In the news today: Canada Post union to give update on negotiations

Late last month, the union responded to Canada Post’s latest offers with a proposal that called for higher wages but made some allowances for part-time workers.

The postal service has yet to respond formally to those proposals but has asked the union to align its expectations with Canada Post’s dire financial realities.

The postal workers’ union has banned overtime work since late May but has not taken to the picket lines since the federal government intervened in a strike over the holiday season last year.

Here’s what else we’re watching…

AI will lead to public service job cuts: official

Ottawa’s chief data officer says he thinks the introduction of artificial intelligence to federal government operations will lead to “some” job cuts in the public service.

In a recent interview with The Canadian Press, Stephen Burt said he thinks the impacts are going to vary widely and will be job-specific, with different outcomes in different areas.

While he wouldn’t identify the risk of job losses in specific areas of government, Burt said the goal will be to ensure employees receive opportunities to retrain and change jobs.

Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned in the spring federal election on using AI to make the public service more efficient. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne has asked his colleagues to identify cuts to program spending of 15 per cent over the next three years.

In August, the federal government signed an agreement with Canadian artificial intelligence company Cohere to identify places where AI could enhance public service operations.

The government says it plans to launch a public registry to keep Canadians in the loop on its growing use of artificial intelligence, and to help it keep track of AI projects already underway. There is no timeline yet for the registry’s launch.

What’s at stake in review of Teck-Anglo deal

Political considerations and critical minerals strategy will be top of mind for Ottawa as it considers whether to approve a planned tie-up between Canada’s Teck Resources Ltd. and U.K.-based Anglo American PLC.

The proposed merger would create a $70 billion critical minerals giant at a time when Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is keenly aware of the sector’s importance, including naming two mining sites among the first five major projects it aims to fast-track.

The parties appear to have kept regulators in mind when hammering out the deal, which promises to keep the new company’s headquarters in Vancouver and yield no net job losses.

However, the government will determine whether this will be enough to help the deal go ahead after review under the Investment Canada Act, which can be used to block deals deemed not in the national interest.

The review also marks the first time the act has been used to scrutinize a merger since it was updated to incorporate a consideration for deals that may undermine Canada’s economic security.

Little resistance at Lethbridge Alberta Next panel

Premier Danielle Smith’s Alberta Next panel faced a mostly supportive and inquisitive crowd at its latest stop Thursday night in Lethbridge as the group continues to take the public’s temperature on the province’s relationship with Ottawa.

While many audience members pushed back on the province’s six proposals with the aim of taking greater control over immigration, policing, taxation and other issues, the crowd joined past town halls by overwhelmingly supporting the ideas in straw polls.

The town hall arrived hours after Smith expressed optimism in the federal government’s new direction under Prime Minister Mark Carney following a face-to-face meeting the day before.

The panel’s town halls are aimed at addressing grievances Smith says are allowing separatist sentiments to fester and the results are to inform which questions would be put to a referendum next year.

Thursday’s event was the seventh of 10 in-person town halls. The back half of the provincewide tour is mostly scheduled to take place in southern Alberta over the coming weeks.

Toronto man falsely accused of killing Charlie Kirk

Michael Mallinson had never met Charlie Kirk, nor had he ever heard the name of the American right-wing commentator who was shot dead in broad daylight at a Utah college event on Wednesday.

They would never have come across each other, but a piece of viral online misinformation has tied Mallinson to Kirk’s story. Now the former banker, 77, is fighting to make the truth understood: he is decidedly not the person who put a bullet in the controversial commentator’s neck.

Mallinson said he and his family are horrified to see his name and likeness falsely connected on a variety of social media platforms to a “heinous crime” he did not commit.

He found out about his weird newfound fame after waking up from a post-shopping trip nap on Wednesday to a call from his daughter. She was begging him to delete his social media accounts.

“She was a bit panicked and she was, you know, kind of shouting at me that I had to do it now, now, and I didn’t quite understand what was happening,” he said.

It seems to have spread from a fake news account that misidentified him as a man whom police arrested then released in the wake of the shooting. Why anyone would make that link is a mystery to Mallinson.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2025.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

In the news today: Canada Post union to give update on negotiations

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