OTTAWA

— Sweeping changes will be coming to Canada Post as the federal government announced a series of moves on Thursday in an effort to help the postal service turn around its dire financial situation. 

Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound announced that the government has accepted a series of recommendations that will see the requirement for daily letter delivery removed and lift the longstanding moratorium on rural post office closures and community mailbox conversions.

Canada Post will have 45 days to come up with a plan to put the recommendations into place, which will determine the specific timeline for implementation.

The government says the service delivery standard will be relaxed from three to seven days, instead of the current two to four days.

The recommendations around changing how the postal service operates were contained in a report written while the government grapples with a lengthy labour dispute between the Crown corporation’s management and its union.

The report examined the financial situation of Canada Post, which has recorded billions of dollars worth of losses.

A government official who spoke to reporters in a not-for-attribution briefing about the changes said the government did not have figures for how many workers would be impacted and how many rural post offices would close.

More to come … 

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This story first appeared in the Montreal Gazette

The man who killed one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers inside a federal penitentiary in Quebec last year pleaded guilty to the homicide on Thursday. A judge at a courthouse in Sept-Îles heard the guilty plea from Martin “Spike” Charest, 52, who appeared by videoconference.

Charest is currently at a federal penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, located north of Montreal. When he was connected to the courtroom, he first said: “Do you want a pizza or not?” It appeared to be an attempt at a joke for his defence lawyer Sonia Bogdaniec.

Charest then proceeded to plead guilty to first-degree murder. He attacked Pickton inside the Port Cartier Institution, a maximum security federal penitentiary 850 kilometres northeast of Montreal, on May 19, 2024.

Pickton was taken to a hospital in Quebec City, where he died days later. Pickton, 74, was serving a life sentence after a jury in British Columbia convicted him in 2007 of killing Georgina Papin, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe and Marnie Frey.

In all, DNA from 33 women was found on his Port Coquitlam farm and Pickton once bragged to an undercover officer that he killed 49 women. When the judge asked Charest, who has a long grey beard and tattoos all over his forearms, if he had anything to add, he said Pickton set him off by talking about the many people he killed in British Columbia.

“He said that a child was with one of the women (he killed). He said he wanted to eat the liver of the child,” Charest said. “(Pickton) did 49 victims and maybe more. I couldn’t let him go on. “I have no remorse. I did it for the victims.” With the guilty plea, Charest automatically received a life sentence, with his period of parole ineligibility set at 25 years.

Since 1999, Charest has spent much of his life behind bars inside maximum security federal penitentiaries. While he was a resident of Lévis, he was arrested as a suspect in a series of armed robberies and on Dec. 15, 1999, he pleaded guilty at a courthouse in Querbec City to four counts of armed robbery and other related offences.

He was sentenced to a 52-month prison term the same day and, according to court records, he has spent almost all of his time since then inside Canadian penitentiaries, including the Port Cartier Institution where he killed Pickton last year. In 2005, he was out and had returned to Lévis when he was arrested and charged with assault.

In that case, Charest pleaded guilty quickly and was sentenced to a 21-month prison term. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to three armed robberies and was sentenced to an eight-year prison term that appears to have been extended several times, keeping him behind bars up to today.

In 2014, while Charest was close to completing the eight-year sentence, he was at Port Cartier when he was charged with uttering threats. He was ordered to serve a 48-month prison term after he pleaded guilty to the threats. Four years later, he was inside a maximum-security penitentiary in Dorchester, N.B., when he assaulted a male nurse.

The assault left the nurse unconscious and Charest used a pen to keep guards at bay. In November 2018, a judge in Miramichi extended Charest’s sentence by another five years. In 2021, while he was at the Donnacona Institution, a maximum security penitentiary near Quebec City, Charest was charged again with uttering threats and his sentence was extended once again.

Last year, after he killed Pickton and before he was charged with the homicide, he was charged again with two counts of uttering threats and was sentenced, on Jan. 30, to a three-year prison term.

 

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OTTAWA — More than 880,000 Canadians’ phone numbers and 85,000 email addresses used to access federal government web services were stolen by hackers, who then spammed victims with fraudulent messages, National Post has learned.

Late on Sept. 9, the government’s Chief Information Officer revealed in a statement that there had been a “data security incident” impacting Canadians’ data held by the multi-factor authentication provider for CRA, Service Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency’s public-facing portals.

