Federal Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen is holding meetings with his provincial counterparts, including officials from BC. The ministers are searching for ways to make housing more affordable. The gathering comes one day before the House of Commons finance committee hears from the head of the federal housing agency and the superintendent of financial institutions, the regulator of Canadian banks. Statistics Canada says homeowner replacement costs across the country jumped nearly 14 per cent last month compared with 2020, and the Canadian Real Estate Association says the average home price in BC

The mayor of Brampton, Ont., says three children have died after a house fire in the city this morning. Patrick Brown says they were nine, 12 and 15 years old. He says firefighters faced extremely challenging conditions as they tried to save the children. Brown says one firefighter was injured in the process. Peel Regional Police say emergency crews responded to the house fire after 9 a.m. this morning. They say the home was fully engulfed in flames. It's not clear yet what caused the fire.

Mounties in Manitoba say they have found the bodies of four people, including an infant and a teen, near the United States border. They say the four died from exposure during a blizzard and freezing temperatures. RCMP say American authorities first notified them about a group that had crossed into the U.S. from near Emerson, Man., and they had items with them for an infant but no baby. Mounties went searching yesterday and located the body of a man, woman and infant. They also found a teen's body nearby. RCMP are telling people not to attempt to cross the border in either direction because it

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirms that new Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly has met with leaders in Ukraine to assure them Canada stands with its international allies in defending the country. Trudeau calls Russian aggression in the region ``absolutely unacceptable.'' He says he's spoken to cabinet ministers and the chief of the defence staff about Canada's strategy in Ukraine. Joly says Canada has not decided whether it will help arm Ukraine's forces with military hardware after NATO ally Britain said it would supply anti-tank weapons.

The fifth wave of the pandemic appears to be peaking in hard-hit provinces like Ontario and Quebec, but Saskatchewan is bracing for a wave of COVID-19 hospitalizations and workers off the job until the middle of next month. Alberta's hospitalization rates are rising to levels not seen since mid-October and P-E-I is bringing in restrictions on gathering limits and shutting down gyms and restaurant dining rooms. B-C provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry is going to let gyms and other fitness facilities re-open tomorrow -- a move she calls a cautious step in lifting COVID-19 restrictions.

Inflation hit 4.8 per cent in December. The last time it was that high was December, 1991 when the number-one hits on the radio included Michael Bolton's ``When a Man Loves a Woman'' and Michael Jackson's ``Black or White.'' The main drivers for price growth were higher year-over-year prices for food, passenger vehicles and housing. Prices at the gas pumps shot up 33.3 per cent from December 2020, but that was lower than November's 43.6 per cent annual increase.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada says this year's floods in B-C helped make 2021 Canada's sixth-highest year in insured losses since 1983. The bureau says insured damage from last year's extreme weather events totalled more than two-billion dollars. B-C floods were the biggest ticket event at 515-million dollars, followed closely by Calgary's 500-million-dollar hailstorm in July. 2016 remains the most expensive year on record at five-point-four billion in insured damage, due in large part to the Fort McMurray wildfires.

Grocery stores are struggling with rising labour and product shortages that experts warn could threaten Canada's food security. Gary Sands, senior vice-president of public policy with the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, says employee absenteeism due to COVID-19 protocols has hit about 30 per cent across Canada, and rising. Without access to rapid testing in many provinces, he says workers are repeatedly forced to isolate for a week or more after an exposure to COVID-19. Sands says if the situation worsens, some grocery stores won't be able to open, threatening food security in rur

New figures show the Canadian Armed Forces are struggling with a growing shortage of personnel even as the military faces more and more demands at home and abroad. While the military is supposed to have just over 100,000 troops at full strength, new Defence Department figures show it was short about 12,000 regular force troops and reservists at the end of November. The shortfall is worse than at the end of 2020, when military was short about 7,000 troops as the onset of the pandemic forced recruiting centres and training schools to close for months. The latest figures also show another 10,000