More than a dozen RCMP cruisers converged on a B.C. ostrich farm just before dawn on Monday to execute search warrants, as the owners made a last-ditch effort to prevent the cull of hundreds of birds whose fate has attracted international attention.

Staff Sergeant Kris Clark, a spokesperson for the Mounties in B.C. who was on the scene at the farm in the Kootenay town of Edgewood, told The Globe that officers were there to assist the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which had obtained a warrant to enter the farm beginning at 6 a.m. that day.

The Globe and Mail has been nominated for five Jack Webster Awards, including for coverage of British Columbia’s mental health system in the wake of a deadly attack on a street festival and an investigation into the culture within Canada Soccer before the drone spying scandal at the Paris Olympics.

Nancy Macdonald is a finalist for Best News Reporting of the Year – Print/Digital for her in-depth feature about the impact of fentanyl on Victoria’s Pandora Avenue.

Pandora Avenue has seen an especially stark transformation from a leafy, green gateway boulevard into the city’s downtown to a street of desperation. Ms. Macdonald spent several days in the neighbourhood to measure the toll of the crisis.

B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad abruptly fired his highest-profile MLA ahead of a caucus meeting on Monday where his leadership was on the table, removing a prominent moderate voice of the party.

The MLA, Elenore Sturko, emerged from her legislature office with a box of personal items in hand, saying she had been blindsided by the decision to turf her from caucus and the party.

Two years ago, RCMP officers spying on an alleged ring of extremists in Quebec took notice when one suspect warned on a gun culture podcast about “another Waco.” But another part of his online chat raised more immediate concerns.

Besides talking about the deadly 1993 clash between law enforcement and cult members in Waco, Tex., the suspect had mentioned that he wanted to change the tires and suspension of his Toyota Tacoma pickup.

In 2015, Mark Kirton was on a beach in the Bahamas and reading a book about the National Hockey League, in which he had competed as a journeyman centre with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings and Vancouver Canucks.

Suddenly, his right biceps muscle started to twitch uncontrollably. The episode marked the beginning of Mr. Kirton’s lengthy battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an incurable neurodegenerative disease. More commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS ultimately makes breathing, eating, talking and walking impossible without medical devices and drugs, leading to paralysis before death.

A Whitehorse-based tech startup is working to simplify medical forms and optimize appointment times to improve the efficiency of the health care system in Yukon and across Canada.

The company, PeerSupport.io, is part of a growing trend of technology companies trying to use artificial intelligence to tackle paperwork, one of the top complaints of health care workers.

The claims of elite junior hockey players who blame the Canadian Hockey League for enabling a widespread hazing culture of assault and abuse are too complex to proceed as a single class action lawsuit, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled on Monday.

However, Ontario’s highest court left the door open for the players to pursue compensation through a series of smaller class actions, and said “there is evidence that serious abuse has long plagued major junior hockey.”

Sarah McLachlan cancelled musical performances planned for the Sunday premiere of her Lilith Fair documentary in Los Angeles, saying it was a gesture of solidarity to support free speech.

The Halifax-born singer-songwriter took the stage before the screening of Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, telling the crowd that she and her fellow musicians had “collectively decided not to perform.”

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Court records show that some Canadians residents unknowingly drank contaminated water for years while Ottawa sat on test results. Now, they’re demanding to know how long they were exposed and when their tap water will be safe to drink again.

A transit strike kicked off Monday morning that could disrupt bus and subway service in Montreal for the next two weeks, as Quebec’s labour minister accused the workers of holding public transit users hostage.

The strike by the Montreal transit agency’s maintenance workers will limit service to morning and evening rush hours and late at night on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The 2,400 maintenance workers are also refusing to work overtime.

The Ontario government says its plan to fund new primary care clinics across the province is paying dividends, with nearly 100,000 patients on the official waiting list for a family doctor having recently found a new medical provider.

Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said the number of people registered on Health Care Connect has fallen by 42 per cent since the Progressive Conservative government began a concerted effort to expand access to primary care in a province where 2.5 million people did not have a family doctor as of September, 2023.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has removed MPP Chris Scott from the Progressive Conservative caucus after he was charged with assault in what court documents describe as an alleged case of intimate partner violence.

