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 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 underway to make that happen, the Crown corporation said.

When Sandy Fainer was growing up in Toronto in the 1950s, she loved reading Nancy Drew mystery books and channelled her admiration for the girl detective by conducting her own investigations in the family’s suburban bungalow.

“I was snooping through my mother’s underwear and found it,” she recalled. It was what her mother, Fania Fainer, called in Yiddish “the little book,” a tiny heart-shaped autograph book covered in purple fabric, with a letter F stitched onto the cover.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is appointing his principal secretary and former justice minister David Lametti as Canada’s next ambassador to the United Nations.

The Prime Minister’s Office says Lametti will replace former Liberal leader Bob Rae, who has held the role since 2020.

When fires burned near towns or villages in the past, they were stamped out, and fast. “Redshirts,” as Canada’s wildland firefighters are still known – although they wear banana yellow now – reliably came to the rescue.

Those days are over.

The RCMP say they have taken down a cryptocurrency platform that was being used mainly for criminal transactions, what the force claims is the largest crypto bust in Canadian history.

In a statement Thursday, the force’s federal policing wing in Quebec said it had recovered $56-million from a platform known as TradeOgre, “the first time that a cryptocurrency exchange platform has been dismantled by Canadian law enforcement.”

Canada’s government is sending more asylum-seekers hoping to file claims in Canada back to the U.S. under a bilateral pact, even as the U.S. says it may deport them to third countries.

Some of the people Canada is turning back should be eligible to file refugee claims in Canada, lawyers say, under exemptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement. The agreement broadly requires asylum-seekers at the Canada-U.S. border to be sent back to the first of the two countries they entered but allows some people - for example those with close family in Canada or stateless persons - to file claims.

Donald Oliver, the first Black man appointed to the Senate of Canada, has died at the age of 86.

Oliver’s family in Nova Scotia confirmed the retired senator died Wednesday from a chronic heart condition.

Premier Danielle Smith’s Alberta Next panel, aimed at wrenching more political control from Ottawa, was spurred to take action in Grande Prairie Wednesday.

The panel is expected to eventually pick six ideas that could become potential referendum questions, and the naysayers were again outnumbered in a packed house of more than 500 attendees.

Canada-wide protests are planned this weekend, a coalition of progressive civil society groups say, in what organizers call an emerging “common front” to elements of the new Liberal government’s agenda.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s support for new fossil-fuel projects, expected public service cuts, expanded military support and new border measures are some of the concerns motivating Saturday’s co-ordinated day of action, organizers of the Draw The Line protests say.

Telus Corp. T-T is partnering with Samsung to deploy what it calls Canada’s first commercial radio access network intelligent controller, a software platform that will help eventually deliver networks fully powered by artificial intelligence.

Samsung said its technology will enable automation, enhanced energy efficiency and optimized performance across Telus’s wireless network.

A psychiatrist, politician and patron of the arts, Janusz Dukszta was a man of many faces – literally. His two-bedroom apartment, on the edge of Toronto’s exclusive Rosedale neighbourhood, was filled with paintings, many of them portraits of himself, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends and family. They were hung everywhere, higgledy-piggledy, on walls, suspended from the ceiling, or mounted three-deep over packed bookshelves.

It was not narcissism that prompted Dr. Dukszta to commission such portraits, but rather a desire to support artists who were starting their careers, and a deep-seated curiosity about the process of transformation and transcendence. How would others see him? Serious and natty in one of his many Savile Row-tailored suits, or posing in the nude, it did not matter. As he told this newspaper in 2010, “I am much more interesting than a vase or a mandolin.”

Good morning. Meatballs built IKEA’s food empire but its plant balls failed to make a dent in the MAGA era – more on that below, along with Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension and Donald Trump’s state visit. But first:

Today’s headlines

• The Bank of Canada and U.S. Federal Reserve resume rate cuts amid job market slowdowns
• The BC Ferries deal was raised with Transport Canada weeks before Freeland’s criticism, e-mails show
• Canada and Mexico will sign a strategic partnership during Carney’s visit
• Gaza faces internet and phone blackouts as Israeli tanks advance

The federal broadcast regulator begins a hearing today to look at which Canadian content obligations should apply to music streamers like Spotify.

Streaming services argue their current efforts to promote Canadian culture – and the royalties they pay – are good enough. Radio broadcasters, meanwhile, say their sector is in serious decline and they want the CRTC to take a lighter regulatory touch for traditional players.

Kira Schulz is standing in the field behind her daughter’s elementary school in the Alberta city of Airdrie and trying to make sense of space.

If the school adds modular classrooms to accommodate new students – the local school division has asked the government for several – where will the children play, Ms. Schulz wonders.

British Columbia is creating a provincial police unit to crack down on the wide-scale extortion of South Asian businesspeople, including a wave of shootings in recent months that echoes similar violence seen across Alberta and Ontario.

