As we enter another wildfire season, Environment and Climate Change Canada is advising people to pay attention to air pollution levels and check the Air Quality Health Index – especially on smoky days.

HOW CAN I CHECK THE AIR QUALITY READING IN MY AREA?

The Air Quality Health Index is at: https://weather.gc.ca/airquality/pages/index_e.html

You can take a look at the ratings in communities across your province or territory.

A rating of 1-3 is low risk, 4-6 is moderate risk, 7-10 is high risk and over 10 is very high risk.

Environment Canada also encourages people to download the WeatherCAN app and set personal notifications for the AQHI in their region.

Fancy Bermudez scored two tries as Canada recorded a historic rugby win over New Zealand on Sunday, holding on to dispatch the reigning World Cup champion 22-19 and win the Pacific Four Series.

The Canadian women had lost all 17 previous meetings with the Black Ferns, with 10 of those defeats by 27 points or more. The six-time world champions won 52-21 the last time they met, last July in Ottawa in the same tournament.

The closest Canada has come to a win was a 16-8 loss in Tauranga in June 2014, a match that marked the only time New Zealand had failed to score 20 points against Canada.

“I feel like we’ve been knocking on the door and pushing to make a statement on the world stage for Canada for a while now,” said captain Sophie de Goede.

The milestone win moved the Canadian women to No. 2 in the world rankings behind England, replacing New Zealand and equalling their highest-ever position (last reached in November 2016). Canada started the tournament at No. 4, but moved past France into No. 3 after beating Australia 33-14.

“We worked so hard for the last, well it feels like for ever, and then having this outcome,” said an emotional Canadian prop DaLeaka Menin who earned her 55th cap

The Black Ferns have never been lower than No. 2 in the rankings, which were introduced in February 2016.

Immigration lawyers say the screening questions go ‘above and beyond what is asked in a normal immigration application’

The authors of the study said the figures should serve as a ‘wake-up call’ for the country’s Liberal government

In Prince Edward Island, a province in Canada, hundreds of Indian students are facing deportation after it changed its provincial immigration rules. Around 300 students are protesting and have threatened to go on a hunger strike if the Canadian province doesn't review its latest immigration policy.

Kelly O’Connor, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, said she gasped out loud when she saw the text. Any medical worker who denies care to someone hurt in a war zone is committing a “serious breach of the Geneva Convention,” she said in an interview.

“It’s completely outrageous that the government would ask these kinds of questions because it’s trying to promote that someone would violate the Geneva Conventions in wartime, which is really not something that the Canadian military stands for,” O’Connor said.

Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Randall Cohn said the questions in the letter are “patently illegal and absolutely egregious.” He has seen two such letters asking about medical treatment of Hamas members — sent to a doctor and a nurse — and he is aware of two more, he said in an interview.

The people who received these letters and brought them to lawyers were afraid to do it, Cohn said, because they worried they would be penalized by Canadian immigration officials. He wonders how many other people have received similar letters but haven’t shown them to anyone out of fear.

The federal Immigration Department said that an interview with its minister, Marc Miller, was not possible.

It was early August 2022, when Michelle Wigmore was on her way back from leading a crew of wildland firefighters near Grande Prairie, Alta. They stopped for a coffee in Fox Creek, about 230 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

"There was a 'help wanted' sign up and the wage that they were offering at the Tim Hortons was higher than all our crew members," said Wigmore in an interview with CBC's What On Earth.

While they made a joke of it at the time, Wigmore — who has about three decades of experience fighting wildfires in Ontario and Alberta — says it felt unfair when she considered the amount of training and work involved in the job.

Low wages are one of the reasons Wigmore and others say wildland firefighters in Alberta are not returning to the seasonal jobs, resulting in a dwindling number of experienced firefighters and creating potential safety risks to personnel and the public.

Other reasons include "lack of benefits [and] lack of potential opportunity in the organization," said a former wildland firefighter, whom CBC News has agreed to call by one of his initials, D, because of concerns speaking out could harm his livelihood.

Some Canadian provinces have logged a jump in unclaimed dead bodies in recent years, with next of kin citing funeral costs as a growing reason for not collecting loved ones' remains.

