A new Punjabi bilingual program is set to start at the Seven Oaks School Division in Winnipeg next school year. Students will receive Punjabi instruction in core subjects for about half of the day.There will also be some focus on Indian culture and history.Amber Trails Community School will be offering the program to students in kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2.This is the fourth non-French bilingual program offered in the school division, which currently runs similar programs in Ukrainian, Ojibway and Tagalog.

The Alberta government says $1 million in funding is to be used to train rural health-care providers to better support victims of sexual assault.The money, announced in October, helped Grande Prairie's Northwestern Polytechnic develop an online course for specialized training. The course, called Rural Sexual Assault Care-Expanded, teaches how to provide comprehensive, trauma-informed care to survivors of recent sex assaults.It focuses on assessment, forensic evidence collection and court testimony.The government says too often sex assault survivors in rural Alberta must drive long distances to

Bus service across most of B.C.'s Fraser Valley, from Abbotsford to Hope, has been halted by a strike.More than 200 members of CUPE Local 561 walked off the job, affecting all bus service in Abbotsford, Mission, Agassiz-Harrison, Chilliwack and Hope, although essential HandiDart trips can still be booked. The union says its members, who work for a company that contracts service to BC Transit, have no pension and make 32 per cent less than bus drivers and other staff elsewhere in Metro Vancouver's transit system.Talks between the two sides collapsed last week and the union says BC Transit and i

Updating the news regarding arrest of Bhai Amritpal Singh, Punjab Police has twitted confirming that Bhai Amritpal Singh has not been arrested yet. He is a fugitive. 78 members of Waris Punjab De have been arrested after mega crackdown. Nine weapons including 8 rifles, one revolver recovered during operation. https://twitter.com/PunjabPoli... Bhai Amritpal Singh, the Head of the Waris Punjab De outfit and a pro-Khalistani leader, was arrested. Nine of his accomplices have also been arrested from different places. His arrest has been made in connection with three separate cases registered in c

The federal government says Mike Duheme will be the interim commissioner of the RCMP, until a replacement is found for Brenda Lucki.Lucki, who was appointed commissioner in April 2018, is retiring as of today.Her tenure as the top Mountie has been marked by internal and external challenges, including allegations of systemic racism within the force, growing calls to defund the police, and the devastating mass shooting in Nova Scotia in 2020.Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says Duheme, who currently oversees federal policing for the Mounties, will take over the job on Saturday.Duheme was

A memorial mass will be held this evening in the Quebec town where two people were killed and nine injured when a pickup truck crashed into pedestrians.Two men, Gérald Charest and Jean Lafrenière, died after being struck on Monday afternoon.Police have said those injured in the crash range in age from less than a year old to 77, and on Thursday a Quebec City hospital said two injured adults remained in critical condition.The mass will be held at Saint-Benoît-Joseph-Labre church in Amqui.A candlelight vigil was held in front of the church Thursday evening in the town about 350 kilometres nor

Police say they have arrested a man in Nanaimo, B.C., who was allegedly threatening people with a toy bow and arrow that had a syringe with a needle attached to the arrow's tip.Mounties say they were called to the parking lot of the Port Place Mall in the Vancouver Island city on Monday after the man was reportedly threatening people with a stick and the toy bow and arrow.Police say the arrow "appeared to have" a hypodermic needle attached to the end, and the man was taken into custody after a brief foot chase and struggle with officers.RCMP say the 32-year-old man now faces charges of assault

A pigeon wearing a tiny empty backpack has been captured inside a federal prison in British Columbia, in what a union official says was likely another plan by inmates to smuggle drugs.The discovery at the Matsqui prison in the Fraser Valley comes just a few months after another pigeon was captured carrying a bird-size backpack full of crystal methamphetamine at the Pacific Institution right next door.John Randle, the Pacific regional president at the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, says the latest pigeon's pack was made of blue jeans and bedsheets, materials easily available to inmate

RCMP in British Columbia say they've disrupted major organized crime groups that are flooding the streets with toxic drugs in two separate investigations involving transnational drug production and distribution operations.Police in Surrey, B.C., announced the seizure of a massive cache of precursor chemicals used to make the powerful opioid fentanyl and MDMA, also known as ecstasy.Police say they executed several search warrants in late February across Metro Vancouver, leading to the arrests of a man and woman and the seizure of the chemicals in addition to luxury cars, electronics, watches an