Mr. Scott, a first-term MPP who represents Sault Ste. Marie in the legislature, is no longer a member of the PC caucus, spokesperson Grace Lee said Monday. He was also the parliamentary assistant to Minister of Energy and Mines Stephen Lecce. Mr. Scott now sits as an independent.

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles won a leadership review on Saturday.

Stiles won 68 per cent of the votes cast at a party convention in Niagara Falls, Ont.

A member of the Aquilini family that owns the Vancouver Canucks NHL team has filed a lawsuit alleging he was disinherited from a family trust and excluded from family business in a “retaliatory” conspiracy over historical allegations of sexual assault against an unnamed family member.

Matteo Aquilini filed a lawsuit this week in B.C. Supreme Court, naming his grandfather, Luigi Aquilini, and uncles Roberto and Canucks chairman Francesco Aquilini as defendants, both personally and as trustees of the Luigi and Elisa Aquilini Legacy Trust.

Canada’s Sophie de Goede is a finalist for World Rugby’s Women’s Player of the Year.

The 26-year-old forward from Victoria, who only returned to action in July after being sidelined by knee surgery, is up against England’s Megan Jones and New Zealand’s Jorja Miller.

Mackenzie Hughes, a 23-year-old from Calgary, was serving in southern Ukraine when the Russian military attacked his position with a Shahed drone, causing a van to pin him down and catch on fire.

From a hospital in Kyiv, about two months later, he recalled the tale of how he was stuck under the van as flames worked their way up his legs and how, fortunately, one of his comrades saved him. Doctors estimate 28 per cent of his body is covered in burns. But despite all he’s been through, he is choosing to stay in Kyiv and vows to return to the fight once he’s recovered.

Farm Credit Canada has identified $12-billion in food and beverage exports that could be shifted away from the U.S. market as cross-border trade comes under continued strain.

The Crown corporation, which provides financing and other services to the agriculture industry, says U.S. tariffs have introduced uncertainty to a relationship that has historically been of benefit to Canada’s agriculture and food sector.

Good morning. Canada, along with several European countries and U.S. allies have moved to officially recognize Palestine as a state. More on that below, plus reporting from Charlie Kirk’s funeral and data show Canadian wildlife on the decline. Let’s get to it.

TOP STORY

British Columbians are now as likely as Albertans to prioritize jobs over the environment, as concerns grow in B.C. over unaffordability and the trade dispute with the U.S., according to a new national survey.

The Confederation of Tomorrow survey of nearly 5,400 Canadian adults was conducted by the Environics Institute and a group of public policy and socioeconomic research organizations. It found that while Canadians are concerned about the impact of climate change, they are evenly divided on which is more important when asked to choose.

It was late June, and the largest hospital in the Northwest Territories was running out of options for keeping its emergency department open through the summer.

There were nine shifts in July and 38 in August and early September during which no ER doctor was scheduled to work at Yellowknife’s Stanton Territorial Hospital, a facility that serves all of the NWT and western Nunavut.

Environmental advocacy group WWF has updated its Living Planet Index for Canada and found that downward trends in monitored wildlife populations are becoming more pronounced – a sign that federal and provincial policies are inadequate to the task of protecting species at risk across the country or improving their chances of recovery.

In a report released on Monday, the organization found that 52 per cent of the Canadian species it measures are decreasing in abundance, with an average decrease of 10 per cent since 1970 (a point in time from which wildlife population data were sufficient to allow for reliable estimates). Among those species already listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 43 per cent showed population declines, including the boreal caribou.

An ostrich farm in the B.C. Interior has got further support from right-wing American influencers when another online commentator added his voice, saying he would like to “help the ostriches out there in Canada” and relocate them to Texas.

The Universal Ostrich Farm in Edgewood, B.C., has been calling on supporters to gather at the property to save about 400 ostriches at the farm after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ordered the cull of the birds following an outbreak of avian flu last December.

The date was Feb. 8, 1954 and young David Edmonston had an upset tummy.

Compared with other global events around that time – the death of Joseph Stalin, the advent of colour TV – the gastrointestinal woes of an 11-year-old in rural Massachusetts hardly seemed consequential.

The passing thought of moving to Canada from the United States because of its political climate became an active idea for physician Libby Fleming when, in 2022, the constitutional right to abortion was overturned south of the border.

