Author: The Canadian Post
The federal government opened its Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program to all individual owners on Jan. 17, 2026. Owners of firearms prohibited since 2020 can declare them online or by mail between Jan. 19 and March 31 to qualify for compensation when the guns are collected and destroyed. A declaration window, then collection Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree launched the program in Montréal alongside Nathalie Provost, the secretary of state for nature, and Ian Lafrenière, Quebec’s public security minister. All valid Possession and Acquisition Licence holders were to be notified on Jan. 19, when the declaration period opened. Owners have until…
South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean has blanketed Ottawa with billboards, bus ads, airport displays and streaming spots promoting its KSS-III submarine. The campaign is aimed at making Hanwha a household name in the capital while it competes with Germany’s TKMS to build Canada’s next fleet of patrol submarines. Selling submarines like smartphones Ottawa residents have puzzled in recent months over orange-hued advertisements for a product no shopper can buy: a roughly 300-foot submarine. The ads, placed by South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean, tout its KSS-III submarine as the “best economic plan for Canada” and promise fast delivery and maintenance services in…
The City of Calgary lifted all water restrictions on Friday, January 16, 2026, after the final pump at the Bearspaw Water Treatment Plant was activated and the repaired Bearspaw South feeder main returned to stable service. The move ended 17 days of Stage 4 emergency restrictions imposed after the main ruptured on December 30. Restrictions end after 17 days The city announced Friday morning that with the final pump running and flow through the feeder main increasing, the system was stable and all restrictions were lifted, effective immediately. Normal water use could resume indoors and outdoors for Calgary’s 1.6 million…
The Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal has upheld a $10,000 fine against Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood, B.C., for violating the Health of Animals Act by failing to report sick and dying birds in December 2024. The tribunal found the farm negligent: all it had to do was phone the CFIA’s Sick Bird Line. The call that was never made The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued the penalty after an anonymous caller — not the farm — alerted it on Dec. 28, 2024, that the ostriches were believed sick with avian flu. The farm’s owners, Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski, asked…
Dwight Kematch was sentenced in B.C. Supreme Court on Jan. 16, 2026, to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 13 years for the January 2024 murder of Alexander Lo. Kematch told the court the Lapu Lapu festival attack carried out months later by Lo’s brother was a “ripple effect” of his crime. ‘A ripple effect from what I did’ Kematch pleaded guilty in July to second-degree murder in the killing of Alexander Lo, 31, at Kematch’s Vancouver home on Jan. 28, 2024. The two men had met that night through the dating app Grindr. An agreed statement of…
Immigrants are more likely than people born in Canada to identify human rights, respect for the law, gender equality and diversity as shared Canadian values, according to Statistics Canada survey results in briefing notes prepared for Immigration Minister Lena Diab and obtained by The Canadian Press through an access to information request. Higher scores on every value tested The survey asked respondents whether they saw six things as shared “Canadian values”: human rights, respect for the law, gender equality, linguistic duality, ethnic and cultural diversity, and respect for Indigenous culture. On every one, the share of immigrants who said yes…
Severe weather and flooding that hit southern British Columbia and parts of Alberta in December 2025 caused close to $90 million in insured damage, the Insurance Bureau of Canada said on Jan. 16, 2026, citing CatIQ estimates. B.C.’s Fraser Valley bore the brunt, with an estimated $74 million in losses, mostly to homes and businesses. Water across the border, again In mid-December, floodwaters from Washington state once again poured across the U.S. border into neighbourhoods and farm fields in Abbotsford, east of Vancouver. Evacuation orders were issued and poultry barns were inundated, in an area still marked by the catastrophic…
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Unifor national president Lana Payne attacked Canada’s new trade deal with China on Jan. 16, 2026, saying the agreement to admit up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles a year at a 6.1% tariff endangers Ontario auto jobs and offers no guaranteed Chinese investment in return. ‘A terrible, miscalculated decision’ Hours after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the deal in Beijing, Ford told reporters it would be “terrible, for not only just all the people of Ontario, but especially the auto manufacturers, the supply chain.” Under the agreement, Canada slashes its 100% tariff on Chinese EVs…
The Federal Court of Appeal ruled on Jan. 16, 2026, that the federal government’s 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and beyond its legal authority, and that the emergency measures infringed the Charter rights to freedom of expression and protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The court dismissed every appeal of the 2024 ruling. Every appeal dismissed In its judgment, cited as 2026 FCA 6, a three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeal confirmed the conclusion Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley reached in January 2024: the decision to declare a public order emergency did not meet the…
Economists surveyed by Reuters expected Canada’s annual inflation rate to hold steady at 2.2% in December 2025 when Statistics Canada released the data on Jan. 19, 2026. An expected 8% drop in gasoline prices was forecast to offset food prices pushed higher by comparisons with the 2024 GST/HST tax holiday. A noisy number to read Forecasters warned that December’s consumer price index would be unusually hard to read. The federal government’s two-month tax holiday, which removed the GST from some groceries, restaurant meals, alcohol and common gifts starting in mid-December 2024, temporarily pushed prices down a year earlier — and…
