National News

It's now been more than six months since Canada has had a federal ethics watchdog. 

Mario Dion retired in February after serving as the last permanent ethics and conflict-of-interest commissioner. 

A longtime staffer in that office, Martine Richard, took on an interim role in April — but she resigned within weeks amid controversy around the fact she is the sister-in-law of Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc.

Investigations that would normally be conducted by a commissioner are on pause until a permanent replacement is found.

Members of the military now have the option to bypass the Canadian Armed Forces grievance process and taking complaints of sexual misconduct, harassment or discrimination to a third party.

The military announced today that the independent Canadian Human Rights Commission will hear new and existing complaints.

Former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour recommended the change in her May 2022 report on sexual misconduct and toxic culture in the Armed Forces.

Donald Trump's defiant march deeper into infamy barely broke stride Tuesday after a grand jury in Georgia finally handed up another long-awaited indictment of the former president — his fourth in five months. 

"Communism has finally reached America's shores," Trump's campaign, seemingly buoyed by his mounting legal woes, declared in a fundraising missive that accused "rogue prosecutors" of "criminalizing dissent." 

An unusually high number of great white sharks found dead on Canadian beaches over the past year is a sign the population is growing, says a shark biologist.

Four great white sharks were found washed up along beaches in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the past 12 months, said John Chisholm from the New England Aquarium, in Boston, Mass. That number is higher than previous years, he said in an interview Thursday.

"The other part of this is how many go unreported as well," he said.

Statistics Canada documents show workers who went door-to-door to collect data for the 2021 census logged hundreds of workplace injuries and at least 15 assaults by members of the public.

The data tables obtained by The Canadian Press through access-to-information law list 680 injury reports, including more than 280 cases of harassment or violence. 

In some of the most extreme examples, employees were punched, threatened with firearms, spat on or sexually assaulted.

Reality seems to be sinking in for the man poised to become the first Canadian astronaut to fly around the moon. 

"I already knew going to the moon was hard," Jeremy Hansen quipped Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center during an update on Artemis II, the first crewed voyage to lunar space in more than half a century. 

"That's why we're doing it — I already knew it was hard. But boy, it's harder than I thought." 

Ottawa introduced a new three-year pilot program Tuesday that would incentivize employers to follow worker-protection rules by making it easier for them to hire temporary foreign workers. 

Under the "recognized employer pilot" program, companies with a good track record would only need to prove that they require temporary foreign workers every three years, instead of every 18 months. 

The employer's trusted status would also be flagged to potential workers in the government's job bank.

Earlier this summer, two Canadians walked into a party in rural Germany.

"Canadians?" joked the host. "I thought you'd smell more like smoke."

It's been that kind of season. Floods, drought, warm waters lapping three coasts — but mostly wildfire smoke from sea to sea and overseas. Yes, this is climate change, scientists say, and expect more weather weirdness to come. 

"It's been a wild ride," said Danny Blair, co-director of the Prairie Climate Centre at the University of Winnipeg. "It's been a season and a year of extremes."

British Columbia's port workers have voted almost 75 per cent in favour of accepting a contract offer, ending weeks of turbulent job action that stopped billions of dollars' worth of goods from being shipped.

In a statement on the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada website, president Rob Ashton says the results of the latest ratification vote came in 74.66 per cent in favour of the agreement.

Federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan confirmed in a tweet that both the ILWU and the BC Maritime Employers Association have ratified the deal, ending the dispute.

The road at Winnipeg's well-known downtown intersection ran red as protesters gathered to call out government inaction on searching a landfill for the remains of two First Nations women. 

People chanted "Search the landfill!" and "Bring our women home!" as red paint was poured onto the pavement, eventually forming the shape of a dress at Portage Avenue and Main Street on Thursday.