Provincial and Territorial Update – December 6, 2025
An overview on Provincial and Territorial updates for the week of December 6, 2025. Written by Wes McLean.
New Brunswick
- Recent deaths of homeless people around the province have prompted criticism of how fast the Liberal government is moving to address homelessness. Opposition Progressive Conservative Leader Glen Savoie shared in the legislature on Thursday that a homeless person died in Saint John, among others in the province. David Hickey, the minister responsible for the New Brunswick Housing Corporation, confirmed that two people who were homeless have died in Saint John.
- Premier Susan Holt may say she’s “frustrated” by the Energy and Utilities Board wiping out her eight-cent gas price cut, but comments at last week’s hearing on the plan make it clear the Liberals had an option to avoid that and chose not to use it. An oil sector lawyer and a member of the board itself both said the government could have simply forbidden consumers from being charged for the cost of federal clean fuel regulations.
- The Holt government has bumped up spending for several files in what Finance Minister René Legacy called “the largest investment in capital in our province’s history.” The province announced its 2026-27 capital budget on Tuesday. “The capital budget I am tabling … meets the moment we are in,” said Legacy. “These projects will strengthen the services families rely on every day and reinforce the foundations of strong and vibrant communities.” Overall, the province is planning to spend more than $200 million, exceeding last year’s allocation.
- A stream of people showing up to a brightly lit front porch, each holding up a bottle of wine, spirits, or beer. This cozy winter scene depicted in a new advertisement for N.B. Liquor encourages customers to stock up for the holidays. But none of the smiling people, or the bottles of alcohol they are holding, are real. The ad was made with artificial intelligence. And now N.B. Liquor is catching enough heat for the video campaign that a government minister directed them to take the ad down.
Nova Scotia
- If all goes according to plan, at 6 a.m. AT on Saturday people working at the IWK Health Centre will become the test case for a generational change to Nova Scotia’s health-care system. That’s when the Halifax-based children’s hospital will become the first site in the province to go live with a new electronic medical record system that officials say will make patient care safer and more efficient, while also improving the workflow for providers.
- Nova Scotia’s largest utility is responding to a stinging letter from Premier Tim Houston by insisting it hasn’t broken any laws. The statement came after Houston sent a letter to the chair of the energy board, calling for an investigation into how the private utility has handled a cyberattack and saying residents should not be responsible for paying for Nova Scotia Power’s failures. Nova Scotia Power, a subsidiary of Halifax-based Emera Inc., has said the personal and financial data belonging to 280,000 ratepayers was accessed by an unauthorized party as early as March 19.
- A new program for assessing internationally trained doctors in Nova Scotia is off to a slow start, yielding just five licensed doctors in the first 10 months, but officials say it’s ramping up and proving successful. The physician assessment centre of excellence, or PACE, opened in February. Internationally trained doctors are assessed by licensed physicians in 12-week cycles and can come out of the program with a licence to practise on their own. Previously, it took 18 months for internationally trained doctors to be assessed and licensed.
- The number of patients that acute care nurses are looking after is a priority area for the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union in their next round of contract talks with the province. The union sees nurse-to-patient staffing ratios as a significant step toward improving working conditions and patient care. “Nurses are working over capacity all the time. They have way more patients than they should have and they feel unsafe,” said union president Janet Hazelton. Health authority employers and the nursing unions agreed to establish nurse-to-patient ratios as part of the last collective agreement, which expired at the end of October.
Prince Edward Island
- Prince Edward Island got more permanent residency nominations than it expected this year, after the federal government allowed the province an additional 575 nominees for 2025 through the Provincial Nominee Program and the Atlantic Immigration Program. The additional allotment, received in October, brings P.E.I.’s total to 1,600 nominees. P.E.I.’s Office of Immigration says that is the exact number of spots it initially requested for the year.
- Hundreds of P.E.I. parents can’t find child-care spaces, especially for infants. The provincial government says expanding those spots remains a top priority — and it recognizes the concern. The provincial child care registry has about 1,800 names on its list, according to recent data from the Department of Education and Early Years. More than 1,400 are waiting for infant care, with close to 800 families needing an infant spot immediately.
