REGINA — Saskatchewan is stepping in to supervise three independent schools after a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed against former teachers, pastors and church elders for alleged abuse of students. Education Minister Dustin Duncan said Thursday he will appoint supervisors to oversee three schools linked to the allegations, which include paddling children and an exorcism. Legacy Christian Academy and Grace Christian School in Saskatoon and Regent Academy in Prince Albert are to get superv
PENTICTON, B.C. — Residents of the British Columbia community of Olalla are now allowed to return home after being forced out by a threatening wildfire last week. But a fierce lightning storm that swept across the southern part of the province on Wednesday has sparked numerous new fires, with Environment Canada warning more storms were on the way. Severe thunderstorm watches blanketed the B.C. interior from Prince George south to the U.S. border on Thursday. BC Wildfire Service information offic
OTTAWA — Former British Columbia premier Christy Clark on Wednesday endorsed Jean Charest to be the next leader of the federal Conservatives at a time when she says the party is racing to the extremes. She also expressed choice words for a pitch from a front-runner in Alberta’s United Conservative Party leadership contest who has vowed to introduce legislation to ignore federal laws. “I think that is bats--t crazy,” Clark said of Danielle Smith’s proposed Alberta Sovereignty Act. Clark’s comment
OTTAWA — In a University of Ottawa lab, Sarah Laframboise is hoping to advance cancer research by studying a gene that causes the disease in humans. Her research works with a "model organism": tiny fungi that have a surprising amount in common with us. "Yeast and humans share about 20 to 30 per cent of the same genes," she said. "The goal of that is really to find underlying mechanisms that cause different disease states." The 27-year-old has always dreamt of being a scientist. After a decade in
OTTAWA — A new tax on yachts, luxury cars and private aircraft designed to hit the super-rich could also cover vehicles meant to help the environment, a tax expert warns. The luxury goods tax, which will come into force on Sept. 1, will cover cars and SUVs, as well as private planes and helicopters, worth more than $100,000. The federal tax will also cover yachts and boats — including motorboats — worth more than $250,000. But senior tax lawyer Héléna Gagné says the new tax could also hit some e
A 70-year-old retiree from Toronto's Scarborough area won big after scoring the $20 million Lotto 6/49 prize from the July 9 draw.
Few movies are more iconic, particularly for women, than Penny Marshall's A League of Their Own, but Abbi Jacobson's reexamining of what life was like for women in 1943 is a worthy, essential expansion to the story we got in the 1992 film.
EDMONTON — Alberta's Opposition is calling for the two top legislature leaders on women’s issues to quit for giving a prize for an essay that urges women to forgo careers and focus on baby-making so the province doesn’t have to bring in more foreigners. NDP critic Rakhi Pancholi said Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk, the United Conservative Party government's associate minister for the Status of Women, and Jackie Lovely, the department's parliamentary secretary, have lost all credibility to advance the
NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — A sentencing hearing for a Dutch national convicted of harassing and extorting British Columbia teenager Amanda Todd before her suicide has been scheduled for next month. Justice Martha Devlin set the hearing for Aydin Coban to begin on Sept. 20 in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster. A jury delivered a unanimous verdict on Saturday convicting Coban of extortion, harassment, communication with a young person to commit a sexual offence, and possession and distribution of
MONTREAL — The remains of a priest alleged to have sexually abused children have been exhumed and removed from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake. The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, which governs the community south of Montreal, says the remains of Rev. Léon Lajoie, who died in 1999, were exhumed Wednesday. Last summer, several members of the community alleged that they were abused by Lajoie and called for his remains to be removed to start a healing process. Members of the community in March voted
MONTREAL — Moderna says construction of its new mRNA vaccine factory in the Montreal area will begin later this year, with production expected to begin by the end of 2024. The vaccine manufacturer is announcing that it has agreed to purchase land in a biotechnology park in Laval, Que., a northern suburb of Montreal, to serve as the site of its biomanufacturing facility. The Massachusetts-based company says the site is ideal due to its proximity to a renowned research institute, the Institut nati
CALGARY — A new report says Canada needs to change its federal visa policy to speed up the admission of Ukrainian refugees, which has slowed to a trickle. The study by the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy released Thursday says that compared to other countries, Canada has received a small number of the millions of Ukrainians who have been displaced since Russia invaded the eastern European country in February. "Applications by Ukrainians are starting to far outstrip the number tha
OTTAWA — A new survey finds more Canadians report a strong attachment to their primary language than to other markers of identity, including the country they call home. The survey, which was conducted by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies, found 88 per cent of respondents reported a strong sense of attachment to their primary language, whereas 85 per cent reported the same for Canada. The greater importance of language was especially notable among francophones and Indigenous Peoples.
