Health Canada has slapped new terms and conditions on all of a company's paid plasma centres after multiple failed inspections where the regulator found "recurring, systemic deficiencies."

This comes after two people died in Winnipeg less than four months apart after giving their plasma at different Grifols locations in the city.

It also comes after the company's Canadian head office in Oakville, Ont., failed its January inspection. The head office doesn’t collect plasma, but the federal health regulator said it oversees all 16 Canadian collection sites.

On Wednesday, a Health Canada spokesperson said they conducted a virtual inspection of the head office. The inspection found Grifols wasn't accurately assessing a donor's suitability, did not thoroughly investigate errors and accidents, and didn't have enough properly trained staff members.

The inspection also found operating procedures were not always followed and that Grifols was allowing people to give plasma even when information shows "the safety of blood could be affected."

As U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration moves to expand immigration detention capacity, Montreal-based GardaWorld is poised to profit.

GardaWorld Federal Services, the U.S. subsidiary of the private security firm headquartered in Montreal, won a $313-million US contract earlier this month to convert a warehouse into a detention centre in Surprise, Ariz., a fast-growing suburb outside Phoenix. The contract could potentially be worth $704 million US — nearly $1 billion Cdn.

The company already helps operate a notorious detention facility in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, which is facing legal challenges for alleged human rights abuses.

GardaWorld has not been named as a defendant in any of those lawsuits and there is no evidence of their involvement in alleged wrongdoing at Alligator Alcatraz.

But human rights activists say the contracts and the company’s association with the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raises accountability questions back home, after GardaWorld got financial backing from the Quebec government in 2022.

Alberta separatists aren’t just enthused by the fact they have apparently surpassed the necessary 177,000 signatures to force their referendum onto ballots — they’re also celebrating when they reached the target.

Stay Free Alberta claimed that accomplishment a week before a judge in Edmonton hears a First Nation’s injunction bid against the citizen’s initiative on April 7, arguing that the independence bid would violate Indigenous treaties.

A casual legal/political observer might puzzle over this logic. After all, it might not matter that enough signatures were collected if Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation gets its injunction, because that would likely freeze the whole Elections Alberta process of vetting and approving the petition.

However, this could set up a Plan B for separatist leader Mitch Sylvestre: appeal directly to Premier Danielle Smith to put the referendum to leave Canada on October’s ballot, regardless of what the court had just said.

“Let's get the signatures first before the 7th, before they can go to court over it, and just say: all right, we've done our share,” Sylvestre told CBC News. “We've followed the rules up to now.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney generated considerable international praise for his 20 January speech at Davos. He called for intermediate powers such as Canada to work together to build a new world order based on values like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

His speech was given against the backdrop of a rupture in the rules-based order that Canada has long supported. This was caused by the United States appearing to abandon the order it helped build, by threatening to annex territory from western allies, including Canada itself.

Carney warned about the need for middle powers to work together for mutual protection in a global system where there are seemingly no constraints on the actions of great powers. He suggested they should build something bigger, better, stronger and more just together.

Why, then, did his government immediately support the illegal US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran just a month later?

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s unwillingness to condemn forced labor in China risks reducing pressure on the Chinese government to end its repression of ethnic Uyghurs.

Responding to Member of Parliament Michael Ma’s comments casting doubts on reports of forced labor in China, Carney told the media on March 30 that Canada “takes issues of forced labor and child labor incredibly seriously.” But when asked directly whether forced labor is present in China, Carney said that “there are parts of China that are higher risk.”

Carney’s remarks ignore extensive and consistent documentation of state-imposed forced labor involving Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China’s supply chains, including cotton, automotive, solar, and critical minerals. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and others have for several years reported on crimes against humanity by Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang region.

Carney’s comments also divert from past Canadian government statements expressing concern at forced labor in Xinjiang. In January 2021, Canada’s Global Affairs Ministry issued an advisory warning businesses of forced labor risks there.

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Carney’s government [...] has so far failed to adequately enforce legislation blocking products made with forced labor and has not acted on a proposed supply chain due diligence law modeled in part on legislation in the European Union.

[...]

As Prime Minister Carney takes Canada forward in a multipolar world, he should make clear that Canada’s foreign and trade policy will be grounded in human rights, including by unequivocally condemning Uyghur forced labor.

[...]

As her alter ego Marg Delahunty, comedian Mary Walsh spent years fearlessly ambushing Canadian politicians, skewering them with barbs and insults phrased as friendly advice.

But for Walsh, every ambush was always “deeply, deeply terrifying.”

“You only had one shot. It wasn't like you could do it again,” said Walsh, who played the fictional Delahunty on CBC satirical news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Walsh would turn up to press briefings sporting large glasses and often violent shades of blush and eye shadow. She wore a breastplate and mini skirt — inspired by the hit 90s TV show Xena: Warrior Princess — and waited to pounce as politicians took questions from journalists.

“Everybody else was dressed appropriately. And I was there in a few bits of red felt with gold glue around my breasts, brandishing a plastic sword from Toys “R” Us," she told The Current’s Matt Galloway.

“I would just feel so embarrassed and ashamed. I would think, 'Well, shag it. I've got nothing to lose, certainly not any shred of human dignity.’ And you know, I'd just go for it.”

