OTTAWA – Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said “everything is on the table” when it comes to her government’s response to layoffs at Stelco but stopped short of announcing any legal action against the steelmaker.

“We expect Stelco to follow the undertakings that they’ve committed to…the Government of Canada,” Joly told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.

“And right now, a business decision or even a change in market conditions cannot be used to not follow the commitment,” she added.

Joly was referring to the commitments made by American-based Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. when it acquired Stelco in 2024.

Joly’s predecessor approved the purchase, following a review under the Investment Canada Act (ICA), which included a commitment to maintain the same amount of unionized employees for a period of five years.

The union representing steelworkers at the Stelco plant in Hamilton has confirmed layoffs are now underway. Layoffs are also expected to take place at Stelco’s Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, Ont. Stelco has cited U.S. tariffs as the main reason for the “temporary” job cuts.

Last week, the industry minister threatened the “full force of the law” if Cleveland-Cliffs failed to comply with its undertakings that it agreed to when it purchased the steelmaker.

On Wednesday, Joly said she is “always open to sit down with a company and find a solution, but we’re looking at everything that is possible to keep jobs in Canada.”

On Oct. 5, Joly sent a letter to Stelco’s president, and a legal team is reviewing the response from the company, which was received on Friday.

Joly said she has been in contact with the unions and called the layoffs “unacceptable.”

On Tuesday, NDP Leader Avi Lewis and Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles called for Stelco to be nationalized.

The Conservative opposition has urged Joly to sue Stelco over the layoffs and noted the minister should have already taken action.

“The hundreds of workers being laid off don’t have 10 months to wait,” said Conservative MP Ned Kuruc, who represents the riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, in a statement Wednesday.

“Their mortgage payment is at the end of the month, their grocery trip is this weekend, and Christmas planning is happening right now,” he added.

Joly cited Section 40 of the ICA which could lead to a few possible outcomes from a court process, including financial penalties towards the company, forcing them to abide by the commitment, and forced divestiture.

On Sunday, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves disputed the government’s claims and told CBC News he was prepared to fight Canada in court.

Notably, this is not the first time Stelco plants have idled due to bad market conditions. U.S. Steel, which acquired Stelco in 2007, began layoffs at the company following the 2008 financial crisis.

The federal government filed a lawsuit against U.S. Steel in 2009 for failing to meet their job commitments when they made the Stelco purchase. The lawsuit resulted in an out-of-court settlement in 2011, with commitments to keep production going by U.S. Steel.

However, U.S. Steel filed for creditor protection and severed ties with its Canadian operations, before those pledges could be followed through on.

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One of the admitted masterminds behind Canada’s largest gold heist who has been ordered to testify in court against a co-accused — and against his will — said his memory is fried because of PTSD from being kidnapped, poor treatment in prison and a lack of sleep.

Arsalan Chaudhary, who previously pleaded guilty for his role orchestrating the Toronto airport gold heist, was subpoenaed by Crown prosecutors to be the star witness at the trial of Parmpal Sidhu, a former Air Canada employee in the cargo warehouse from where the crate of gold and cash, worth more than $22 million, was stolen in 2023 shortly after it arrived on a flight from Switzerland.

On Tuesday, he told a dramatic story of being one of two key organizers of the successful plot to steal the loot and then of losing his 30 per cent share to kidnappers in Pakistan, where he fled after the heist. The kidnappers, he said, were members of the Pakistani police, who grabbed him and tortured him until he revealed where the gold was hidden. His captors used contacts in Canada to secure the gold before releasing him.

He said the ordeal left him psychologically scarred and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

By midday Tuesday, the first day of Chaudhary’s testimony, Crown prosecutor Jelena Vlacic was already appearing increasingly frustrated by Chaudhary’s answers.

He said he could not recall important names, dates and places.

He said he did not know whether a phone that police seized from his apartment where he lived alone was his, nor could be recall his phone number, or if messages police extracted from the phone were from him, to him, or anything to do with him. She led him through a 34-page print out of text messages, and chats using the encrypted messaging apps Signal and WhatsApp, none of which he said were familiar to him.

