Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says the central bank held its key interest rate at five per cent in part because of the effect a wave of upcoming mortgage renewals is expected to have on the economy. Macklem appeared before a Senate committee alongside senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers on Wednesday following the Bank of Canada's most recent interest rate decision and monetary policy report.
The Conservatives moved on Wednesday to make carbon pricing the ballot box question in the next election, seizing on the public's anxiety about affordability and seeing a crack in the Liberals' carbon-price armour. "A carbon tax election," Leader Pierre Poilievre proposed in a speech to his caucus in Ottawa.
The Conservative party is maintaining a steady lead over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals, a new poll suggests, at a time when Canadians are reporting limited trust in their institutions. Pierre Poilievre's Tories are 14 percentage points ahead of the governing party, according to the survey by polling firm Leger. Forty per cent of respondents said they would vote Conservative, 26 per cent Liberal and 17 per cent NDP if an election were held that day.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 8,805, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, 130 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them civilians slain in the initial Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. In addition, around 240 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.
New targets tabled in Parliament show the government plans to level out the number of new permanent residents to Canada in 2026, forecasting an end to record-breaking year-over-year immigration. Immigration Minister Marc Miller submitted new targets for the next three years, which call for the number of new permanent residents to hold steady at 500,000 in 2026.
A death review panel from the British Columbia Coroners Service is recommending community groups be allowed to hand out drugs without a prescription in an attempt to stop the relentless overdose death toll. The panel's report coincided with the monthly overdose death toll of 175 people in September, which the coroners service says is a 10 per cent drop from the same month a year ago, but still equal to 5.8 deaths a day across B.C.