The Canadian Press

Canada is about to toss more than half of its doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine because it couldn't find any takers for it either in or outside of Canada.

A statement from Health Canada says 13.6 million doses of the vaccine expired in the spring and will be thrown out.

A year ago Canada said it would donate almost 18 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to lower-income countries.

As of June 22, almost nine million doses were delivered to 21 different nations.

Rick Bowness is returning to his roots.

The Winnipeg Jets announced the hiring of Bowness as their head coach on Sunday after several days of speculation.

The 67-year-old Bowness, who becomes the team's eighth head coach in franchise history and third since the club’s relocation to Winnipeg, began his coaching career with the Jets, culminating in 28 games running the bench to close the 1988–89 season.

The former right wing ended his NHL playing career with Winnipeg in the 1982 playoffs.

The chief of police in Saanich, British Columbia, says it is truly amazing that no members of the public were hurt during a gunfight at a bank in which two robbery suspects died.

Chief Const. Dean Duthie says two suspects who were believed to be wearing body armour died Tuesday in the gun battle with police outside a Bank of Montreal. 

Six members of the Greater Victoria emergency response team were hurt, three of them seriously enough to require surgery. 

Duthie says the emergency response team happened to be deployed nearby and was on the scene within minutes.

Cat and dog owners who cuddle their pets when infected with COVID-19 could end up making the animals sick with the virus, according to a Canadian study.

The study said that while it was already known that animals including cats, dogs, ferrets and hamsters seem to be susceptible to COVID-19, transmission may be happening more often than previously thought.

The research, published this month in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, involved 69 cats and 49 dogs, including pets and animals from shelters and neuter clinics. 

Rev. Garry LaBoucane remembers going to Wakamne — or God's Lake — during the Lac Ste. Anne pilgrimage as a boy.

"It was always a family tradition," the 74-year-old said in an interview from Vancouver, where he's a Métis priest at Sacred Heart Parish.

He remembers sleeping in a pup tent near the cemetery with his grandfather, attending Latin church services he didn't understand and meeting people from all walks of life.

Protesters are massing outside the barricaded U.S. Supreme Court to decry the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that cleared the way for legal abortions in the United States. 

The high court released its final decision this morning, and it differs little from the leaked draft decision that emerged back in May. 

Dozens of states are poised to enact bans on abortion as a result of the decision; many already have such laws on their books despite polls that suggest a majority of Americans support abortion rights. 

A Manitoba judge has ruled the province failed to properly consult First Nations communities on part of a planned flood-prevention project.

Chief Justice Glenn Joyal of the Court of Queen's Bench says the province did not live up to its constitutional duty to consult First Nations near Lake St. Martin, where the province is planning to build two channels to reduce the risk of flooding.

As part of preparatory work, the Manitoba government issued a permit in 2019 for a right of way on Crown land, so that engineers could do groundwater monitoring and other activity.

The Manitoba government has outlined how it will distribute $2.5 million it promised last year to help find and commemorate unmarked graves at former residential schools.

The money is to be shared between Indigenous groups, including the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the Manitoba Métis Federation and the Manitoba Inuit Association.

The Progressive Conservative government says the search for children who died while attending residential schools must be Indigenous-led.

Chiefs from two First Nations in Manitoba say their communities are still looking for answers after finding possible graves using ground-penetrating radar at the sites of former residential schools that were run by the Roman Catholic Church. 

Sagkeeng First Nation found 190 anomalies in the soil and Minegoziibe Anishinabe First Nation located six. Initial data shows the irregularities fit some of the criteria for graves, but both communities say more information is needed.

The news was recently shared with community members.

The economy added 40,000 jobs in May, driven by a gain in full-time jobs as the labour market continued to tighten and wages pushed higher, Statistics Canada said Friday.

The increase came as the unemployment rate fell to 5.1 per cent, the lowest rate since at least 1976 which is as far back as comparable data goes. The unemployment rate was 5.2 per cent in April.

TD Bank senior economist James Orlando said as Canadians headed out to patios and hit the road for overdue vacations, employers continued to search for workers to meet heightened demand.