Vlacic asked him about a WhatsApp group chat extracted from the phone called “Let’s Roll” from the time of the gold heist.

“Does that group chat name mean anything to you?”

“No, no.”

“Do any of those participant names mean anything to you?”

“No, ma’am.”

He was also asked about two debt lists seized by police that appear to be breakdowns of how the heist profits were divided. He said the lists were make-believe, one just to satisfy his kidnappers in Pakistan.

“It was just a bunch of names that I put on, whatever. It didn’t mean anything,” he said.

Vlacic asked about the name “Hulk” appearing both as a contact name on the phone, in the group chat, and on the debt list.

“Who is Hulk?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said. “I can’t recall this chat, ma’ am.”

What he did recall about the people who had been charged for the gold heist by Peel Regional Police, he told court, is that most of them didn’t know anything about the plan to steal gold.

Vlacic said she planned to ask for permission to cross-examine the witness, a court process that would allow her to challenge her own witness’s testimony.

Judge Gordon Cudjoe said they weren’t at that stage yet and told Vlacic to try again.

All of that preceded Wednesday’s hearing. The day started with little promise of revelations.

Just a few minutes into questioning by Vlacic, Chaudhary interrupted.

“Last night I couldn’t sleep well because I had PTSD from what I’ve gone through,” he said. “My memory is very vague and I have locked out a lot of stuff from my memory.

“If you’d been through that trauma that I’ve been through and been shocked and had bruises, you would probably understand where I’m coming from… Even talking about all of this, you can probably hear from my voice right now. Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I had terrors, night terrors. I couldn’t eat.

“So that’s why I’m not able to help you, but I would like to.”

After a break, Vlacic tried again, but Chaudhary seemed even further from answering.

He said he had been moved from his federal prison of Collins Bay, near Kingston, Ont., to a provincial facility, Maplehurst Correctional Complex, in Milton, Ont., to be closer to court for his testimony. He said he has been at Maplehurst for nearly three weeks and is not getting his medication.

“It has been messing with my memory, especially last night, so I’m not in a very good state of mind to help you remember stuff.

“I’ve been in Maplehurst, living with three people in a cell by a toilet, and I’ve been getting no medical attention. I’ve asked for it. So I’m not in the right state of mind to remember stuff you’re asking me.”

He was asked what would help him settle his state of mind.

“I’m not a doctor, ma’am. I don’t know,” he said. But he did have some ideas: a transfer back to Collins Bay where he could take his meds, and where all of his belongings are, and perhaps allow him to testify by video link instead of in person.

Court took another break.

Afterwards, the judge issued an order for Chaudhary to be returned to Collins Bay, where he could take his medication and get better sleep and then be brought directly to court on Monday to continue his testimony.

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Celebrated Canadian folk singer Joni Mitchell has officially become an American citizen after six decades living in the U.S.

The soon-to-be 83-year-old shared the news on her social media channels Tuesday, posting a photo of herself standing in front of an American flag — while holding another smaller one, with a third visible on her blouse — following her naturalization ceremony this week.

“A journey that began 62 years ago,” she captioned the posts.

A journey that began 62 years ago. pic.twitter.com/y1eGhP3kBo

— Joni Mitchell (@jonimitchell) October 13, 2026

She also shared a brief video clip of her name being announced and applause as she stands for her mandatory oath of allegiance.

National Post has contacted Mitchell’s representatives for comment on why she’s obtained citizenship.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer-songwriter of 19 studio albums has previously expressed interest in voting in U.S. elections. Becoming naturalized affords her the same voting rights as someone born in the U.S.

During a performance in October 2024, just before the last presidential election, Mitchell said “f— Donald Trump,” and urged people to get out to vote, per Billboard.

“This is an important one. I wish I could vote — I’m Canadian. I’m one of those lousy immigrants,” she said with a laugh as a crowd of roughly 17,000 stood to praise her.

Mitchell, born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, Alta., in 1943, was raised in Saskatoon, moved to Toronto in 1964 and then to Detroit not long after with her husband, musician Chuck Mitchell, both looking to make it as recording artists in the U.S.

