Changes to Canada’s climate now ‘irreversible,’ federal report says

OTTAWA - The impacts of climate change in Canada are now largely irreversible and average temperatures are expected to rise by at least 3.5 C by the end of the century, a new government report warns.

The report, published Thursday, is the second released by Environment and Climate Change Canada examining changes to Canada's climate. It was authored by nearly two dozen government and climate science experts.

It says that even if the world reaches net-zero emissions by 2075 — which would mean any greenhouse gases would be captured by nature or technology — the effects in Canada will be stark.

The report says those effects include a nearly 50 per cent increase in the area burned by wildfires and glaciers in Western Canada losing more than 75 per cent of their mass.

‘One-stop powwow shop’: Trail Creations opens doors to traditional, ceremonial clothing

Spoons hang on the wall — small, silver and, unlike most items in the shop, not for sale.

One from Saskatchewan, another from Florida. Each represents a place Jessica Lavallee and her family visited during a powwow circuit. The 32,000-kilometre trek led Jessica to 3096 Portage Ave.

She opened Trail Creations, a Winnipeg store selling materials to make traditional Indigenous garb, in the space last month.

“We want it to be a one-stop powwow shop,” Lavallee said.

Recognizing the value of phys-ed for kids

The message from Premier Wab Kinew and Education Minister Tracy Schmidt last week about the importance of exercise for young people was timely and important — but it is not new.

Immigration board asks feds to better track temporary residents

OTTAWA - Canada needs to make further cuts to the number of temporary residents in the country and generate better tracking data when they leave the country, the head of an expert panel on immigration said.

Parisa Mahboubi chairs the C.D. Howe Institute's immigration targets council, which includes former immigration minister Jason Kenney and top academics in the field in its membership. The council is preparing a submission for the government's annual immigration levels consultation period.

The report comes two years after Canada began moving to cut down on the number of temporary residents, including foreign students and workers, as soaring immigration contributed to significant issues, including housing shortages and overburdened social services.

In July, Prime Minister Mark Carney said immigration was too high when he took office in 2025, and specifically blamed a loss of control of the intake of international students and temporary workers.

Icelandic voters reject a proposal to restart negotiations to join the European Union

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — Iceland's voters rejected restarting negotiations to join the European Union in a referendum that pitted concerns about geopolitical stability against keeping national control of Iceland’s prized fisheries, officials said Sunday.

Opponents defeated the measure by a margin of 52.8% to 47.2%, the National Electoral Commission said. The result puts the divisive issue to rest for now — more than a decade after a euroskeptic government ended EU talks that had begun after the 2008 financial crisis.

The vote Saturday was held in the shadow of repeated threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to take control of nearby Greenland. Although Iceland is a NATO member, supporters said European solidarity would provide greater protection if Trump ever made similar threats toward the volcanic island.

Iceland’s left-leaning coalition government, elected in 2024, moved up the EU referendum it had planned for next year after Trump mistakenly named Iceland four times while speaking about his designs on Greenland.

At the city’s busiest fire and paramedic hall, first responders face a relentless workload

As a soft rain begins to fall between the concrete walls of “Hope Alley,” little feels further away than the place’s namesake.

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews have been called to the narrow downtown passage, named by Al Wiebe, a formerly homeless man turned advocate. People regularly pass through here, moving between the shelters, drop-ins and resource centres clustered around Main Street between Logan and Higgins avenues.

Against a wall, as the sky switches into night mode, a man sits bleeding from his nose, seemingly unaware of how he ended up with blood running down his T-shirt.

His situation has already set Winnipeg’s emergency response network in motion.

Researchers tracking Manitoba monarchs migrating to Mexico

Thirty monarch butterflies were outfitted with trackers at the Living Prairie Museum this week as part of a national effort to help preserve the endangered species, marking the first time the new technology has been used in Manitoba.

Earth is simmering in its hottest water temps on record, and that’s bad for fish and us

The world's oceans simmered to their hottest temperatures on record over the weekend and are likely to warm even further in the next few months, putting stress on life in the water and on land too, the European climate service Copernicus announced Monday.

