, Bank of Montreal chief investment strategist Brian Belski became the latest finance heavyweight to warn his social-media followers about imposters posing as him to scam investors. Mr. Belski alluded to bogus Instagram and Facebook ads under the account name 'BMO Belski,' which sought to lure users to investment groups on WhatsApp through AI-generated videos and other content. 'To be clear: I only post from this official LinkedIn account and do not engage on other social platforms,' the real Mr. Belski wrote on LinkedIn. To those who've seen the hyper-realistic videos purporting to show Mr. Belski turning his head from side to side, promising to 'share three stock picks and the latest market insights every day' with his WhatsApp community, this may have come as a surprise. While scams impersonating celebrities and politicians have proliferated for years, fraud targeting investors through fake advice from big names in finance is now multiplying, with the real experts struggling to get the content taken down. Law enforcement, legal experts and social-media giants are split on who should take the blame. Last week, prominent Bay Street economist David Rosenberg spoke out about a scam that used his identity, telling The Globe and Mail that several investors reported collective losses to his firm exceeding $1-million. Victims were lured to WhatsApp groups recommending stocks that swung dramatically in price, creating the illusion of quick profits. Once investors put in more money, the stocks' prices plummeted. Mr. Rosenberg and his firm reported the scam to both Meta Platforms Inc. and the police but eventually went public after the ads continued to circulate for months. David Rosenberg says investment scam using his name bilked victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars Meta spokesperson Julia Perreira said the content of those ads violated the company's policies and it removes scam ads when detected. In March, Financial Times economics commentator Martin Wolf and his colleagues played 'whack-a-mole' with Meta, trying to take down deepfakes of him giving investment advice. 'The voice didn't sound fully like me,' Mr. Wolf said in an interview, adding that his avatar did look convincing otherwise. Data from Meta's Ad Library seen by Mr. Wolf and his colleagues revealed that the ad reached nearly one million users by the end of April in the EU alone. Roughly 960,000 were reached after the Financial Times first notified Meta about the deepfakes. In Canada, net losses from investment scams where the initial contact was on social media have risen 95 per cent since 2021, reaching $128.4-million last year, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Meanwhile, the number of reported victims has fluctuated, suggesting that the scams are becoming more ambitious in how much money they steal. 'Fraud is not only becoming more common, it's becoming more convincing,' said Detective David Coffey of the Toronto Police Service's Financial Crimes Unit. 'That is really what we're seeing with AI – they're scraping the internet for these legitimate businesses and they're utilizing them to commit their own frauds.' People may also be losing more money to imposter scams because it's become difficult to grow investments the traditional way, said Tanya Walker, managing partner at Walker Law, who specializes in fraud litigation. 'Thirty years ago, interest rates could have been 16 per cent,' she said. 'For quite some time, our interest rates have been low.' She said investors may think to themselves, ' 'Why am I going to invest in a GIC with the bank at 3-per-cent interest when I could get 14 or 15 per cent?' ' Who should be held accountable for these scams is a divisive question. 'Once it gets to be a police report, it's too late,' Det. Coffey said. Most investment scams targeting Canadians are orchestrated from outside the country and across regions where local officials are not friendly to Canadian law enforcement, he said. But Kenneth Jull, partner at Gardiner Roberts LLP, specializing in financial crimes and corporate compliance, said relying on social-media companies to police their clients is both logistically and legally challenging. 'They wouldn't have the resources to do it, even if they wanted to,' he said. Under Canadian law – and similarly in the United States – social platforms have limited legal liability for users' content based on the safe harbour principle, said Mark Lokanan, a professor at Royal Roads University specializing in AI-driven financial-crime investigations. 'They are not liable as long as they do not actively curate, endorse or participate in the scam.' But the law does hold tech giants responsible when there's credible notice and willful blindness, Mr. Jull said. The case of YesUp eCommerce set a precedent. It was the first Canadian case where a server company was convicted for child pornography because of willful blindness, Mr. Jull said. In that case, YesUp was warned more than 200 times about illegal content. However, Prof. Lokanan said the burden of proof can make legal action difficult. Det. Coffey said Canada has fallen behind global peers on prevention and apprehension of imposter scams. Australia has created a national fraud-fighting agency and brought social-media and telecom companies into the fold. Australia's reported scam losses fell by almost 26 per cent in 2024 from the previous year, according to official statistics. But Mr. Jull said Canadian law enforcement can do more to work with foreign officials to apprehend perpetrators, citing the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and its enforcement as an example. 'We don't sit back and say, 'Well, it's Russia, nothing we can do,'' he said. But Mr. Wolf's case suggests that as much as Meta may be facilitating the problem, it might be in the best position to help solve it. Shortly before Mr. Wolf published his column on the experience, Meta enrolled him in a new program that uses facial recognition to compare legitimate images of public figures against potential scam content. 'Nobody has been bringing the scam to my attention since,' Mr. Wolf said.