Assistant Commissioner John Brewer, with the British Columbia RCMP, and provincial Solicitor-General Nina Krieger announced the new 40-member team at a news conference Wednesday flanked by police leaders from around Metro Vancouver. They said this unit will lead new investigations as well as help local RCMP detachments and other municipal forces with their open cases.

Saskatchewan Mounties have charged three more people in their investigation of the Kingdom of Canada, a group likened to a cult that has been clashing with area residents.

RCMP said in a news release Wednesday three women face charges of obstruction of a peace officer in Richmound, a village west of Regina.

Quebec has become the second Canadian province after Alberta that will no longer provide free vaccination against COVID-19 for all its population.

Instead, only certain categories of people will still receive the shot at no cost: seniors, health care workers, residents of remote regions and medically vulnerable patients.

A Minnesota court requested the arrest of a Canadian resident this month so he can stand trial in the U.S. after he allegedly helped with the 2022 cross-border smuggling of an Indian family of four who froze to death in Manitoba.

U.S. authorities were concerned that Fenil Patel, 37, who also goes by the name Fenilkumar Kantilal Patel, would flee Canada – possibly to India – according to new court documents filed in Ontario and Minnesota, verified by The Globe and Mail.

Ottawa is calling on the Supreme Court of Canada to clarify the law around governments’ use of the Charter’s notwithstanding clause, arguing that courts should have a bigger role in such cases than previously granted by legal precedent.

If the Supreme Court accepts Ottawa’s arguments, it will mark the first substantive limits on governments’ use of the notwithstanding clause to override the rights of Canadians since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted in 1982.

British Columbia Premier David Eby is off to Ottawa to lobby the federal government for more investment in major infrastructure projects in the province.

The Premier’s Office says in a statement that Eby is leading a mission to Ottawa that will last until Thursday, and the itinerary includes a meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney on priorities for B.C.’s economic growth.

The Nova Scotia RCMP have laid dozens of sexual-abuse charges against a former swim instructor who worked at a provincially run youth detention centre for nearly three decades.

Donald Williams, 75, was arrested at his home last week in Dartmouth and faces 66 charges of sexual assault, sexual assault causing bodily harm, sexual exploitation, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and assault. The charges relate to 30 victims − all boys but one.

This is the fifth story in a series on Canada-U.S. cross-border measures to protect North Atlantic right whales.

The union representing WestJet flight attendants says it has given the airline notice to begin contract talks.

CUPE 8125 says in a press release that it has served notice to bargain a new collective agreement. Its current contract is set to expire on Dec. 31.

When immigration lawyer Hana Marku opened her email weeks ago to a photo of an emaciated infant in the Gaza Strip, she said she felt helpless.

The child is among about 50 Palestinians the Toronto-based lawyer is representing. She said each one was blocked without explanation from submitting applications under the temporary visa program the Canadian government created to help them flee the Israel-Hamas war.

The federal union representing workers at the Canada Revenue Agency has started the second phase of its online campaign denouncing staffing cuts.

The “Canada on Hold” campaign was launched last month with a focus on CRA call centres but has now been expanded to draw attention to staffing cuts across the agency.

Marc Brière, national president of the Union of Taxation Employees, says the CRA has cut almost 10,000 jobs since May 2024 and the campaign looks to highlight the impact of cuts on the delivery of services to taxpayers and businesses.

Good morning. Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza City has begun, with missiles flattening neighbourhoods and families fleeing on foot – more on that below, along with the coming federal budget and Robert Redford’s cinematic legacy. But first:

Today’s headlines

• Chrystia Freeland will leave her cabinet post to serve as Canada’s special representative for Ukraine
• The suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk is charged and prosecutors will seek the death penalty
• Washington was hoping for a ‘bigger’ deal with Canada than USMCA, the U.S. ambassador says
• Britain prepares for Trump’s arrival with pomp and protests

The small B.C. town of Smithers is the latest Canadian community to table extraordinary measures to deal with the chaos and disorder triggered by the fentanyl crisis.

Last week, the northern mountain town of 5,400 announced that it will be hiring a team of private security guards to patrol a homeless encampment and the wider downtown from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays and 24 hours on weekends and holidays.

Ontario’s Minister of Education has ordered child-care operators to immediately block parking spaces that could endanger children, a directive prompted by a Richmond Hill crash that killed a toddler and described by operators as a rushed response that has created new risks.

One-and-a-half-year-old Liam Riazati died when a vehicle crashed through the front window of the First Roots Early Education Academy last Wednesday. Six other children were injured – two critically – along with three adults.

David Sydney-Cariglia saw the struggling plane before he heard it.

He’d been focusing on his son playing soccer at St. Patrick Catholic Secondary School in Toronto’s east end. It was a cloudless Monday night in September. As dusk settled in and the floodlights hummed, a strange shape whispered over the field.

A Canadian resident has been arrested after his alleged involvement in the high-profile smuggling of a young Indian family of four who froze to death along the U.S. border in Manitoba in early 2022.

