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In the wake of recent shootings at Jewish schools, the federal government is planning to hold a national forum to combat antisemitism in the country. The forum will be held in Ottawa in February of 2025 to “discuss the growing public safety threat of antisemitism,” the Department of Justice Canada announced on Friday.“Canada has seen a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents, threats, and hate crimes,” the department said.“The Government of Canada recognizes the urgent need for national leadership to ensure Jewish Canadians feel safe in their synagogues, schools, and communities.”The justice minister, attorney general, and the minister and associate minister of public safety will co-chair the forum next year.Federal, provincial, and municipal leadership, along with law enforcement and pros...

After a month-long strike, Canada Post is continuing to ramp up its operations and the postal service expects that most of its backlog of deliveries will be cleared before Christmas. Canada Post workers returned to the job on Tuesday after they were ordered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to end the countrywide strike.The Crown corporation said its network became fully operational on Wednesday afternoon.“Canada Post has processed the parcels held in the postal system during the strike, with all these items now flowing through our network or delivered,” the national mail carrier said in an update on Friday.“We expect a significant portion of these items to be delivered before Christmas.”Postal workers will be making deliveries this weekend in some select cities, the company ...

An “overheated” immigration system that admitted record numbers of newcomers to the country has harmed Canada’s decades-old consensus on the benefits of immigration, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said, as he reflected on the changes in his department in a year-end interview. The system, he said, needed some discipline to get the country back on track.Over the course of 2024, Miller moved to cap the number of student visas, reduced the number of permanent residents it plans to admit, made it harder to get a working visa and paused most private refugee sponsorship applications.All of that came as record immigration levels pushed population growth up over three per cent in 2023, twice what it has averaged over the previous decade.“There’s no shying away from the fact that there’s some stuf...

Facing a government shutdown deadline, the Senate rushed through final passage early Saturday of a bipartisan plan that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster aid, dropping President-elect Donald Trump’s demands for a debt limit increase into the new year. House Speaker Mike Johnson had insisted Congress would “meet our obligations” and not allow federal operations to shutter ahead of the Christmas holiday season. But the day’s outcome was uncertain after Trump doubled down on his insistence that a debt ceiling increase be included in any deal — if not, he said in an early morning post, let the closures “start now.”The House approved Johnson’s new bill overwhelmingly, 366-34. The Senate worked into the night to pass it, 85-11, just after the deadline. At midnight, the White...