National News

The Liberal government is planning to create a "digital safety commission of Canada" to regulate social media companies to take steps to reduce the risk of online harms to their users.

Justice Minister Arif Virani tabled the Online Harms Act today, and creating a new regulator is just one of the new measures being proposed.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has long promised to better protect against online harms, but his ministers have repeatedly said developing such legislation was complicated.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended Canada's defence spending Monday as Polish counterpart Donald Tusk urged the rest of the West to confront the very real dangers Russia poses at a critical juncture in its war with Ukraine. 

There is still more to do, but Canada is doing it, Trudeau said during a joint news conference alongside Tusk, who now finds himself back in his old post as Poland's prime minister. 

Authorities in the United States have charged another man in an alleged human smuggling operation that led to a family from India freezing to death while trying to enter the country from Manitoba.

A court document filed Thursday in Illinois says Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel is charged with transportation of an illegal alien along with conspiracy to bring and attempting to bring an illegal alien to the U.S.

No details were provided on his arrest. An arrest warrant for Patel, which says he was also known as "Dirty Harry," was filed in Minnesota court in September.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surveyed the wreckage of one of the first battles in the brutal war that has gripped Ukraine for the last two years, as Ukrainians used Saturday's anniversary of the fighting to take stock of a still uncertain future.

The prime minister joined other world leaders in a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to sign a new security agreement with the embattled country, including a pledge for $320 million in new military spending by the end of the year.

Canadian business investment per worker plummeted by 20 per cent over a 15-year stretch, according to new Statistics Canada research that suggests weaker competition is partly to blame.

The report finds for every worker, businesses invested $628.80 less in their companies in 2021 than they did in 2006.

The decline was more significant in large and medium-sized companies and foreign-controlled businesses, though it's unclear why that was the case.

Amid a rise in measles cases in other countries and a handful of confirmed cases in Canada, the national public health agency "strongly advises" everyone check that they're fully immunized against measles, especially before travelling.

Ottawa is putting $80.5 million toward a mission to improve security conditions in Haiti, where rampant gang violence has caused an ongoing crisis, Global Affairs Canada said Thursday.

The money will go towards a multinational security mission led by Kenya to support efforts by the Haitian National Police, the department said.

It's expected to support training, communications and logistics for police deployed to the mission and expertise in areas like human rights due diligence.

The case of an Ontario man who carried out a deadly attack on a Muslim family was the first to recognize terrorism on grounds of white supremacist ideology and further emphasized that terrorism isn't limited to those who belong to specific groups, experts and observers said after the landmark trial ended this week.

Nathaniel Veltman was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years for each of four counts of first-degree murder in the June 2021 attack that killed four members of the Afzaal family in London, Ont.

Statistics Canada says there are now more millennials than baby boomers in the country, ending the 65-year reign of the post-Second World War generation as the largest cohort in the population.

The federal agency noted the change in its population estimate for July 1, 2023, broken down by age and gender released today.

The average age in Canada dropped slightly between July 1, 2022 and July 1, 2023 for the first time since 1958.

However, Statistics Canada says the number and proportion of people aged 65 years and older have continued to rise.

As Ukraine nears a grim anniversary in its war with Russia, the Red Cross says residents in the strife-torn country are adapting to a new normal of cannibalized houses, intermittent electricity, air raid sirens and rocket attacks.

The agency says residents have embraced the hard reality that with scarce resources going to the war, they must turn to one another to get things done.

Saturday marks the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.