WINNIPEG — The Manitoba government has been mailing out cheques to people in recent years to help with issues ranging from property taxes to inflation to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the cost of printing those cheques and putting them in the mail — not including the cost of the benefits themselves — […]

Blake Desjarlais laboured to steady his voice. On Thursday, the NDP MP for Edmonton Griesbach spoke at a public accounts committee meeting after the release of an auditor general’s report on systemic barriers facing prisoners in federal jails. “(Correctional Service Canada) acknowledged in November 2020 that systemic racism is present in the correctional system; it’s […]

Ottawa is spending $2 million for an international organization to provide Indigenous communities with options for identifying possible human remains buried near former residential school sites. The office of Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said in a statement Tuesday it is signing a technical agreement with the International Commission on Missing Persons. Based at The […]

As of April 2023, patients checking into any Manitoba hospital or emergency room will be asked for one additional item of personal information at the registration desk: the race or ethnicity with which they identify. This new aspect of personal data collection comes as a joint initiative of Shared Health and the University of Manitoba. Its purpose […]

MASKWACIS — An Alberta First Nation signed a two-year agreement with Ottawa Wednesday that gives it the autonomy to administer its own child welfare. Louis Bull Tribe in Maskwacis, Alta., south of Edmonton, is the first in the province to sign such an agreement. “This is an important day for Louis Bull Tribe,” Chief Desmond […]

LONDON (AP) — Opposition parties and children’s advocates accused the U.K. government on Tuesday of putting vulnerable young people in danger, after authorities said scores of children who arrived in Britain as asylum-seekers have disappeared. Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told lawmakers that more than 200 children and teenagers under 18 were missing from government-approved accommodation. […]

As the year’s climate-related gains and catastrophes wrap, Canada’s National Observer is reviewing the top five stories to make waves in B.C.’s coastal and island communities in 2022. First Nations, forests and fish-related news surfaced as some top issues from CNO’s Island Insider beat, and are likely to dominate headlines in the new year as […]