National News

Canada is giving Ukraine a $120-million loan to help bolster its economy and aid as it faces a hostile buildup of Russian forces on its borders.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the loan today, saying he was answering a request from the Ukrainian government for support. 

Trudeau has yet to say whether Canada will provide weapons to Ukrainian forces, impose further sanctions on Russia or extend the Canadian military training mission of Ukrainian forces beyond its expiry date at the end of March.

Turmoil and confusion over whether truckers would remain exempt from the vaccine mandate last week stemmed from bureaucrats misinterpreting policy in more than one federal agency — including the one that co-ordinates Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canada's Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller says Ottawa has reached an agreement with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to hand over more records on residential schools that Ottawa had been holding back.

The federal government says the agreement outlines how and when it will send the historical documents to the Winnipeg-based centre, will make them available to residential school survivors and work to preserve them.

More than 400 Canadian climate scientists and other academics are pleading with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to scrap her plan to create a tax credit for companies that build carbon capture and storage facilities.

Freeland floated the idea of the tax credit in last year's federal budget and consultations to design it ended just before Christmas.

Statistics Canada says the annual pace of inflation climbed in December to its highest rate since 1991.

The agency says the consumer price index in December was up 4.8 per cent compared with a year ago.

The reading compared with a year-over-year increase of 4.7 per cent in November.

Driving the faster pace of price growth in December were higher year-over-year prices for food, passenger vehicles and housing.

The federal Liberal government appears to be in no hurry to complete a legally required parliamentary review of Canada's law on medical assistance in dying, which is already 18 months overdue.

Repeated delays have led some critics to conclude that the government would rather wait for court rulings to force its hand, rather than plunge into the potentially politically explosive questions the parliamentary review was supposed to explore.

There's hope that Health Canada's approval of Pfizer's antiviral COVID-19 treatment will help ease the strain on the country's health-care system, as hospitalizations continue their steady climb.

The pill uses a combination of two antiviral drugs to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from replicating once it has infected a patient, but health officials stress it is not a replacement for vaccinations.

Newly released documents show the Finance Department last year warned that the pace of price increases could gain speed, even as the Liberal government and central bank maintained that inflationary pressures were temporary.

In a briefing note to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland from the spring, officials outlined "the case for runaway inflation" as part of a larger review of consumer prices.

Health Canada has approved Pfizer's antiviral treatment for COVID-19 and the drug maker says some of it has already been delivered for use.

The authorization posted to the Health Canada website Monday morning says the treatment can be used for adult patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 who are also at high risk of becoming more seriously ill.

The drug review team at Health Canada says the risk-benefit analysis was "favourable" for adults in this category.

Millions more Canadian students will head back to school today as officials across four provinces work to keep classrooms safe from COVID-19 and the threat of Omicron-driven staff shortages.

Students in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Nova Scotia are returning to class after starting the New Year online because of record-high case counts. 

The provinces said the return to remote learning was intended to take pressure off the health-care system and give schools more time to improve safety measures.