The Canadian Press

A transit driver has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder after two children were killed and six were seriously injured when a city bus crashed into a daycare north of Montreal.

Pierre Ny St-Amand, 51, appeared in court by video late Wednesday afternoon from a hospital room and will remain detained. Court documents show he faces a total of nine charges, including attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault causing bodily harm. The dead children were both four years old, identified in the documents only by their initials.

Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos will ask the provinces today whether or not they intend to accept the new health-care funding deal tabled by the prime minister.

Duclos and Mental Health and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett are to write to the provincial health ministers seeking some clarity on their positions.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers met in Ottawa Tuesday where he presented an offer that would see transfers to the provinces rise by $196 billion over the next 10 years.

The federal defence minister says Canada "unequivocally supports" the United States government's decision to shoot down a high-altitude surveillance balloon that was suspected of spying for China, noting the balloon violated Canadian airspace.

Fighter jets downed the balloon off the Carolina coast on Saturday afternoon after it had travelled over sensitive military sites across North America.

The federal Liberals withdrew an amendment to their guns bill on Friday that had introduced a controversial new definition of an assault-style weapon.

On behalf of the government, Vancouver MP Taleeb Noormohamed asked for and received unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment to Bill C-21 at the House of Commons public safety committee Friday morning.

The amendment introduced a new definition of an "assault-style" gun that includes semi-automatic rifles and shotguns with a capacity of more than five cartridges.

The Department of National Defence says Canada is working with the United States to protect sensitive information from foreign intelligence threats after a high-altitude surveillance balloon was detected.

The U.S. says it is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a few days. 

The Pentagon says it decided not to shoot it down over concerns of hurting people on the ground.

Former Conservative interim leader and longtime Manitoba member of Parliament Candice Bergen has announced she is stepping down. 

Bergen said in a video posted to Twitter that she submitted a letter of resignation as the representative for Portage-Lisgar after meeting with her party's caucus. 

The MP said last September, after serving as interim leader of the party following the ouster of former leader Erin O'Toole, that she was not planning to run in another federal election.

The United States is filing another formal dispute over what it considers Canada's failure to live up to its trade obligations to American dairy farmers and producers.

It's the second time the U.S. has launched such a dairy-driven escalation, formally known as a dispute settlement panel, in less than two years.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai says the new panel has become necessary because Canada has so far refused to take the steps necessary to properly address the first one.

Crown prosecutors say they are staying six sexual assault charges against a doctor in rural Manitoba.

They told a Winnipeg court Wednesday that they couldn't go through with a trial for Dr. Arcel Bissonnette after new evidence came into play.

Court of King's Bench Justice Anne Turner heard from Nadine Vasas that the Crown reassessed the charges against Bissonnette. 

"Based on that assessment, the Crown is entering a stay of proceedings at this time," Vasas said. 

Social Development Minister Karina Gould says Service Canada has "virtually eliminated" the massive backlog of passport applications that were delayed this year because of a surge in demand.

Most new passport applications were being processed on time by October, but thousands of people who applied before then still faced excessive delays.

Gould says 98 per cent of those backlogged applications have now been processed.

The chief of a northwestern Ontario First Nation that found the province’s first "plausible burials" says the community is in shock and its members are working hard to ensure survivors and their loved ones have mental health support.

Wauzhushk Onigum Nation Chief Chris Skead says the uncovering of 171 anomalies and "plausible burials" at the site of former St. Mary’s Indian Residential School in Kenora earlier this week is retraumatizing many survivors who attended the Catholic-run institution.