She had a planned trip to Costa Rica later that summer but cancelled it, booking a plane ticket to Nova Scotia instead. The Atlantic province was a bucket-list destination for her. It was also actively recruiting foreign physicians to address a country-wide shortage of doctors.

Alberta’s premier says her government might invoke the notwithstanding clause to defend laws affecting transgender people because courts may take “years and years and years” to resolve the issue, and she wants to “protect kids.”

Smith, who made the comments Saturday on her provincewide radio call-in program, was responding to news that an internal memo from her government, obtained by The Canadian Press, says it plans to apply the clause this fall to its three laws that police school pronouns, female sports and gender-affirming health care.

Canadians in several major cities demonstrated Saturday against elements of the Liberal government’s agenda, including Prime Minister Mark Carney’s support for new fossil fuel projects and expected public service cuts.

Hundreds who took part in “Draw the Line” protests in Toronto marched from downtown to the provincial legislature building, carrying signs that included messages advocating full immigration status for all, ending trade with Israel, Indigenous rights and a revolution against billionaires.

Canada’s finance minister says the country could be a “supplier of choice” for European markets looking to bolster energy security and defence capabilities.

Following a meeting in Denmark with European Union finance ministers, François-Philippe Champagne said Saturday that Canadian critical mineral and energy exports could help European economies become more resilient while diversifying Canada’s trade relationships.

A legal challenge is seeking to expand the right to a lawyer for immigrants and asylum seekers in “high-stakes” proceedings that impact their ability to enter or remain in Canada.

Currently, extensive portions of the immigration and refugee system do not afford people the right to be represented by a lawyer, says the proposed application for judicial review by the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, or CILA.

No one saw much cause for alarm when the Pattanasat Witaya School in the deep south of Thailand first noticed last summer that children were getting sick, their chests flushing with bumpy red spots.

Homelessness, street chaos, mental-health problems and drug addiction are the top preoccupations for many municipal politicians set to gather in Victoria next week for their annual convention.

Stretched to the limit of their resources, they say that although the provincial government has been stepping up with housing support in the past year, it’s still not enough.

Sometimes change is hard to spot. Limberlost Place, a new 10-storey facility for George Brown College, lands quietly on Toronto’s eastern waterfront. Its serrated, copper-hued facades rise up and slim to a peak with just a hint of bravado.

There’s no sign this is among the country’s most innovative buildings – not until you cross the threshold. The main lobby rises in a grand staircase framed by ten-tonne columns and nine-metre-long beams of black spruce.

Alberta’s plan to use the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to shield laws affecting transgender young people from court challenges has sparked criticism and intensified a national debate about governments’ wielding of such power.

The laws, passed by the United Conservative Party government late last year, generally focus on people younger than 16 and ban transgender girls from female-only sports, prohibit gender-affirming health care and require parental consent at school to change a name or pronouns.

An RCMP commander in B.C. has been charged with multiple counts of assault after an off-duty altercation this summer in a Vancouver suburb.

The BC Prosecution Service said in a news release Friday that Assistant Commissioner David Teboul, who is the RCMP’s Pacific Region commander, is accused of assaulting two people and choking one of them.

Nova Scotia RCMP are deploying dogs that are specially trained to detect human remains in “areas of highest probability” in the search for Lilly and Jack Sullivan, children who mysteriously disappeared months ago from their home in the wooded community of Lansdowne, N.S.

Staff Sergeant Stephen Pike from the Police Dog Service Training Centre in Innisfail, Alta., told reporters Friday that using cadaver dogs in an investigation means there is reason to believe human remains are present.

The Carney government is barring the Belfast rap group Kneecap from entering Canada, saying the group has endorsed political violence and terrorism.

Liberal MP Vince Gasparro, parliamentary secretary for combatting crime, made an announcement in a video posted Friday morning to social media. He said Kneecap has “publicly displayed support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas” and said that goes beyond artistic expression.

More than one million people have already submitted claims for compensation under the $500-million settlement that Canada’s largest grocer, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. L-T, and its parent company, George Weston Ltd. WN-T, agreed to pay to settle their part in class-action lawsuits over a scheme to fix bread prices in Canada from 2001 to 2015.

So, how much could eligible bread customers be paid? That depends on a few factors.