- A new report commissioned by the Eastern P.E.I. Chamber of Commerce says the ferry service between Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia is vital to the region’s economy — and that without a reliable service, exports and jobs in the area could be hurt. “Without that reliability, it’s going to continue to lag in terms of its service to the Island and how Islanders will treat it, and how businesses will treat it, coming both ways,” said Blair Aitken, the chamber’s president.
- Prince Edward Island’s largest power utility says it has plans in place to prevent province-wide blackouts this winter. Maritime Electric said rotating outages, also known as load shedding, could be used for the first time to protect P.E.I.’s power grid from a full shutdown in the event of large electricity demands. It means some communities or areas could be temporarily shut off to prevent a total blackout. Jason Roberts, the utility’s CEO, said the higher demands for electricity during the winter months can put the system at risk of overloading.
Newfoundland and Labrador
- The federal government says it isn’t liable for an unsafe amount of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water wells in southeastern Torbay, according to a statement of defence filed last month. It is in response to an uncertified class action lawsuit against the federal government, which alleges the use of firefighting foam at the St. John’s International Airport from the early 1980s through 2004 contained toxic chemicals that continue to spread and contaminate drinking water in the area.
- Newfoundland and Labrador has reported 30 new cases of HIV since 2023, and the AIDS Committee of Newfoundland and Labrador (ACNL) says the disease can’t be thought of as a disease of the past. The cases come as part of a national increase in new HIV cases. Data from Health Canada shows more than 1,800 new cases of HIV were reported in 2024 across the country, excluding Quebec. Julia Abundo, ACNL co-ordinator of HIV and Hepatitis C services, said 19 new cases were reported in the province in 2023 and 11 were reported in 2024.
- The Newfoundland and Labrador government is forming a working group to tackle what it calls systemic issues in the justice system, but answers or solutions could still be months away. “The complexities we face will take time to resolve, but I am optimistic about the future. Our new government is working hard trying to tackle the problems that have been building over the past number of years,” Justice Minister Helen Conway Ottenheimer told reporters Thursday.
- Thousands are without power across Newfoundland this morning due to severe weather conditions, including high winds and cold temperatures. In the St. John’s metro region, more than 2,000 customers are without power from Morrissey Road in the university area to Brigus South-La Manche. In Carbonear, 26 customers are without power in the Valley Road area. From Plate Cove to Random Island, over 1,100 customers are without power, with restoration expected Saturday afternoon.
Quebec
- Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette was able to gauge the resistance to his plan to give Quebec a constitution on Thursday as consultations on the bill opened in a parliamentary committee. Even before the consultations began, more than 300 civil society organizations had gathered to demand the withdrawal of the project, some announcing their intention not to participate. Then, at the opening, the opposition parties took turns criticizing the minister’s project before he found solace in the remarks of the first group, who were clearly in favour, called to testify.
- Just a day after returning to the federal cabinet and taking over the portfolio for official languages, Marc Miller said Tuesday he is “fed up” with the debate over the decline of French in remarks that drew immediate backlash from Quebec Premier François Legault. “As a Quebecer, I’m pretty fed up with this debate, which is generally about identity and elections,” Miller told reporters in Ottawa. He added that there is “a decline in some respects” in Quebec, particularly as a language spoken at home and at work. In response, Legault, for whom protecting French has been a core priority since being elected premier in 2018, said: “What a disgrace.”
- The crisis in the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) is moving the needle in the polls. The Liberals are down, according to the latest Léger/Québecor poll, much to the benefit of the Parti Québécois (PQ). The poll puts the PLQ at 21 per cent, down six points from the last Léger poll. The PQ, meanwhile, is up seven points to 39 per cent. Contrarily, there hasn’t been much change for the ruling Coalition Avenir Québec (18 per cent) or Quebec Solidaire (eight per cent).
- Spokespersons for the cultural community lack loyalty to Quebec, according to Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. On Tuesday, representatives from several cultural associations welcomed Marc Miller’s appointment as federal minister of Canadian Identity and Culture in an article published by Radio-Canada. This stung St-Pierre Plamondon, who declared on social media: “The intellectual vacuity and sycophancy of a substantial part of Quebec’s cultural community are frankly embarrassing. I am ashamed.” At a news briefing at the National Assembly on Wednesday, the PQ leader defended himself by saying he felt “really hurt by the behaviour of certain people.”
