OTTAWA - This year has been marked by economic upheaval, global conflict and climate change-induced natural disasters, and only a third of Canadians are optimistic things will get better in 2026, a new Leger poll suggests.

Asked about their expectations for the new year, 35 per cent of respondents said they were optimistic that 2026 will be better than 2025. 

Thirty-seven per cent of people said they think it will be about the same, while 22 per cent said they think it will be worse than 2025. 

The poll, which was conducted online and can't be assigned a margin of error, surveyed 1,523 people between Dec. 19 and Dec. 21.

VICTORIA - When veterinary pathologist Stephen Raverty is chest deep in work, the term takes on a gruesome meaning.

Picture Raverty deep in the innards of a humpback whale, trying to retain his balance as he wades through a quagmire of intestines, blubber and blood.

A photograph that is unsuitable for breakfast-table viewing captures a moment in 2011 as Raverty, drenched from the shoulders down in purple muck, works on a humpback whale that washed up dead on San Juan Island in U.S. waters, just off Vancouver Island.

It's one of about 2,500 necropsies on whales and other large marine mammals performed over the past 25 years by Raverty, who works for B.C.'s Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

MONTREAL - Quebecers are being urged to avoid unnecessary emergency-room visits amid what one infectious-disease doctor is calling a respiratory virus "maelstrom."

McGill University Health Centre doctor Donald Vinh says the emergency room is "bursting at the seams" as the province grapples with a combination of flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

He said the main culprit is the flu, with cases rising upward in an epidemiological curve he called "downright scary." 

"Our flu curve now is increasing at such an alarmingly high rate it's almost vertical," he said Tuesday. And some of those cases are ending up in hospital, resulting in yet more pressure on an emergency room that was already full before flu season began, he said. 

MONTREAL - Workers for nearly 40 ambulance services across Quebec are planning an unlimited strike beginning Christmas Eve.

The 39 unions are associated with the Fédération du préhospitalier du Québec and represent more than 2,000 paramedics and ambulance technicians across the province. 

Union spokesperson Jérémie Corneau-Landry says paramedics will still be working all their shifts and the strike won't impact services to the public.

However, he says they will be refusing some other duties, including supervising interns and transporting medical personnel.

OTTAWA - The federal government is planning to release a strategy on men's and boys' health in the new year, something advocates have long called for to address issues that prevent men from getting the care they need. 

Health Minister Marjorie Michel said she heard about the need for such a strategy from provincial and territorial counterparts while touring the country. 

"In particular, what was mentioned to me is the challenge that men and boys are facing, not (getting) the services," she said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press. 

The advocacy group Movember Institute of Men's Health and researchers from the University of British Columbia released a report last summer that called on the federal government to create a men's health strategy. 

TORONTO - A Pillsbury brand Pizza Pop may not seem like an obvious candidate for E. coli – given the freezing and heating that goes on before it reaches the consumer's lips – but foodborne illness experts say it's not that simple. 

A public health notice Monday stated 20 people got sick and four have been hospitalized in Canada between early October and late November after eating or handling certain pepperoni and bacon Pizza Pops. 

April Hexemer, director of the outbreak management division at the Public Health Agency of Canada, said for every case that is lab confirmed there are an estimated 32 more undetected in the community. 

"We estimate that there's several hundred illnesses associated with this outbreak at this time," she said. 

The B.C. Supreme Court has ordered the husband of a woman with Alzheimer's disease removed as her representative over a "death plan" he decided to carry out if his wife became ineligible for medical assistance in dying. 

The Vancouver Island Health Authority petitioned the court for "declaratory relief and orders to enable it to provide protection to a vulnerable woman against the likelihood of death at the hands of her husband," the ruling says. 

The woman, who is only identified by her initials in the ruling, is 77 years old, has advanced Alzheimer's and lives in a long-term care home operated by the health authority. 

The authority went to court to remove the woman's husband as her representative after it said he revealed a "death plan" for his wife, who "never expressed agreement" with the plan.