A new federal anti-hate bill would make it a crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to obstruct someone from accessing a place of worship or other sites where Jews, Muslims and other identifiable groups gather, including by blocking doors, driveways and roads.

The Combatting Hate bill would also criminalize the promotion of hatred toward religious and ethnic groups by publicly displaying terror or hate symbols, including the swastika and insignia of the Nazi SS.

Canada, which is preparing shortly to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, will nevertheless withhold full normalization of relations until the territory’s leadership delivers on commitments they made, including releasing Israeli hostages, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said.

Speaking to reporters Friday during a visit with Prime Minister Mark Carney to Mexico, Ms. Anand said she intended to speak the same day with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to drive home this point.

Retail sales fell 0.8 per cent to $69.6-billion in July as shoppers spent less at supermarkets and grocery stores, Statistics Canada said Friday.

However, the agency said its advance estimate for August pointed to an increase of one per cent, though it cautioned the figure would be revised.

Cenovus Energy Inc. CVE-T says its cash-and-stock bid for MEG Energy Corp. MEG-T offers a premium valuation and certainty over a rival all-stock offer by Strathcona Resources Ltd. SCR-T

“Cenovus brings scale, industry-leading experience, tier-1 assets, near-term growth, diversified revenues, a stronger balance sheet and clearly defined synergies,” Cenovus said in a presentation laying out its arguments for MEG shareholders to accept the friendly deal.

Last week, Strathcona revised its hostile offer to 0.80 of a share for each MEG share it does not already own. Its initial overture this spring was a combination of cash and stock. When the new bid was announced, it was worth $30.86 per share, up from $28.02.

Canadians might be shunning leisurely visits to the U.S., but new data show corporate travel appears to be business as usual. 

Despite political tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, economic uncertainty stemming from tariffs and fears of treatment at the border, data from SAP Concur suggests Canadian business travel to the U.S. during the first half of the year has remained stable compared with last year’s levels, even if it means some companies are taking more precautions at the border. 

Good morning. The gender gap in higher education has persisted for many decades. Do universities need to do more to entice men back? More on that below, plus follows to our reporting on the notwithstanding clause and the BC Ferries deal. But first:

Today’s headlines

• A real estate executive, lobbyist and banker held an event for cabinet ministers and MPs, raising concerns over federal lobbying rules
• Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum vowed closer ties Thursday against the backdrop of rising U.S. protectionism
• American television’s remaining active late-night talk shows put on a display of deference to the U.S. President, with a wink
• In Toronto’s Dufferin Grove, a big tent of compassion for homeless encampments begins to fray

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has directed officials to invoke the Charter’s notwithstanding clause in amending three laws that affect transgender people, says a leaked government memo obtained by The Canadian Press.

The internal document sent Sept. 10 by the Justice Department asks other departments to assemble information as per a directive from Ms. Smith’s office to invoke the clause.

Ottawa is defending its proposal at the Supreme Court of Canada to put limits on governments’ use of the notwithstanding clause, with the federal Liberals arguing they are standing up for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In the House of Commons on Thursday, Minister of Canadian Identity Steven Guilbeault said, “We have the responsibility to defend one of the pillars of our democracy, the Charter.”

When officials took steps to remove an encampment in a Toronto park this week, sympathizers rushed to the park to defend it. One of them wore a sign on the back of his jacket made from strips of adhesive tape: “Love Your Neighbour.”

To supporters of those who live in the cluster of tents near the southwest corner of Dufferin Grove Park, it is that simple. If we call ourselves a caring society, we must stick up for its most vulnerable members. Many of those who end up in encampments have mental or physical conditions that have landed them where they are. Unless we find a humane way of accommodating them, we should leave them be.

Thousands of public servants have requested exemptions to the Ontario government’s upcoming order to return to the office full-time, as unions say they are set to meet with the province’s top bureaucrat later this month to plead their case for flexible work arrangements.

Dave Bulmer, president of Ontario’s professional employees union AMAPCEO – which has 17,000 members – said there have been about 4,500 requests for remote or hybrid work arrangements in the last three weeks.

Canada Post is sending new offers to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) in an effort to move negotiations forward, the postal service said Thursday.

The new terms will allow the two sides to return to the bargaining table next week, with work already under way to make that happen, the Crown corporation said.