National News

A Canadian effort is underway to conduct airlifts out of Sudan and two military vessels have arrived off its coast, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, as the government looked for a fragile ceasefire to help evacuation efforts in the embattled East African country.

Trudeau said the federal government is co-ordinating with its allies to get Canadian citizens out of Sudan, where fighting between the military and a rival paramilitary group erupted earlier this month, with hundreds killed and thousands more injured. 

Airlines say it goes too far. Advocates say not far enough.

The proposed overhaul of Canada's passenger rights charter earned mixed reviews Monday after Transport Minister Omar Alghabra laid out measures to tighten loopholes to traveller compensation and toughen penalties.

If passed, the reforms will put the onus on airlines to show a flight disruption is caused by safety concerns or reasons outside their control, with specific examples to be drawn up by the Canadian Transportation Agency as a list of exceptions around compensation.

Canada's biggest federal public service union is preparing to ramp up its ongoing strike by moving picket lines to strategic locations such as ports on Monday, as both sides continued to accuse each other of poor communication.

In a Sunday interview with The Canadian Press, Public Service Alliance of Canada National President Chris Aylward said civil servants need to further affect the economy to push Ottawa for a solution.

Abdelgadir Eltayeb and his family have no electricity, dwindling food and water, and haven't been able to venture far from the home in Khartoum where they took shelter after violence exploded in Sudan's capital this week. 

The Canadian, who is visiting relatives in Sudan with his wife and two children, says fighting between the country's army and its rival paramilitary force has unleashed chaos.

"It’s a very difficult situation," the 68-year-old said in a phone interview from Khartoum on Friday.

The mayor of a northern Saskatchewan village says her community has been shaken after two people were stabbed at the high school in La Loche. 

The Northern Lights School Division confirmed Friday a student and a staff member were attacked Thursday at the Dene High School.

The two victims were being treated in hospital in Saskatoon and the suspect was in RCMP custody, the division said.

When Samantha Mackey was diagnosed with celiac disease a few years ago, she was relieved that there was something she could do to finally stop feeling sick. 

But the diagnosis also "turns your life upside down," she said.  

"I can remember, you know, once standing in a supermarket and just wanting to cry because being so overwhelmed by the amount of effort that goes into just a basic need of groceries,” said Mackey, who lives in Conception Bay South, N.L.

Two years ago, Canada embarked on an odyssey to plant two billion trees in just 10 years. 

An audit of the program so far says that unless things drastically change, it won't even get one-tenth of those trees in the ground in time. 

The audit was one of five reports issued Thursday by Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco, who said he cannot stress enough how important it is for the government to live up to its commitment on trees.

"There is no solution to climate change and terrestrial biodiversity loss that does not include forests," DeMarco's report said.

Canada's largest federal public-service union has left the bargaining table but says it is standing by to resume negotiations when the federal government comes back with a new offer. 

Federal workers were hitting the picket lines across the country on Wednesday after Canada's largest federal public-service union and the government failed to reach a deal by a Tuesday evening deadline.

On Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said negotiations had paused. 

Nine people were detained and one was missing after trying to walk across the Canada-United States border in the early hours of Tuesday morning, a Minnesota sheriff says.

The group made their illicit crossing in woods near Sprague in southeastern Manitoba and called 911 at approximately 4 a.m. as they were suffering from hypothermia, Steve Gust, the sheriff of Roseau County, said Tuesday. 

"Some were transferred to hospital but the majority of them were pretty good," Gust said. "They were wet and had frozen clothing."

A new report says hundreds of thousands of Canadians may have missed out on government money intended to help with the rising cost of living because the housing and dental benefits rolled out last year have had "atrocious" take-up. 

The analysis by David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, assesses both benefits, as well as how much the federal government has actually spent on the measures.