VANCOUVER — It was difficult to see any difference had been made to the tent encampment in Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside on Wednesday, a day after city staff began what's expected to be a weeks-long process to remove the structures. That's for good reason, said a resident who goes by the name Edith Elizabeth — the people who live in the tents have nowhere else to go. She said previously, residents would relocate their structures nearby so city staff could clean the street. "It's just li
PENTICTON — Drones are helping map hot spots in a wildfire burning in British Columbia's Okanagan region as cooler conditions helped firefighters elsewhere in the province bring blazes under control. Crews were making progress on several wildfires Wednesday, including a blaze near Lytton that broke out nearly a month ago and destroyed several properties. But BC Wildfire Service information officer Mikhail Elsay told a news conference that crews were still having a difficult fight with the 67-squ
MONTREAL — Quebec’s public health director is recommending that arsenic levels in the air of a western Quebec city be reduced significantly, but even then they would remain five times higher than the provincial standard. Dr. Luc Boileau told reporters in Rouyn-Noranda Wednesday that average emissions of 15 nanograms of arsenic per cubic metre of air would be a safe level for people in the city until air quality is “eventually” improved to the provincial standard of three nanograms of arsenic per
MONTREAL — Quebec's Health Department has rejected a request from officials in the northern region of Nunavik to have Armed Forces members brought in to help ease a shortage of health-care workers. Kathleen Poulin, a spokeswoman for Nunavik Regional Board of Health, said Wednesday that labour shortages in the health sector are hitting Nunavik particularly hard due to the region’s "remoteness and its specific characteristics." "In some of the smaller villages that have only two to four nurses, th
OTTAWA — Two containers of food bound for Afghanistan have been cancelled by a Canadian aid agency because of a law banning any dealings with the Taliban. World Vision says it has been forced to cancel a large shipment of "therapeutic food," which it said could have fed around 1,800 children. Canada passed a law in 2013 listing the Taliban as a terrorist organization and listing penalties of up to 10 years in prison if Canadians directly or indirectly provide them with property or finances. Aid
Netflix show Locke & Key has come to end with Season 3 and Canadian star Connor Jessup, who plays Tyler Locke, is reminiscing about the series finale (spoilers ahead), his early frustrations with the character and celebrating filming in his hometown of Toronto.
Relatives of a Saskatchewan woman being held in custody in the United States say they want her extradited quickly to deal with her charges in Canada. Dawn Walker, 48, is facing two charges in Oregon related to identity fraud along with two charges in Saskatoon of child abduction and public mischief. She was arrested Friday when she and her seven-year-old son were found in Oregon City, Ore., after a two-week search. Police allege Walker was involved in a custody dispute with the boy's father and
MONTREAL — Religious minorities in Quebec are feeling less safe, less accepted and less hopeful since the province passed its secularism law three years ago, a new survey suggests. The results published Wednesday by Léger and the Association for Canadian Studies reveal that Quebecers who identify as Jewish, Muslim or Sikh report "broad-ranging, disruptive and profound negative impacts" stemming from the 2019 law, which bans public sector workers deemed to be in positions of authority from wearin
Montreal public health officials say they are investigating a deadly case of legionnaires' disease in the city's east end to see if it is linked to two other cases detected in the area. The city's public health department said today that the investigation will target water cooling towers in the area. The victim was only identified as a man. Last year, two people died after an outbreak of legionnaires' disease in an adjacent area. The public health department says 27 cases of legionnaires' diseas
Ottawa was careful to avoid admitting abuses Indigenous children suffered at residential schools happened "at the hands of the federal government" in remarks prepared for a Liberal cabinet minister after the discovery of unmarked graves last year, documents show. The Canadian Press obtained documents through the Access to Information Act that show a draft version of a speech written for Carolyn Bennett, who was then minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, originally contained those words before
OTTAWA — Canadian aid agencies are warning that the world food crisis, made worse by the war in Ukraine, is leading to a rise in underage girls being forced into marriage. Plan International Canada says it has seen a worrying increase in the number of teenage girls in the developing world being forced into marriage because their families cannot afford to feed them. The agency says 12 million girls under the age of 18 become child brides each year, forcing them to abandon school while putting the
Ontario's Progressive Conservative government has finally announced that the recipients of Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) will receive their five per cent increase in September this year.