Greatest hits of the fearless Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior -- https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.4320213

Stellantis is discussing options for building electric vehicles in Canada in partnership with China’s Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology, according to people familiar with the matter. It’s a signal of how quickly the auto industry is being reshaped by US protectionism. Tariffs were the trigger that caused Canada to open the door to companies from China, the world’s largest car market.

The talks with the Canadian government are at an early stage. If the companies proceed, it would be the first major Chinese auto investment in Canada since Prime Minister Mark Carney reached an agreement with President Xi Jinping in January to reduce tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.
For Carney and Industry Minister Melanie Joly, it’s tricky. They want to see the factory humming again. But just as important, they want a supply chain and business for auto suppliers in Ontario — not large-scale parts imports from China.

Flavio Volpe, the auto parts manufacturers’ representative, had a warning for the government soon after we published our story. “A ‘complete knock-down’ operation with all parts and systems brought in from China is an import quota cheat. Allowing this will kill Canadian industry,” he said on social media.

I didn’t want to write this essay.

I was born in Alberta. I graduated from St. Francis High School in Calgary, then earned two degrees down the street at the University of Calgary. I wrestled for the Dinos, the university’s wrestling team, and for Team Alberta at the Canada Summer Games, where I lost the gold medal match in overtime to a kid from Newfoundland. The memory still haunts me. I got married in Cochrane, Alberta, to a woman from Fairview, Alberta. We had a son and, eventually, a divorce in Calgary. Alberta has always been my home.

So, when I’ve been asked in the past to write about the Alberta independence movement, I’ve said no. As a lifelong Albertan, I’ve grown weary of the rest of Canada’s fixation on my province’s conservative excesses, and I didn’t feel the current separatist tantrum warranted the nation’s attention. Or maybe I was just embarrassed. In any case, I thought Canadians were hearing enough about this already.

I changed my mind when I realized what people outside of Alberta — or even those within the province — weren’t hearing. The economic and political grievances expressed by the movement’s leaders obfuscate what’s really going on. I wanted Canadians to understand that Alberta separatism, at its heart, isn’t motivated by equalization policies, Senate seats, carbon taxes or oil. These tired complaints may ride shotgun on independence, but bigotry drives the truck.

Sextortion cases involving both adults and youth have soared in Winnipeg, say police, who are using April, the nationally recognized Sexual Assault Awareness Month, to shed light on the crime.

The Winnipeg Police Service had 19 extortion reports in 2020. In 2025, the number was 223. Although the cases are recorded as extortion, most, if not all, involve sextortion, said Const. Stephen Spencer.

"These numbers are quite concerning," he said, noting the number of reports received has grown annually from 31 in 2021, climbing to 56 in 2022, 165 and 2023 and 213 in 2024.

As the search continues for a baby girl who vanished months ago when her mother was killed, Alberta RCMP have released new, heartbreaking details on the case.

The Alberta RCMP Major Crimes Unit say they remain committed to their investigation into the killing of Ayla Egotik-Learn, and the presumed death of her daughter Braylee Beasley. Police also say they hope public tips help narrow their search for the infant's remains.

In late January, RCMP recovered the body of Egotik-Learn, a 23-year-old Inuk mother from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, inside her apartment in St. Albert, a city northwest of Edmonton.

Her baby daughter has never been found — and is presumed dead by police.

A new study from southwestern Manitoba paints a stark picture of rural residents experiencing gender-based violence, where the nearest help might be hours away, and finding safety and anonymity often means leaving the community.

Barriers pile up fast for survivors outside city limits, Jamie Brown of the Western Manitoba Women's Centre in Brandon says. There's a lack of transportation, child care and housing, and the fear of encountering abusers at the community's only grocery store, gas station or hospital.

The centre's report, Advancing the Rights of Women Experiencing Gender-Based Violence in Southwestern Manitoba, was funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada and publicly released Thursday. It highlights a rural-urban divide in access and equity in terms of gender-based violence support and resources, Brown says.

Manitoba has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country, with 568 reported incidents of family violence and 607 of intimate partner violence per 100,000 people, per Statistics Canada.

Archived link

Prime Minister Mark Carney would not say when asked whether China’s treatment of the Uyghurs amounted to genocide – as the House of Commons declared several years ago – but acknowledged the Asian country was “rightly called out” for its conduct toward this minority in the past.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday at an unrelated news conference in Quebec, Mr. Carney was asked whether he agreed with the [Canada's] 2021 House of Commons motion on genocide.

He declined to say but noted “there are fundamental issues in terms of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in the past, and they’ve been rightly called out.”

Mr. Carney is still navigating the fallout from comments from new Liberal MP Michael Ma who last week cast doubt on reports of forced labour in China. Mr. Ma, who defected from the opposition Conservatives in December, has since apologized for his statements.

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Mr. Ma sparked a backlash last Thursday after he challenged the existence of forced labour in China during a meeting of the Commons industry committee, which is examining Mr. Carney’s deal to allow 49,000 Chinese-made electric vehicles into Canada at a low tariff rate.

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Last week, Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, had told the Commons industry committee Thursday that electric vehicles (EV) are being built with Chinese aluminum products made by slave labourers in Xinjiang. A 2024 Human Rights Watch report also said major automakers including Tesla, BYD, GM, Toyota and Volkswagen are drawing aluminum from supply chains linked to Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang.

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Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, a region some call East Turkestan, have faced years of repression, forced internment and coerced labour under Beijing, according to rights groups. A 2022 report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said China has committed “serious human rights violations” there that may amount to “crimes against humanity.”