Grandparents killed in wrong-way crash on Hwy. 401 identified
A 60-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman killed in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 earlier this week have been identified by the Consulate General of India in Toronto.
U.S. President Joe Biden's latest leap into the Senate's up-and-down efforts to clinch a bipartisan US$1 trillion infrastructure deal comes with even more at stake than his coveted plans for boosting road, rail and other public works projects.
The outcome of the infrastructure bargaining, which for weeks has encountered one snag after another, will impact what could be the crown jewel of his legacy. That would be his hopes for a subsequent $3.5 trillion federal infusion for families' education and health care costs, a Medicare expansion and efforts to curb climate change.
Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will need support from every Democratic moderate and progressive to push the $3.5 trillion bill through the 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote. If the infrastructure talks implode, it may be harder for moderates -- who rank its projects as their top priority -- to back the follow-up $3.5 trillion plan, which is already making them wince because of its price tag and likely tax boosts on the wealthy and corporations.
"I would say that if the bipartisan infrastructure bill falls apart, everything falls apart," West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, one of his chamber's most conservative Democrats, warned reporters this week.
That could well prove an overstatement, since moderates like him will face enormous pressure from Biden, Schumer and others to back the $3.5 trillion package, whatever the bipartisan plan's fate. But it illustrates a balancing act between centrists and progressives that top Democrats must confront.
"If infrastructure collapses, which I hope it does not, you'd have the difficulty of holding some of the Democrats" to back the $3.5 trillion bill, No. 2 House leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Tuesday in a brief interview. Party leaders will be able to lose no more than three Democrats to prevail in the 435-member House.
Biden met at the White House on Tuesday with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a leader of moderate Democrats who've been laboring to strike an infrastructure deal with GOP senators. The president also used several tweets to prod lawmakers, including one saying, "There are no Democratic roads or Republican bridges -- infrastructure impacts us all and I believe we've got to come together to find solutions."
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden and Sinema "are very much aligned on the path forward" and expressed optimism, but also said the president was "not setting new deadlines" for a deal. Several target dates for reaching an agreement have come and gone, though Schumer wants a Senate vote on a package before sending lawmakers home for an August recess.
Sinema is a centrist who's alienated some Democrats who consider her unpredictable.
Illustrating that, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., told House Democrats privately Tuesday that the infrastructure accord senators are trying to complete is "crap," according to two people who attended the session and described it on condition of anonymity. He also said the measure was being crafted by "three Republicans," pointedly naming Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sinema, they said.
Moderate Democrats have long made an infrastructure deal their top priority. The bipartisanship such an accord would display plus the meat-and-potatoes spending it would bring back home have made that their goal over the separate $3.5 trillion measure for family and environmental programs.
If the infrastructure talks fail, it would deprive moderates of a victory that if reached might leave them more open to making concessions on the $3.5 trillion measure. A collapse could also trigger fresh internal Democratic fighting over how much of the infrastructure spending would be transferred to the huge domestic spending plan, and how that would affect its overall price tag.
Even Republicans are divided over the infrastructure measure and what a failure of the bipartisan talks would mean as both parties eye 2022 elections in which House and Senate control are fully in play.
Some Republicans worry that approval of a bipartisan infrastructure plan would help Democrats pass their $3.5 trillion measure by making moderate Democrats more prone to cooperate with their colleagues on that subsequent, costlier legislation.
They also say supporting the infrastructure measure would let Democrats rope the GOP into sharing the blame if inflation or other economic problems take hold amid massive federal spending programs.
But others say that since Republicans won't be able to stop Democrats from passing their $3.5 trillion bill, the GOP might as well back an infrastructure agreement. That would let Republicans haul a share of its $1 trillion in popular projects back to their home states.
Democrats plan to use special budget rules that would prevent Republicans from using a filibuster -- a delay that takes 60 Senate votes to halt -- to derail the $3.5 trillion measure.
These Republicans also say passage of the infrastructure measure would make it harder for Manchin and Sinema -- and moderate Democrats facing reelection in swing states, like New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan and Arizona's Mark Kelly -- to vote for an even larger $3.5 trillion plan.
"I think it puts their members more on the defensive and having to defend very, in my view, indefensible spending and taxing," said No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Thune of South Dakota.
A 60-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman killed in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 earlier this week have been identified by the Consulate General of India in Toronto.
Three people have been arrested and charged in the killing of B.C. Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar – as authorities continue investigating potential connections to the Indian government.
The Vancouver Canucks are moving on to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
A Quebec man who pleaded guilty to threatening Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier François Legault has been sentenced to 20 months in jail.
RCMP say human remains found in a rural area in central Saskatchewan may have been there for a decade or more.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
As Wegovy becomes available to Canadians starting Monday, a medical expert is cautioning patients wanting to use the drug to lose weight that no medication is a ''magic bullet,' and the new medication is meant particularly for people who meet certain criteria related to obesity and weight.
Drew Carey took over as host of 'The Price Is Right' and hopes he’s there for life. 'I'm not going anywhere,' he told 'Entertainment Tonight' of the job he took over from longtime host Bob Barker in 2007.
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 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.
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.