Deal still needs to be ratified by CUPE members with voting set to start Thursday The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) says it has reached a tentative deal with the Ontario government to avert a strike after labour negotiations over the weekend. “Workers will be in schools tomorrow and there will not be a strike,” said Laura Walton, the president of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions. Walton announced the tentative deal Sunday at a news conference shortly after the 5 p.m. strike deadline given to the province to come toRead more

CBC spoke with 25 Iranian Canadians who say they are being treated as 2nd-class citizens With the holiday season just around the corner, many are planning to travel, but Saskatoon resident Amir Abolhassani says he and many other Iranian Canadians will be shoveling snow at home. Abolhassani sold his house in Saskatoon when his U.S.-based employer asked him to relocate to North Carolina. But at the Calgary airport this January, his family was not allowed to cross the border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer told Abolhassani, who isRead more

Eby names housing, health care, public safety as top priorities Former attorney general and housing minister David Eby has been sworn in as the 37th premier of British Columbia. Eby, 46, took the oath of office before Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin during a ceremony at the Musqueam Community Centre, on the nation’s land southwest of Vancouver, on Friday — the first-ever swearing-in of a premier hosted by a First Nation in B.C. Speaking to the crowded room in the first minutes of his term, Eby named housing, health care and public safety as his top priorities. “TheseRead more

Private messages between 2 senior RCMP employees show disdain for officers who asked for support Members of Nova Scotia’s emergency response team are “shaking mad” after texts between a superintendent and a subordinate reveal they were making fun of their mental health requests in the aftermath of the Portapique tragedy. The WhatsApp messages were released by the Mass Casualty Commission this month. The commission is examining the circumstances surrounding the events of April 18-19, 2020, when a gunman killed 22 people during a 13-hour rampage in several Nova Scotia communities. InRead more

Lapointe is known for his music as well as comedy throughout the 1970s and 80s Jean Lapointe, the beloved Quebec singer, actor and comedian who was later appointed to the Senate, has died at age 86. The foundation he created announced Friday his death from health complications at a Montreal palliative care home, surrounded by loved ones. Born in Price, a village in the Lower St-Lawrence region, Lapointe began his career as a teenager at a Quebec City radio station. In 1955, he founded the Jérolas with Jérôme Lemay. TheRead more

‘For families, that will mean a big savings for people across our territory,’ says education minister Nunavummiut families will be seeing $10-a-day child care much sooner than anticipated. According to a joint news release from the federal and territorial government, as of Dec. 1, Nunavut will be the first jurisdiction to achieve $10-a-day for licensed child-care centres under a Canada-wide early learning and child-care system. Pamela Gross, Nunavut minister of education, said her ministry has been working with the federal government on the agreement — worth $66.1 million over the next fiveRead more

Inquiry is weighing whether federal government was justified in invoking act The memorandum to the prime minister suggesting the government invoke the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history acknowledged its interpretation of a national security threat could be challenged, the inquiry reviewing that decision heard Friday. The Privy Council Office document — entered into evidence at the Public Order Emergency Commission Friday — was sent on the afternoon of Feb. 14 as the protest in Ottawa against COVID-19 restrictions entered its third full week. The government announced itsRead more

School Lunch Association charity serves up cod — and education — to students in Musgravetown Since Anthony Paddon Elementary in Musgravetown, N.L., sits mere metres from the Atlantic Ocean in a province that, over much of its 500-plus years of colonized life, has had an economy largely tied to the sea, you’d think fish would be an easy lunch menu option. However, that’s not the case, as a provincial charity found when it organized a special cod lunch for the school’s students. “Fish is not on the menu in any of theRead more

‘It’s time that governments woke up and smell the coffee and begin to seriously engage Indigenous people’ A grand chief in B.C. is backing one member of Parliament’s push for the Liberals to amend tabled legislation so a proposed new federal law enforcement watchdog would, if established, employ Indigenous people as both decision-makers and complaints investigators. “All legislation must engage Indigenous input not after the fact but during the drafting of the legislation itself, and it’s absolutely essential that any oversight bodies of policing agencies include an Indigenous presence,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president ofRead more

Jody Short is living at the Miller Centre until he can raise enough funds to build a ramp Jody Short was ankle-deep in snow in February, a shovel in his hands, when searing pain shot up his left leg. “I was almost passing out with pain,” recalled Short recently, speaking quietly from the recreation room of the Miller Centre in St. John’s, where he’s been stranded for three months. Short ended up hospitalized, rushed to an operating room to fix an aortic dissection — a tear in his main artery, and theRead more