Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government is delivering the final instalment from billions of dollars announced last summer to help provinces and territories through the COVID-19 pandemic. He says the federal funding has been used to bolster the capacity of Canada's health-care systems, secure personal protective equipment for essential workers and protect the most vulnerable. It has also helped support child-care needs during the pandemic and keep municipalities and public transit operating. Trudeau now says $700 million, the final instalment from the Safe Restart Agreement,

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says this is an especially difficult day for a lot of people as we mark three years since the terrible bus crash involving the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team. Trudeau says we remember 16 people who were taken much too soon. A virtual tribute is planned for today to mark the third anniversary of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash. Sixteen people died and 13 were injured when a semi-trailer ran a stop sign and into the path of the junior hockey team's bus near Tisdale, Sask., on April 6, 2018. The service from St. Augustine Catholic Church is to be livestreamed on

A lawyer for Meng Wanzhou says payments between a Huawei subsidiary and an HSBC client that were cleared in American dollars do not give the United States jurisdiction to charge the executive. American authorities are seeking the extradition of the Huawei chief financial officer on fraud charges linked to a 2013 meeting in which they allege she lied to the bank about a subsidiary of her company. The subsidiary, Skycom, was doing business in Iran, which authorities allege put HSBC at risk of violating American sanctions, and they also point to payments that were cleared through the United Stat

Pfizer Canada says it will be asking Health Canada to amend the authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine to extend to children between 12 and 15 years old. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already been approved for people as young as 16. The initial clinical trials didn't include younger adolescents, but a follow-up trial in 2,260 kids 12 to 15 in the U.S. has been running since the fall. The company released preliminary data from that trial Wednesday, saying none of the kids who got the vaccine developed a COVID-19 infection, compared to 18 infections among the kids who were given a placebo. Ex

The governments of Canada and Ontario say they will help fund construction of a new influenza vaccine manufacturing facility in Toronto.Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says the federal government will spend $415 million in the partnership with Sanofi Pasteur Ltd.Champagne says the pandemic has taught all countries that they need to have domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity.Ontario Premier Doug Ford says his government will contribute $55 million to the project.Sanofi will provide more than $455 million as well as create and maintain 1,225 jobs in Canada.The company will als

Canada is staying in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant for another year. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced this afternoon that Canada will keep up to 850 troops in Iraq and the surrounding region until next March. The extension comes only one day before the mission, which began in October 2014, was set to end. It also coincides with growing concerns about Iran's influence in Iraq, with Tehran backing numerous Shia militia groups. Those groups, which have largely displaced ISIL as the main threat in Iraq, have stepped up attacks on Western forces in recent month

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Pfizer-BioNTech has confirmed it will move up delivery of five million vaccine doses to June from later in the summer. The earlier shipment period will boost the number of Pfizer doses received by the end of that month to 18 million doses. Procurement Minister Anita Anand says the accelerated schedule means Canada will receive about 44 million vaccine doses in total by the end of June, more than enough for every Canadian to receive at least one shot. By the end of this week, Canada will have received about 9.5 million vaccine doses from three manufacturers,

The federal government is expecting around 1.5 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from the United States today. The vaccines are expected to arrive by truck and represent the first to come from south of the border. Provincial governments decide on their own how to use a vaccine, but Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada's deputy chief medical officer of health, says all provinces and territories have agreed to suspend the use of the vaccine for those under 55, pending the results of further study. The province's are acting on an advisory committee's concerns about a possible link between the

Federal immunization experts changed their recommendations for the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The National Advisory Committee on Immunization says the vaccine should not be used on people under the age of 55. Health Canada is asking AstraZeneca to do a full analysis of the risks of its vaccine across all age groups and genders, following additional reports of patients in Europe developing blood clots. Dr. Supriya Sharma, the chief medical adviser at Health Canada, says there have been no blood clots reported in Canada to date and still believes the vaccine's benefits outweigh the r