Only email addresses and phone numbers had been stolen by unknown hackers, the statement said, making the breach a “non-material privacy incident” (meaning it involved only low-risk, low-privacy information).

But criminals still had a use for it, the CIO noted.

“The (malicious) actor sent spam text messages containing a link to a fraudulent phishing website designed to look like a Government of Canada website to some of these phone numbers,” the office of the CIO said at the time.

If a victim fell for the scam and tried to login to the spoof website, they would be handing over their credentials to criminals who could use them to access sensitive personal information on the real government websites, for example.

“At this time, there is no indication that any additional personal identifiable information or sensitive personal data was disclosed,” the statement noted.

But what the CIO did not disclose at the time was the scope of the breach: nearly one million emails and phone numbers had been stolen, allowing criminals to send over 881,000 fraudulent spam messages attempting to steal victims’ login or financial information.

The data was confirmed by ESDC Wednesday after repeated questioning by National Post over two weeks.

Despite the scope of the leak and subsequent spam SMS campaign, ESDC spokesperson Mila Roy said the government had not detected any fraudulent activity or compromised accounts at this time.

“The data accessed did not include any additional personal identifiable information or sensitive personal data,” Roy wrote. “This information alone does not allow the unauthorized individual(s) to access Government of Canada accounts or other personal information.”

The breach stems from a vulnerability in the government’s multi-factor authentication software provider, Interac-owned 2Keys. The company’s software is used to verify that a person logging into a CRA, ESDC or CBSA account is the real account owner by sending them a code via text, call or email.

The office of the CIO said 2Keys discovered in mid-August that hackers had managed to exploit a vulnerability during a routine software update to steal the phone numbers and email addresses over a two-week period starting Aug. 3.

Within two days of discovering the “unusual behaviour” in its multi-factor authentication, Interac spokesperson Cillian Murphy said the company conducted a preliminary investigation of the issue and notified the government of the unauthorized entry into its system.

Asked about the two-day delay between the unusual behaviour first being detected and when the government was notified, Murphy pointed to the CIO’s statement saying that 2Keys “promptly informed the government and launched an investigation” after discovering the incident.

Ultimately, Roy said the breach exposed the phone number of 881,000 users of the Canada Revenue Agency’s MyCRA online portal. The hackers also made away with the email addresses of 85,699 people with a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) account.

In an interview, cybersecurity expert Ian L. Paterson said that breaches like this one occur nearly daily across the world. The most important thing for 2Keys now is to ensure that the hackers have been cut off from accessing the system.

“Do bad guys still have access to the system? Meaning, is this the tip of the iceberg and there’s a lot more behind it? That’s really the thing to be concerned about,” said Paterson, CEO at Plurilock Security.

He said there are multiple ways for criminals to use information as basic as phone numbers and emails to scam people.

That’s why it’s important for everyone to remain vigilant and follow basic cybersecurity guidance, such as knowing that government agencies will never ask for you tax information via text message for example.

“One of the ways would be to set up fake systems try and collect money directly through fraudulent emails, fraudulent SMS. Another way would also be to try and harvest credentials, so try and get those users to give up their passwords and other forms of identification,” he detailed.

“I would fully expect that if bad guys have one thing, they’re going to try and make the most they can from it.”

National Post

• China-backed hacker hijacked 9,200 Canadian devices to operate illegal hacking network: FBI and CSIS
• Global Affairs investigating ‘malicious’ hack after VPN compromised for over one month

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Immigration lawyers in the United States had a busy weekend. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s executive order on Friday, which introduced a US$100,000 fee for every H‑1B visa application, effective Sunday, legal teams spent Saturday fielding phone calls and filing as many visa applications as they could.

The phones have not stopped ringing since.

Having dropped without warning, the rule change came as a shock to companies throughout the U.S. and aspiring visa holders worldwide. The new, nonrefundable fee — a nearly 5,000 per cent increase from the roughly US$2,000 companies paid between the application and asylum fees before — is to be paid by companies for each foreign worker applying for an H-1B visa from Sept. 21 onward.

Prime Minister Mark Carney addressed the issue during his Monday talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. While touting Canada’s research universities as producing some of the largest numbers of AI computing and quantum talent in the world, he also lamented that, “unfortunately, most of them go to the United States.”