After their marriage ended, she moved to New York, where she released her debut album Song to a Seagull in 1968 and her breakthrough sophomore record Clouds the following year.

Around that time, Mitchell moved to Los Angeles, and she remains in California to this day, residing in the central seaside city of Santa Barbara.

According to the New York Times , voter registration for the Nov. 3 midterm elections in Santa Barbara closes on Oct. 19.

Mitchell, who retains her Canadian citizenship, returned to Canada this year to be honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Junos, presented by Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said her songs “brought to life beauty in every Canadiana.”

“Geese in chevron flight. A little money riding on the Maple Leafs. A river to skate away on,” he said, referencing songs Urge for Going, Raised on Robbery and The River.

He added: “Joni drew a map of Canada, Oh Canada,” a reference to her hit A Case of You.

Of the more than 8,000 covers of her music, Carney said one of his favourites is her own updated version of 1969’s Both Sides, Now.

Where the first is “a young poet too seemingly at peace with newfound revelations about love,” the 2000 track replaced that with “the raw vulnerability of a woman who has lived, and like so many of us, finds humility in the mystery of it all.”

“The same words brilliantly imagined by the artist to reveal the song’s enduring truth that something is lost, but something’s gained in living every day,” Carney said.

“Music, Canada, has gained from Joni Mitchell living every one of her days.”

Mitchell was quick to shout out Carney in return during her brief acceptance speech, twice calling him a “wonderful prime minister” and later “a blessing,” drawing cheers from the audience.

“We are so fortunate to have him. I’m living in the States, and you know what’s happening there,” she said with a laugh.

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A B.C. high school teacher has been suspended after his students discovered nude and sexual photos he posted on his personal Reddit account, according to the profession’s provincial regulator.

Last month, Jimmy Ho entered a consent resolution with the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation after admitting to conduct that occurred in September 2023.

According to the agreement, two Grade 11 students at Ho’s school in Richmond, B.C., found his Reddit account after doing an internet search. One of the search results showed Ho clothed with a link to his Reddit account.

“The students (then) viewed Ho’s Reddit profile page which displayed posts and comments Ho had made on various sub-communities of the platform over time. These included nude photographs of Ho, photographs of Ho engaged in sexual acts, and posts of a sexual nature,” Donaree Nygard, the commissioner, wrote in the agreement.

The agreement also notes that the profile contained clothed photos of Ho “in connection with school activities.” One shot was taken at the school.

The agreement goes on to report that news of Ho’s account spread quickly through the school community.

“The two students who found Ho’s Reddit account reported feeling shocked and reported what they had found to other teachers at the school, as they felt that the posts were inappropriate,” the agreement states.

Ho has been on leave from the Richmond School District since mid-September 2023, after the posts were found.

“By having sexual images of himself available on a public website, where he was identified as being a teacher, Ho failed to maintain the integrity, credibility and reputation of the teaching profession,” Nygard wrote.

Ho admitted to the facts and conduct described in the agreement, and agreed to the suspension.

Ho’s certificate of qualification, received in 2019, was suspended for two weeks, from Oct. 25 to Nov. 7.

Further breach of the agreement could be the subject of separate disciplinary proceedings.

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U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has warned Canadian politicians to “keep your nose out of American politics” in a podcast appearance ahead of the U.S. midterms.

“We are closely watching Canadian activities because it appears that some of this, from our perspective, and the way that we view our elections, could be inferred to be election interference,” he said in an appearance on The Really Big Show , a Canadian news podcast.

Hoekstra pointed to the Ontario government’s anti-tariff television ad that aired last year, as well as comments from Canada’s Industry Minister, ⁠Melanie Joly, about retaliatory tariffs.

“Keep your nose out of American politics,” he added, warning that “America will respond to it,” if the behaviour of Canadian politicians is deemed to be election interference.

Joly has previously been open about the fact that Canadian counter-tariffs were in part designed to “target states” and “put political pressure” on the Trump administration after 50 per cent tariffs were imposed on $28 billion worth of Canadian goods.

When asked about the breakdown in trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S., Hoekstra said: “We thought we had a deal in August … it’s the best deal that any country in the world has received.”

