Canada's environment commissioner says the country is nowhere near to meeting its goal of planting two-billion trees by 2030.
The Liberals first made the massive tree-planting promise during the 2019 federal election campaign and followed through with a 10-year 3.2-billion-dollar budget for it in 2020.
However, an audit of the first two years of planting says it appears the government isn't on track to get even four per cent of the promised trees in the ground by the end of 2030.
Ottawa is trying to make the rebates more visible by sending them directly to people every three months rather than incorporating them into annual tax refunds. But when the first new deposits went out in July, most financial institutions dropped them into accounts with labels like "Canada Fed" or "EFT Credit Canada."
The weather office says other records for the day were set along the south, central and north coasts, and through the central Interior and southeastern B.C. Many regions of the province have had no rain in October and no significant precipitation since early July, prompting severe drought conditions, but forecasters are calling for showers and possible snowflurries in Fort Nelson by Friday.
Justice Martha Devlin of the B.C. Supreme Court says Aydin Coban's calculated conduct caused the girl mental anguish and social isolation, contributing to her suicide after he told Todd he would ruin her life. The sentence is longer than the 12 years suggested by the Crown, but Devlin said Coban's conduct calls for "sharp rebuke."
Police located just under 600 grams of suspected methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl in a satchel believed to have been discarded by the suspect while he fled from police. Through additional investigative steps, it was determined that the motorcycle was stolen on September 20, 2022 while being test driven by a potential buyer.
The program, which is financed entirely through premiums paid by workers and employers, accumulated $25.9 billion of debt by the end of 2021, according to the Office of the Chief Actuary. The rise in debt comes after a staggering number of Canadians were unemployed during the pandemic and eligibility rules for the program were relaxed to ease access to jobless benefits.
British Columbia is enduring a record-breaking dry spell, but farmer Amir Mann says the drought is far preferable to other recent weather extremes. Mann and others involved in agriculture say the downside of the drought, which has required some crops to be irrigated, is offset by benefits such as a longer harvesting period and little rot.