Vue lecture

Three wildfires in B.C. prompt local officials to issue new evacuation orders

Smoke from the Mine Creek wildfire burning between Hope and Merritt, B.C., on Wednesday.

Three British Columbia wildfires, including a blaze that forced this week’s closing of the Coquihalla Highway, have prompted local officials to issue new evacuation orders.

The Fraser Valley Regional District says it has declared a state of local emergency and issued an evacuation order for the Coquihalla Lakes Lodge and the Coquihalla Summit Snowmobile Club site due to the Mine Creek fire that shut the highway on Wednesday.

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Canada providing $3-million in humanitarian aid for Afghan earthquake victims

Afghans search remnants of damaged houses, after earthquakes at Nurgal district in Kunar province, in Eastern Afghanistan, on Sept. 4, 2025.

The Canadian government is providing $3-million in humanitarian assistance to help people directly affected by recent earthquakes in eastern Afghanistan.

Randeep Sarai, the Secretary of State for International Development, made the announcement on Friday, saying the money will be allocated to organizations working within the country.

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Federal government delaying electric-vehicle mandate as part of new measures to aid tariff-hit sectors

Honda employees work along the vehicle assembly line in Alliston, Ont.

The Liberal government is delaying mandatory sales targets for electric vehicles as one of a series of new measures aimed at supporting sectors badly hit by the ongoing trade disputes with the United States.

Prime Minister Mark Carney also announced a new “strategic response fund” with $5-billion to assist affected companies, expand existing loan programs for small- and medium-sized businesses, increase cash advances available to the canola sector and a new biofuel production incentive.

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Two Canadians confirmed dead in Lisbon funicular crash

Flowers are placed Friday at the site where a funicular crashed in Lisbon, Portugal.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand has confirmed two Canadians are among the 16 people killed in a funicular railway crash on Wednesday in Lisbon, confirming an earlier report from local police.

“I am saddened to confirm that two Canadians have been confirmed to be among those who died in the Lisbon streetcar crash,” she said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

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Morning Update: The unsung heroes of TIFF

Good morning. Just as the Toronto International Film Festival has something for everyone, the 11-day event requires the wide-ranging work of many different hands. More on the heroic effort below, plus news updates from the Middle East and Portugal. But first:

Today’s headlines

  • An internal government document obtained by The Globe lists 32 potential national projects
  • A woman has been killed and the suspect, her brother, is dead after multiple stabbings in Hollow Water First Nation, a small community in Manitoba
  • Tom Pitfield, a top adviser to Mark Carney and a Liberal Party strategist, has ties to Big Tobacco, sources say

© Chris Donovan

Volunteers take down signs after the last red carpet of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
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August unemployment rate reaches nine-year high outside of pandemic

Canada had almost 1.6 million people unemployed in August as the economy lost thousands of jobs and its unemployment rate scaled over a nine-year peak barring the pandemic years, data showed on Friday.

Its unemployment rate rose 0.2 percentage points in August to 7.1 per cent, a level last seen in May, 2016, if the COVID-19 years of 2020 and 2021 were excluded, Statscan said

The economy shed 65,500 jobs in August, largely in part-time work, it said, and added that this was fuelled not only by lower hiring but also some layoffs with the layoff rate rising to 1 per cent in August, compared with 0.9 per cent observed 12 months earlier.

© Sean Kilpatrick

Signage mark the Statistics Canada offiices in Ottawa on July 21, 2010. Statistics Canada says it is working with the United States Census Bureau and plans to release the December merchandise data on March 6.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
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Darkened by ash from wildfires, glaciers in the Canadian Rockies are melting even faster

As the helicopter turned toward Peyto Glacier, located in the Park Ranges of the Canadian Rockies, John Pomeroy and his team of scientists gasped.

Prof. Pomeroy, a distinguished professor and director of the Global Water Futures Observatories at the University of Saskatchewan, has studied the ice mass in Banff National Park since 2008, visiting several times a year to adjust weather stations and photograph changes.

© Sarah Palmer

Dr. John Pomeroy, Director of the Global Water Futures Programme and Coldwater Laboratory in Canmore, walks across Peyto Glacier in Alberta on September 4, 2024.
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Saskatchewan requests notwithstanding case to be folded into Bill 21 Supreme Court hearing

The Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa.

The Saskatchewan government said on Thursday it plans to appeal a case it recently lost in the lower courts to the Supreme Court of Canada.

And, if that’s granted, the province added an unusual request: It wants the top court to combine the proposed appeal with a major Supreme Court case already in progress on Quebec’s secularism law.

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Self-styled Queen of Canada charged after raid on Saskatchewan compound

Romana Didulo, the self-declared 'Queen of Canada,' leaves after speaking on Parliament Hill during protests of vaccine mandates in February, 2022. Ms. Didulo was arrested after an RCMP raid on Wednesday.

A day after Romana Didulo, the self-styled Queen of Canada, and 15 of her supporters were arrested in a tiny Saskatchewan town, she and the owner of her group’s compound were both charged.

The RCMP had announced earlier on Thursday that they had to release the group because no charges had been secured in the investigation, but they noted an unidentified man and woman had been taken back into custody. 

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