Wildfire smoke prompts air quality advisory for most of Manitoba
A special air quality statement is in effect for most of Manitoba as wildfire smoke leads to poor air quality and reduced visibility.
Environment and Climate Change Canada's statement, issued early Sunday morning, is in effect in parts of northern Manitoba as well as the Interlake region and the province's southeast, including Winnipeg.
The smoke may cause irritation, headaches or a mild cough, the federal agency said. More severe symptoms include wheezing and chest pains.
Environment Canada is asking people to limit time outdoors and consider rescheduling open-air activities. Windows and doors should be kept closed as much as possible when indoors, it said.
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CBC
35 minutes ago
- CBC
Talk to medical professionals, not just ChatGPT, urge Ontario doctors
Social Sharing ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence tools can sometimes answer patient questions accurately, but Canadian medical researchers caution that the information needs to be carefully checked before acting on what you see. The researchers' advice comes as the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) hosted a media briefing this week, discussing DIY information sources — from search engines to social media to chatbots — and their impacts, as well as what patients can do instead. It's important to warn people now, said Dr. Valerie Primeau, a psychiatrist from North Bay who leads inpatient and community programs for mental health and addictions, because patients are increasingly turning to AI tools. The chatbots give convincing and empathetic results — but the information might be fake. "I have patients now that talk to ChatGPT to get advice and have a conversation," Primeau said. "So I foresee that we will continue having this issue, and if we don't address it now and help people navigate this, they will struggle." Dr. David D'Souza, a radiation oncologist in London, Ont., who leads clinical research into image-based treatments for cancer, said depending on how patients interrupt what AI tells them, they could put off conventional treatments. "A patient came to me asking if he should wait to have his cancer that was diagnosed treated in a few years because he believes that AI will customize cancer treatments for patients," D'Souza told reporters. "I had to convince him why he should have treatment now." Given that consumers will use the tools, OMA president Dr. Zainab Abdurrahman advised if a post says "doctors have been hiding this from you," she suggests checking the websites of relevant specialist groups, such as provincial cancer care associations, to see if they back it up. Fake ads, including AI-generated images, can also lead patients astray, warned Abdurrahman, who is also a clinical immunologist and allergist. Lost nuance makes AI results harder to rely on While the technology is progressing, today's chatbots routinely answer health queries with false information that appears authoritative. In one study, Dr. Benjamin Chin-Yee, an assistant professor in the pathology and lab medicine department at Western University and his co-authors fed nearly 5,000 summaries of medical and scientific literature into AI large language models including ChatGPT and asked for summaries. They found three-quarters of the AI versions missed key parts of carefully guarded statements. For example, the journal article might say a drug was only effective in a certain group of patients while the summary leaves out that key detail, said Chin-Yee, who is also a hematologist. "The worry is that when that nuance in detail is lost, it can be misleading to practitioners who are trying to use that knowledge to impact their clinical practice." Chin-Yee said AI is an active area of research that is rapidly changing, with newer models that are more human-like and user-friendly, but there can be drawbacks to relying on the tools alone. Similarly, David Chen, a medical student at the University of Toronto, compared results provided by chatbots to 200 questions about cancer from a Reddit forum to responses provided by oncologists. "We were surprised to find that these chatbots were able to perform to near-human expert levels of competency based on our physician team's assessment of quality, empathy and readability," Chen said. But the experimental results may not reflect what happens in the real world. "Without medical oversight, it's hard to 100 per cent trust some of these outputs of these generative technologies," Chen said, adding concerns about privacy, security, and patient trust still haven't been fully explored. WATCH | Researchers use AI to help treat brain patients: MUN's Faculty of Medicine is using A.I. to treat brain patients 4 months ago Duration 5:00 Artificial intelligence is expected to revolutionize health care. And at Memorial University's Faculty of Medicine, A.I. is already being used in the treatment of patients with various brain conditions. Neuroscience professor Michelle Ploughman showed the CBC's Carolyn Stokes around her lab at the Miller Centre and demonstrated how A.I. is changing patient care. Don't rely on a single chatbot Generative AI technologies like chatbots are based on pattern-matching technologies that give the most likely output to a given question, based on whatever information it was trained on. In medicine, though, unlikely possible diagnoses can also be important and shouldn't be ruled out. Plus, chatbots can hallucinate — produce outputs that sound convincing but are incorrect, made up, nonsensical or irrelevant. "There's also been research studies that have been put out that suggested that there are hallucination rates of these chat bots that can be upwards of 20 per cent," Chen said, which could make the output "clinically erroneous." In the spring, cardiologist Eric Topol, a professor and executive vice president of Scripps Research in San Diego, Calif., published a book, Superagers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, that looked at the impact of AI on longevity and quality of life. "There's a lot of good anecdotes, there's bad anecdotes," Topol said of patients using chatbots. "It hasn't been systematically assessed in a meaningful way for public use." Topol said he advises people to consult multiple chatbots and to check that you're getting reliable information. He also suggested asking for citations from the medical literature, noting sometimes those aren't real and need to be verified. Ideally, Topol said there would be a real-world test of chatbot responses from tens of thousands of people tracking what tests were done, what diagnosis was given and the outcomes for those who used AI sources and those who didn't. But tech companies are unlikely to participate because each one wouldn't gain, he said. "It's a different world now and you can't go back in time," Topol said of using the tools wisely.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Change will help ensure serious complaints about Manitoba doctors are handled quickly: regulator