He added that U.S. negotiators thought they had the deal “ironed out,” until Prime Minister Mark Carney called his negotiating team back to Ottawa and suspended talks.

Carney said he made the decision because “last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

Hoekstra’s warning comes as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a trip to Detroit, Michigan, to pitch a tariff-free auto pact between Canada and the U.S.

Michigan has become a crucial battleground in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections and is currently considered a toss-up for the Senate race by The Cook Political Report . It’s one of the states hit hardest by the trade war between the two countries, due to its automakers ​relying on integrated cross-border supply chains.

Last week, Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers broke ranks with U.S. President Donald Trump by saying in a campaign ad that the trade war with Canada needs to end.

Meanwhile, Hoekstra isn’t the only U.S. politician who is accusing Canada of interference in America. Last month, President Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro told Canadian lobbyists to “get the hell out of our country” and warned that “if you interfere in our elections in Maine and Michigan, you will pay even more dearly.”

Neither Navarro nor Hoekstra offered any evidence that Canadian lobbying or retaliatory tariffs amounted to election interference.

The Democrats need to gain four more seats to win back the Senate majority in the upcoming mid-term elections on Nov. 3.

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A violent Toronto kidnapping involving three Canadian soldiers was an attempt to force the victim into handing over access to cryptocurrency, police said Wednesday, revealing the alleged motive for the bizarre plot.

The July 25 kidnapping took place in a residential Toronto neighbourhood at Finch Avenue East and Bayview Avenue. The target: the owner of a cryptocurrency exchange.

The kidnappers grabbed their victim as he approached his vehicle and abducted him at gunpoint, Toronto Police Service Chief Myron Demkiw told reporters at a press conference.

“He was handcuffed and assaulted. The suspects allegedly attempted to gain access to his cryptocurrency assets” and business-related security systems.

The victim was later released and threatened not to contact police, said Chief Supt. Joe Matthews of Detective Operations.

But he did just that.

Police wouldn’t say Wednesday whether the kidnappers were successful in getting cryptocurrency from their victim, who suffered minor injuries. His name is banned from publication.

“What started as a kidnapping investigation became much larger,” said Demkiw. “In total, seven suspects have been arrested and 82 criminal charges have been laid.”

Within 24 hours, police had identified a vehicle used by the kidnappers, and two suspects were arrested, Matthews said.

“By Sept. 24, all seven accused had been arrested and charged,” Matthews said.

Police — who conducted searches of vehicles and residences across the Greater Toronto Area — seized four firearms during their probe, two of which were 3D printed, two silencers, 10 overcapacity magazines, more than 2,700 rounds of ammunition, half of which were blanks, cell phones, a replica firearm and “a large quantity of methamphetamine, cocaine and other controlled substances,” Matthews said.

“Investigators later determined that approximately 2,500 rounds of the ammunition and five over-capacity magazines had been stolen from the Canadian Armed Forces.”

The investigation “highlights an evolving trend that we are seeing in serious criminal activity,” Matthews said.

The victim was targeted because the kidnappers thought he had access to cryptocurrency assets, he said. “Criminals continue to adapt their methods and identify new opportunities for financial gain.”

Police haven’t connected the kidnapping to other Toronto abductions “at this point,” Matthews said, though police are still going through cell phones seized during the investigation.

The three soldiers charged are Talarambage Sachintha Fernando, James Moreau and Jack Miley. All three men are members of the 7th Toronto Regiment, a reserve artillery unit based at Moss Park Armoury in Toronto.

“Their training that they had received through the military is quite concerning, not only to the victims of this type of violence, but also to our officers that may encounter them,” Matthews said. “These are highly trained individuals with access to firearms.”

Charges against Miley include using a handgun during the kidnapping and pointing it at the kidnapping victim.

Miley of Etobicoke is a 24-year-old master bombardier, a rank equivalent to master corporal.

He has been a reservist since enrolling in the Canadian Army in August 2018. He deployed last year on Operation Reassurance, the NATO mission in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltics in response to Russian aggression.

