Politics

Nova Scotians are set to go to the polls in a provincial election Nov. 26. Here are five key issues that leaders and candidates for the Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and NDP are expected to highlight during the campaign:The Progressive Conservatives were elected in 2021 on a pledge to “fix” the province’s ailing system. Story continues below advertisement The Tories say they have made inroads in recruiting doctors and nurses and in providing more resources for emergency medical care. 2:05 Could Nova Scotia call an early election? Health concerns come into focus in province The Liberals and NDP will highlight...

Another week, another raft of imminent challenges to Justin Trudeau’s leadership of both the country and the Liberal Party. The Prime Minister, whose presence at the party helm has stirred criticism and calls for his resignation from within his own ranks, is facing two deadlines in the coming days: one from Liberal MPs who want him to resign and another from the Bloc Québécois as they threaten to trigger an early election. 9:13 Jody Wilson-Raybould’s recommendations ‘for the good of the party’ Discontent with Trudeau’s leadership has been mounting for months amid persistently dismal approval ratings and two recent byelection losses in long-tim...

Here are the three main political leaders vying to be Nova Scotia’s next premier in November, including two men and one woman. Two of them are taking their party into the election as leaders for the very first time.Before the election was called, the Progressive Conservatives held 34 seats in the 55-seat Nova Scotia legislature, the Liberals held 14 seats, the NDP had six and there was one Independent. Tim Houston, Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia Tim Houston, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia, is seeking a second mandate as premier. Story continues below advertisement Born: April 10, 1970.Early years: Born in Halifax and raised in a military family, he grew up on military bases in Prince Edwar...

As a young child, Dennis Saddleman’s mother always ensured he knew how much she loved him, gave him kisses on his forehead and told him how beautiful he was. That all changed when he was six years old, and those warm words turned ice cold when he was sent to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The priests and nuns who were tasked with looking after him constantly berated him, beat him, barred him from speaking his language and practising his culture, and sexually assaulted him. 1:36 What needs to be done to confront residential school denialism? “I didn’t know what I was getting into when I got there,” he said in an interview on Parliament...

The razor-thin U.S. presidential race between U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump could be decided by American voters living abroad in countries like Canada, a former envoy says. Bruce Heyman, a Democrat who served as U.S. ambassador to Canada under the Obama administration, says a large number of voters from vital swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that could decide the Nov. 5 election live just across the border in Canada.The latest FiveThirtyEight polling averages in those states and others show Harris and Trump are separated by a fraction of a percentage point, making every vote consequential.“I’m just appealing, please, Americans in Canada, please, if you have been registered to vote (and have received an absentee ballot), you need t...

WASHINGTON — A presidential candidate’s phone is hacked. A fake video falsely shows ballots burned in Pennsylvania. National security officials warn that U.S. adversaries may incite violent protests after Election Day. These developments — all revealed in the past week — show how Russia, China and Iran have increased the pace of efforts to meddle in American politics ahead of next month’s election, just as intelligence officials and security analysts had predicted.At the same time, officials, tech companies and private researchers have adopted a more aggressive defense by swiftly exposing foreign election threats, highlighting the lessons learned from past election cycles that revealed America’s vulnerability to disinformation and cyberespionage.Officials say the U.S. election system is so...

The Quebec Liberal Party has called for the province’s French language commissioner to investigate the cancelling of some French-language training courses for newcomers. Citing an “ongoing series of closures of francization programs,” the Opposition party announced Saturday morning in a news release that its critics for the French language and French classes, André Albert Morin and Madwa-Nika Cadet, sent a letter to the Commissioner of the French Language.The letter asks commissioner Benoît Dubreuil to “investigate to ensure that the right to French language learning services, included in the Charter of the French Language, is respected,” the release said.The Liberals are blaming the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s budgetary decisions, which it says, “jeopardize the possibility for im...

Canadian Indigenous leaders say U.S. President Joe Biden’s apology for his country’s residential school system is only the first step toward healing generations of harm. On Friday, Biden apologized for the U.S. boarding school system that for more than 150 years separated Indigenous children from their parents, calling it “one of the most consequential things” he’s done as president.The apology comes 16 years after former prime minister Stephen Harper apologized for Canada’s residential school system. It follows an investigation of boarding schools driven by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the country’s first Indigenous cabinet secretary, which was prompted by the discovery of 215 suspected unmarked graves at a residential school site in Kamloops, B.C.“The federal Indian boardi...

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday formally apologized to Native Americans for the “sin” of a government-run boarding school system that for decades forcibly separated children from their parents, calling it a “blot on American history” in his first presidential visit to Indian Country. “It’s a sin on our soul,” said Biden, his voice full of anger and emotion. “Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make.”It was a moment of both contrition and frustration as the president sought to recognize one of the “most horrific chapters” in the national story. Biden spoke of the abuses and deaths of Native children that resulted from the federal government’s policies, noting that “while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing” and that great nations “must know the good,...

As Canada looks to cut immigration numbers in the next few years, Canadians may be wondering what those shifts to the population could mean for the risks of a recession. Experts and federal officials over recent years have pointed to high population growth, due in large part to immigration, as a factor that has helped Canada avoid an economic downturn.“We were of the view that the Canadian economy likely would have experienced a recession in 2023 had it not been for the decades-high population growth that we saw in 2023 (and) 2024,” said Randall Bartlett, senior director of Canadian economics at Desjardins.In January, the financial institution along with other economists had suggested a short and shallow recession was possible in the first half of the year, though as time went on that didn...