Fenil Patel, 37, who also goes by the name Fenilkumar Kantilal Patel, was apprehended on Sept. 5, based on an extradition request from the U.S., said Kwame Bonsu, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice Canada. The official declined to provide further details, including about any pending charges, describing the matter on Tuesday as part of “confidential state-to-state communications.”

A powerhouse politician who broke glass ceilings in Canada, Ione Christensen is being remember both for the trails she blazed and the international acclaim she earned for the century-old sourdough starter she protected in the back of her refrigerator.

A former senator and the first woman to be mayor of Whitehorse, Christensen died Monday at the age of 91.

Another man has been arrested in connection with a human smuggling operation that saw a migrant family freeze to death on the Canada-U.S. border near Emerson, Man.

Fenil Patel was arrested Sept. 5 on an extradition request from the United States, the Justice Department in Ottawa said Tuesday. The 37-year-old faces a hearing this week in Ontario Superior Court.

British Columbia’s independent Auditor-General says the province’s record-setting deficit forecast for this year is understated, because Finance Ministry officials were slow to account for a multibillion-dollar settlement that the provinces reached in March with big tobacco companies over health damages.

This week, B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey tabled a fiscal update that shows the provincial deficit in the current fiscal year is forecast to hit $11.6-billion.

The regional director of a union representing workers at the Amazon AMZN-Q facility in Delta, B.C., says leaders are scheduled to meet its members for the first time on the company’s property.

Unifor Western Regional Director Gavin McGarrigle says six, hour-long meetings will be held over three days this week to allow the union to inform workers about next steps in bargaining for their first collective agreement.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he believes Prime Minister Mark Carney will support his plan to build a tunnel under Highway 401 through Toronto and will include it among the major projects the federal government intends to fast-track.

Mr. Ford has spoken out about his plan to build a new driver and transit tunnel expressway under Highway 401 and included it on the list provided to Ottawa of five projects the province believes are in the national interest to build.

The United States is officially starting the process of reviewing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement as President Donald Trump continues to shake up continental trade with his tariff agenda.

The U.S. Trade Representative is beginning 45 days of public consultations ahead of the mandated review of the trade agreement, better known as USMCA, next year.

British Columbia’s public service workers are escalating job action aimed at slowing work in the mining sector just as the province moves to fast-track several projects.

The BC General Employees’ Union and Professionals Employees Association say staff in mineral and mines offices in Vancouver and Cranbrook will join picket lines.

A 34-year-old woman found not criminally responsible after abandoning her toddler in a rural field will remain detained at a Montreal psychiatric hospital.

Judge Bertrand St-Arnaud delivered the ruling at the Valleyfield, Que., courthouse on Tuesday, saying that despite the progress she’s made in her recovery she still poses a risk to the public.

“I understand that you are eager to be released, but I think we need to take it step by step, gradually,” he told the woman, whose name is under publication ban to protect the identity of her daughter.

Critics are questioning what problem the Alberta government’s move to add mandatory citizenship markers to provincial identification aims to solve, and say it opens the door to potential privacy breaches and discrimination.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Monday the move is all about streamlining services and preventing election fraud.

NDP MP and labour critic Alexandre Boulerice said Tuesday his party plans to table a private member’s bill this fall to scrap a section of the Canada Labour Code that lets the government shut down strikes.

Boulerice told a press conference that the Liberals and Conservatives have abused Section 107, which allows a minister to order binding arbitration and end work stoppages.

Children’s book author Robert Munsch says he has chosen a medically assisted death (MAID) because of his dementia diagnosis.

He made the comments in a profile in The New York Times, saying he hasn’t set a date.

A Quebec judge has declared that a man charged with attacking a Jewish father in a Montreal park last month is not criminally responsible.

Sergio Yanes Preciado was charged with assault causing bodily harm after he attacked a 32-year-old man on Aug. 8 who was with his young children at a Montreal park.

A 28-second video of the incident was shared widely online, drawing swift condemnation from Prime Minister Mark Carney and Quebec Premier François Legault.

The federal government’s enthusiasm for laying sanctions on thousands of foreigners has made it harder for Canadians to understand and comply with the sanctions regime and exposes Ottawa to lawsuits, an internal review says.

The findings come as the Conservatives call for Canada to slap sanctions on those behind transnational repression.

“The urgency and frequency of new sanctions packages put intense pressure on operations, limited the ability to conduct research to further support listings and other decisions, and created legal risks,” reads the internal evaluation report dated March, 2025.

Enerflex Ltd. EFX-T has named Paul Mahoney as the company’s new president and chief executive, effective Sept. 29.

Mahoney was group president, production and automation technologies at ChampionX Corp., which was acquired earlier this year by SLB SLB-N.

Enerflex board chair Kevin Reinhart says Mahoney, who will also join the company’s board, is an accomplished and seasoned executive with broad industry experience.