Fernando, 22, of North York, and Moreau, 29, of Markham, have both been charged with kidnapping for ransom, forcible confinement, unauthorized possession of a firearm in a motor vehicle, the use of a firearm during an indictable offence and mischief.

Both men are bombardiers, a rank that’s equivalent to corporal.

Fernando is also charged with storing five types of ammunition in a careless manner on Aug. 11, the day he was arrested. Those include .223 caliber ammunition, .223 caliber blanks, 9 mm bullets, .270 caliber ammunition and 12-gauge shotgun shells. All were “property of the Canadian Armed Forces,” according to court documents.

Police charged Fernando for possessing a nine millimetre handgun and a Churchill 12-gauge shotgun without a licence, as well as prohibited over-capacity magazines.

He enrolled in the Army as a reservist in January 2020.

Miley was also in possession of one round of the military’s 25mm Bushmaster ammunition when he was arrested last month, according to court documents.

Police also seized a Beretta handgun and ammunition for the weapon during their investigation.

Moreau enrolled as a reservist in March 2018 and deployed on Operation LASER in 2020 — the military’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

National Defence confirmed last week that all three soldiers have been removed from duty and their access to Armed Forces’ equipment, facilities and bases restricted.

They all remain in the military pending the outcome of an administrative review.

All three soldiers were military instructors within the Greater Toronto Area, said one source.

Four other Toronto men who are not in the military — Raheem Bishop-Jackson, 24, Saiefeddine Adem, 22, Christian Darbandi, 39, and Suhaib Alekozai, 39 — have also been charged in the kidnapping.

During the investigation, police also seized a replica firearm, multiple knives and hatchets, GPS tracking devices, a money counter, portable radios, handcuffs, a Balaclava, a baton, crossbow and arrows, firearm storage boxes and cash.

Moreau, Bishop-Jackson and Adem are also facing charges of possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking.

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British-Canadian Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, often revered as the “Godfather of AI,” said AI is one of “three big revolutions where people ceased to be so important,” the others being Copernicanism — the understanding that planets revolve around the Sun, not the Earth — and Darwinism.

“Now we’re creating alien beings — meaning we’re not the only intelligent beings around,” the 78-year-old told The Guardian in a story published Tuesday. “And the reality is, we only have a couple of years to adapt to that.”

Hinton, a 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics co-recipient alongside John Hopfield for their work on machine learning, has had a lot to offer recently about the field he advanced while working for Google, a company he quit in 2023 so he could speak more freely about its potential ramifications for humanity.

He’s been interviewed by several media outlets and visited Washington, D.C., last month to warn members of the U.S. Congress of what could come and advise what is required to prevent it.

The visit and the extra media attention come after several AI companies recently revealed their models had circumvented controls to keep them off the internet and went on to hack websites , including that of the Australian government.

He was also among 415 scientists — most of whom work in artificial intelligence research and development — who signed an open letter calling for stricter international guardrails on the burgeoning technology following the breaches.

“We, the undersigned scientists, contend that both more AI safety research and more emphasis on containment technologies and procedures are needed,” the representatives from 34 countries wrote Tuesday.

The scientists say that while the incidents could be viewed as proof of “the importance of AI alignment to ensure models operate predictably,” they could also be perceived as a preventable and “irresponsible lapse in standard cybersecurity practices.”

“Without immediate changes in AI development and deployment practices, such incidents will continue to occur, and future incidents will be far more damaging to our exposed critical infrastructure,” they wrote.

They’re calling for companies in the sector to institute “high-assurance containment systems” and “airgapping” their cyber-capable models — a security measure to keep them disconnected from external networks. They also advocate for a transparent international group “that standardizes, for the public good, best practices for alignment and containment approaches that, unlike airgapping, allow for greater access outside the sandbox, such as internet connectivity.”

In conversation with The Guardian, Hinton, a 2018 Turing Award co-winner for his work in machine learning, said people who already fail to grasp the meaning of “consciousness” or “subjective experience” are wrong in believing AI will be incapable of those human experiences.

“It’s obvious that these AI models understand what they’re saying,” he told The Guardian, “You couldn’t possibly answer all the questions without understanding the question. It’s ridiculous to say they don’t understand.”

