Politics

Carrie Sakamoto left her family’s beloved dogs outside in the freezing cold. She started fires in her kitchen, and she fell down the stairs of her Alberta home — several times.These incidents all occurred since 2021, when Sakamoto was injured and rushed to hospital after a rare adverse reaction from a COVID-19 vaccine.Sakamoto was hospitalized for 17 days. For a time, she could not walk, talk, chew or focus.The federal government announced a program in 2020 to help people like Sakamoto, pledging timely and fair support to the unfortunate like her who were seriously hurt after immunizations.The program was supposed to spare the injured and fragile the cost and stress associated with litigation.In Sakamoto’s case, the program, called the Vaccine Injury Support Program, or VISP, did neither.I...

The group of Ontario First Nations taking the federal and provincial governments to court over fast-track legislation, which will sidestep or suspend a range of legal protections, says the Crown is failing in its duties. A lawyer representing the coalition of nine First Nations filed a legal application against both the Ford and Carney governments on Monday evening. The action looks to have a court rule the entirety of Ontario’s Bill 5 unconstitutional, as well as large parts of the federal government’s Bill C-5.At Queen’s Park on Wednesday, four of the First Nations leaders involved spoke about their concerns with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s approach.“I would say they’re less informed,” Alderville First Nation Chief Taynar Simpson said. “I would say they nee...

Giant shovels, driverless trucks and a dog-like robot have all helped Canada’s oil sands companies including Imperial Oil and Suncor become some of North America’s lowest-cost oil producers, driving down overheads even as the worst inflation in a generation pushed U.S. shale costs up. As the global oil industry enters a downturn due to economic uncertainty related to U.S. tariffs policy and OPEC+ pumping more barrels, Canada’s oil sands industry finds itself in a position of strength.In the years following the oil price crash of 2014-15, international oil majors including BP, Chevron and Total sold their interests in Canadian oil sands.At the time, they classified the Canadian operations as among their more expensive, and therefore less profitable, projects worldwide.They directed their ca...

By Staff The Canadian Press Posted July 16, 2025 7:11 am Updated July 16, 2025 7:15 am 1 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size Prime Minister Mark Carney is scheduled to be in Hamilton today to make an announcement related to the steel industry. It has been more than a month since U.S. President Donald Trump doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25 to 50 per cent, adding further economic insult to the two industries in Canada.Carney met with his cabinet virtually on Tu...

Descrease article font size Increase article font size Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says for the next couple of years “we need more people leaving than coming” into Canada. On Monday, Poilievre was asked by Global News to clarify his June comments calling for “severe limits on population growth.”“In order to fix the problem we’ve got to put very hard caps on immigration levels. We need more people leaving than coming for the next couple of years,” said Poilievre at a news conference in Ottawa. “So our country can actually catch up.” Poilievre said this move could help housing, health care and jobs “catch up,” but he did not elaborate on how he would ensure more people leave the country.“We’ve had population growth of roughly a million ...

By Craig Lord The Canadian Press Posted July 14, 2025 2:02 pm Updated July 14, 2025 2:07 pm 1 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is looking for feedback from Canadians on national security and defence spending and fortifying the Canadian economy amid an ongoing trade war as he prepares to deliver a federal budget in the fall. Champagne launched consultations for that budget Monday that will run through the end of August.The go...

By Dylan Robertson The Canadian Press Posted July 14, 2025 1:16 pm 1 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cuts to government spending will include the foreign service, just as Global Affairs Canada aims to expand its presence abroad. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne sent letters to ministers on Monday asking them to find savings of 7.5 per cent in their budgets starting next spring.Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand says that will include Global Affairs Canada, adding that it is necessary to cut what she calls red tape and inefficiencies. ...

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s chief of staff and the country’s top public servant will be responsible for maintaining an ethics screen preventing him from making decisions that benefit his former employer, says a disclosure issued by the office of the ethics commissioner on Friday. The disclosure states that Carney and the commissioner have agreed to a conflict of interest screen “aimed at preventing any opportunity” to further Carney’s interests “or to improperly further those of Brookfield Asset Management, Brookfield Corporation, and Stripe Inc., and any company owned or controlled by them.”Carney worked for Brookfield Asset Management before he decided to run for the Liberal leadership in January.The screen is administered by Marc-André Blanchard, Carney’s chief of staff, and Privy Coun...

By The Staff The Associated Press Posted July 13, 2025 2:19 pm 1 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday announced 6.5 billion euros in extra military spending in the next two years because of new and unprecedented threats, from Russia to terrorists to online attacks. The French leader laid out the spending plans in a sweeping speech calling for intensified efforts to protect Europe. He said France will aim to spend 64 billion euros in annual defense spending in 2027, the last year of his second term; that would be double the 32 billion in annual spending wh...

By Staff The Associated Press Posted July 13, 2025 8:52 am 2 min read Descrease article font size Increase article font size The EU will suspend retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods scheduled to take effect Monday in hopes of reaching a trade deal with the Trump administration by the end of the month. “This is now the time for negotiations,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels on Sunday, after U.S. President Donald Trump sent a letter announcing new tariffs of 30 per cent on goods from the EU and Mexico starting Aug. 1.The EU — America’s biggest trading partner and the world’s largest tra...