BC's 45,000 public school teachers have overwhelmingly accepted a new, three-year contract with the provincial government. It includes a six per cent pay increase over the life of the deal, as well as wording setting out a mediation process to smooth future negotiations. The BC Teachers Federation says its members voted 98 per cent in favour. The agreement was reached after more than a year of sometimes tense bargaining between the federation and the BC Public School Employers Association, representing the province.

Justice Minister David Lametti say no one should try to surrender their assault-style guns while physical distancing is in effect to fight COVID-19. Lametti spoke after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the federal government is banning a range of assault-style guns, with an order that takes effect immediately. Trudeau also announced a two-year amnesty period for current owners of those guns and said there will be a compensation program that will require a bill passed in Parliament.

Dr. Theresa Tam says lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 are just the tip of the iceberg of the actual spread of the illness. She says the total numbers of people who have contracted the novel coronavirus will be clearer, and much larger, once good blood tests for antibodies are available and widespread. The key to containing the pandemic is still keeping the number of cases low enough that severely ill patients don't overwhelm the health system, Tam says. She says Canada is succeeding at that so far and that's more important for now than knowing exactly how many COVID-19 cases are out there.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is calling on landlords to show compassion to renters facing difficulty meeting their May 1 deadline because of COVID-19 difficulties. She says if a tenant has lost income, now is a good time for a landlord to support their neighbours and their country in a time of crisis. Freeland says it is also a time for banks to be thoughtful about the mortgage payments that landlords must pay.

Ontario is reporting 421 new COVID-19 cases today, and 39 more deaths. The provincial total rose to 16,608 cases, an increase of 2.6 per cent from yesterday. That total includes 1,121 deaths and 10,825 resolved cases. Figures on COVID-19's impact in long-term care homes, which come from a separate database than the provincial numbers, show 26 more residents died in the past day.

Quebec is reporting 163 new deaths because of COVID-19, bringing the total number of deaths in the province to 2,020. The province has 28,648 confirmed cases of the virus in the province, but Quebec's public health director says the province will now try to put those fatality numbers in chronological order to determine where they're at with flattening the COVID-19 curve. Dr. Horacio Arruda noted that of the 163 deaths reported today, only 22 date from the past 24 hours, so the province needs to place the deaths according to the date they actually occurred. Arruda says the province will do a r

Finance Minister Carole James says thousands of people applied for British Columbia's $1,000 tax-free emergency benefit in the first minutes of the program going online today.She says more than 16,000 people registered to receive the one-time B.C. Emergency Benefit for Workers in the first 45 minutes. James says the program is part of the province's $5 billion plan to help people, businesses and organizations affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.It is also available to people in B.C. who are receiving the federal Canada Emergency Response Benefit of $2,000 a month.To get the B.C. benefit, people

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government is banning a range of assault-style guns, with an order that takes effect immediately.He says the order has a two-year amnesty period for current owners, and there will be a compensation program.In an announcement this morning, he cites numerous mass shootings, from Ecole Polytechnique in 1989 to the killings in Nova Scotia last week, as the reasons for the move.Stricter controls on firearms were a promise in the Liberals' election campaign platform last fall.Trudeau has said the government was on the verge of bringing in stricter gun-

Tiff Macklem, a former second in command at the Bank of Canada, is coming back to the central bank to take over the top job. Macklem, the dean of the business school at the University of Toronto, will take over the reins of the central bank as governor in early June when Stephen Poloz's seven-year term ends. Finance Minister Bill Morneau says Macklem brings a deep knowledge of and expertise in financial markets and will serve the central bank well as it navigates the an economic crisis like no other. The bank controls the country's money supply, trying to support economic growth and stability