The looming closure of an Ontario plant that bottles Crown Royal sparked political blowback this week, but a supply chain expert says the company behind the move faced pressing decisions on how to cut costs amid ongoing financial challenges.

Spirits maker Diageo DEO-N found itself in Doug Ford’s crosshairs on Tuesday when the Ontario Premier capped an unrelated press conference by producing a Crown Royal bottle and proceeding to slowly dump it out on the ground.

Two people are dead and six others are suffering from various injuries after a stabbing incident in Hollow Water First Nation, a small Manitoba community on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg.

Manitoba RCMP said the suspect was also killed in the mass casualty event early Thursday, but did not provide any identifying details. Police are now investigating what happened and say there is no continuing risk to public safety.

A town in eastern Newfoundland that was running out of water because of a leaking pipe has lifted a state of emergency.

The emergency was declared Tuesday when officials in Conception Bay South discovered the leak had drained most of its water reserves.

The union representing thousands of British Columbia public service workers says it is escalating job action in the dispute.

The BC General Employees’ Union says pickets are being expanded today to include the Ministry of Finance office in downtown Vancouver.

Canada’s top bureaucrat met with senior American officials this week to try to find common ground with the Trump administration for potential deals on sectors that are hardest hit by U.S. tariffs, says the federal minister in charge of Canada-U.S. trade.

Dominic LeBlanc – the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, Intergovernmental Affairs and One Canadian Economy – told reporters outside of a cabinet meeting Thursday that Canada is pursuing “technical discussions” with the Americans to try to strike deals that would be beneficial to both countries.

A new report says Vancouver and Toronto topped the unaffordability list for renters in Canada last year.

The report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the cities topped the list based on the rental wage, the hourly wage needed to afford rent while working a 40-hour week and spending 30 per cent of income on housing.

An Alberta government order banning some books from school libraries doesn’t appear to be deterring people from reading them, say managers at several bookstores.

Kelly Dyer with Audreys Books in Edmonton said the store has noticed a jump in sales since July, when the province announced the ban on books with explicit sexual content.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan will be asking Parliament to close a loophole that could allow the U.S. to purchase Canadian weapons for Israel, despite a ban on arms exports to that country.

Kwan will be speaking this morning on Parliament Hill about a private members’ bill she plans to table later this month “to ensure Canadian weapons and military components are not used to fuel human rights abuses abroad,” according to a statement from her office.

Good morning. China paraded its military – and its friends – through Tiananmen Square yesterday in a blunt message to Washington. More on that below, along with the end of Florida’s vaccine mandates for school children and Félix Auger-Aliassime’s comeback win. But first:

Today’s headlines

• Carney says he spoke with Trump and expects ‘small agreements’ on tariff relief for some sectors
• Portugal observes a national day of mourning after the death toll in a funicular railway crash in Lisbon rose to 17
• The UAE warns that West Bank annexation would be a ‘red line’ as Israelis stage fresh protests against the war
• The U.S. is no longer a safe harbour for domestic violence refugees, but crossing into Canada is often impossible

The self-styled Queen of Canada and 15 of her followers were arrested Wednesday after a firearms complaint prompted a predawn raid on their rural Saskatchewan compound.

Dozens of RCMP officers, some wearing SWAT gear, executed a warrant at 4:30 a.m. on a decommissioned schoolhouse in Richmound, a hamlet of just over a hundred people near Alberta, RCMP Inspector Ashley St. Germaine told a press conference later in the day.

Residents across Western Canada were urged to limit outdoor exposure on Wednesday as hot, dry weather stoked new and growing wildfires, blanketing dozens of communities with smoke from the West Coast to Saskatchewan.

About 3.5 million people in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley are advised to seek time in spaces with air filtration or air conditioning to avoid breathing fine particulate matter.

Several Indigenous leaders from Alberta are warning the Assembly of First Nations not to step on individual First Nations’ authority, treaty rights and jurisdiction to determine the outcome of national infrastructure projects.

