pandemic

Canada’s Competition Bureau has launched investigations into the parent companies of grocery chains Loblaws and Sobeys for alleged anticompetitive conduct, court documents reveal, with Sobeys’ owner calling the inquiry “unlawful.”  The Federal Court documents show the Commissioner of Competition launched the probes on March 1, saying there’s reason to believe the firms’ use of so-called property controls […]

Roughly 200,000 small businesses took on new debt to access the forgivable portion of their pandemic relief loans from the federal government, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said Tuesday. Many businesses took private bank loans with high interest rates to pay back enough of their Canada Emergency Business Account loans to qualify for partial […]

The Bank of Canada announced today that it will continue to hold its key interest rate steady at 4.5 per cent, as was widely anticipated by economists. The central bank says recent data is reinforcing its confidence that inflation will continue to fall in the coming months. Canada’s annual inflation rate fell to 5.2 per […]

The Public Order Emergency Commission says the Liberal government met the “very high threshold” for invoking the Emergencies Act amid the weeks-long “Freedom Convoy” protests last winter. In a report released today, Justice Paul Rouleau concludes a series of policing failures and a “failure of federalism” led to a protest that spun out of control […]

Statistics Canada says there were 2.8 million fewer commuters in 2021 than in 2016. In a new census release, the federal agency says COVID-19 altered commuting patterns for Canadian workers with fewer people driving, taking transit, or walking and bicycling in 2021 compared to five years before. By May 2022, the number of car commuters […]

A Saskatchewan judge has upheld the province’s public health orders that required restaurants to track patrons during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying it did not violate the charter rights of people going to get food at a restaurant linked to a significant outbreak. Shorebird Investment Ltd, which operates a hotel and restaurant in Tobin Lake, […]

As of this morning, travellers to Canada do not need to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 — and wearing a mask on planes and trains is now optional, though it is still recommended. People entering the country are no longer subject to random mandatory tests for the virus, and those who are unvaccinated will […]

Canada’s year-over-year inflation rate slowed to 7.6 per cent in July, with the deceleration largely driven by a decline in gas prices. The inflation rate hit a nearly 40-year-high of 8.1 per cent in June, but economists were widely expecting inflation to have since slowed. In its latest consumer price index report, Statistics Canada said […]

There were 832 labratory-confirmed new cases of COVID-19 reported in this week’s COVID-19 report from the province. The number of COVID deaths, however, went up to 28 last week compared to 13 in the  previous week. Of those who died, one person was between age 20-to-39, four were between 40 and 59 and two each […]

The University of Regina comes into the next few years out of the pandemic with stable funding, plus an additional $11 million over last year and this year. That money, Dr. Jeff Keshen said, is to help the university become more financially stable and find new revenue streams. Keshen provided an overview of the university’s […]