Teresa Patry is feeling gaslit by Alberta's oil and gas regulator — and she's not the only one.

The Vermilion, Alta., farmer and rancher has two active oil wells operating on her land, which, according to an independent air quality assessment, are venting a steady stream of methane and potentially dangerous chemicals downwind from where she lives with her family and livestock.

Patry can smell the fumes from her home, and she believes they are negatively impacting her health and that of her family and animals. But every time she calls the province's energy regulator, she says they tell her everything is operating as it should be.

"Our home isn't an industrial site, but it's sort of been turned into one," she told What On Earth host Laura Lynch.

Halifax will not move ahead with a tool that would require affordable housing units in certain new buildings — for now.

On Tuesday, municipal staff brought a report on inclusionary zoning to regional council, nearly three years after a former council voted for the idea in 2023.

The report includes a consultant’s study that examined the local market impacts of requiring a certain percentage of affordable units in new buildings. The group also consulted with private developers and non-profit housing groups.

If you buy an $800,000 condo in British Columbia you will likely pay provincial property transfer tax of about $14,000.

But Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega, founder of the Zara clothing chain, and his private investment company Pontegadea paid no property transfer tax when he bought the Post office-retail development in downtown Vancouver for $1.2 billion last year.

Instead of buying the building, Ortega bought 8384410 Canada Inc., which owned it. As a result he didn’t have to pay the $36 million in property tax that would otherwise have been levied.

It is routine strategy in the B.C. real estate and development business to establish a bare trustee company and register it in the land title office as the owner of a property. The beneficial owner of the property is whoever owns the shares in that company.

When they want to sell, they sell the shares of the company (and the property) with no change of ownership in the land title office and no property transfer tax payable.

That’s the case in B.C. but not in Ontario, which taxes the transfer of a beneficial interest in land in the same way as property sales transfers. It closed the loophole back in 1989.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford defended his government's plan to build many more jails, saying the billions in cost will be worth it.

Ontario's jails are well over capacity and the overcrowding has been worsening for years under Ford's tenure as premier.

The province plans to add upward of 6,000 new jail beds by 2050, government documents obtained by The Canadian Press show.

About 80 per cent of inmates in provincial jails are awaiting trial and presumptively innocent. The provincial institutions hold people who are accused of a crime but not on bail, as well as those serving sentences of two years less a day. Inmates with longer sentences are housed in the federal prison system.

One of the Canada's oldest Black churches faces an uncertain future with the owner applying to repeal the 150-year-old building's heritage designation.

Since 1983 the British Methodist Episcopal Church at 430 Grey St. in London, Ont., has had full heritage designation. Built between 1868 and 1871, the yellow brick church has served as a place of worship and gathering for London's Black community, including many who fled slavery by way of the Underground Railroad.

It was originally known as the African Methodist Church which started in 1856 with a location on Thames Street before the brick building was built on Grey Street in what is now London's SoHo neighbourhood.

“It’s one of the few churches in London associated with the Black community that’s still standing," he said. "It has direct ties to the Underground Railroad and it’s a neighbourhood landmark."

A rally organized by the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) on Tuesday commemorated those lost to the toxic drug crisis 10 years after a public health emergency was declared in B.C. over a spike in illicit drug deaths.

The rally was one of numerous events that marked the grim anniversary, with more than 18,000 people having died of toxic drugs since the state of emergency was declared on April 14, 2016.

VANDU got its start by distributing clean needles to community members in 1997 amid spiking HIV rates. Its members were involved in the 2003 opening of Insite, North America's first supervised injection site.

Ten years into the public health emergency, VANDU president David Hamm said the thousands of people lost to toxic drugs weren't just numbers, but people, and their deaths were preventable.

Carney and Co are lowering gas/diesel taxes:

The move means that the cost of gas will drop by 10 cents on a litre of gasoline and four cents per litre of diesel starting on Monday and lasting until Labour Day. The fuel tax holiday, which Carney said would also see the four cent per litre excise tax removed on aviation fuel, is expected to cost an estimated $2.4 billion.

One of the aims is to improve the affordability hit we're taking because of the US/Israel war with Iraq.

Does the tax holiday make sense to you? Could it be done better?

The former leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party is facing a hate speech charge in Saskatchewan.

RCMP say they received a report last year of hateful material being posted online in a public forum.

Mounties say Travis Patron, 35, of Redvers, Sask., was arrested last Friday and charged with one count of wilful promotion of hatred for allegedly making antisemitic remarks online.

He is scheduled to appear in provincial court in Carlyle, Sask., on May 13.

The leadership of a First Nation in southern Manitoba is calling on the province to remove a gas main that crosses its territory, saying it puts the community at risk while providing no benefit.

Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation says in a letter the community will take legal action to protect its territory if the government and Manitoba Hydro don't start taking steps to remove the gas line. The line cuts through about a 1.5-kilometre area of Roseau's main reserve.

The letter, addressed to Premier Wab Kinew and Hydro CEO Allan Danroth, said the line offers the community "zero economic benefit" while exposing it to safety risks such as fires or explosions.

A Hydro report from 2024 said while the line runs through Roseau River, the First Nation did not have access to natural gas services.

The Canada Border Services Agency has launched a probe to determine if plywood is being subsidized or sold at unfair prices in Canada.

A news release from the agency says the investigation began on April 10 and focuses on imports from producers operating in or exporting from China.

It says the practices can harm Canadian industries by undercutting Canadian prices and undermining fair competition.

The investigation comes after a complaint was filed by Columbia Forest Products and the Canadian Hardwood Plywood and Veneer Association, which say they’ve faced lost sales, poor financial results and reduced employment.

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Yan Li doesn't want to uproot her two young daughters again and be forced back to China, but she fears that could happen if Ottawa doesn't heed calls for an extension to federal work permits this year.

She joined more than 100 people who rallied at the steps of the Manitoba Legislative Building on Tuesday to call on government to extend federal work permits that are set to expire.

"Most of us here ... work permits will be expired this year, and if we don't have [an extension], we go back where we come from," Li, 38, said. "That would be very terrible."

Li came to Winnipeg from Wuhan two years ago and graduated from a culinary arts program at the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology. Now employed as a cook, she hopes the provincial government is advocating for people like her so her daughters can stay.

The rally comes about two years after Ottawa said it would no longer be extending post-graduate work permits.

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That announcement came in late 2023, though in 2024 the federal government approved a request from Manitoba to extend permits for thousands of workers for at least two years.

The cut and past extensions came on the heels of a spike in the number of temporary foreign workers and international students who arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic amid a labour shortage.

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• Canada passed the Supply Chain Act in 2023 after the United Nations reported that China had committed serious human rights violations in Xinjiang against Uyghurs
• Now Canadian lawmakers across multiple parties criticize the government in Ottawa that the law lacks proper enforcement
• Expert claim the Canadian government’s efforts need to be “far more robust” to screen out products linked to forced labour in areas like China’s Xinjiang region.

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A multi-party group of parliamentarians is urging Ottawa to step up its efforts to stop Canadian companies from profiting from slavery in their operations abroad and through imports.

Parliament passed the Supply Chains Act in 2023, which requires Canadian companies and government institutions to report annually on what they did to prevent or mitigate against the use of child labour or forced labour. Advocates argue the bill is not being adequately enforced.

The International Justice and Human Rights Clinic at the University of British Columbia analyzed filings of 119 companies over the past two years and found them to be extremely vague on their efforts to weed out forced labour.

There is no requirement for reporting on forced labour from companies involved in services, mining and real estate. The researchers say this is due in part to Public Safety Canada’s guidance for companies, which they say is much less comprehensive than what the law requires.

McMaster University researcher Sima Fallah-Tafti said an artificial intelligence analysis of more than a thousand filings under the law found an average 36 per cent score on specificity.

“Most reports we analyzed were boilerplate -- generic language, no specific suppliers named, no meaningful risk identification,” she said.

“Firms are filing paperwork. They are not doing due diligence.”

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It’s really, in my opinion, a problem of implementation,” Sen. Julie Miville-Dechene, who helped shepherd the legislation through Parliament, told the news conference in French.

“There must be clear guidelines so that we can have something other than generic reports that say very little about the activities of a company.”

Former Liberal MP John McKay said Ottawa’s efforts need to be “far more robust” to screen out products linked to forced labour in areas like China’s Xinjiang region.

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Parliament passed the Supply Chains Act after the United Nations reported in 2022 that China had committed serious human rights violations in Xinjiang against Uyghurs that “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

Global Affairs Canada reported that same year that China “is using otherwise legitimate programs for retraining and relocation of unemployed workers as instruments of a broader campaign of oppression, exploitation and indoctrination of the Uyghur Muslim population.”

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McKay said the incident with Ma illustrates the conundrum facing Canada.

“The depth of the problem is such that Canada has a choice here. If we go along to get along, then we will compromise our own values,” McKay said.

Conservative MP Arnold Viersen told Tuesday’s news conference that the Tories remain concerned about Canada’s posture toward China.

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GAC redacted details about what was discussed during the meetings.

Loblaws and others cheating customers again

Kevin Kielty, was charged with two counts of alleged employment-related offences under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), including employing foreign nationals in a capacity in which the foreign nationals are not authorized, and counselling foreign nationals to work in Canada without authorization.

On March 2, 2026, he pleaded guilty to both counts and was sentenced to two years’ probation, 50 hours of community service and was fined $70,000.