In a letter dated Tuesday and addressed to chiefs attending the AFN’s national assembly, the Alberta chiefs say resolutions proposed by some of their colleagues present “significant risks” to their jurisdiction.

The Law Society of Alberta has disbarred lawyer John Carpay, a conservative legal activist and president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms who in 2021 helped arrange the undercover surveillance of a top Manitoba judge.

The Calgary-based Justice Centre helps fund an array of legal challenges across Canada, including this year’s Federal Court case against then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau’s prorogation of Parliament. The Justice Centre lost and an appeal is underway at the Federal Court of Appeal.

Terry Holowach knew the fire was coming when dense smoke eclipsed the sunlight. It was an ominous sign of what was to come: Residents would soon battle the Pisew wildfire to save their homes, defying an order to evacuate.

Earlier that day in June, the regional government agency directed residents of Wadin Bay – a small cottage community on Lac La Ronge, around 400 kilometres north of Saskatoon – to leave the area because of the out-of-control wildfire. It was one among dozens of fires burning in the province, forcing evacuations and prompting officials to declare a state of emergency the week before.

Jean Charest says Canada will eventually thank U.S. President Donald Trump for providing the country with a much-needed economic shakeup.

The Quebec premier between 2003 and 2012 told business leaders in Quebec City on Tuesday that Trump is pulling Canada out of its “lethargy” and forcing its leaders to rethink the economy.

André Thibault thought he had left his past behind him. After he was caught carrying cocaine back in 1999, Mr. Thibault pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and spent 16 months in jail.

After his release, he stayed out of trouble. He drove tow trucks for the next two decades, finding refuge in an industry that gave him a stable life, allowing him to support his son and aging mother, who live with him in his Ottawa home.

RCMP say 16 people, including self-proclaimed “Queen of Canada” Romana Didulo, were arrested Wednesday in southwestern Saskatchewan.

Followers of Didulo, who has promoted various conspiracy theories, set up a “Kingdom of Canada” compound in an old school in Richmound, west of Regina, in 2023.

Ottawa music impresario Harvey Glatt, who died on Aug. 20, at age 91, played an oversized role in turning the country’s sleepy capital city from a cultural desert into a musically vibrant place.

The son of scrap metal merchants, he was a music fanatic who began reading music trade journals as a 13-year-old. In 1957, he co-founded the Treble Clef record store, a retail outlet devoted solely to music at a time when vinyl was typically sold in department stores or distributed by mail through record clubs. The initial shop grew to a chain of 15 locations, earning Mr. Glatt the unofficial title of Sam The Record Man of the Ottawa Valley.

A suspected arson at a home in Richmond Hill, Ont., that left an 11-year-old girl dead and four others critically injured is now being investigated as a homicide, York Region police said Wednesday.

Police said they were called to the scene on Skywood Drive just before 3 a.m. on Monday after a report of a house fire. Four unconscious residents were found inside the home while a fifth was found outside, and all of them were taken to hospital in critical condition.

The Metro Vancouver Regional District has issued an air-quality warning for the Lower Mainland as a dense shroud of wildfire smoke descends over large parts of British Columbia.

Environment Canada has expanded air-quality advisories to more than 30 locations including the Vancouver area and Fraser Valley, as well as most of the B.C. Interior and the northeast.

The range of British Columbia public service staff that could potentially be impacted by job action that began this week is wide, from scientists and social workers to liquor and cannabis distribution and retail staff.

But a labour expert says the BC General Employees’ Union’s actions have so far been limited to allow for an “escalating strategy” to force the government’s hand in negotiations.

Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner has ordered a Windsor doctor and his private clinic to pay thousands of dollars in fines for privacy breaches in a case she calls a “cautionary tale” for other health startups.

Commissioner Patricia Kosseim wrote in a recent decision that a doctor with privileges at Windsor Regional Hospital used his electronic health record access there to look for parents of newborn boys and contact them to offer circumcisions at a clinic he partly owns.

