National News

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.

A federation representing truckers across Canada has denounced a series of planned protests against the federal government's cross-border travel vaccine mandate, arguing such demonstrations aren't a safe or effective way of resisting the policy.

A federation representing truckers across Canada has denounced a series of planned protests against the federal government's cross-border travel vaccine mandate, arguing such demonstrations aren't a safe or effective way of resisting the policy.

People in Amsterdam are getting their hair cut beside priceless works of art or to a symphonic soundtrack to protest COVID-19 regulations.

Last week, Dutch health authorities allowed personal services such as hairdressers and barbers to reopen, but cultural locations such as museums and concert halls remain closed.

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The federal government says the agreement outlines how and when it will send the historical documents to the Winnipeg-based centre, will make them available to residential school survivors and work to preserve them.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