Spurred by a still growing but already supersized natural El Nino and human-caused climate change, the world's ocean temperatures hit 21.1 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) on Friday and Saturday, narrowly edging out the average daily record set in March 2024, said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead for Copernicus.

“This is yet another sign of our climate system under strain and the ocean under immense pressure,” Burgess said.

Jane Lubchenco, an oceanographer and former chief of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the record “very troubling.”

Somalia faces another hunger crisis and the UN food agency head says it has far less funds to help

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Six million people in Somalia are facing acute food insecurity while the World Food Program has only a tenth of the resources it had in 2022 when it helped avert famine in the drought- and conflict-stricken East African nation, the head of the U.N. agency told The Associated Press.

“We can only do the bare minimum,” WFP acting executive director Carl Skau said Wednesday during a visit to a nutrition center on the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu. “We’re only providing these nutrition supplies to the children that are really the worst hit.”

The reduced funds, because of cuts in international aid by donors and the redirection of resources to other humanitarian crises, meant that the WFP is unable to expand its assistance in Somalia, Skau said.

Millions of people at risk but far less aid

Manitoba honey industry buzzing as U.S. tariff clock ticks

Canadian product is being rushed to the United States ahead of a threatened 50 per cent tariff on the industry.

Trustees call for e-scooter safety education

School trustees are calling on the province to bolster public education around e-bike and e-scooter safety ahead of back-to-school season.

The Manitoba School Boards Association brought members’ concerns about a growing number of students using electronic devices to get to and from classes to the education minister’s office this month.

“There’s a concerning lack of safety knowledge on the part of Manitoba youth,” executive director Alan Campbell said.

Campbell, a long-time trustee in the Interlake School Division, resigned from elected office this summer to run the association that mobilizes school boards and provides them with labour relations support.

Feds reports progress on climate adaptation but climate groups say it isn’t enough

OTTAWA - Three years after it formally launched its national climate adaptation strategy, the federal government says Canadians are more aware of the risks and more resilient to flooding, wildfires and major storms caused by climate change.

But an analysis by the Canadian Climate Institute suggests there is little sign any of that work has actually reduced the risks Canadians face.

The strategy, finalized in 2023, set out a road map for preparing communities for extreme weather events and a warming climate. The government estimates every dollar spent on proactive adaptation measures can save taxpayers between $13 and $15 in the long term.

The progress report touts the work Ottawa has done on the strategy since its launch and claims it hit its short-term targets along the way.

Elections Canada says 40% of people in Indigenous communities voted federally in 2025

OTTAWA - More than 40 per cent of registered electors living in Indigenous communities voted in the federal election last year, a new Elections Canada report shows.

The highest level of voter participation in Indigenous communities was recorded in the Yukon at 61.9 per cent, while the lowest level was recorded in Quebec at 21.1 per cent.

Across Canada, nearly 70 per cent of registered electors cast ballots in the 2025 election.

Indigenous people in Canada tend to be less likely than others to vote in federal elections — a legacy of decades of mistrust and tensions between their communities and Ottawa.

Organization works to support Black politicians as they face barriers, discrimination

OTTAWA - A newly incorporated organization is working to support Black politicians across Canada as they continue to face challenges with representation and discrimination.

The Canadian Congress of Black Politicians formally announced it was incorporated as a national organization this month.

Liberal MP Michael Coteau, who helped to assemble the group about a decade ago, told a press conference last week that it's "refreshing" to see growth in the organization.

"This organization was established to build a network across the country so Black politicians from all levels of government and from all political stripes could come together," he said.

Insolvencies jumped 11.5% annually in June, Canada’s bankruptcy monitor shows

OTTAWA - Insolvencies in Canada are floating around levels not seen since the global financial crisis more than 15 years ago, new data shows.

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcies released updated figures on Monday showing 13,254 insolvencies were filed in June, up 5.7 per cent compared with May and 11.5 per cent from a year ago.