The brother of a man who was fatally shot in his Vaughan, Ont., home during a home invasion described him as “a hero who died defending his family,” as he and the city’s mayor called for changes to Canada’s criminal justice system.

Police said Wednesday that Abdul Aleem Farooqi, 46, died from gunshot wounds after at least three male suspects broke into his home around 1 a.m. on Aug. 31.

Claudia Ensuncho Martinez’s right forearm is tattooed with a feather, its spine formed by the white scar stretching from her wrist to elbow.

On a sweltering day last August, Ms. Ensuncho Martinez arrived at the Canadian border, fleeing the man who inflicted that scar. After the journey from Colombia by boat, by foot, by bus and by train, the Rainbow Bridge was a portal to a new life.

The Quebec government wants a judge to declare insolvent the North American branch of Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt, as the province attempts to recoup some of its losses on a failed electric-vehicle battery project.

Documents filed in Quebec Superior Court on Tuesday say that Northvolt Batteries North America owes more than $260 million on a government loan that allowed the company to buy land near Montreal to build a $7-billion battery plant.

The countrywide push for major projects won’t happen without First Nations at the table, the Assembly of First Nations warned government and industry Wednesday, as its annual summer gathering began in Winnipeg.

“We can all agree on this: that progress cannot come at the cost of our rights, our treaties or our responsibilities to the land,” Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Kyra Wilson told those gathered in Winnipeg.

Heat warnings and air-quality advisories are persisting in parts of British Columbia after daily high temperature records fell in a dozen communities, and the mercury rose to 40 degrees in the Fraser Canyon.

Environment Canada says Lytton, B.C., reached that mark on Tuesday, breaking a record of 39.6 degrees set in 2022.

IndyCar is coming to Markham, Ont.

The open-wheel auto racing series announced on Wednesday that it’s moving the Grand Prix of Toronto from Exhibition Place in the city’s downtown core to its northeastern suburb and that it will now be held later in the summer. Neil Lumsden, Ontario’s Minister of Sport, said he was happy that the multiyear deal will keep the race – now dubbed the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham – in the province.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on the Liberals to scrap the temporary foreign worker program and stop issuing visas under the program, arguing it has caused an employment crisis among young Canadians.

“The Liberals have to answer why is it that they’re shutting our own youth out of jobs and replacing them with low-wage, temporary foreign workers from poor countries who are ultimately being exploited,” Poilievre told a news conference Wednesday morning in Mississauga, Ont.

Lightspeed Commerce Inc. LSPD-T has agreed to pay $11-million to settle a class-action lawsuit in Quebec that alleged the company misrepresented its financial performance.

The proposed settlement agreement reached in June does not include any admission of liability by the company which denied the allegations of any wrongdoing.

Toronto Metropolitan University’s new medical school officially opens its Brampton campus Wednesday. The school is trumpeting the opening as the first new medical school in the Greater Toronto Area in more than a century. It will be located about an hour’s drive northwest of the downtown Toronto campus in the former Brampton Civic Centre, which has been renovated to include classrooms, labs, offices and student spaces for the incoming class of 94 MD students.

TMU president Mohamed Lachemi spoke to The Globe and Mail about the significance of the school’s opening and other issues affecting the university sector.

Good morning. Companies want employees back at their desks, but one powerful Canadian institution has yet to fully return in-person – more on that below, along with the Taliban’s appeal for international aid and the new editor of American Vogue. But first:

Today’s headlines

• Alberta pauses its ban on school library books with sexually explicit content
• Trump vows to take his fight for tariffs to the U.S. Supreme Court
• With a grand display of force, China’s Xi flaunts his country’s military and diplomatic might

Lawyers for attorneys-general across the country want to appear in person before the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada when they make their arguments at a coming landmark hearing on Quebec’s secularism law and the Charter’s notwithstanding clause.

One problem, however: That’s not allowed.

