New polling suggests a majority of Canadians think Canada ought to explore joining the European Union at a fraught time for geopolitical relations.

A survey of 4,000 people conducted by Spark Advocacy’s polling arm in March found that one in four respondents thought it would be a good idea for Canada to formally join the economic and political bloc of European nations.

A further 58 per cent indicated it was a proposal worth exploring further, while the remainder felt it was a bad idea.

Spark’s chief strategy officer Bruce Anderson says the survey suggests Canadians are increasingly open to finding ways to buck Canada’s reliance on the United States after more than a year of tariffs under U.S. President Donald Trump’s second administration.

France’s foreign minister last month openly floated the idea of Canada joining the EU, while Prime Minister Mark Carney has said he’s looking to deepen trade and security ties with the continent but not as a formal member of the bloc.

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Officials of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) and members of the Uyghur community staged protests across the United States and Canada, calling for global accountability and urgent international action over what they described as China’s “ongoing genocide” in East Turkistan, also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.

These protests were held on Sunday in Washington and Edmonton, Canada, to mark the 36th anniversary of the 1990 East Turkistan Uprising, also known as the “Baren Uprising”, which the ETGE said was “one of the most significant acts of national resistance” against China’s “colonial occupation” of the region.

According to the ETGE, thousands of East Turkistanis rose up on April 5, 1990, in Baren Township of Xinjiang to protest China’s “genocidal enforcement of coercive population control policies”, under which it alleged that over 250 Uyghur women were subjected to forced abortions.

The exiled authorities claimed that the Chinese authorities responded by deploying over 20,000 troops, helicopter gunships, and heavy artillery, killing more than 3,000 people and arresting over 7,600 more, following the uprising.

Calling the Baren Uprising a legitimate act of “anti-colonial resistance”, the ETGE said, “Mass imprisonment, forced labour, coercive population control, family separation, and the systematic destruction of Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic cultures continue across occupied East Turkistan.”

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The Artemis II mission is expected to complete a record-breaking lunar flyby today.

The Canadian Space Agency says astronaut Jeremy Hansen and his three American crewmates are set to become the space explorers who will have ventured farther into space than anyone before, surpassing a record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

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When Orion passes behind the moon, the spacecraft will enter a communications blackout of about 40 minutes as the lunar surface blocks radio signals.

Later, it will come as close as about 6,500 km to the moon’s surface, and from that vantage point Hansen has said the moon will look like a basketball held at arm’s length.

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"The crew will make their lunar observations with real-time data analysis, guidance provided by a team of scientists and the knowledge acquired through their geology training in Labrador, Iceland and in class to describe surface textures, shapes, and colours, providing valuable data for future exploration of the moon,” reads a news release from the Canadian Space Agency.

The flyby promises views of the moon’s far side that were too dark or too difficult to see by the 24 Apollo astronauts who preceded them.

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The BC Counter Human Trafficking Unit and Richmond RCMP have made multiple arrests that they say will deter predators looking to purchase sex from potential trafficking victims.

But a criminologist who specializes in sex work laws and an organization that supports sex workers — some of whom have been trafficked themselves — say police operations like this actually make sex work more dangerous and make it less likely that someone who is being trafficked will speak with police.

On March 17 the RCMP put out a press release saying it had completed a one-day operation in which officers posed as sex workers online, spoke with more than 100 people and made multiple arrests when potential clients showed up. All individuals were released pending further investigation.

The BC Prosecution Service told The Tyee that at this time no charges have been laid.

Erick Serpas Ventura knows the bones of a good home.

In El Salvador, where he was born, Serpas Ventura was raised in a small house until the age of five. When a civil war broke out, he and his family emigrated to Vancouver.

They settled in a 1920s heritage home held together by ancient trees and handmade bricks, a structure similar to the one featured in the video above. Having lived in a smaller, simpler abode in El Salvador, Serpas Ventura gained appreciation for the people who built their Vancouver home. He says it felt like “a massive mansion” compared with what they’d known back home.