Consumers — who make up the bulk of insolvency filings — led the annual increase, though business filings were also on the rise year-over-year.

"While the data has been quite volatile over the past year, even on a seasonally-adjusted basis, insolvencies have been stabilizing at levels not seen since the Global Financial Crisis in 2009," said Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist at Servus Credit Union, in a note to clients this week.

City emergency crews to administer drug that stops opioid withdrawal symptoms

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews will soon give out a medication that stops withdrawal symptoms after someone is treated for an opioid overdose.

Emergency workers will be administering a drug called buprenorphine, after Health Canada granted WFPS permission to use the controlled substance.

“Buprenorphine is a medication that offers people who are in active addiction — so those people who have received naloxone as a result of an overdose and those that are experiencing significant and, at times, dangerous withdrawal symptoms — just a bit of a reprieve … (It) reduces cravings and prevents those immediate withdrawal symptoms, which allows more time to connect those patients to further care,” said Michelle Long, WFPS assistant chief of paramedic operations.

The treatment option is in response to a persistently high number of WFPS opioid calls.

Does Wealthsimple want to add sports, politics to its new prediction markets product?

TORONTO - Wealthsimple’s newest product has given armchair economists and Canadians convinced they can predict Mother Nature a chance to put their skills to the test, but some say the business is likely after an even bigger audience.

The Toronto-based financial services company started offering prediction markets last month. The product lets customers make wagers of $1 or less on the outcome of economic, financial or climate matters like what will happen at the Bank of Canada's next interest rate announcement or how many major Atlantic hurricanes there will be this year.

But the first few weeks have some thinking Wealthsimple might have even bigger ambitions.

When Charles Martineau, an associate professor of finance at the University of Toronto, and Marius Zoican, the Canada Research Chair in financial technology, each logged onto Wealthsimple's Predict app, they found it displaying stakes in who will become the next James Bond, what the score will be at future football games and who will win the 2028 U.S. presidential election.

Rise of computer program Lean has changed the field of mathematics — and how we assess the truth

There are two age-old laments about mathematics which persist to this day. The first is that either ourselves or someone we know will express that they are not a math person — an admission that we are not good at math, or that somehow we are not hardwired for it. But we don’t tend to admit the same for reading, writing, child rearing, cooking or other skills that we deem inherent to the human experience.

The second lament is one that asks why we even learn math. “We’ll never use this in the real world,” goes the saying, particularly within the context of pre-calculus mathematics or calculus itself.

Both of these laments are regrettable, and most certainly need to be corrected by the public education system. Because, as author Kevin Hartnett argues in his latest work, The Proof in the Code: How a Truth Machine is Transforming Math and AI, mathematics is not only the language of the universe, but also a pathway to learning how to reason and seek truth.

Mathematics, ergo, is the language, both the physical and the metaphysical.

Some US adults are using AI for financial guidance but few trust it, Gallup poll finds

NEW YORK (AP) — Some U.S. adults are using artificial intelligence for financial guidance, but it’s far from the most trusted source of advice, according to a new Gallup survey conducted in partnership with Edward Jones, a financial services firm.

About 1 in 5 Americans who have sought financial advice in the past year turned to AI, the survey found. But among U.S. adults overall, only about 3 in 10 have “a great deal” or “some” confidence in its expertise for managing money, according to the survey, including just 3% who trust AI “a great deal.”

The poll, which was conducted in the spring and looked at the views of adults who are at least 21, found a disconnect between the resources Americans trust for financial advice and the ones they actually rely on. About 8 in 10 U.S. adults have at least “some” confidence in financial advisers. But only about one-third of U.S. adults who sought financial advice turned to a professional financial adviser, with far more, 73%, saying they relied on their own internet research.

As the use of AI increases, financial experts say consumers should be cautious about fully trusting these tools. Using AI as a tool at the start of a learning journey and then combining this knowledge with other trusted sources can be the best way to engage with new and traditional financial guidance tools, said Taha Choukhmane, associate professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.