Ottawa reverses orders to surrender some ‘lost Canadian’ citizenship certificates

OTTAWA - Just one week after some "lost Canadians" were told to surrender their new citizenship certificates, a few received letters over the weekend confirming their citizenship claims are valid once again.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson said Monday the department is now reviewing the roughly 4,100 citizenship by descent claims made under an amendment to the law that offers a path to citizenship for those with Canadian ancestors.

Citizenship certificates will not be suspended unless the review turns up a problem with a document already issued, the spokesperson said.

A statement the department issued last week said it is temporarily pausing the finalization of citizenship certificates related to the citizenship by descent amendment passed as Bill C-3.

Many hands feed many mouths at Siloam Mission

It takes many willing hands to prepare the quantities of food required to serve community members accessing Siloam Mission’s meal services.

One of these hands belong to Kishwar Mirza, a recently retired nurse who has been volunteering every Tuesday morning for the 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. breakfast shift in Siloam’s kitchen.

Led by Siloam Mission’s kitchen staff, Mirza and the volunteer crew — who number between 12 to 16 — prep 700 pieces of toast, 576 eggs, 150 pounds of fruit, 120 litres of soup and 80 pounds of meat daily for the approximately 600 people who turn up for breakfast, lunch and dinner at the Princess Street drop-in.

Breakfast is served from 9 to 10 a.m., plated up assembly-line style as community members queue to receive their food through the service window.

Iran war ripple effects drive inflation to its highest level since 2023

OTTAWA - Inflation accelerated to its highest level in more than two years in May as price pressures from the war in Iran started to crop up outside the gas pumps.

But most economists weighing in Monday saw little cause for panic in Statistics Canada's latest consumer price data with oil prices already receding and the Bank of Canada unlikely to move from the sidelines anytime soon.

Statistics Canada said Monday that the annual rate of inflation jumped to 3.2 per cent in May, up from 2.8 per cent in April and notching the highest headline inflation rate since December 2023.

StatCan said gas prices rose 33.2 per cent year-over-year last month as conflict in the Middle East continued to shutter the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers. The agency said last month marks the most consumers have paid for gasoline since June 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove supply uncertainty.

Thousands celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day

Drums and song filled Winnipeg’s downtown Sunday as thousands gathered at The Forks to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day and while festivities continued late into the evening, some in attendance said the event’s importance spans generations.

Braiding her daughter Sofia Ducharme’s hair in preparation for the Wáhkóhtowin Powwow — one of the day’s numerous celebrations — Alea Elliott said the powwow was one of the first for the 11-year-old. Watching his daughter get ready was Derek Ducharme, who is originally from the Waywayseecappo First Nation.

“It’s nice she gets to do this, because Derek didn’t get to learn about his culture,” said Alea, saying the family came into the city from Landmark.

Wearing a stunning jingle dress that shines in the summer sun, both Alea and Derek said they were proud to see their daughter participate in Sunday’s celebration, as Derek’s father was a victim of Canada’s colonial systems that separated Indigenous families from their children.

AI safety advocates say bill a good ‘first step’ on regulation, but more needed

The federal government’s proposed online safety legislation is a good start on regulating artificial intelligence chatbots — but more work will be needed to protect Canadians from their potential harms, a pair of advocates say.

Bill C-34, introduced earlier this month in the House of Commons, would regulate the companies behind AI chatbots by imposing on them a duty to act “responsibly.”

It includes measures to lower the risk of chatbots communicating harmful content and would put in place crisis intervention protocols for cases involving self-harm, suicide or violence.

Wyatt Tessari L’Allié, founder of Artificial Intelligence Governance and Safety Canada, said the bill’s effectiveness depends on how the details are worked out.

‘This is nuts’: The hard-fought race to build Canada’s next submarine fleet

From a massive ad blitz featuring Canadian broadcast icon Peter Mansbridge to a cabinet minister calling on shipbuilders to cough up a car plant, the brief race to replace Canada’s aging submarine fleet turned heads in more ways than one.

More than words: Military-Indigenous reconciliation event aims to build bridges between past and future

Bagpipes and traditional Indigenous drums played as one Saturday morning at the Canadian Forces Base in Winnipeg for the first Indigenous Reconciliation Gathering.

Ahead of National Indigenous Peoples Day Sunday, the Canadian Armed Forces hosted a full day of programming focused on bridging the gap between the military and Indigenous communities.

“What we really want to do is we want to move away from words,” said Lt. Col. Josh Van Tine. “There’s a lot of talk about reconciliation, but actions are harder to find, and we want to move beyond words and move to actions. We hope that people see we’re serious about it.”

The event is based on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 57th call to action, which is to provide education to public servants on the history of Indigenous people.

Happy feet: Students get outfitted with donated running shoes ahead of Manitoba Marathon

About 250 kids from remote and inner city communities were fitted for happy feet Saturday afternoon ahead of Sunday’s Manitoba Marathon events.