And it caused a twinge of sadness whenever he saw a similarly old but sturdy house being bulldozed to make way for new construction.

So, after a decade in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Serpas Ventura pivoted and founded Vema Deconstruction in 2022. The goal? Reuse the materials — wood, metal, bricks — that make up many of the homes on the West Coast.

The former MP who spent more than a decade pushing to legalize single-event sports betting says he doesn't regret it — but says its implementation is in some ways "sad" and "deplorable."

He also says more regulation is required to curb the volume and methods of gambling advertising in Canada.

Former NDP MP Brian Masse introduced a private member's bill to lift the prohibition in 2019, and one year later, Conservative MP Kevin Waugh re-introduced Masse's bill.

But Masse says, five years later, legalized sports betting hasn't been implemented in the way he had envisioned.

Members of the Canadian Forces and Canadian Rangers are nearing the end of their epic trek across the North.

Close to a dozen personnel have spent the past few weeks zipping across 4,500 kilometres of snow and ice on snowmobiles from Herschel Island, Yukon, to Churchill, Manitoba.

It’s part of Operation Nanook-Nunalivut — the military’s annual exercise to shore up Canada’s ability to defend the Arctic and the North.

Elanik says setting up camp in temperatures hovering around -50 C was no easy feat, making it tough to even wriggle into her sleeping bag because it stiffened in the cold.

“It's been exhilarating, but definitely required the most focus and attention … because the ice does not flex," she said. The jumbo ice, it's going to buck you off if it wants."

A group home worker in Winnipeg says she can't stop thinking about an 18-year-old homicide victim she helped care for — and what more might have been done to protect her.

Avontai Hartleib was expressive, smart and had a big personality, said the worker, whom CBC is not identifying because she's not authorized to speak about her work publicly.

The worker said Hartleib's death in February has left her with "overwhelming sadness" and many unanswered questions about a lack of consequences and support in the Child and Family Services system.

Combining ecological and cultural values, and nearly two dozen planning partners, British Columbia’s Great Bear Sea is a model of con­ser­va­tion cooper­a­tion

When O'Leary (of Dragon's Den fame) first announced the project a year and a half ago alongside municipal and provincial representatives, they described the project as "the world's largest AI Data Centre Industrial Park." The project is slated to need about 7.5 GW of power when fully built.

That's roughly seven times the amount of electricity generated by the Site C dam in northern BC.

Much of that power is poised to come from natural gas. The company's initial announcements about the project claimed it would use geothermal power and gas. However, emails _Canada's National Observer _obtained through a Freedom of Information request from the municipality where the project is located suggest O'Leary's company rapidly ditched plans for geothermal power in favour of exclusively using natural gas.

If the project is entirely powered by natural gas and doesn't capture any of those emissions, it will set Canada back 20 years in carbon emissions reductions and wipe out the reductions gained by phasing out coal, according to Will Noel, senior analyst with the Pembina Institute's electricity team.

Ottawa's decision to roll back federal climate rules for Alberta's AI industry comes after intense lobbying efforts by Capital Power, an Alberta electricity company building a gas-powered AI data centre. And Evan Solomon, Canada's AI minister, has only met with mining and energy companies about the environmental impacts of AI data centres

but so far has ignored environmental groups.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has announced recalls due to possible listeria contamination affecting products including salads, cheese and meal kits.

The agency says Co-Op brand creamy garlic and spinach salad, sold in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan with best-before dates between March 24 and April 4 are recalled and should not be consumed.

Numerous cheese products sold nationally, including Bothwell shredded three-cheese nacho blend in 400-gram and one-kilogram quantities, Goldstream cheddar style shredded processed cheese product, and Paradise Island brand Asiago shredded cheese are also among the recalls over listeria concerns.

Complete lists of affected products are available on the CFIA website.