Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
The British government has refused an order to hand over a sheaf of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson's personal messages to the country's COVID-19 pandemic inquiry. It said Thursday it would try to challenge the order in court, setting up an extraordinary legal battle with an inquiry that Johnson himself set up.
The notebooks, diaries and WhatsApp messages between Johnson and other officials form key evidence that the head of the probe, retired judge Heather Hallett, wants to see. The government has handed over incomplete versions, saying it cut personal and private information that is "unambiguously irrelevant" to the investigation.
Hallett -- who has the power to summon evidence and question witnesses under oath -- wants to judge for herself, and set a deadline of 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) Thursday for the government to hand over the unredacted documents, covering a two-year period from early 2020.
Soon after the deadline passed, the government said it would seek to challenge the order in court.
"The Cabinet Office has today sought leave to bring a judicial review" of the decision, it said. "We do so with regret and with an assurance that we will continue to cooperate fully with the inquiry."
Just before the deadline expired, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his government would "comply, of course, with the law and cooperate with the inquiry."
"We are confident in our position but are carefully considering next steps," he said.
WhatsApp is a favored way for British politicians, officials and journalists to converse. The tone is often candid or casual, and potentially embarrassing. The government is worried about the precedent that disclosing Johnson's full, unredacted conversations might set.
Hallett, however, said "the entire contents of the specified documents are of potential relevance to the lines of investigation being pursued by the inquiry."
The issue has caused tension between Johnson and Sunak's administration, which claimed this week that it did not have the material Hallett wanted. Both are Conservatives, but Sunak has tried to distance himself from the chaos that engulfed the government during Johnson's scandal-plagued three-year term in office.
On Wednesday, Johnson's office said the former prime minister had given the government all the material and urged authorities to hand it to the inquiry.
The U.K. has recorded more than 200,000 deaths among people testing positive for COVID-19, one of the highest tolls in Europe, and the decisions of Johnson's government have been endlessly debated. Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold an inquiry after pressure from bereaved families.
Hallett's inquiry is due to investigate the U.K.'s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded and whether the "level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better."
Public hearings are scheduled to start June 13, and to last until 2026. U.K. public inquiries are often thorough, but rarely quick. An inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath began in 2009 and issued its 2.6-million word report in 2016.
Johnson is among the senior officials due to give evidence.
The inquiry has already landed Johnson in hot water. He was one of dozens of people fined last year for breaking his own government's pandemic lockdown rules in the so-called partygate scandal. Earlier this month, government-appointed lawyers helping Johnson prepare his submissions and testimony came across evidence of more potential breaches of COVID-19 restrictions. Civil servants reported the information to police, who say they are assessing the new evidence. Johnson denies wrongdoing.
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
An Ontario man found out that a line of credit he thought was insured actually isn't after his wife of 50 years died.
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat off the coast of Indonesia. Until now, little was known about why the boat capsized.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
When Speaker Greg Fergus tossed out Pierre Poilievre from the House last week, "those of us who have experience as parliamentarians simply couldn't believe our eyes," writes former NDP leader Tom Mulcair in his column for CTVNews.ca
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.