In the news today: Major projects list updated, budget infrastructure plan supported

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Wednesday he was pleased to hear the project was among those selected, but lamented the lack of progress on other projects.

“Let’s get out of our way when it comes to the Ring of Fire,” Ford said, referring to planned mining projects in northern Ontario.

Canadians back budget infrastructure plan: poll

Prime Minister Mark Carney secured broad support from across party lines and provincial borders for some major items in his first federal budget, new polling suggests.

But one pollster warns Carney risks reopening old regional wounds if he doesn’t show progress soon on critical infrastructure and housing files.

Leger polling this week showed broad support among respondents for a number of flagship proposals in the budget tabled on Nov. 4.

The budget forecast a deficit of $78.3 billion for this fiscal year and pitched billions of dollars in net new spending aimed at pivoting Canada’s economy away from reliance on the United States.

Some 76 per cent of those surveyed were in favour of the Liberals’ proposed 10-year, $51-billion local infrastructure fund. Reduced immigration targets received 74 per cent approval, while 60 per cent of respondents backed plans to spend billions of dollars to modernize Canada’s military.

Housing advocates say budget promises not enough

Housing advocates are lamenting “missed opportunities” in last week’s federal budget, saying more effort will be needed to accelerate home construction and bring prices down.

The Liberal government’s 2025 budget tabled Nov. 4 — its first under Prime Minister Mark Carney — pledged to spend $25 billion on housing over the next five years. The budget noted Canada’s “steep housing supply gap,” with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimating 430,000 to 480,000 new housing units are needed per year in the next decade in order to restore affordability to 2019 levels.

That would represent around double the current pace of home construction across the country. Canadian Home Builders’ Association CEO Kevin Lee called it an “aspirational” target and said there’s still much that would need to change in order to achieve it, including when it comes to federal policy.

“My biggest question would be, ‘How are we going to truly support home ownership of all kinds?'” said Lee.

$20M in pharmaceuticals lost from stockpile

The Public Health Agency of Canada lost more than $20 million worth of pharmaceutical products from the national stockpile this year because of what it calls a “temperature deviation.”

The figure was reported in the 2025 public accounts but Health Canada refuses to say what was lost, citing national security implications.

In a statement, Health Canada says the line item refers to pharmaceutical products such as vaccines held in the national emergency stockpile.

It did not say how the temperature deviation happened or whether it was the result of a single incident.

The statement says the losses will not compromise the stockpile’s capacity to respond to public health events.

Final arguments today in daycare crash hearing

Final arguments are set to begin today in a hearing involving a Quebec man who killed two children and injured six others when he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023.

Lawyers for Pierre Ny St-Amand say it would be unconstitutional for a Quebec Superior Court judge to declare him a high-risk offender, a designation that would impose stricter rules on him while he is detained at a psychiatric hospital.

They want the judge to strike down the section of the Criminal Code that allows courts to label certain people deemed not criminally responsible as high-risk.

The judge ruled in April that Ny St-Amand was likely in psychosis when he crashed a bus into a daycare in Laval, Que., killing a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.

Original Gainer the Gopher reflects on highs, lows

One of Don Hewitt’s core memories from three years as the furry, minuscule mascot of the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the late 1970s can be summed up in two letters — P.U.

“They’d wash the suit once at the end of the season, and it just stunk,” Hewitt said of the rancid Gainer the Gopher getup.

“They’d ask you to go to different functions, like a Grey Cup thing, and walk into a room with respectable people and whatnot, and it just stunk so bad.”

Canadian football fans will get to see a lot of the gamey but lovable rodent as Roughriders spokeswoman Arielle Zerr confirmed Gainer will travel to Winnipeg ahead of Sunday’s battle for the Grey Cup with the Montreal Alouettes.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2025

The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

In the news today: Major projects list updated, budget infrastructure plan supported

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