“I understand you’re changing your visa policy here, so we’re gonna hang on to a few of those,” he quipped with a grin.

Companies looking to hire the most talented workers in computer and IT-related professions top the list of applicants, which means tech giants like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft will feel the pinch, but not nearly as much as the smaller players looking to attract talent from abroad. H-1Bs have long been a pathway for the world’s brightest thinkers to forge their careers and residencies in the U.S. — unlike other visa types, the H-1B allows holders to also pursue a green card — often at the cost of their own countries’ talent pools.

Roughly 400,000 H-1B visas were approved in 2024, and the top countries of origin for approved H-1B visas last year were India, with 71 per cent, and China, with 12 per cent, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The Philippines and Canada rank third and fourth for the most H-1Bs, at one per cent each. Canada has long lamented the loss of some of its finest computing engineers to Silicon Valley and even tried wooing some H‑1B visa holders with visas to come to Canada in 2023 as a way to offset the talent drain.

So what do the changes mean? Can any benefits be gleaned from America’s exorbitant new H‑1B fee, and is there really a silver lining for Canada?

How it works

Teams offering legal advice to U.S. companies and foreign workers have been trying to advise clients despite the subsequent uncertainty following the sudden change.

Isabelle Hurtubise, a partner in the San Francisco-based Hurtubise Weber Law firm, is herself an immigrant from Montreal who specializes in immigration law. She and her team worked tirelessly over the weekend to help clients, but she says confusion remains. After the executive order on Friday, the USCIS issued a memo on Saturday, an FAQ on Sunday, and other quasi-official pronouncements, she said.

Trouble is, “they’re not all consistent, so we are still figuring out how this is going to actually look.”

What is clear is that the $100,000 fee is only for new applicants, not existing H‑1B holders.

“Anybody who has an H-1B visa that was filed starting at midnight on Sunday that was outside the U.S., when they attempt to use that visa to come into the U.S., they have to prove that their company has paid the $100,000 fee,” Hurtubise explained, noting that one of the government clarifications suggested it might be a one-time fee per worker.

Who gets hurt?

Companies sponsor H-1B applications to draw the best possible talent from around the world.

“A lot of our clients are early-stage companies or very cutting-edge, doing new things, and they want the best of the best talent,” Hurtubise said. While tech giants may be willing to pay the new fee, it will likely be “cost-prohibitive,” she said, for some of the smaller Silicon Valley startups.

This, in turn, could have implications for where they decide to do business.

“They’re still going to have to hire the best talent … So they’re going to place their companies where they can hire that talent,” Hurtubise said.

This could be good news for Canada, given that it shares the same time zones and language, offering similarities for remote teams who need to work together.

“I would think Canada is one of the top places that people will look to,” said Hurtubise.

Others aren’t sure there are enough numbers of Canadian workers on H-1Bs to make a difference.

Andreas Schotter, an international business professor at Western University’s Ivey Business School, pointed out that only a fraction of the H-1B visas issued each year go to Canadians.

“We may move some talent to Canada away from the United States because of the H-1B visa,” he said, “but that’s not a lot of visas.”

A few drops in the talent pool may not help much, but Schotter said Canada’s problem is not a lack of talent so much as a lack of investment. While Canada has some strong angel financing, it has nowhere near the scale of what is available in the United States.

Still, the resulting loss of talent could have a huge impact on U.S. companies and American innovation. Because fewer of the world’s top minds will be able to get visas, “I think (this) issue will hurt the U.S. very much,” Schotter said.

Making the U.S. less competitive could also hurt Canada, he said, but in the long run, it could lead to an indirect benefit where the U.S. needs Canada more for its talent and products.

Trade experts in the U.S. are scratching their heads over Trump’s new H-1B fee, as it could undermine a system that has brought some of the most talented computer and AI engineers to American shores.

“This is going to make it difficult for the United States to attract the needed workers to build the plants that we’re pressing countries to build in the United States,” said Wendy Cutler, senior VP at Asia Society Policy Institute and a former trade negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

“I think it’s important to marry our investment promotion policies with our visa policies.”

National Post

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Nearly 400 ostriches on the Universal Ostrich Farm in northern B.C. will be spared from a cull while the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decides whether to hear the farm owners’ appeal against the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Word of the SCC stay

arrived on the farm, midday on Wednesday. Cheers went up from supporters as farm spokeswoman Katie Pasitney shared the news.