Zoe Yanke, 16, bused from her home community of Gillam to run in the Manitoba Marathon 10-kilometre race Sunday morning. She and about a dozen of her peers are participating in several of the events and were gifted a new pair of shoes ahead of race day through the Soles4Souls program.

The program hosts events across North America and donates shoes, socks and active wear to kids in need.

At the University of Manitoba’s student centre, not far from Sunday’s starting line, students trickled in by the busload and were met by a volunteer who fitted them for shoes. From there, a “runner” volunteer fetched a few options for them to try on for size, fit and style.

Confronting the scourge of polio

From 1928 to 1953, polio epidemics occurred in Manitoba every three to five years. The pain for the young victims was often excruciating. The vast majority of children recovered, yet many experienced lifelong disabilities from the disease.

Rise in female chiefs ‘a beautiful resurgence’

BRANDON — One month after Birdtail Sioux First Nation member Tréchelle Bunn was elected chief of her community, she was described on the Matriarch Movement podcast as a woman “who truly embodies what this movement is all about.”

“At just 25 years old, Tréchelle is making history while balancing law school, community leadership and national advocacy,” wrote podcast host and founder Shayla Oulette Stonechild. “Her journey reminds us that the next generation isn’t just preparing to lead — they are leading.”

Bunn was the first woman and youngest person to be elected chief of the First Nation in western Manitoba. It was a historic moment in her community and part of a larger story of the changing role of women in First Nations today.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak noted earlier this year that a record number of female chiefs — 164 — were leading First Nations across the country.

Daniel Lavoie, entre racines et liberté

Le 6 juin, au Centre national des Arts, à Ottawa, Daniel Lavoie a reçu le Prix de la réalisation artistique 2026, catégorie musique populaire, des Prix du Gouverneur général pour les arts du spectacle.

Sask. Métis village grapples with child abductions, North-West Rebellion

Major events and big personalities can overshadow the lives of ordinary people, but even the youngest and seemingly least important members of a society can help shape communities.

In Treat Them as Buffalo, Blair Palmer Yoxall has portrayed various characters in a Métis village in 1885 Saskatchewan through the life of a 12-year-old boy named Nikosis (Niko) Eriksen and his interactions with relatives and friends in the context of a community crisis and Louis Riel’s rebellion.

Yoxall is an Alberta Métis writer and poet with a master of arts in English in Indigenous literature and westerns. His fiction has won a range of prizes and landed on a number of short lists. His prose and poetry pieces have appeared in Glass Buffalo, the Fiddlehead and Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology. Treat Them as Buffalo is his first novel.

The novel follows Nikosis (Cree for “my son”) as he attempts to sort out the events occurring in his home community, Lac-aux-Trois-Pistoles, Sask., in 1885. Several boys, including Niko’s cousin, have disappeared from the town, with some reappearing mutilated or dead. Niko’s mother, grandmother and aunt try to protect him, while other women in the community attempt to find their missing sons and grandsons. Meanwhile, a fierce fighting woman named Kate McCannon seeks to resolve the situation, offering to help with the search and rescue operations.

Stopping AI ‘slop shots’ in modern politics

Welcome to the new frontier of AI campaign advertising. It is real, even if the content it produces is not.

Designated encampments worth second look

Winnipeg city councillor Cindy Gilroy (Daniel McIntyre) continues to champion the idea of authorized, designated homeless encampments despite getting no support from her colleagues on city council or the provincial government. That’s too bad, because her idea has merit.

Reducing homelessness and all of the collateral problems it represents is a pressing issue for the city and the provincial NDP government. To that end, both levels of government have taken steps to address the problem, with differing results.

The province has taken the lead with Your Way Home, a program to provide permanent housing for the homeless with “wraparound” social and health services. Your Way Home has made some progress but there is evidence the size of Winnipeg’s homeless population is growing faster than the program can house it.

At the same time, the city passed a bylaw to clear homeless encampments. To date, it has forcibly cleared some 60 encampments, containing hundreds of residents.

Greed outshines ‘the Beautiful Game’

Utter greed is at the heart of this World Cup, and it has shown up as utter stupidity on the part of FIFA to think that it could treat the 104 matches of this tournament as “104 Super Bowls.”

Pill, bills, budgetary aches

We’re a nation of drug users. Well, not those drugs.

Rather, many Canadians have their health supported by pharmaceutical medications prescribed by a physician.

In our universal health-care system, medication can come with a big additional cost.

The federal government introduced a national pharmacare program in 2024. Manitoba was among the first to sign on, partly leading to its Enhanced Pharmacare Program, which now offers birth control, diabetes and a few other medications at no cost to Manitobans.

How Canada can continue to lead on news policy

As a proud Dane, I have long admired the warm relations and respect between my country and our close, like-minded friends in Canada.