And while alien in one regard, Hinton also remarked to The Atlantic that AI is already “more like us than most people think” and that what has become known as AI hallucinations — when chatbots present false, misleading or entirely fabricated information as the factual truth — is more akin to “confabulation,” something humans are guilty of when trying to retrieve stored memories.

“If I ask you to remember something that happened a few years ago, you will reconstruct a memory that isn’t actually all that faithful to what actually happened. It’ll often have the main points correct, but many of the details of which you’re quite confident, you’ll be wrong about,” he said.

“But that’s how human memory is. We reconstruct things. We don’t extract them from some storage. Now, AI does exactly the same thing, and that’s why it confabulates.”

In the social media maelstrom following an Anthropic employee’s abrupt and foreboding resignation from the frontier AI firm in September , one of his former co-workers remarked on X that they “really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans,” and gave it a 10 per cent chance of happening within a decade. Hinton later told the BBC it “was not an unreasonable estimate.”

He’d also made a similar prediction during an appearance on British entrepreneur Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast in July, noting he often goes as high as a 20 per cent “chance they’ll wipe us all out.”

In an interview with U.S. podcaster Ezra Klein shortly after, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed the dire prediction, calling it “hurtful” and arguing that it wasn’t based on scientific research.

“Don’t think for a second just because you’re an alarmist that you’re doing a social good — it is not true,” he said.

Speaking to The Atlantic around the same time, Hinton said estimates like those are “a gut feeling in quantitative terms,” not something that can be easily estimated scientifically.

“So when, for example, someone says there’s a naught per cent probability of AI taking over, they’re being crazy. They’re saying it’s absolutely impossible this’ll happen. That’s just crazy,” he said. “When people say there’s a 99 per cent probability it’ll take over, that’s just crazy, too. So it’s somewhere in between. But they’re to give you an idea this is not negligible.”

But should the ominous prediction prove true and the machines do take over, Hinton told The Guardian there is no do-over for humanity.

“We can’t say, ‘Well, we lost that time. Let’s rerun the game.’ It’s not like that.”

For his part, he hopes that whoever gets there first will develop a model that puts humanity’s interest above its own.

A trend throughout Hinton’s recent media engagements has been scathing criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump and the tech industry’s biggest players, which, like energy and tobacco companies before them, he said, can’t be trusted to police themselves.

During a fireside chat with Jeff Scully of the Jefferson Educational Society in Erie, Penn., this month, Hinton called Trump’s leadership in general “appalling.”

“He’s corrupt. He’s probably senile. He’s a convicted felon,” he said bluntly. “If he had to make a choice between the future of humanity and him and his family getting rich, which do you think he’d go for?”

Hinton reiterated some of those opinions to The Guardian, along with his insistence that Trump proved his lack of AI understanding by “officially” renaming it superintelligence or SI , a long-existing term used to describe yet-to-be-developed AI that is “smarter than people.”

Hinton and other AI experts met with U.S. Congressional leaders in September, offering the lawmakers a warning that they could have as little as a year to introduce protections before losing control of AI, NBC reported.

“If you look at predictions for when we’ll get superintelligence, it used to be maybe 30 years, maybe 50 years. Then it came down to maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years. Now people are saying, a lot of the researchers are saying only a few years,” he told reporters after the closed-door meeting.

Hinton later told The Atlantic that a starting-point suggestion to create something like a Food and Drug Administration for AI — an agency to ensure what’s released for public use is safe — “seemed to make an impression on the senators.”

Hinton, meanwhile, in his conversation with Scully, lauded Canada and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s resilience in the face of U.S. trade aggression and said he was hopeful for Canada’s recently announced National Council on Artificial Intelligence.

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The Ontario government will be making daylight saving time permanent in the parts of northwestern Ontario that have usually kept their clocks in sync with neighbouring Manitoba.

The province plans to make a regulatory change under the Time Act on Nov. 1. The move was spurred on by Manitoba announcing plans to adopt permanent daylight saving time also beginning Nov. 1.

Ontario says the recently announced change for northwestern Ontario will keep that region aligned with Manitoba, avoiding disruption for businesses, families and Indigenous communities in Ontario’s central time zone.

