National News

OTTAWA — Keith Spicer, Canada's first commissioner of official languages, died Thursday in Ottawa at 89.

EDMONTON — After two decades in the oilpatch, Shawn Hubbard was tired of layoffs and uncertainty about the future. "I was pretty much done with that after 20 years," he said. "Getting the rug pulled out from under you gets tiresome.

MONTREAL — Quebec university administrators, professors and students are rejecting an idea by the federal housing minister that Canada could cap the number of international study permits it issues as a way to ease the country's housing shortage.

OTTAWA — Discussions about a public inquiry on foreign interference have stretched well into the summer, as House leaders put aside political jabs that dominated Parliament for much of the year in exchange for "collaborative" chats from hotel rooms a

OTTAWA — Canada aims to heed a new call from Ukraine to help it sell a peace plan with Russia to developing countries that have taken a neutral stance on Moscow's invasion.

The board says there have been at least 21 more on-board fires involving "remote" locomotives in the middle or at the end of a train since the incident in B.C., with 34 occurring in the 10 years before.

OTTAWA — The federal privacy watchdog and some of his global counterparts are urging the largest social media companies to prevent bulk extraction of personal details from their websites.

In the U.S., wildfires are becoming mass-casualty events — unlike in Canada, where an encroaching fire is still largely a matter of mass evacuations and narrow escapes. 

OTTAWA — Canada's corporate-ethics watchdog is investigating if Walmart, Hugo Boss and Diesel have forced labour in their supply chains.

LAVAL, Que. — A Montreal-area company has come up with a novel — if extreme — way to boost employee happiness: buying them a private island.