Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
The federal government is planning to match donations individuals make to the Canadian Red Cross to help bring humanitarian relief to Ukraine, as invading Russian forces close in on the country's capital.
The campaign, which is slated to begin Friday and run until March 18, would see the government match donations by Canadians dollar for dollar to a maximum of $10 million, said a senior government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters not yet public.
International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan spoke Thursday with his American counterpart, Samantha Power, to discuss co-operation for battered Ukrainians, said a spokeswoman for the United States Agency for International Development on Friday.
Power told Sajjan that the U.S. is deploying its Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART, to the region, said spokeswoman Rebecca Chalif.
Power also told Sajjan that USAID has shifted its development programming "to ramp up responses to cyber attacks, disinformation, threats to the energy sector, essential health needs and the continued functioning of local and national government entities," Chalif said in a statement.
Sajjan was to join Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly and other cabinet ministers for a briefing midday Friday but it was postponed as the fast-moving situation in Ukraine developed.
Russian forces are advancing on the capital of Kyiv, after invading the country on Thursday in a three-pronged attack that included ground forces, aerial bombardment and a maritime assault from the Sea of Azov.
The head of Save the Children Canada also urged Canadians to donate funds as part a US$19-million global appeal to help the humanitarian efforts on the ground as the fighting continued across Ukraine.
Danny Glenwright, the organization's president, said at least three children have been killed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and is calling on both sides to cease their fighting.
"We can certainly be supporting people in Ukraine right now. We should not look away from what we're seeing," Glenwright said in an interview.
"We know that any war is a war against children."
Glenwright said his organization has verified the deaths of two children in shelling in eastern Ukraine, while a 17-year-old boy was killed in an attack on a village in the country's southern region. But he added the death toll of children is likely higher.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said its workers have verified 25 civilian deaths and 102 people injured from mostly shelling and airstrikes.
Save the Children also said two teachers were reported killed when a missile struck a school in eastern Ukraine.
Canada joined its allies on Thursday in responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- the most intense ground fighting in Europe since the Second World War -- with a barrage of new sanctions targeting the Russian economy and its leaders that they hoped would avert an all-out war.
But there were calls for deeper sanctions, including to ban Russia from the international banking system known as SWIFT, a digital payment and messaging network that connects thousands of banks worldwide.
Independent Canadian Sen. Ratna Omidvar said the "self-interest" of some European countries was preventing any co-ordinated action on SWIFT because some are too economically dependent on Russia, including for energy.
Omidvar has introduced a bill in the Senate that calls for not only the freezing of assets, which is the common practice for international sanctions regimes, but for them to be seized and repurposed to help support the victims of violent conflict and rights violations.
With tens of thousands, if not more, refugees expected to flee Ukraine to Europe, she said, "those people will need shelter, they will need medicine, they will need food. And where's the money for this going to come from? We know that the UN is already overstressed."
The legislation proposed by Omidvar would be similar to the executive powers of the U.S. president to seize and repurpose the funds of dictators and their supporters. But unlike the U.S. executive authority that gives that power to the president, Omidvar said her legislation would leave that decision in the hands of Superior Court judges.
"The Ukrainian context speaks to the need for not just sanctions, but sanctions with sharper teeth and a sharper bite," she said.
"One, it will provide relief to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. And two, it will hurt the oligarchs, because it will mean a permanent confiscation of their assets as opposed to simply freezing them and holding them in account," she said. "These oligarchs have so much money that they can afford to wait it out."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 25, 2022.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
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.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Auston Matthews will miss the Maple Leafs' must-win Game 6 against the Boston Bruins.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
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.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.