The union that represents the RCMP's emergency dispatchers and 911 operators is calling for the force to come up with a recruitment plan to fix worsening staff shortages.CUPE Local 104 president Kathleen Hippern says hundreds of people are off on long-term sick leave, but the force has not hired replacements for many of them.Hippern says that few centres are fully staffed, specifying that in Nova Scotia, staffing is only at about 50 per cent.She says morale is "abysmal" and she believes the lack of staff is affecting public safety by leaving callers sometimes waiting for minutes before someone

Quebec's electric utility says it still can't say with certainty when power will return to all the homes and businesses affected by last week's ice storm.About 16,000 customers are still off the grid, and Hydro-Québec says the majority of them are in the Montreal area.Utility spokesman Francis Labbé says work is particularly complicated in areas where mature trees have damaged power lines and need to be removed before crews can conduct repairs.Hydro-Québec says it has restored power to 99 per cent of the 1.1 million customers who lost electricity after freezing rain sent trees crashing onto

The CEO and most members of the board of directions for the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation say they are stepping down because of the political climate that has recently surrounded their work.In a statement posted on its website, the foundation says the politicization of a donation it received seven years ago has put a great deal of pressure on its management, volunteer board of directors and staff.The resignations come after the Globe and Mail newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources, that Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin and another Chinese businessman, Niu Gensheng, donated $200,000 to th

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford, will appear before a parliamentary committee on Friday.The Prime Minister's Office says Telford will testify at the procedure and House affairs committee on the issue of foreign interference in Canadian elections.The office says an exact time has not been scheduled.Telford agreed to meet with the committee last month, but not before the Liberals launched a filibuster that spanned several meetings in an attempt to keep her from appearing.At the time, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh had said his party would back a Conservative motion to cal

Montreal police say a 32-year-old man is facing a mischief charge after allegedly smashing his way into a downtown mosque early Sunday morning.Const. Véronique Dubuc says investigators don't believe the incident was a hate crime, adding that the suspect will appear in court at a later date.A national Muslim group posted surveillance videos to social media showing someone using a rock to break into the mosque and to smash into the prayer room.The video by the Canadian Muslim Forum also shows an altercation involving the perpetrator and a handful of worshippers at the Al-Omah Al-Islamiah mosque

The federal government says today it is bringing home four Canadian women and 10 children from prison camps in northeastern Syria.The Canadians are among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.The long-anticipated flight to Canada had been expected to bring more people home.Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon reached an agreement with the federal government in January to repatriate six Canadian women and 13 children who had been part of a court action.Greenspon says today that two mothers

Akwesasne Mohawk police say are suspending the organized search of local waterways for a man linked to the eight migrants whose bodies were pulled from the St. Lawrence River last week.Police say they believe they have exhausted search efforts on the water for 30-year-old Casey Oakes and are set to resume normal patrol operations, unless they receive "actionable intelligence".Oakes was last seen on the night of March 29 operating a boat found next to the bodies of two migrant families, one from Romania and the other from India.Police say the families were trying to cross into the United States

The search is expected to continue today after six bodies (including a child under age of three) were discovered Thursday in the St. Lawrence River near Akwesasne, Quebec.The Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service says the first body was located around 5:00 p.m. in a marsh area, which searched later Thursday evening by a police marine unit with the help of the Canadian Coast Guard and the Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department.Air support units with the Quebec provincial police and Ontario Provincial Police are expected to assist with further investigation of the area.Post-mortem and toxicolo

Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole says he will not seek re-election and plans to resign his seat this spring.The Ontario MP led the Conservatives and served as official Opposition leader from August 2020 until February 2022, when a majority of his caucus voted to remove him from the post.That followed months of tensions over O'Toole's management of caucus and attempts to moderate the party's image.Those efforts led to concerns that he flip-flopped on key policy positions, including on carbon pricing and gun control.O'Toole has kept a low profile on Parliament Hill since his ousting and