The phenomenon has prompted at least one province to build a new storage facility. Demand for memorial fundraisers has surged. The overall cost of a funeral in Canada at the top end has increased to about $8,800 from about $6,000 in 1998, according to industry trade group estimates.

Now, in the wake of an uproar over unclaimed bodies kept in freezers outside the (Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador), the province is constructing a permanent storage unit to hold remains.

"People weren't claiming bodies because they realized they couldn't afford to bury them," said Jim Dinn, leader of the province's opposition New Democratic Party. "It's not about building a bigger storage unit: It's about addressing the underlying cause causing the accumulation of bodies and removing the barriers so people can have a dignified burial."

Almost a week after some of his officers violently cleared out a peaceful Palestine solidarity protest on the University of Alberta campus, Edmonton Police Chief Dale McPhee finally showed up Thursday to make his case at a police commission meeting.

But not before the doors were locked and the public was barred from the meeting because 100 or so still-peaceful protesters made the official participants nervous.

Notwithstanding the metal detectors and heavy security at Edmonton City Hall since a shooting in January, protesters were told they’d have to watch the proceedings online because, in the words of commission chair John McDougall, “we had our back to a very, very large crowd. Admittedly they were peaceful… but when you know you have angry people behind you and you can’t see what’s going on, that’s a bit of a challenge.”

Well, nobody likes criticism. I guess no one thought to suggest that if it made them that uncomfortable to have people staring at their backs and grumbling, they could always turn their chairs around. Really, people, you can’t make this stuff up.

For his part, McPhee can be heard on various news organizations’ broadcasts claiming that his officers “protect free speech and we protect the very essential right of free expression, when both police and protesters respect their rights and responsibilities.”

On Saturday, in the chief’s opinion, those protesters’ responsibilities, apparently, included not camping on the campus of a public university even though there’s plenty of legal opinion that in fact they had every right to do just that.

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The federal government says it will not allow Canada to become a dumping ground for diverted Chinese steel or aluminum after the United States announced it plans tariff hikes on imports from China.

U.S. tariffs on certain Chinese steel and aluminum products will climb to 25 per cent this year from as much as 7.5 per cent. The proposed higher tariff rate, announced this week, would apply to more than US$1- billion worth of steel and aluminum products.

“Canada is not and will not be a ‘back door’ for Chinese steel and aluminum,” Navpreet Chhatwal, communications adviser for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, said in a statement.

"Canada has a robust, responsive trade-remedy system to prevent dumped and subsidized imports and is committed to protecting our workers and industry from unfair trade,” Ms. Chhatwal said.

Ms. Freeland’s office did not rule out any measures but said it is still analyzing the American action.

The White House justified the tariffs by saying China is off-loading unfairly produced steel and aluminum in the United States.

“China’s policies and subsidies for their domestic steel and aluminum industries mean high-quality, low-emissions U.S. products are undercut by artificially low-priced Chinese alternatives produced with higher emissions,” the White House said in a Tuesday statement.

Canadian international trade lawyer Lawrence Herman said Canada should act quickly to enact tariffs to ward off Chinese steel and aluminum that might be redirected from the U.S. to markets with lower trade barriers.

He said this country shouldn’t wait for Ottawa’s trade-remedy system to handle a complaint from Canadian industry over unfair imports.

“The trade-remedy process is a slow, cumbersome process,” he said. “It requires industry to file complaints, complaints are investigated. It takes a long time to get the Canadian International Trade Tribunal to issue an order to apply anti-dumping or countervailing duties. I don’t think trade remedies are the answer.”

The risk, Mr. Herman said, is that Chinese steel gets dumped in Canada or the Canadian market becomes a clearing house for the transshipment of steel from China through this country and then into the United States.

He said Canada should enact targeted tariffs based on the same rationale employed by the Americans.

Mr. Herman noted that Section 53 of Canada’s Customs Tariff Act allows Ottawa to take pro-active steps in response to any major increase of Chinese goods into our country that are subsidized imports and in breach of trade agreements.

The tariff announcement was released in the middle of a heated campaign between presidential contenders Joe Biden and Donald Trump, his Republican predecessor. Both have tried to show who’s tougher on China.

The Chinese economy has been slowed by the collapse of the country’s real estate market and past coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, prompting President Xi Jinping to try to jump-start growth by ramping up production of electric vehicles and other products, making more than the Chinese market can absorb.