Social Sharing The regulator for doctors in Manitoba says it has a new triage system for complaints about its members that will let it respond to the most serious cases faster. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba says its newly implemented analytics unit will help it determine what course of action is needed on complaints as soon as they come in. "That way, we can pick out when we're seeing complaints that are really, really serious, and act on them really quickly," said Dr. Guillaume Poliquin, assistant registrar of complaints and investigations for the college, which self-regulates the medical profession in Manitoba. Under the new analytics process implemented on July 7, "once we receive that concern, it will be screened, and then it will come to me for initial review," Poliquin told guest host Faith Fundal in a Thursday interview with CBC's Information Radio. "If it's something that sounds … serious, like a boundary violation, then we essentially drop all we're doing and focus on that." Previously, when the college received complaints about a physician, it would determine the "best process for resolution" and "send it down that path," with the analysis happening after the fact — which could prove problematic, Poliquin said. "Because once you get into the details of a case, you can find out, 'Oh, the complaint was about the wrong doctor,'" or "the concern that was brought forward, which sounded OK … was actually really, really serious, and we should have acted on this sooner," he said. Poliquin spoke to CBC after confirming the college is "engaged" with Birchwood Medical Clinic in Winnipeg, following complaints about a family doctor working there. CBC spoke to 11 former and current patients and staff members of Dr. Christina Winogrodzka, who described different versions of the same themes, including delays in accessing medical records needed for either disability benefits or medical referrals, and delays in accessing medical results because, they allege, they were lost. One former patient told CBC that years ago, she'd tried to complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons about Winogrodzka, but changed her mind after she was cautioned by the college that she'd have a hard time finding a new general practitioner. Other patients of Winogrodzka echoed those concerns, saying they too feared they would lose access to a family doctor if they complained. 'Power imbalance' The college recognizes "it's a really significant concern," Poliquin said. "I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for people who feel that power imbalance." The college has a directive in place that states no one should lose their family doctor because they've made a complaint, "and we do enforce that," he said. He expanded on that in a followup written statement. "If we receive a report that a physician has breached those expectations, this may result in an investigation into professional misconduct being added to the overall review," he wrote. Last month, Helena Friesen — the former patient who had earlier tried to complain about Winogrodzka — submitted a new complaint to the college. Christine Edwards, a former employee of Winogrodzka's, filed a separate complaint about the doctor with the college last month. The college confirmed as a result, it is "engaged" with the clinic, but would not provide further details.
National Post
2 hours ago
- National Post
Contrary to Trump's claims, Canadian border is not major source of fentanyl, U.S. report says
Most of the fentanyl entering the United States continues to come from the southern border, not the northern one, according to a recent report by an American think-tank, despite President Donald Trump's statement on Thursday that Canadian authorities have failed 'to stop the drugs from pouring into our country.' Article content 'Countering supply effectively depends on understanding what the dominant drug-trafficking routes are,' says the report by the Manhattan Institute, which was published July 1. 'New data on fentanyl seizures presented here largely reinforce previous understanding that most IMF (illegally manufactured fentanyl) enters the U.S. from the south. These data call into question tariffs and other policies and policy justifications that treat the threat from the northern border as comparably severe.' Article content Article content Donald J. Trump Truth Social 07.10.25 08:15 PM EST — Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) July 11, 2025 Article content Article content The report used new data regarding fentanyl seizures, which challenges public pronouncements made by Trump and the White House about the threats posed by the Canadian border. Authors Jon Caulkins and Bishu Giri write that such concerns are largely overstated and could even undermine America's ability to prioritize tightening the country's border with Mexico. Article content Article content The report looked at 'large' seizures of fentanyl — defined as over a kilogram of powder or more than 1,000 pills — that would suggest wholesale trafficking as opposed to smuggling for personal use. It found that officials made more large seizures in U.S. counties along the northern and southern borders when compared to the rest of the country. However, far more seizures were made in the south. Article content 'Counties along the Mexican border account for only 2.35 per cent of the U.S. population; but in 2023–24, they hosted about 40 per cent of the nationwide quantity of fentanyl appearing in large seizures, for both powder and pills,' says the executive summary of the Manhattan Institute's report. 'By contrast, counties in the lower 48 states that border Canada account for 3.1 per cent of the U.S. population but only 1.2 per cent of the powder and just 0.5 per cent of the pills obtained in large seizures.'
