HellsBelle

Through laughter, Lori Brem tells the story of the meeting that brought her brother Jonathan Hooker, a New Zealand resident, and her Uncle Darryl Flett from northern Manitoba together for the first time.

The three relatives met in Texas in November 2024. Brem, a resident of China Spring, Texas, and Hooker, of Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, share the same birth father and Flett is their uncle.

Brem and Hooker are survivors of the Sixties Scoop, where First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were removed from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous foster or adoptive parents between 1951 and 1991, and lost their cultural identities as a result.

Brem was taken from Swan River, Man., along with her siblings. Hooker was taken from Moose Lake, Man.

An African Nova Scotian RCMP sergeant who created anti-racism workshops for his employer says he was removed from his position after he raised concerns about intellectual property rights when the initiative he headed was going to be expanded.

Craig Smith, a Mountie for nearly three decades, was described by the RCMP as a driving force behind its African Canadian Experience workshop, but the two sides are disputing who owns the course material.

The dispute began in 2023. Smith now works for the RCMP in national recruitment.

"I believe that I was sidelined for no other reason than the fact that I said that I want to be compensated for my intellectual property rights," Smith said.

Over the past month, VA has cut 2,400 positions, and VA Secretary Doug Collins said this week the department plans to slash more than 70,000 jobs. The goal would reduce VA staffing to 2019 levels, three years before the historic PACT Act expanded benefits to more than a million veterans sickened by exposures to toxins.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has repeatedly promised that the quest to shrink the federal government will not harm veterans or their care.

“We’re going to make the department work better for the veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors,” Collins said this week.

But VA employees from across the country said the cuts and a climate of fear are already hurting veterans.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Sunday he was hopeful a dispute with Canada over accusations of the deadly fentanyl opioid entering the U.S. across its northern border could be resolved by the end of March.

His comments on ABC News's "This Week" raise the possibility that tariffs due to be reimposed by U.S. President Donald Trump at the end of the month could be stayed further.

In reality, Canada is responsible for a minuscule proportion of drug smuggling into the United States and it wasn't immediately clear what progress Hassett was referring to.

Democratic U.S. Senator Adam Schiff from California, who appeared after Hassett on ABC, called the adviser's comments "incomprehensible."

A federal judge has awarded nearly $2 million in damages as part of a civil lawsuit after concluding an FBI agent was negligent when he fatally shot a kidnapped Texas man during a botched rescue attempt in 2018.

The family of 47-year-old Ulises Valladares filed a lawsuit in Houston federal court alleging their loved one had been helpless as he was bound and blindfolded when FBI agent Gavin Lappe shot him shot in January 2018 as authorities entered a home where the man was being held.

The FBI agent had told investigators he only fired when he thought a kidnapper had grabbed his rifle after the agent broke a window to get inside and didn’t know he was shooting Valladares, who had lived in suburban Houston.

A dozen people were injured in a shooting at an eastern Toronto pub in what police called a reckless act of violence by three men who entered the bar and fired randomly without warning.

Superintendent Paul MacIntyre of the Toronto Police Service said that authorities received numerous emergency calls reporting a shooting at the Piper Arms around 10:40 p.m. Friday.

A preliminary investigation determined that three males entered the pub and began shooting at customers, MacIntyre said during a news conference at the scene. There were no immediate arrests.

“One male was armed with what appears to be an assault rifle, the other two males were armed with handguns, and they walked into the bar, they produced their guns and they opened fire indiscriminately on the people sitting inside,” MacIntyre said, adding that there were no fatalities.

The huge US army base of Fort Bliss at the Texas-Mexico border is poised to become a deportation hub under plans proposed by the Trump administration – prompting an outcry from critics as it once again becomes a focal point in the immigration debate.

Situated in the heart of El Paso, the base has already been used by Donald Trump since he returned to the White House to fly deportees on military aircraft to Guantánamo Bay and Central and South America amid intense publicity around his wider anti-immigration agenda.

Now it is reportedly being considered for large-scale detention as well as expulsion purposes.

Opponents of any such plan disapprove of the effect it would have on the armed forces and also condemned it as treating migrants as if they are “reality TV”.

The proposed expansion of a Quebec landfill that accepts hazardous waste from the United States has ignited a turf war between the Quebec provincial government and local leaders, who say they oppose putting US trash into a local peat bog.

Local leaders are protesting against the move – saying the province is capitulating to a US company in the midst of a tariff war between Canada and the United States.

For a year, the Montreal suburb of Blainville has been refusing to sell a piece of city-owned forest land to facilitate the expansion of Stablex, a US-owned company that treats and stores hazardous waste, including 33,000 tons exported from the US in 2023. Tech billionaire Bill Gates is listed as a stakeholder in the company.

When Donald Trump illegally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, he promised to secure a better arrangement through a policy of “maximum pressure” on the West Asian country. He did not get a better deal. Instead, Iran wrested back its bargaining chip by further increasing its enrichment of uranium.

Instead of breaking Iran, US sanctions pushed it to reorient its trade and diplomatic relations. It turned to its neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, and looked east to China and Russia. Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, two massive international organizations whose goal is to counterbalance the American-led unipolar world. Iran also signed a 25-year strategic and economic partnership with China, as well as a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Russia.

Iran didn’t capitulate to America: Iran turned away from America.

Engaging the US did not work for Iran: Trump unilaterally and illegally withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear agreement. Engaging the US did not work for Canada: they did everything the Trump administration asked for, virtually eliminating the fentanyl crossing the border; yet they will now feel the harsh pain of 25 percent tariffs.

Perhaps, with an emerging multipolar world awaiting them, America’s friends, like Canada, Mexico and the EU, fresh off a failure to accommodate the US in a quest for a better deal, can learn a lesson from America’s enemies.

Robert Williamson says he remembers watching his parents lose their only source of income as his neighbours started to get sick.

Now, he's sick, too, but his hope is that his grandchildren won't suffer the same symptoms he does.

Williamson, like roughly 90 per cent of residents in Grassy Narrows First Nation, has been impacted by mercury poisoning that dates back to the 1960s and '70s, when the Dryden Paper Mill dumped about nine tonnes of the toxin into the English-Wabigoon River System in northwestern Ontario.

On Wednesday, he joined fellow mercury sufferers in a groundbreaking ceremony for the community's long-awaited Mercury Care Home.

"It's something that should have happened a long time ago, instead of us having to fight so hard to get to this point," said Williamson.

New Democrats say Conservative MPs were missing in action as Canadian parliamentarians visited Capitol Hill and met with American lawmakers and business leaders this week.

Canadian MPs and senators were in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday as part of Parliament's diplomatic efforts. The trip coincided with the start of the U.S.-Canada trade war.

In a social media post, NDP MP Brian Masse noted the Conservative MPs' absence at a critical time.

"The Conservative House of Commons members are a no show despite having the most spots for our delegation," posted Masse, who represents the border riding of Windsor West. "We even have the Bloc [Québécois] represented to show solidarity for all those who live in our great nation."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrapped up a call with his U.S. counterpart midday Wednesday, a senior government official told CBC News.

It's the first time the two have spoken since U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war yesterday with devastating tariffs on all Canadian goods.

The details of what the two leaders discussed are not yet known.

Vice-President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were also on the call, the government official said.

The official said discussions between the two sides will continue throughout the afternoon.