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 U.S. Supreme Court agreed Thursday to decide whether the Biden administration can broadly cancel student loans, keeping the program blocked for now but signalling a final answer by early summer.
That's about two months before the newly extended pause on loan repayments is set to expire.
The administration had wanted a court order that would have allowed the program to take effect even as court challenges proceed. The justices didn't do that, but agreed to the administration's fallback, setting arguments for late February or early March over whether the program is legal.
U.S. President Joe Biden's plan promises US$10,000 in federal student debt forgiveness to those with incomes of less than $125,000, or households earning less than $250,000. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, are eligible for an additional $10,000 in relief.
The Congressional Budget Office has said the program will cost about $400 billion over the next three decades.
More than 26 million people already applied for the relief, with 16 million approved, but the Education Department stopped processing applications last month after a federal judge in Texas struck down the plan.
The administration said it was pleased the nation's highest court had intervened, and Biden said on Twitter that the White House will keep fighting for the loan plan.
"Republican officials are throwing up roadblocks in order to prevent middle-class families from getting the student debt relief they need," he said in a tweet.
The Texas case is one of two in which federal judges have forbidden the administration from implementing the loan cancellations.
In a separate lawsuit filed by six states, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis also put the plan on hold, and that case is before the Supreme Court.
The moratorium had been slated to expire Jan. 1, a date that Biden set before his debt cancellation plan stalled in the face of legal challenges from conservative opponents.
The new expiration date is 60 days after the legal issue has been settled, but no later than the end of August.
Conservative attorneys, Republican lawmakers and business-oriented groups have asserted that Biden overstepped his authority in taking such sweeping action without the assent of Congress. They called it an unfair government giveaway for relatively affluent people at the expense of taxpayers who didn't pursue higher education.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, said in a statement following the high court order that the Biden plan "would saddle Americans who didn't take out loans or already paid theirs off with even more economic woes." Missouri is one of the six states that sued to block the plan, along with Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina.
The administration has argued that the loan cancellations are legal under a 2003 law aimed at providing help to members of the military. The program is a response to "a devastating pandemic with student loan relief designed to protect vulnerable borrowers from delinquency and default," the Justice Department said in court papers.
The law, the HEROES Act, allows the secretary of education to "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs ... as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency."
In putting the program on hold, the 8th Circuit panel said there was little harm to borrowers because repayments have been suspended. Allowing the cancellations to proceed before a definitive court ruling would have had än "irreversible impact," the appeals court said.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, issued a more sweeping ruling in the Texas case, finding that such a costly program required clear congressional authorization.
The justices also will confront an important procedural question, whether anyone who has sued faces any legal or financial harm.
The 8th Circuit judges, two Trump appointees and one judge selected by former President George W. Bush, determined there might be financial costs to the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, and said that was enough.
In the Texas case, Pittman wrote that plaintiffs Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor could file their lawsuit, though neither faces financial harm. Brown is ineligible for debt relief because her loans are commercially held, and Taylor is eligible for just $10,000 and not the full $20,000 because he didn't receive a Pell grant.
But Pittman said it was enough that the government did not take public comments on the program, meaning neither person had a chance to provide input on a program they would be at least partially excluded from.
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.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
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.