$3 billion dollar funding gap drives privatization and downloads costs onto Ontarians

I may travel to Canada in the future, but these are the currencies I have:

• Kuwaiti Dinar (1 KD = C$4.50)
• Omani Rial (1 RO = C$3.60)

So, they are worth more in face value. The question is: will money changers in Canada accept or recognize them on directly converting to CAD despite these currencies being uncommon? Also will I really be allowed to bring either 5000 RO (C$18,100) or 2000 KD (C$9,025) in cash?

33% of Canadians wait more than two years for effective menopause care due to a complex series of barriers ranging from confusion over symptoms and dismissed concerns to not knowing where to turn for help.

"The attrition rate that they're looking at is going to hit missions abroad pretty hard," said Pam Isfeld, a career diplomat and president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers.

"I just don't think that things have really been thought through," she said.

"It's a structural mismatch to be saying we're going to be active and engaged in this ambitious foreign policy — G7 presidency legacy, Indo-Pacific stuff, Africa stuff, Ukraine stuff, climate finance, now all kinds of Arctic stuff, co-operation with the Nordics," she said.

"You just cut the entire cadre of most experienced, most specialized people," she said. "Your influence doesn't come really from your press releases in Ottawa."

It's something I started noticing recently in some standup and improv shows in Toronto, not sure if it's a new trend, or it just more noticeable now. Here are some examples I remember:

• Jokingly asking audience for their social security number. This happened in two different shows
• "I've been on dating apps for a presidential term"
• I heard zip code being mentioned in one act
• A performer shouting "fuck ICE". This was not even part of any joke, just a political statement. While I sympathize, of all the scourges of the US this one is really domestic in nature and I don't get the point bringing it up in front of a Canadian audience (unless it's part of your set)
• And not to mention using their units of measurement, which is unfortunately commonplace (thanks a lot Brian Mulroney)

Other than the "fuck ICE" performer who said about themselves that they are Turkish (which I took to mean Turkish-Canadian, but maybe I'm wrong), the others were Canadian-born. In all cases these were young people who I don't believe do comedy professionally.

I have nothing against American comedy, but this low key pretense that Canada is part of the US irks me.

Nova Scotia-based Oxford Frozen Foods has been fined $10,000 for mislabelling its blueberries as Canadian at a time when more consumers are looking to buy local in grocery stores.

The food processing company is among five businesses fined a total of $47,000 by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency since April 2025 for "inaccurate or misleading country of origin claims," the federal food regulator said in a recent news release.

Blueberries, carrots and battered appetizers are processed in Oxford, N.S. The company also has facilities in Halfway River, N.S., and in Bois-Gagnon, N.B. Storage and manufacturing also takes place in the company's Maine location.

The awakening of Banff National Park's most iconic grizzly heralds the return of bears to the Alberta landscape.

Parks Canada calls him Bear 122, but he's better known to most in Alberta — and across Canada — as The Boss.

Believed to be in his mid-to-late twenties, the Bow Valley's dominant grizzly is typically among the first bears observed in Banff National Park every spring.

"He's still super tired, walks around really slow, and he's probably sleeping about 20 hours a day right now, so he's not doing a whole lot," said Bloodoff.

The gargantuan grizzly has been estimated to weigh somewhere between 650 and 700 pounds. He's the largest bear in the Bow Valley, followed by his rival Bear 136, or Split Lip.

A 12-year-old boy, found unconscious and emaciated in a puddle before dying in hospital. Brothers, forced to sleep in a mesh tent, zip-tied to their clothes. Audio recordings and text messages from would-be adoptive parents, calling the kids "f–kface," "loser" and "dumb brat."

Chilling details have come to light in the trial of Becky Hamber and Brandy Cooney. The Burlington, Ont., couple have been charged with abusing two Indigenous brothers they were in the process of adopting and murdering the older boy, known only as L.L., who died on Dec. 21, 2022. They have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“Sometimes when we see the headlines, we focus on the offenders’ behaviour as being so reprehensible,” said Cindy Blackstock, an Ottawa-based First Nations child advocate.

“But what we need to do is knit together these cases to see the patterns.”

There have been several high-profile cases across Canada of children dying while being followed by the youth protection system, meaning a child welfare system has received reports about the child’s safety in the past, or has previously interacted with the child and the family.

But we don’t have an official count of them across Canada — and each jurisdiction has a different way of monitoring these deaths.

CBC News reached out to every province and territory to ask if and how they track those numbers. Every province that responded said it does — but some, like Ontario, Quebec, P.E.I. and Nunavut, would not share the number of deaths in 2025. P.E.I. and Nunavut said releasing the information could mean identifying people, due to their small number of child and youth deaths. Quebec’s coroner’s office said it doesn't yet have a comprehensive picture of last year's figures. Ontario didn't answer questions about why it wasn't publicizing its 2025 data.

The Northwest Territories and Yukon did not respond to CBC's inquiries by deadline.

After the airstrikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian-Canadian Salar Gholami went to a rally in a Toronto suburb to celebrate the downfall of a leader he fiercely opposed.

Then, in the early hours of March 1, someone fired 17 shots at his boxing gym, which was empty at the time but is often full of children he teaches to fight.

The bullet holes, marked by numbered police tape, were still visible outside the building in Richmond Hill on a rainy morning three weeks after the shooting, which has drawn renewed attention to the alleged presence of Iranian government officials inside Canada, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Gholami is a physically imposing former competitive fighter aged 32 who describes himself as an activist within Canada's large Iranian diaspora. He wants the Tehran government brought down.

...

Toronto, and the large suburban communities that surround it, are home to one of the world's largest Iranian diaspora communities -- some jokingly refer to Canada's largest city as "Teheranto."

Concern about Iranian government presence grew after June 2024, when Canada listed the IRGC as a "terrorist entity."

...

The CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency] told AFP that as of March 5 it had reviewed about 17,800 visa applications over possible inadmissibility to Canada due to involvement with the Tehran government.

From that group, 239 issued visas were cancelled -- individuals who never came to Canada.

Regarding people in Canada, dozens of investigations are ongoing but 32 people have already been ordered to leave "for being a senior official in the Iranian regime," the CBSA said.

Four left voluntarily after learning Canada intended to remove them, one was deported, and immigration proceedings are ongoing against others.

...

[Edit typo.]

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