Average hourly wage in Canada now $34.95: StatCan
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping just concluded a three-day visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a warm affair in which the two men praised each other and spoke of a profound friendship. It's a high point in a complicated, centuries-long relationship during which the two countries have been both allies and enemies.
Chinese and Russian states have loomed large in each other's foreign affairs since the 17th century, when two empires created a border with a treaty written in Latin.
Neighbours can be good friends, or bitter rivals. Sharing a border of thousands of miles, Beijing and Moscow have been both.
"China and Russia relations have always been uneasy," said Susan Thornton, a former diplomat and a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School.
The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, following a brutal Japanese occupation during World War II and a bloody civil war between the Nationalist and Communist Parties.
Russia was part of the Soviet Union, a global superpower, while China was poor, devastated by war and unrecognized by most governments. Communist leader Mao Zedong was junior to Josef Stalin, who led the Soviet Union until his death in 1953.
The early People's Republic depended on the Soviet Union for economic aid and expertise. In 1953, the slogan that appeared in Chinese newspapers was "The Soviet Union's today is our tomorrow." The Soviets sent some 11,000 experts in 1954-58 to help China rebuild after its civil war, according to Joseph Torigian, an associate professor at American University's School of International Service.
The two countries also had a formal military alliance, but Moscow decided against giving China the technology for nuclear arms.
But there were points of friction, especially after the death of Stalin.
In 1956, then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev condemned Stalin's "cult of personality" in an address to Communist Party members later known as the "secret speech." Mao, who had modeled himself on the former Soviet leader, took it personally.
When Mao decided to shell two outlying islands of Taiwan held by the Nationalist Party he had defeated in the Chinese civil war, he did not warn Khrushchev. Khrushchev saw it as a betrayal of the alliance, Torigian said. In 1959, the Soviet Union remained neutral during a border conflict between China and India, which led China to feel that it was not getting enough support from its ally.
The relationship soured until the two countries broke off their alliance in 1961 in the Sino-Soviet Split.
They quickly became open rivals. Beijing blasted Moscow for "phony communism" and revisionism, or straying from the Marxist path. Soldiers clashed along their borders in China's northeast and the western region of Xinjiang.
The Sino-Soviet Split left Beijing isolated, but set the stage for outreach to the United States. In 1972, the revolutionary communist state welcomed President Richard Nixon for a visit that paved the way for global recognition of Mao's government and for the U.S. and China to enter into a tacit alignment against Moscow.
The 1990s led to a rapprochement between China and Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The two countries formally settled their border disputes.
In the years since, the world has changed greatly, as have the fortunes of the two countries. China is now the world's second-largest economy, while Russia's economy was stagnating long before its invasion of Ukraine last year. Today, it is China facing the U.S. in a strategic competition fueled by intense nationalism on both sides.
Once again, Moscow and Beijing are finding common ground. Under Xi Jinping, "repairing the damage and cultivating the relationship has gone much faster than it has ever before," Thornton, the former diplomat, said.
Meanwhile, the similarities between the two leaders, as well as their personal relationship, has helped ties grow.
Both Xi and Vladimir Putin see Western attempts to spread democracy as an attempt to de-legitimize themselves, and they believe that authoritarian regimes are better for confronting the challenges of the modern world. Russia supplies energy and China exports manufactured goods to Russia.
And while some analysts and commentators have started saying that China is now the senior partner in the relationship, given the history, it's not necessarily how that's viewed in China.
Russia's hold over China is not only historical, but also cultural. Students read translated Russian stories and poems in their literature classes, while many educated Chinese of an older generation learned Russian instead of English.
"Many Chinese people, including elites, have not yet realized the historic reversal of China's comprehensive national strength compared to Russia," wrote Feng Yujun, a prominent Russia scholar at Shanghai's Fudan University, in an article published last month that was shared widely. Feng declined to be interviewed.
"Although China's national strength is now ten times that of Russia, the biggest challenge is that many Chinese people are still subservient to Russia ideologically," he wrote.
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
A 4.2-magnitude earthquake was recorded west of Vancouver Island early Friday morning.
Andy Kim's 'Rock Me Gently' is marking a major milestone, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.
Oprah Winfrey said on Thursday evening that she has long played a role in promoting unhealthy and unrealistic diets.
A southwestern Ontario woman has received an $8,400 bill from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., after she refused to put her mother in a nursing home she hated -- and she says she has no intention of paying it.
Toronto police say a man who allegedly attempted to access Drake’s Bridle Path property was taken to hospital on Thursday after an altercation with security guards.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.