In the news today: Federal leaders debate round 2, fewer Canadians heading stateside

Carney is leading in the polls and was the frequent target of attacks from his rivals on Wednesday.

Poilievre accused Carney throughout the evening of being just like his Liberal predecessor Justin Trudeau, and promised to reverse Liberal economic policies he said had halted resource development and weakened the country.

Canadians cancel U.S. business trips en masse

First came the tariff threats. Then the annexation taunts.

But it wasn’t until reports surfaced about foreigners detained while trying to enter the U.S. that Oscar Acosta decided to call off trips to three business conventions south of the border.

He was “undeterred until last month” — when the tech CEO read about 35-year-old Canadian actress and entrepreneur Jasmine Mooney, who was held in detention for 12 days after reapplying for a work visa at the American border in San Diego and then banned from the U.S. for five years.

“That struck fear in my heart,” said Acosta, who runs Ottawa-based startup Body M3canix, which makes fitness-tracking devices for extreme environments.

“Being an entrepreneur as well, being from a visible minority — because my background is Hispanic — would I not run into a situation like the one that this lady ran into?”

Femicides spike 5 years after N.S. mass shooting

The worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history began almost five years ago, shortly after a Nova Scotia man brutally assaulted his common-law wife.

Lisa Banfield was kicked, punched and choked by her partner of 19 years on the night of April 18, 2020. She was left with fractured ribs and vertebrae but managed to escape. Over the next 13 hours, Gabriel Wortman fatally shot 22 people in rural Nova Scotia before two Mounties shot him dead at a gas station north of Halifax.

In March 2023, an inquiry into the murders issued 130 recommendations aimed at preventing a similar tragedy, including more than a dozen that called on governments to do more to end “an epidemic” of gender-based violence. But as the anniversary of the killings approaches, people working in the field say not enough is being done to implement those recommendations.

“There is still a lot of work to do,” said Kristina Fifield, a trauma therapist who works with survivors of intimate-partner violence and is a member of the committee monitoring how governments and the RCMP are responding to the inquiry’s recommendations.

Quebec gas price move seen as ‘symbolic gesture’

The Quebec government has made a move it hopes will lower the price of gas in the province — but observers say consumers are unlikely to benefit at the pump.

They say the province has faced pressure to act since the federal government scrapped the consumer carbon price, which applied across much of the rest of the country, on April 1. In the days that followed, Quebec went from having some of the cheapest gas in the country to some of the most expensive.

On Monday, Economy Minister Christine Fréchette announced Quebec is withdrawing its floor price on gasoline and other fuels, a measure that has been in place since the 1990s to protect small service stations from being undercut by larger players. She framed the decision as a way to boost competition and ultimately lower prices.

“I have the impression they were under pressure to do something about the price of gas,” said Pierre-Olivier Pineau, chair of energy sector management at HEC Montreal, the business school of Université de Montréal. “This allows them to make an announcement without there being any real consequences.”

Freeze and thaw lead to more potholes in Ontario

For Mike Sanders, owner of Aaron’s Taxi in Sudbury, Ont., bumpier routes have become an “unfortunate way of life.”

Cities, including his, are reporting that a repeated cycle of freezing and thawing this spring has led to more potholes than usual on some Ontario roads.

“The biggest problem in Sudbury is so many of the main thoroughfares are bad,” Sanders said in a recent interview.

Taxi drivers for his company usually drive major city roads dozens of times a day, often dipping into hard-to-see potholes in the curb lane. Sanders said it’s taking a toll on his vehicles this year.

“You end up with a tremendous amount of damage to the components of the vehicle. The tires, rims, front end, rear end. It’s unfortunate,” he said.

Along a N.S. river, Mi’kmaq fishers defy Ottawa

As night falls along the banks of the Fitzroy River, Tabitha Morrison pauses from dipping her net for baby eels, and explains why she believes Ottawa’s rules shouldn’t govern Indigenous fishers.

“We’re out here trying to make a living,” said the Mi’kmaq fisher in an interview Tuesday about 50 kilometres west of Halifax, where headlights of 15 other fishers intermittently brightened the tidal waters.

“There are catch limits we follow … We have the right to self-govern ourselves and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Morrison, 38.

The member of Sipekne’katik First Nation was harvesting baby eels, known as elvers, migrating along the waterway — even as the federal Fisheries Department had assigned the harvesting rights in the river to a non-Indigeous, commercial licence holder.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 17, 2025

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

In the news today: Federal leaders debate round 2, fewer Canadians heading stateside

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