National News

The Bank of Canada is keeping its key interest rate target on hold at 0.25 per cent, but warning it won't stay there for much longer.

The trendsetting rate has been at its rock-bottom level since March 2020 during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as the economy went into a downturn and three million jobs were lost.

The central bank said Wednesday the rebound since then and especially over the last few months has been stronger than it anticipated.

Listeners are being invited to open a decommissioned phone booth's folding doors, pick up the receiver, and dial a poem's phone number.

In 2016, Elizabeth Hellstern and her partner Owen Fritts were driving along a road in their home of Arizona when a thought came to her: what if they took an old rotary phone booth and when people picked the receiver up, it had poetry on the other end? She tracked down her first vintage "lost object" of a telephone booth, making that thought a reality.

A new poll suggests some Canadians are feeling more upbeat about the state of the domestic economy and their own pocketbooks, though not quite as positive as they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The annual Leger survey of economic confidence found that nearly two in every five respondents rated the economy as being good or very good, which was up from the same survey last February.

Still, just over half of respondents weren't as chipper on the state of the economy, with 54 per cent rating it as poor or very poor.

Canada has ordered the children and family members of its embassy staff in Ukraine to leave the country as the possibility of a Russian invasion looms. 

The decision comes after Britain said it would pull some of its diplomats out of its Ukraine embassy, and after the U.S. State Department decided to order the families of its Ukraine embassy personnel to leave.

Russia has positioned about 100,000 troops across Ukraine's borders along with tanks and other heavy artillery, stoking fears across Europe of an invasion, something Russia has denied.

Groups representing Canada's paramedics are calling for improved mental health services as staff shortages and unprecedented call volumes fuelled by the pandemic and the overdose crisis take a toll on workers. 

In British Columbia, BC Emergency Health Services reported more than 840,000 ambulance dispatches in 2021, but the union representing ambulance workers said the figure is likely much higher. 

Rebates on carbon taxes haven't helped Canadians warm to them, a new survey suggests.

Results published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change say that not only did rebates fail to make much difference to public opinion, Canadians don't understand them very well. 

And those convinced they were paying more in carbon taxes than they received remained just as convinced even when they were shown the facts.  

Rebates on carbon taxes haven't helped Canadians warm to them, a new survey suggests.

Results published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change say that not only did rebates fail to make much difference to public opinion, Canadians don't understand them very well. 

And those convinced they were paying more in carbon taxes than they received remained just as convinced even when they were shown the facts.  

Statistics Canada says the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to an average seven-month decline in national life expectancy, the largest decrease recorded since 1921 when the vital statistics registration system was introduced.

The federal agency released preliminary data Monday showing national life expectancy, which is estimated on an annual basis, was 81.7 years for those born in 2020 — down from 82.3 the year before.

Halifax artist Jessica Wiebe served eight years in the Canadian Armed Forces as an artillery gunner, often the lone woman in a male-dominated environment. Now she draws on that experience, and her mental and physical struggles after leaving the military, to create her art.

“I really want to bring awareness to the fact that female narratives of war have been largely omitted from dominant discourse historically,” Wiebe said in a recent interview.

WASHINGTON — A Florida man is set to appear in U.S. court today, charged with sneaking migrants across the Canada-U.S. border in a perilous human-smuggling scheme that cost the lives of four people, including an infant. 

Steve Shand, 47, will appear by video before a Minnesota judge for a detention and preliminary hearing. 

Shand, of Deltona, Fla., is charged with transporting or attempting to transport illegal aliens.