“Our lawyer called. The Supreme Court of Canada has granted us an interim stay,” she posted to

her Facebook

.

The owners have been fighting the cull order, prompted by an outbreak of avian influenza on the farm in December 2024. It killed 69 of their ostriches.

The CFIA’s response was to mandate a cull of the entire flock to prevent the spread of the virus. The agency said that the remaining ostriches may not show signs of the disease but they could still be shedding the virus or be the source of further spread of infection to people, livestock and wildlife.

Will the farmers succeed in the Supreme Court?

The stay should not be taken as an indication that the country’s highest court will grant the appeal or decide in the farmer’s favour if it does.

It simply prevents a cull from going forward until a decision is made about the appeal application. If it is allowed, the stay will remain in place until a decision is finally rendered by the SCC justices.

The farm has failed to make its case in previous applications to the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal.

It’s also important to note that

the SCC hears a minority of the appeal applications it receives

.

In 2024, it received 526 and only granted 35. Its basis for doing so can be found in the Supreme Court Act, which refers to cases of “public importance” or “significant law” that warrant a decision by the court.

If it decides not to hear an appeal, it doesn’t have to provide the reason.

Some appeals heard in a given year are left over from the previous year. In 2024, the court heard a total of 50. Of those, 20 succeeded.

What will happen to the birds if the farmers’ appeal fails?

If the cull goes ahead, the entire flock will be slaughtered.

The CFIA publishes

slaughter guidelines

on the federal government’s website.

The birds will most likely be stunned in the head with an electrical device. A leg would be shackled, enabling the bird to be lifted into the air. (Hoisting is not permitted until the bird is “effectively stunned.”)

Then its carotid arteries are cut.

How has the battle over the ostriches played out in recent days?

The SCC stay came a day after Pasitney and her mother, Karen Esperson, a co-owner of the farm, were arrested for refusing to leave the bird pen. They were later released.

In a statement, the RCMP said two people were

arrested for obstructing the CFIA agents

from undertaking their duties. Neither Pasitney, nor Esperson were named.

The CFIA served a warrant on the owners Monday and told them to leave or they would be

arrested by the RCMP

.

How has interest in the battle developed?

The ongoing battle to save the birds from slaughter has garnered widespread interest, including a battle through the court system, protests and attention from prominent figures in the U.S. such as Secretary for Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, Jr.

The farmers’ court battle began last spring in the

Federal Court of Canada.

That’s the court that resolves legal disputes in federally regulated areas against the government and its agencies.

The court upheld the CFIA’s cull order in May, deeming it a necessary measure in the ongoing battle against avian flu.

The farm then appealed to the

Federal Court of Appeal. But it upheld the FCC decision

in August.

The FCA wrote in its decision that that it recognized it “might lead to the death of over 400 ostriches owned by the appellant, an outcome that would doubtless be very difficult, both financially and emotionally… (but) … the law we are bound to apply inevitably leads to the conclusion that this appeal must be dismissed.”

The court reviewed the CFIA’s

“stamping out policy,”

which is a health strategy, recognized by the

World Organisation for Animal Health

, that involves the humane killing of infected, suspected, and exposed animals in eradicating a disease from a farm or area.

In a press release accompanying the FCA’s decision

the CFIA confirmed its intent

: “Our disease response aims to protect both public and animal health, as well as minimize impacts on the $6.8 billion domestic poultry industry, and the Canadian economy. This supports Canadian families and poultry farmers whose livelihoods depend on maintaining international market access for $1.75 billion in exports.”

How have the farm’s supporters reacted?

After the FCA decision came out, the farmers vowed to take their fight to the Supreme Court and continued to argue that the remainder of the flock is healthy and should be tested for avian flu before any cull occurs. Moreover they argued for the scientific value of the ostriches.

They took to social media to make their case, contacting health administration figures such asU.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. who posted a letter on social media in May, saying there would be “significant value” in studying the birds’ immune response to avian flu. The current administrator for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, also voiced his support for saving the birds.

Both were tagged in a Sept. 2 X post made by Paistney about the “scientific merits” the birds would provide by preserving them.