"China’s factory-led recovery and weak consumption growth, which are translating into excess capacity and an aggressive search for foreign markets, in tandem with the looming U.S. election season, add up to a perfect recipe for escalating U.S. trade frictions with China,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

The Chinese government was quick to push back against the tariffs announced by Mr. Biden, including on electric-vehicle imports, saying they “will seriously affect the atmosphere of bilateral co-operation.”

Months after cancelling the construction contract for a new downtown pedestrian bridge in the face of “unforeseen challenges,” city officials have called off the project altogether.

As stated in a post on the city’s website on Friday, plans to build a bridge over the Speed River connecting The Ward with Downtown Guelph have been scrapped. Instead, city officials will look for ways to include pedestrian flow into another nearby project over the river.

Canada's industry minister says Ottawa is "considering all measures" after the U.S. announced it would be hiking tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and other related goods.

François-Philippe Champagne wouldn't rule out Canada imposing similar tariffs during an interview with CBC News Network's Power & Politics on Friday.

"It's fair to say that everything is on the table to protect our industry and our workers," Champagne told host David Cochrane.

"We're working in sync with the United States of America."

President Joe Biden announced earlier this week that the U.S. would be slapping new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.

The tariffs are to be phased in over the next three years; those that take effect in 2024 are covering EVs, solar cells, syringes, needles, steel and aluminum and more.

There are currently very few EVs from China in the U.S., but American officials worry that low-priced models made possible by Chinese government subsidies could soon start flooding the U.S. market.

In a separate interview on Tuesday, Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, said "Canada has to" implement similar trade levies.

"Now that the Americans have put up a tariff wall, we can't leave the side door open here," Volpe told guest host John Paul Tasker.

Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, echoed Volpe's argument in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Canada cannot be out of step with the U.S. on China. We need aligned policies that strengthen the North American auto supply chain," he wrote.

Champagne insisted that Canada wouldn't be a route for China to gain access to the North American EV market.

"Canada has never been and will never be a backdoor [for] China in the North American market and our U.S. friends understand that," he said.

The federal government has partnered with provinces to attract investments from major automotive manufacturers to spur electric vehicle production in Canada.

The same day the U.S. announced its new tariffs, Asahi Kasei Corp., in partnership with Honda, announced the construction of a $1.6-billion electric vehicle battery plant in Port Colborne, Ont.

Volpe said domestic EV production could be held back if China floods the Canadian market with cheaper products.

"There's no logic for Canada to force our market to electrify and then turn the market over to the Chinese," he said.

China has maintained that the U.S. tariffs are a violation of international trade rules. It is not clear how the country will respond at this point.

Volpe suggested Beijing could retaliate by implementing export controls on its critical minerals that are used in EV battery manufacturing.

Champagne said it's important for Canada to shore up its own critical mineral production.

On Thursday, Canada and the U.S. announced they would be co-investing in critical mineral producers for the first time as they work to boost regional supplies.

Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Defense are together putting about $32.5 million into Fortune Minerals Ltd. — which is working on a project with bismuth and cobalt in the Northwest Territories — and Lomiko Metals Inc., focused on a graphite project in Quebec.

“I want to reassure Canadians that the Canada Revenue Agency does not intend to collect any portion of any non-resident landlords’ unpaid taxes from individual tenants,” read a statement released by Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on X, formerly known as Twitter, Friday afternoon.

“It is incorrect to state otherwise.”

Bibeau said in her statement that she would work with Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland “to provide absolute clarity on the law and to ensure that tenants have the certainty they need and deserve.”

A child under five years old has died of measles in Ontario, according to the province's public health agency, the first such death in more than a decade.

In a report published Thursday, Public Health Ontario said the child was not vaccinated against the highly infectious respiratory virus. It did not indicate when or where the child died, or their age.

The report shows there were no other measles-related deaths recorded in the province between Jan. 1, 2013 and this week.

Measles has been on the rise in both Ontario and elsewhere in Canada as cases increase globally, particularly in Europe, which has seen tens of thousands of infections over the last year.

The job posting, which has since been removed, was advertising for a “volunteer” at Shoppers Drug Mart that would restock shelves and clean the store.

If per-capita gross domestic product does not recover in 2024, the decline since mid-2019 may be the longest in the last four decades