More below • A sample from band practice • At the world championships • Bagpipes 101

Mastering It is a summer series to introduce you to Canadians who have sought to rise above being simply good at their chosen endeavour – and who, by perfecting their skill, strive to become the best.

Quebec Premier François Legault told a public inquiry on Tuesday that he knew nothing about the $500-million cost overrun tied to digitization efforts at the province’s auto-insurance board until it became public knowledge in February.

Mr. Legault’s appearance before the Gallant commission into mismanagement and alleged cover-ups at the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec was the culmination of months of speculation about how much the Premier knew, and when, about a scandal that has already claimed one of his cabinet ministers.

The province’s embattled leader, facing plummeting poll numbers as he approaches seven years in office, said that details of mounting problems and ballooning costs within the SAAQclic project should have reached his desk, but didn’t.

Susan Duong was standing behind the counter, stacking containers of chicken fried rice, hot off the wok and ready to eat.

She looked out the window at Riverdale Collegiate – the large high school directly across the street from her little takeout restaurant – and checked her watch. 11:36 a.m. The lunch bell was about to ring. It was time to open the doors. Yummy House was once again open for business.

British Columbia’s core public service union has launched strike action, hoping to force a labour-friendly but debt-swamped government to more than double its wage offer in contract talks.

A segment of the B.C. General Employees’ Union’s 34,000 public sector workers walked off the job on Tuesday, and union president Paul Finch promised to escalate job action if the provincial government doesn’t return to the bargaining table with a better offer.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand says she spoke today with the Canadian judge facing American sanctions for her work at an international tribunal, without condemning Washington’s decision.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month announced sanctions on International Criminal Court judges including Kimberly Prost for her work on a case involving American troops in Afghanistan.

Erin McLeod, the oldest player in the Northern Super League, has announced her retirement in the wake of a season-ending foot injury.

The 42-year-old goalkeeper, the first-ever signing by Halifax Tides FC, has been sidelined since June. She played in six games for Halifax (3-11-3) during the NSL’s inaugural campaign.

A mayor near Newfoundland and Labrador’s capital city said his town of about 27,000 people would likely run out of water by Tuesday evening.

Darrin Bent said officials noticed earlier in the day that the water flow was decreasing to Conception Bay South, on the outskirts of St. John’s. They soon found a main pipe was leaking and the town’s water reserves were running out, he said.

Three weeks after the Long Lake wildfire in western Nova Scotia forced evacuations and eventually destroyed 20 homes, fire officials say some evacuation orders will be lifted.

They say that of the almost 500 orders imposed on individual residences since Aug. 13, residents living at 360 civic addresses will be allowed to return home on Wednesday.

If there was a fire, a flood, kids in need of skates or a hungry family in Montreal, Sid Stevens could be counted on to organize help.

For seven decades, his name was synonymous with Sun Youth, the community organization he founded with his friend Earl De La Perralle when they were both barely into puberty.

The Alberta government is pausing its controversial order for the removal of books deemed sexually explicit from school libraries, a retreat that Premier Danielle Smith vowed would be short-lived as the province continues to push policies around sexuality and gender into the classroom.

As of this month, new amendments to the Education Act dictate that ministerial approval is required before learning resources related to gender identity, sexual orientation or human sexuality are presented in schools.

The Q+A has ended. Click here to read the answers to your questions. If you’re an app user, click on the comments icon on the top right of your screen.

As generative artificial intelligence tools become more readily accessible than ever, parents and educators are struggling to navigate its use in classrooms as the new school year begins.

Alberta’s education minister is directing school boards to pause a government order to remove books with explicit sexual content from libraries.

Demetrios Nicolaides, in an e-mail to school divisions and officials Tuesday, said they should pause any development or distribution of lists of books that are to be removed, “including removing materials containing depictions of explicit sexual content.”

The Quebec government says it is ending funding for Northvolt’s planned battery plant in the province’s Montérégie region.

Economy Minister Christine Fréchette says the government made its decision after the company failed to produce an acceptable plan for Quebeckers.