At the end of the Second World War, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted to stop the Red Army’s westward advance. The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was sent to do the job. Canadian troops encountered the Red Army in Wismar, located on Germany’s Baltic coast. The Canadians effectively blocked a Soviet advance into the Kingdom of Denmark — while that was long ago, it will never be forgotten.

We share a 3,000 km border, which has not been without controversy, but the issue has always been based on good humour and friendship. From 1973 to 2022, we “fought” over Hans Island, which is located between Ellesmere Island and Greenland and measures just 1.2 square kilometres. We were, however, able to resolve the dispute not with weapons, but with whiskey.

For many years, I was CEO of JP/Politiken Media Group, one of the largest media companies in the Nordics. As the employer of 3,000 people, I had a responsibility to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Danish news media ecosystem. Now, as CEO of WAN-IFRA (World Association of News Publishers), that responsibility is global, and it is one I take very seriously.

In choosing each other, same-sex couple in 19th-century Vermont defied convention

The front cover of Charity & Sylvia, the new graphic biography by acclaimed American cartoonist Tillie Walden, recreates the striking 19th-century portrait of two women, silhouetted in profile and framed by braided human hair carefully arranged in a heart-shaped detail, that inspired this volume. They are the eponymous Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, an openly lesbian couple who quietly made a life for themselves in rural 1800s Vermont.

Stitched together from an extensive archive of letters, journals and poetry, Walden’s moving, sepia-toned volume is narrated through both women during their time together as they navigate questions of identity, community and faith.

The story begins when Charity, a family friend of the Drakes, arrives from Massachusetts to rural Vermont. As the relationship between Charity and Sylvia develops, Walden infuses the book with a visual language of the mundane, drawing the reader’s eye to household sundries and everyday minutiae as she builds the story world through wordless panels of homesteading, domestic tasks, sewing patterns (both Charity and Sylvia earn their living as tailors) and impending weather as the seasons change.

She also builds out family trees for both women through backstories (including standout sections chronicling their childhoods) and daily conversations that provide context for those appearing in later scenes. Through an array of vignettes locked into a 12-panel grid, the characters move from church pews to kitchens, bedrooms, dinner tables, gardens and carriages travelling to and from neighbouring towns and states.

Booth University College continues program for emergency shelter residents

Shelter U has found a permanent home in inner-city Winnipeg.

Following a pilot that produced 50 certificates and inspired multiple recipients to pursue further studies, Booth University College will continue an alternative program that makes higher education more accessible in Manitoba.

“It is the best of what education can be,” said Rev. Rob Fringer, president of the Christian post-secondary institute.

In January 2025, Booth’s Aaron Klassen launched the first of a series of humanities courses — a project he dubbed Shelter U — out of the Salvation Army’s Winnipeg Centre of Hope.

Cuba pushes through sweeping free-market reforms in biggest economic shift since the revolution

HAVANA (AP) — Observers on Friday called Cuba’s new free-market reforms the most sweeping economic overhaul of the island’s communist economy since the Cuban revolution, as the grandson of former President Raúl Castro said in an interview that Cuba must seek to move its economy forward.

The 176 measures aim to further decentralize Cuba’s state-run economy, which has been left gasping by a tightened embargo under President Donald Trump. Under the island’s current economic model, the government largely determines what is produced, who produces it, the prices at which goods are sold and how the country’s resources are allocated.

The plan includes more space for private businesses, imports and exports without state intermediation, free hiring of personnel, authorization for private banks and investment by Cubans abroad. It even permits fast-food chains to establish themselves on the island.

“Elements that for decades were listed as pillars of the revolutionary economy, such as the state monopoly on foreign trade and the centralization of productive forces, have been dismantled,” said Luis Carlos Battista, a Cuban-American political scientist and lawyer who is a doctoral candidate at the University of Salamanca.

Manitoba appoints Canada’s first judge of reconciliation

The Manitoba government has appointed provincial court Judge Jerilee Ryle as associate chief judge of reconciliation, the first appointment of its kind in Canada.

Ryle perfect choice for Manitoba’s first associate chief judge for reconciliation

Judge Jerilee Ryle is more qualified than the majority of Manitoba judges on the issue of how to best serve Indigenous peoples in Manitoba’s justice system.

Inuit could pursue foreign partners if relationship with Ottawa sours: ITK leader

OTTAWA - Canada's national Inuit organization is calling on the federal government to be better partners, saying Canada must respect Inuit rights to governance and self-determination.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami wrapped up a two-day Arctic sovereignty conference in Ottawa on Friday.

In a statement following the summit, ITK says it firmly rejects what it calls "outdated, colonial approaches to Arctic policy that repeat Canada’s past mistakes of marginalizing" Inuit.

"We call on the federal government to partner with Inuit in advancing a more ambitious vision for its Arctic territory by prioritizing improved coordination with Inuit rights holders in decision-making, and the investments in the infrastructure and services needed to create prosperity and bring the entirety of Inuit Nunangat into the rest of the country," ITK said in a statement.