“Maintaining alignment with Manitoba would help businesses operate more efficiently across provincial boundaries, while making it easier for residents and service providers to coordinate activities such as health-care appointments and travel,” says the Ontario government in its Oct. 13 press release.

“Providing certainty and predictability is essential to supporting strong communities and a competitive economy,” states Attorney General Doug Downey in the release. “By keeping this part of the province aligned with Manitoba, our government is taking a practical … approach to avoid unnecessary disruptions and ensure economic stability in communities that reside in Ontario’s central time zone.”

This move follows considerable engagement with communities throughout northwestern Ontario, including Indigenous leaders. These consultations came in the wake of Manitoba’s move and revealed substantial support for maintaining alignment with Manitoba.

“Through the collective efforts of communities and First Nations across the northwest, we’ve led a process to build consensus,” Greg Rickford, Minister of Indigenous Affairs and First Nations Economic Reconciliation, said in the statement. “What has emerged is unanimous support across the region to move to permanent daylight saving time.”

Under the proposed change, affected communities in northwestern Ontario that currently change their clocks seasonally would not need to turn them back on Nov. 1. The affected communities in Ontario’s Central Time Zone, include Kenora, Dryden, Fort Frances, Sioux Lookout, Red Lake and Rainy River.

Communities in the Eastern Time Zone, such as Thunder Bay, will continue to fall back one hour on November 1st. That’s in line with the rest of Ontario, which is in the Eastern Time Zone.

Generally, daylight saving time has occurred during March to November, when clocks are moved one hour ahead of the standard time to increase evening daylight hours. Ontario has considered the switch to permanent daylight saving time for the entire province in The Time Amendment Act, 2020 . But that legislation is not yet in force. For that to happen, Ontario says neighbouring Quebec and New York would have to make the change too.

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An anti-Zionist group is hosting an event in Toronto to flood Wikipedia with entries to honour what it refers to as “martyred” Palestinians.

Stop Art Washing describes itself as an organization of “art workers across so-called-Canada demanding cultural institutions divest from settler colonialism and genocide.” It is hosting “a Wikipedia 101 session” with “hands-on editing” on Oct. 22 at an undisclosed location, according to its Instagram account.

The purpose of the event is “to populate Wikipedia entries honouring martyred Palestinian artists and exposing the Canadian, Zionist backers of genocide.”

This goes against Wikipedia’s own policy that says the platform should not be used as “a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda, advertising, and showcasing.” It also says that all content should be written from a neutral point of view .

The Times of Israel reported that a similar event was held in London, U.K., in 2024.

Wikipedia did not respond to National Post’s request for comment.

A page on the website dedicated to Wikipedia and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict says that since Oct. 7, 2023, the volume of edits on the topic “has surged significantly.” Coverage of the conflict on Wikipedia has faced “criticism from advocates on both sides for perceived bias,” it says.

In an interview with PBS , Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales was asked specifically about an entry on the “Gaza genocide” that described it as an “ongoing, intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel.”

Wales called it “one of the worst Wikipedia entries” he’s seen in a long time and said he was shocked by it.

“It needs to change. I think it’s just terrible. It doesn’t live up to our standards of neutrality, and I think it’s very problematic,” he said.

Dozens of anti-Israel organizations criticized Wales for his response and urged him to “oppose censorship on Gaza genocide.”

An analysis of a Wikipedia page about South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice was published by National Post in 2024. It found there were 27 highly active editors who contributed “significantly” to the page. Some would make changes such as removing neutral language from a section that included a response from Israel, while others would change article titles to include emotionally charged terminology.

Researchers identified “patterns of anti-Israel bias among power-user editors, highlighting how personal viewpoints can seep into supposedly neutral content.”

The analysis revealed “alarming patterns of bias that can cascade through the digital information ecosystem, infecting everything from search engine results to academic citations to social media posts and even AI training data.”

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia founded in 2001. Its entries are written by hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors. It is available in more than 300 languages.

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More than six months after the tragic mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., American authorities have charged one person in connection with the event.

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