A Calgary police officer has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder after Alberta’s oversight agency investigated a 2023 shooting that killed two men.

Constable Craig Stothard appeared in court Tuesday and was released, according to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, or ASIRT, in a statement published later in the day. His bail was set for $1,000, and he must remain in the province under a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., with his passport surrendered.

The officer has been placed on leave, Calgary Police Service Chief Katie McLellan said in a separate statement. She declined to say whether his leave was with or without pay. He is a 15-year member of the service.

Heavy smoke and thick fumes have triggered air-quality alerts in vast swaths of the country, as some areas in Western and Central Canada are experiencing one of the most destructive wildfire seasons in recent decades.

With winds pushing plumes from Prairie wildfires toward Ontario and Quebec, causing reduced visibility in multiple regions, Environment and Climate Change Canada is now warning people to be prepared for smoke exposure thousands of kilometres away from fire zones. Residents have been advised to keep windows and doors closed, limit their time outside, and reschedule or cancel summer sports, events and activities.

Smoke alerts and heat warnings are in place across the country this weekend, as thousands of people are fleeing their homes from out-of-control wildfires.

In a rare occurrence, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew declared a second provincewide state of emergency this week, calling upon the military to airlift residents from northern communities toward safer areas, emphasizing the severity of this year’s historically bad wildfire season. The province was under a state of emergency from May until late last month, during which more than 21,000 people had been evacuated.

Alberta has issued a ministerial order to restrict books from school libraries that the province believes are sexually explicit, instructing authorities to remove the material by October and prohibit students from accessing it.

Demetrios Nicolaides, Alberta’s Education and Childcare Minister, said Premier Danielle Smith’s government will require all school boards to create or update policies to meet the province’s new safeguards. Until now, he stressed, schools had “zero standards” to select appropriate content for libraries.

Wildfires have burned through more than a million hectares of forest in Manitoba this year, prompting Premier Wab Kinew to declare a second provincewide state of emergency and call upon the military to help once again with thousands of evacuations from fly-in communities.

The province, which was under a state of emergency until late last month, made the latest declaration Thursday. More than 12,600 people across the province are now being told to leave their homes, many for the second time.

The United States is complaining about another Canadian export: wildfire smoke ruining the summer in their neck of the woods.

Six Republican members of the U.S. Congress have penned a public letter to Canada’s ambassador in Washington, demanding that their northern neighbour do better at mitigating wildfires, which have led to thousands of evacuations in this country and sent thick smoke billowing across the border over the past couple of months.

Two student pilots have died after their small airplanes crashed mid-air in Manitoba’s rural municipality of Hanover.

RCMP confirmed that the pilots – a man and a woman – were pronounced dead on scene Tuesday near wreckage, just above an hour-long drive south of Winnipeg.

Manitoba’s Accessibility Minister is apologizing after she was heard on video using “demeaning” language while questioning why a sign-language interpreter had been placed on the stage with her at a recent event.

Nahanni Fontaine was preparing to speak with reporters during a gala celebrating Indigenous graduates last week when she made the off-the-cuff comments, voicing her frustrations using an expletive with a member of her staff. Her words were captured on a hot mic.

History books will show that Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham was the first pedestrian in more than four decades to traverse between Portage Avenue and Main Street, finally reopening what is widely known as the crossroads of Canada to foot traffic after years of fervent debate.

Well, kind of. Many others have routinely jaywalked across the downtown thoroughfares since 1979, when barricades were erected to prioritize the free flow of cars and trucks. People on foot have since been crossing illegally or using an underground concourse beneath the 16 lanes of traffic at the famed intersection, proximate to the longitudinal centre of the country.