Canada

A young girl who was seriously injured in Inukjuak, Que., during a Nunavik Police Service intervention has died, according to the the Kativik Regional Government.

Quebec's police watchdog, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI), said two people were injured during a shootout with police on Dec. 20. In a news release published Tuesday, the BEI confirmed one of the people involved has since died but did not identify the deceased, citing the ongoing investigation.

“No further information can be released,” the BEI said.

According to the community's mayor, the two people injured were a man in his 30s and his six-year-old daughter.

Canada PM Mark Carney will be in France on Monday and Tuesday, where leaders of the bloc known as the Coalition of the Willing will gather to “accelerate efforts toward a negotiated peace for Ukraine, supported by strong security guarantees.”

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The group’s 35 member states, including Canada, have pledged their support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

“Canada is working relentlessly with our allies to secure a just and lasting peace for Ukraine. We must deter and fortify – with robust security guarantees and by ensuring Ukraine can rebuild, recover, and create the foundations of true prosperity,” Carney said in a statement Friday.

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Canada is pushing back on Chinese influence in the Taiwan Strait after Beijing ratcheted up tensions in East Asia by conducting military drills off Taiwan this week.

China’s People’s Liberation Army said Wednesday that it had “successfully completed” two days of military exercises in the waters off Taiwan, concluding a set of high-powered manoeuvres aimed at asserting its sovereignty over the island.

Global Affairs Canada says in a media statement that Canada “opposes any unilateral attempts to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.”

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The agency says the strait connecting the east and south China seas is “indispensable to the security and prosperity of the international community” and it’s “in the interest of all parties to maintain the peaceful and accessible nature of this waterway.”

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The gap between average worker wages and Canada’s top-paid CEOs widened to a record in 2024, according to a new report that pushes for higher taxes on the wealthiest.

A home described as the first of its kind now stands in the Nak’azdli Whuten community near Fort St. James, B.C.

The home is a prototype for an Indigenous-led housing system that uses low-grade locally-sourced wood to produce prefabricated housing kits for northern communities.

The concept is to take trees from the local territory, mill them locally, and then have local workers use that lumber to build panels, which are then used to construct a house in a matter of days.

“You can build the panels through the winter months, and then in the summer you can erect the houses a lot quicker. The idea would be instead of producing two or three houses, we could maybe do 10 houses in this area with our construction crew and local contractors.”

Residents of Pimicikamak Cree Nation are celebrating and relieved now that power and electricity are being restored to the community.

Manitoba Hydro has repaired a broken line that caused a widespread outage. On Thursday, it began restoring power to homes in stages, nearly four days after the downed line left community members without heat in freezing winter temperatures and prompted a state of emergency.

On Sunday night, lights went dark and heaters went cold in the northern Manitoba First Nation, located about 530 kilometres north of Winnipeg, when a power line that crosses the Nelson River snapped.

“It was –30 with the wind chill here," Grand Elder Raymond Robinson said of the situation earlier in the week before power was restored. "When I go to these homes, when they're breathing you just see that mist coming out of people's mouths because they didn't have [any] heating system."

Growing research suggests that in addition to how much protein we consume each day, the type of protein we eat influences healthy aging too

Eat only what you need. Repurpose what you don’t. Less wasted food means fewer emissions, less cooking and more easy, tasty leftovers.  

Eliminate or reduce your beef consumption—43 per cent of food-related emissions from the average Canadian come from beef alone. We could have had our beef and eaten it too if we’d followed the agreements laid out in the Kyoto Protocol, but we’re now at a point where food emissions also need to fall to avoid the worst of climate change.

Vote with your fork. This is a first step to demand change from your political leaders. The more we talk about our own dietary changes and what matters to us, the more politicians will begin to care about policies that bring positive changes to our food systems.

Carney vs. Poilievre -- Here in Canada, there will be two big political changes in the coming year. The Liberals will become a majority government after more disgruntled Conservative MPs inevitably defect to the government side.

Why inevitably?

As 2025 showed, Pierre Poilievre is terminally unpopular. Loss after loss. A lot of Conservative MPs have realized that dear leader simply doesn’t have the royal jelly to become prime minister. Why else would they have agreed to give him a $3-million makeover? Pretty clear proof that they knew that “as is,” Poilievre was lacking something needed to lead them to victory.

Trump and Putin -- The biggest story in the world will be unfolding in the United States. How fast and how far will the Orange Octogenarian carry his unconstitutional agenda in what was once the world’s greatest democracy?

Belligerent fascism has already landed in America. So far, there have been bombs for Iran and Nigeria; missile strikes and summary execution for over 100 people denounced without proof by President Donald Trump as “narco-terrorists”; a quarter of the U.S. navy deployed off the coast of Venezuela; and Trump sending the National Guard into U.S. cities, even though that violates the country’s constitution.

With Trump’s poll numbers tanking and two-thirds of Americans disapproving of his handling of the economy, the Republican party is headed for the wood chipper in the 2026 midterm elections.

The voluntary grocery code of conduct for grocers, suppliers, wholesalers and primary producers in Canada is set to fully roll out on Thursday.

The grocery code is intended to promote fair dealings between grocers and their suppliers, including in the application of penalties and fees. It was set up in an effort to bring more transparency, fairness and predictability to the industry as a whole.

The code, governed by the Office of the Grocery Sector Code of Conduct, includes trade rule provisions, a governance model and an adjudication and dispute resolution process.

Canada's five largest grocers — Empire, Loblaw, Metro, Walmart Canada and Costco Canada — have now formally registered.

Happy New Years, hope next year is kind to everyone :)

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