National News

New visas for international students will be slashed by more than one-third this year as the federal government tries to slow a rapid increase in temporary residents that has put immense pressure on Canada's housing system.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a temporary cap on new student visas at a three-day cabinet retreat in Montreal. Affordability and housing are top items on the agenda, with a growing focus on the role record immigration has been playing in both.

Canada's financial intelligence agency warns that illicit cash is being laundered through online gambling sites that provide a variety of ways to disguise shady funds.

In a newly published bulletin, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada highlights the criminal exploitation of legitimate and unlicensed digital wagering operations.

The centre, known as Fintrac, notes the popularity of online gambling grew during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been fuelled by the 2021 legalization of single-event sports betting in Canada.

Myles Sanderson had a list of grievances and was ready to kill anyone who got in his way, a coroner's inquest into a Saskatchewan mass stabbing heard Friday. 

Experts testified there was likely a reason the killer chose each of his targets. 

"His mission was to attack, injure and murder those who he had a grievance against," said Staff Sgt. Carl Sesely, an RCMP criminal profiler.

"Simple as that." 

The RCMP has eased its policy on cannabis use by members, saying simply they must be fit for duty when reporting for work. 

The new substance use policy replaces a 2018 one that required front-line officers and many other employees in "safety-sensitive" positions to refrain from recreational cannabis use for four weeks before duty.

The change, implemented earlier this month, brings the Mounties in line with many other police forces on employee pot use.

The village of Ste-Pétronille, Que., is used to receiving attention from outsiders. Tourists flock to the hamlet at the tip of picturesque Orleans Island to see its French colonial architecture and enjoy views of the Quebec City skyline across the St. Lawrence River.

The common-law partner of the man responsible for a massacre on a Saskatchewan First Nation wept as she talked about years of emotional and physical abuse that would culminate in the death of her father during the stabbing rampage.

"I wish I left sooner," Vanessa Burns said Thursday while wiping tears from her eyes on the fourth day of a coroner's inquest. 

Burns met Myles Sanderson when she was 21 and he was 17. They would go on to have five children. 

Millions of uninsured Canadians will be left out of the new federal dental program because their family income is too high, says a report released Wednesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Enrolment began last month for a new federal benefits program, which was developed as a condition of a political pact between the Liberal government and the NDP.

It will see the federal government offer dental benefits to uninsured families with a household income under $90,000 per year, starting with seniors, children under the age of 18 and people with disabilities.

Some family members say they don't have faith in a coroner's inquest as Mounties who responded to a stabbing rampage on a Saskatchewan First Nation testified they found people bleeding and others dead. 

"The justice system has never, ever been kind to us native people," said Darryl Burns, whose sister, Gloria Burns, was among those killed during a massacre on the James Smith Cree Nation on Sept. 4, 2022. 

"So do we have faith in this justice system? Do we have faith in this (inquest)? I don't think we do."

Former premier Rachel Notley, after almost a decade at the helm of Alberta’s NDP, is stepping down from the top job.

Notley, the official Opposition leader, said a leadership race will be called and she will stay on as leader until a replacement is chosen.

That means she will remain on the front bench during the upcoming spring sitting.

Edmonton's Capital Power Corp. and Ontario Power Generation are joining together to assess the feasibility of developing small modular nuclear reactors to help power Alberta's electricity grid.

At an announcement Monday in Edmonton, the two companies said small modular reactors, or SMRs, will be critical in the years to come if Canada and Alberta are to meet growing demand for clean electricity.