Vue lecture

B.C. Premier David Eby travels to Ottawa to lobby Carney for major projects funding

Prime Minister Mark Carney with British Columbia Premier David Eby, April 7. Eby is leading a mission to Ottawa that will last until Thursday.

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.

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Former swim instructor in Nova Scotia faces dozens of sexual-abuse charges

The Nova Scotia Youth Centre in Waterville, N.S., pictured on Wednesday. The province's RCMP says Donald Williams was arrested at his home last week in Dartmouth on sexual-assault charges.

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 for sexual assault, sexual assault causing bodily harm, sexual exploitation, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and assault.

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Palestinian visa applications for Canadian asylum blocked without explanation, lawyer says

‏Palestinians displaced by the Israeli military offensive take shelter in a tent camp in Gaza City, on Tuesday.

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.

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Federal union expands campaign denouncing staffing cuts at Canada Revenue Agency

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.

© Sean Kilpatrick

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) national headquarters in Ottawa on June 28, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
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Morning Update: Israel’s ground invasion pushes into Gaza City

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

© Mahmoud Issa

Displaced Palestinians in Gaza City move south as Israel launches its ground invasion.
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Some cities declare states of emergency over public disorder triggered by fentanyl crisis

Barrie, Ont., declared a state of emergency last week to address encampments, lawlessness and disorder.

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.

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Rushed crash safety measures creating new risks, Ontario daycare operators say

Police and fire crews work to remove a vehicle from First Roots Early Education Academy after it was driven through the daycare's window in Richmond Hill, Ont., on Sept. 10.

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.

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Pilot narrowly avoids soccer fields, pickleball courts to safely land after plane loses power

A plane crashed near the sports field at Monarch Park Collegiate Institute in Toronto on Tuesday.

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.

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Canadian resident accused of smuggling Indian family who froze to death near U.S. border arrested

The bodies of the Patel family – Jagdish, 39, Vaishali, 37, Vihangi, 11, and Dharmik, 3 – were found with signs of severe hypothermia just a short distance away from the Manitoba-Minnesota border in January, 2022.

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.”

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Ione Christensen, first female Whitehorse mayor and former senator, dies at 91

Ione Christensen waits outside the Senate Chambers to be sworn in as senator in Ottawa, 1999.

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.

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Man faces extradition for human smuggling in case of family who froze to death at border

The Patel family was dropped off near the Canada-U.S. border in Manitoba.

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.

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B.C.’s record-setting deficit ‘understated,’ Auditor-General says

B.C. Premier David Eby and Finance Minister Brenda Bailey in Burnaby, B.C., on July 7. Mr. Eby says the dispute between his Finance Ministry and the Auditor-General is just a technical disagreement about accounting tactics.

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.

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