Saskatchewan News

TORONTO — Celestica Inc. boosted its financial guidance for its full year as it reported its first-quarter profit and revenue rose compared with a year ago. The technology company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, says it earned US$212.

Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today, the StarPhoenix spoke with Darryl Babey, who recently opened his fourth Babco Meats location in two years, and his first in Saskatoon. Read More

The amendments proposed by Saskatchewan's Minister of Health would provide the province's College of Physicians and Surgeons similar powers as regulatory bodies in other provinces.

After a review, Michaela Kleisinger has been hired as the head coach of the University of Regina Cougars women’s basketball team.

LONDON (AP) — The former chief of staff to U.K.

Reductions come amidst consumer concerns in the European Union about the oil’s environmental and health effects.

University of Saskatchewan research shows COVID-19 may trigger backup cell defences despite weakening early immune response.

Hundreds attended an artificial intelligence expo Monday in Saskatoon, two days after Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced a social media ban for teens that will include AI chatbots.

Prince Albert police are investigating an arson incident involving a firearm early Monday. Police said officers were sent to help the fire department at a business on the 3300 block of Second Avenue West shortly after 5:15 a.m.

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff said Tuesday that he made a “serious mistake” by recommending Peter Mandelson’s appointment as U.K. ambassador to the United States.

TORONTO — Your next drink order from McDonald's Canada may come in a frosty cup all but glowing from its fluorescence or brimming with a layer of foam thick enough to give you a milk moustache.

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed … Prime Minister Mark Carney promises 'good news' in spring economic update Prime Minister Mark Carney is suggesting there will be "good news" about Ottawa's fiscal situation when the federal government tables its spring economic statement later today. The mid-year update will offer Canadians a look at how the war in Iran and new spending items like a boost to the GST benefit are affecting federal finances. Carney told reporters Monday that the Liberals are "good fiscal managers" and have made tough decisions about cutting spending to keep federal finances on a sustainable track. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre describes the Liberals' spending strategy as "credit card budgeting" and is calling on the government to make deeper cuts to put the deficit back on a track to balance. --- Liberals formalize majority, pass motion to restructure committees The federal government moved quickly to make use of its new majority powers on Monday, hours after three Liberals who won recent byelections took their seats in the House of Commons. The Liberals passed a motion to restructure committees to give them a majority of seats on committees, and passed a motion to limit debate on the motion to make the changes, with opposition MPs accusing the Liberals of a power grab. Committees study legislation and other government business and have the power to call witnesses and require the production of documents. Government House leader Steven MacKinnon says the changes reflect the "long tradition" in Parliament that majority governments also hold a majority of seats on committees, but Opposition House leader Andrew Scheer decried the move as undemocratic. --- OPP officer dead after crash on Highway 401 in Cobourg: police An Ontario police officer who died in a highway crash east of Toronto is being remembered as a dedicated member whose life was taken "far too soon." Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Thomas Carrique says hearts are broken as officers mourn the on-duty loss of Sgt. Brandon Malcolm. Northumberland O-P-P officers were called Monday just after 5:30 p-m to a single-vehicle crash involving a police motorcycle on the eastbound Highway 401 in Cobourg, and Malcolm died at the scene. Investigators are looking into the circumstances of the crash, and Carrique says there's no evidence to suggest another vehicle was involved. --- Rescuers recover last victims from Indonesia train wreck that killed 14 and injured dozens Rescuers finished removing victims from a damaged commuter train car Tuesday, confirming that the crash outside Indonesia’s capital killed 14 women. The crash occurred Monday when a long-distance train crashed into the rear car of the stopped commuter train at Bekasi Timur Station outside Jakarta — a car that was designated for women only (a common accommodation to stop harassment). Bobby Rasyidin, CEO of state-owned railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia, said a total of 84 injured people were taken to hospitals for treatment. The Indonesian Ministry of Transportation said authorities believe the incident began when another commuter train hit a stalled taxi near Bekasi Timur Station, leading staff to stop a second commuter train at the station, where it was struck by a long-distance commuter train. --- Parents who don't allow kids to have smartphones say social media ban would ease their minds Some parents say a proposed government social media ban would make their efforts to protect their children more effective. Demand is mounting for the federal government to act quickly to prevent kids under 16 from using social media. Jennifer Gill says she worries about what kind of content her three youngest kids might see online, such as sexual images and violent videos. Rebecca Snow, with advocacy group Unplugged Canada, says governments have already set age limits for things like drinking and smoking, so it makes sense to implement one for social media, too. --- This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2026. The Canadian Press

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed … Prime Minister Mark Carney promises 'good news' in spring economic update Prime Minister Mark Carney is suggesting there will be "good news" about Ottawa's

VANCOUVER — A cluster of wildfires are burning in British Columbia, many of them on land that is already parched, marking the beginning of a season that has some officials planning for how to conserve water.

