18 BC communities are among 30 across Canada to reach agreements with the federal government to fast-track the construction of new housing.
Ottawa is providing 68 million dollars to support the plans.
The government says the agreements will result in a total of 17-hundred housing units over the next three years and more than 14-thousand over the next decade.
The B-C communities receiving funding include nine First Nations as well as the District of Tofino, Ucluelet, Saanich, and others.
British Columbia Premier David Eby says there's a "zero per cent chance" the province will implement recommendations by the provincial health officer that alternatives to opioids and other street drugs be made available without a prescription. Eby says he has "huge respect" for Dr. Bonnie Henry, who he said saved countless lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that it's OK they occasionally have a difference of opinion.
Police in Vancouver say a three-year investigation has led to the arrests of six people allegedly connected to a "sophisticated" organized crime group. Police say the probe began in November 2021, focusing on a kilogram-level drug-trafficking operation working both domestically and internationally.
Supervised consumption sites are just "drug dens" that a future Conservative government would not fund and seek to close, Pierre Poilievre said Friday. During a visit to a park near such a site in Montreal, Poilievre said he would shutter all locations near schools, playgrounds and "anywhere else that they endanger the public."
British Columbia's wildfire service says crews are battling a 10-hectare blaze in a park that protects a portion of what the province calls the "only inland temperate rainforest in the world," with trees 1,000 years old. The Ancient Forest or Chun T'oh Whudujut Park is about 115 kilometres east of Prince George in the traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation.
It says it reached a bargaining agreement with Dometic Marine Canada Inc. after a yearlong negotiation process. It says the company responded by issuing a 72-hour lockout notice, but a work stoppage was averted after an arbitrator met with both sides and issued a decision last month.
An RCMP news release says Parks Canada contacted police around 3:15 p.m. Wednesday after a three-metre-long inflatable boat washed ashore on the island with two deceased people on board. Police say they think the boat is a lifeboat from a larger vessel named Theros.