Scientific Merits of Preservation of our Ostriches At Universal Ostrich Farm
Help save us please @elonmusk @trump @DrOz @RFKJr_Official pic.twitter.com/EtRcOf55XK

— Katie Pasitney (Universal Ostrich Farms) (@KatiePasitney) September 2, 2025

New York billionaire John Catsimatidis also took up the cause,

stating publicly

that he believed the ostriches are crucial to medical research into immunity and treatment of viruses. He promised to fund the farm’s ongoing court battle and wrote

a letter to the prime minister

, advocating for them.

Chris Sanders

, a conservative commentator with a large social medial following, issued a plea to truck drivers to help pick up the birds in Canada to relocate them to farms in Oklahoma, Texas and South Dakota.

They set up a

website

to rally support.

Meanwhile, many supporters set up camp at the farm.

The RCMP says

local businesses have complained of harassment

, believed to be coming from the farm’s supporters, who have review-bombed, emailed and called businesses that they think have been contracted by the CFIA to help carry out the cull.

Pasitney has urged the farm’s supporters to remain peaceful but she has also called for them to flood phone lines of businesses whose services may be utilized by the CFIA, in the process, posting phone numbers for specific companies from hotels to gas stations to waste management companies.

Farm supporters have also been urged to contact anyone they believe can help, including local SPCA and humane societies, as well as RCMP and CFIA non-emergency lines.

The

B.C. SPCA released a statement

in response that “it does not have any authority to intervene or influence the decision-making process where avian influenza is a factor, nor does it have the authority to prevent a legally permitted cull from happening.”

The RCMP says it is investigating reported incidents and promised and that responsible individuals may be held accountable.

• New York billionaire prepared to fund B.C. ostrich farm’s legal battle against forced cull
• Ostriches at B.C. farm have version of avian flu not seen elsewhere in Canada: CFIA

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As some Canadians eschew the United States in favour of other international travel destinations or staying home, the lieutenant-governor of Louisiana — home to New Orleans and Mardi Gras — is calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to apologize for his slew of 51st state remarks made earlier this year.

“I don’t realize what the impact has been until I got here, but the pushback from the president’s comments about the 51st state, the tariffs, have really left a bad taste in Canadians’ mouths,” Lt.-Gov. Billy Nungesser told a New Orleans television station last week.

Nungesser, a Republican, was in Canada for a week-long tourism-promotion visit and said steps should be taken to protect Louisiana’s multi-billion dollar tourism market, according to WVUE, a Louisiana Fox affiliate.

“It would be really nice if the president could issue an apology about the 51st state,” Nungesser said. “I think that would go a long way — at least many of the people up here believe it would.”

In the late months of 2024 and early 2025, Trump repeatedly said that he would like Canada to become the 51st state, while simultaneously launching a trade war that upended decades of free trade between the two countries.

“Look, what I’d like to see — Canada become our 51st state,” Trump said in the Oval Office in early February.

The comments prompted denunciations from major Canadian political leaders, including then prime minister Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and then NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.

“Canada will never be the 51st state. We are an independent, proud and strong nation,” said Poilievre at the time.

Since Trump instigated a trade war with Canada and began talking about annexing Canada, Canadian visits to the United States have dropped off precipitously.

Updated data from Statistics Canada

shows that Canadian trips by car decreased by nearly 36 per cent in July 2025, compared to July 2024, and air travel to the United States dropped by more than 16 per cent.

The decline has prompted the state tourism agency in California to launch a campaign directed at Canadians. Visit California launched a video called California Loves Canada.

“California wouldn’t be California without Canada. That’s the heart behind Visit California’s newest video, “California Loves Canada” — a cinematic tribute and gesture of appreciation for our Canadian neighbours,” the campaign website says.

However, not all states are worrying about Canadian visitors staying home or visiting other destinations.

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida,

said last month that

he doesn’t believe Canadians will stay away from his state, a favoured destination for central Canadian snowbirds. He said the state attracted 640,000 Canadians during the second quarter of 2025.

“They said that the Canadians were going to stop coming to Florida and I’m thinking to myself, I don’t think that’s true because who would want to be in Canada in the winter or spring when you could be in Florida?” said DeSantis.

That said,

data from Visit Florida

shows that Canadian visits to the state dropped by nearly 17 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 and 20 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.

• Most Canadians think Trump would break any new trade deal: poll
• Trump thinks Canadians who avoid U.S. travel, ban its booze are ’mean and nasty,’ ambassador says

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