VANCOUVER — A cluster of wildfires are burning in British Columbia, many of them on land that is already parched, marking the beginning of a season that has some officials planning for how to conserve water. The couple of dozen fires burning are mostly in the southern and central Interior, a swath of the province that federal drought monitors list from "abnormally dry" to "severe drought." The Canadian Drought Monitor says a wet March in B.C. did not result in much improvement, and while drought rankings in several regions were downgraded, "long-term deficits" in the central Interior forced the dry label to be maintained. Rick van Kesteren, an information officer with the BC Wildfire Service, says the province has seen 93 April fires so far, with area burned slightly below the 10-year average. But he says drought conditions are an area of concern, noting that there is record-low snow in some valleys in the Interior, which increases the likelihood of early-season grass fires. B.C. has seen average snowpack at 92 per cent of normal, but there is significant variability across the province, with low snow levels in areas of Vancouver Island, the South Coast and the southern Interior, which could mean water shortages and drought. Long-range forecasts suggest much of Canada could be hotter than normal over the coming months, while forecasters suggest El Nino, the warming phase of a recurring climate pattern tied to shifting waters in the Pacific Ocean, is expected to take hold this summer. The Metro Vancouver Regional District, which normally limits lawn watering to once a week starting May 1, has announced residents will be banned from watering their lawns at all. Linda Parkinson, director of policy, planning and analysis with water services, says the snowpack the district relies on is at about 50 per cent of normal. She says Metro Vancouver, which has 21 municipalities, including Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby and Delta, uses about 1.1 billion litres of water a day in the off-season but that can jump up to 1.7 billion during a warm summer. "That over 50 per cent increase is driven by outdoor water use. And of that outdoor water use, lawn watering is the biggest piece," she says. Parkinson says normally the district's water reservoirs, which are full during the winter, begin to empty just in time for the melting snow to fill them back up. This year, hotter-than-normal temperatures could melt what's remaining of the snowpack early, meaning there would not be room for the water to be stored in the reservoirs and it would instead overflow into rivers. Enforcing lawn watering restrictions is up to bylaw staff in each municipality and the fines for breaking the ban are different depending on where you live. Van Kesteren says the province saw a record 2,400 people apply to be one of the 1,300 seasonal firefighters this year, but there's no way of knowing yet what type of fire season they will be facing. He says a lot will depend on the amount of rain the province gets in May and June. "There's also little to no scale in long-range precipitation forecasting. It just remains to be seen," he says. "We're preparing for the worst and just really hoping for the best." This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2026. Ashley Joannou, The Canadian Press

Some parents who have already limited their kids' access to social media say a proposed government ban would make their efforts to protect their children far more effective.

