National News

A woman accused of faking her death and that of her child before they crossed the border into the United States has been given a one-year conditional sentence that she can serve in the community.

Dawn Walker was also given 18 months probation and ordered to perform 300 hours of community service. She cannot have contact with her child without supervision and must stay in Saskatchewan.

The Conservative party is maintaining a steady lead over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals, a new poll suggests, at a time when Canadians are reporting limited trust in their institutions. 

Pierre Poilievre's Tories are 14 percentage points ahead of the governing party, with 40 per cent of respondents in the survey saying they would vote Conservative, 26 per cent Liberal and 17 per cent NDP if an election were held that day.

Chris Holopina called his mom in Manitoba every single week while he was deployed in Bosnia in 1996. 

At 23, he was doing exactly what he'd always wanted to do: serving in the Canadian Armed Forces as a combat engineer. 

Gloria Hooper remembers how grateful she was that he was able to find time for those weekly calls. 

"I couldn't believe it," she said in an interview on Tuesday from her home in St. Claude, Man. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says there will be no further carbon price carve-outs, including for natural gas heating, as criticism mounts of his decision to temporarily exempt home heating oil from the policy.

The promise is landing with a political thud, with both Conservative and NDP leaders accusing Trudeau of regional favouritism to save his political skin in Atlantic Canada, and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney saying he would have found a different way to ease the rising cost of living.

The federal government's priorities for improving Canada's immigration system include better aligning the number of people welcomed to the country with what the labour market needs, as well as services and infrastructure, says a report released Tuesday.

"With an aging population, people living longer, families having fewer children, Canada imperatively needs immigration to rebalance our demographics and support the growing need for workers," federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on the Liberals to exempt all forms of home heating from the carbon price, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a temporary exemption that only applies to home heating oil.

The federal government announced last week that it is increasing the carbon price rebate for rural Canadians and lifting the carbon price off home heating oil entirely for the next three years.

The son of a Canadian woman believed to be among those held hostage by Hamas in Gaza wants the world to push for an end to the fighting, and says he fears Israel's escalating offensive could end all chance of bringing his mother safely home. 

"My basic belief is that the military actions don't solve anything," said Yonatan Zeigen.

His mother, Vivian Silver, is one of an estimated 229 hostages taken by Hamas during its bloody Oct. 7 rampage in Israel.

Hundreds of flickering candles lit up the evening as residents of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. gathered for a vigil in memory of the victims of Monday's shooting rampage, with the father of one of the victims calling for respect for the family of the gunman as well.

Four people — including three children — were killed and a woman was injured at two different locations in the northern Ontario city before the shooter took his own life in what police have called a case of intimate partner violence.

Sharp-eyed mariners on a Canadian vessel have rescued a U.S. man, one day after the United States Coast Guard ended its search for a commercial fishing boat from Washington state with two people aboard. 

U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Strohmaier says crew aboard the Canadian fish boat Ocean Sunset spotted a life-raft drifting in open ocean far west of Vancouver Island on Thursday.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew apologized Thursday to the families of two slain First Nations women whose remains are believed to be in a Winnipeg-area landfill for what he called being reduced to a "political prop" by the former government during the recent provincial election.

Kinew met with the families of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran to reset the relationship between the two families and the government.