Some parents who have already limited their kids' access to social media say a proposed government ban would make their efforts to protect their children far more effective. They say their kids face peer pressure to join the platforms, and even have access to computers at school where they can access the sites without their parents knowing. Demand is mounting for the federal government to act quickly to prevent kids under 16 from using social media, with advocates pointing to a New Mexico court ruling that found Meta knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed information about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms. And a Canada-wide survey carried out last month by Angus Reid found three-quarters of more than 4,000 respondents were in favour of a ban like the one in Australia, where youth under 16 are prevented from setting up accounts on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Threads. Jennifer Gill, who lives in Charlottetown, P.E.I., says she knew from the time her three youngest kids — who range in age from 12 to 14 — were little that she wouldn't let them use social media until they were adults. That's because she saw the negative effect it had on her now-28-year-old eldest daughter's mental health as a teenager. She says she worries about what kind of content her younger kids might see online, for instance sexual images and violent videos that aren't age appropriate. "The government's not doing a very good job of letting parents know the harm. It's just being normalized, honestly. The RCMP called sextortion, I think the wording was a 'public safety emergency for youth,'" she said. "So that's terrifying." And while Gill has worked hard to make sure her house is a safe place for her kids, even restricting their access to the internet when she's not around to supervise, it's a different story when they're out of sight. "As soon as they get on the school bus, they sit next to somebody with a smartphone who can show them anything. They can show them porn, ...they can show them viral videos of people being murdered. These are things that kids have access to on the phone," she said. Rebecca Snow, who founded the Toronto chapter of Unplugged Canada, a group that encourages parents to hold off on giving their kids smartphones until they're at least 14, said governments have stepped in to protect kids from doing other things that might be bad for them, like drinking and smoking. It makes sense to set an age limit for social media, too, she said, given the growing body of evidence that it's bad for young people. She said she set a boundary with her 12-year-old daughter Lyra early on, but it's much harder for parents who only realize the detrimental effects of social media after buying their kids a smartphone. Lyra said many of her peers have the devices, and some of them question why she doesn't, telling her she's "too old" not to have one. She used to feel that way too, she said. "I used to not really know about all the harmful things on social media and stuff and the people that could steal your information or do bad things. So I didn't really know why (I) shouldn't be on it," Lyra said. Though Lyra is more accepting of her parents' rules now, in the past it led to conflict in her family. "It sucks as parents that we're the ones who have to do something," Snow said. "And that's why we would love to see legislation around this, because it shouldn't really all be in our hands." Snow is concerned about how accessing social media will affect her kids' mental health, and how it might lead to so-called "attention fragmentation," where the brain constantly switches between different stimuli, potentially shrinking kids' attention spans and leading to cognitive difficulties. Even Snow, who has gone out of her way to learn about the effects of social media on kids, said her efforts to keep her daughter off of the apps have sometimes been in vain. Snow said Lyra has access to an iPad, and asked if she could download CapCut, an online video editing tool developed by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. Snow thought it sounded fine, until she saw how her daughter was using it: she was scrolling through TikTok-like videos. Each of the video templates on the app has examples of how it's been employed by other users, and that's what she'd been looking at, Lyra said. "I didn't realize that's what this was," Snow said. "And so I looked into it a bit, did some digging online. I was, like, 'Oh, right. It's just yet another app that I don't want my kid to have.' It's quite exhausting as a parent." Snow deleted the app from Lyra's iPad. Calls to take such decisions out of parents' hands appear to be working. Federal Liberal party members recently passed a non-binding resolution calling for a ban, and Culture Minister Marc Miller said earlier this month the government was "very seriously" considering it. On Saturday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced his government would move to ban children from using social media accounts and artificial intelligence chatbots. Details on the age limit or how the province would implement such a ban have not been revealed. "These tools have been designed by ... people who understand our psychology, who understand our biology. And they have designed these tools and optimized them to hack our children's reward system in their brain," Kinew said. "These are forces that contribute to anxiety and depression. These are forces that lead to young women being trafficked." This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2026. Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Liberals are "good fiscal managers" — and he'll have the chance to prove it when the federal government tables its spring economic update Tuesday afternoon.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Liberals are "good fiscal managers" — and he'll have the chance to prove it when the federal government tables its spring economic update Tuesday afternoon.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Liberals are "good fiscal managers" — and he'll have the chance to prove it when the federal government tables its spring economic update Tuesday afternoon. The federal government typically tables mid-year updates between annual budgets to revise its economic and fiscal projections. These updates can include new spending and are sometimes referred to as "mini-budgets." The Liberals' fall budget — the first under Carney's leadership — projected a deficit of $78.3 billion for the last fiscal year, with deficits declining and averaging around $64 billion annually over the five-year horizon. The federal fiscal monitor for April 2025 to February 2026 shows the deficit came in at $25.5 billion over the first 11 months of the last fiscal year. March typically sees a large one-month jump in the deficit, though some analysts still expect the federal government will post a lower deficit than projected in Budget 2025. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Carney suggested there would be "good news" on the federal government's fiscal position in the spring update. A reporter asked the prime minister why the deficit would come in lower than projected. "Because we're good fiscal managers," Carney replied. "We focus on the numbers. And we were determined to get spending down with a lot of very … difficult decisions. You can't do everything at the same time," he added. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called on the Liberals to slash spending and get the deficit on track to balance. He calls the Liberals' approach to spending "credit card budgeting" and argues it will cost Canadians through higher inflation and interest payments down the road. Poilievre did not suggest a timeline for balancing the budget when asked by reporters Monday. "Let's figure out how badly Mark Carney messes up the books before we announce how long it will take for Conservatives to clean it up," he said. The prime minister has justified deeper deficits by citing the need to build major projects, ramp up defence spending and transition Canada's economy away from reliance on the United States. On Monday, he announced the creation of a sovereign wealth fund with an initial $25-billion capitalization to invest alongside the private sector in nation-building projects. Since the fall budget, the federal government also has unveiled new affordability measures — including a boost to the GST benefit for lower-income households and a pause on the federal fuel excise tax until Labour Day — that will add new expenses to the fiscal outlook. In a video statement released on Sunday, Finance Minister François-Phillippe Champagne touted those efforts, saying "bringing down everyday costs is at the heart" of the fiscal plan. Many economists expect the federal government will receive additional revenues from the oil price shock tied to the war in Iran, though uncertainty over how long the Middle East conflict will last is sure to cloud Ottawa's forecasts. Champagne acknowledged in his statement that "volatility is omnipresent" and said the government's plan is aimed at protecting economic sovereignty. Carney pushed back Monday when a reporter suggested the government's revenues would be better because of higher inflation. He noted the annual rate of inflation has been within the Bank of Canada's target range of one to three per cent for the entirety of his time in office. Statistics Canada also has revised up past gross domestic product data since the fall, giving the federal government a better starting point for many of its fiscal guideposts. The Liberals had a minority mandate when they tabled their first budget in November and legislation enacting the spending plan only came into force in March, with a handful of amendments from opposition members of Parliament. After a Liberal sweep of three April byelections, the party's new MPs were officially sworn into their seats Monday — meaning Carney now has a formal majority government and more power to get bills passed. This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2026. Craig Lord, The Canadian Press