Ontario
- A heated debate in the Ontario legislature on Thursday, with the Ford government accused of neglecting students and teachers. Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser called on Premier Doug Ford to “stand up for kids,” demanding a billion-dollar investment in education and hiring 10,000 support staff. “When will the premier do the simple math and make sure we have enough adults in our schools, qualified adults, to take care of our kids?” asked Fraser. That drew a fiery response from Ford, who said it was the Liberals who voted to close 600 schools and fire thousands of teachers, calling it “hypocrisy at its best,” a comment which he was eventually asked to withdraw.
- Ontario spent a record $112 million on taxpayer-funded advertising last year, with the province’s auditor saying 38 per cent of the campaigns were meant to leave people with a “positive impression” of Premier Doug Ford’s government and came ahead of the snap election. Auditor General Shelley Spence outlines the spending in her latest annual report, noting that it surpasses the previous record for government ad buys the year before by $8.4 million. The deep dive into spending covers the 2024-25 fiscal year, which includes the months leading up to the last provincial election, which saw the Progressive Conservatives win a third-straight majority government.
- Premier Doug Ford and Mayor Olivia Chow both expect the long-delayed Eglinton Crosstown LRT to open in the new year finally — just days after the province’s transportation minister said there was a possibility the line could open before the end of the year. “I’ll be safe and say 2026,” Ford told reporters at an event on Friday for the city’s other newly built light-rail line, the Finch West LRT. “But very soon after 2026.” “There’s always those last little touches,” he added.
- About one in six Ontario government employees has formally requested to work from home in the wake of Premier Doug Ford’s edict for a full-time return to the office, the Star has learned. With Ford ordering civil servants back to their desks five days a week after Jan. 5, the Treasury Board Secretariat said it has been so inundated with “remote work alternative work arrangement (AWA)” requests that it cannot process them all. Ford government says Ontario public servants will return to office full-time in 2026. With unions warning that the government’s decree is violating their collective bargaining rights, Queen’s Park is scrambling to deal with the situation.
Manitoba
- Six months after passing a law aimed at making it easier for new grocery stores to open, Manitoba’s premier says lower grocery bills could be on the horizon. “We could be the first province in Canada that actually has real competition in the grocery sector, and people don’t even know,” Premier Wab Kinew said Friday. A law given royal assent in the province this June bans new real estate deals signed by grocery stores and supermarkets that prevent similar stores from opening nearby.
- Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives have chosen a Calgary political operative, who has orchestrated several come-from-behind election victories, to lead their next election campaign. Stephen Carter will be the Tories’ campaign director, the party confirmed Friday. He’s helped elect Jyoti Gondek as Calgary’s first female mayor, Naheed Nenshi as Calgary’s first visible minority mayor and Alison Redford as Alberta’s premier. In each of those races, his candidates started out trailing in the polls — and in Redford’s case, remained behind for the entire campaign — and yet still won.
- Politicians at the Manitoba Legislature have started their winter break and will not return to the chamber until March. The fall sitting started with a throne speech in mid-November and saw three bills introduced for debate, which are awaiting passage. One of the bills includes new protections for people who have had intimate images shared without their consent. The NDP government has served notice that it intends to bring forward at least 19 more bills in March, including a ban on machetes in public places that was promised in the recent throne speech.
- Manitoba is pulling out a million dollars’ worth of U.S.-made alcohol it shelved months ago amid the tumultuous trade war with the U.S., with plans to now sell the liquor ahead of Christmas and send the proceeds to holiday charities. The revenue will go to charities, including the Winnipeg Cheer Board, Brandon Cheer Board and organizations in Thompson, according to a statement from Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew on Thursday.
Saskatchewan
- A woman whose two sons died after struggles with drug addiction says she endorses new legislation from the Government of Saskatchewan that would implement involuntary treatment for people with severe addictions. Angela McPhee of Kindersley, Sask., said her son Colton Richardson, 33, died this March from a drug overdose. Colton had been living on the streets of Saskatoon. McPhee said she had been trying to get him help by going to court or having him held under the province’s Mental Health Act. Everywhere McPhee turned, she was unsuccessful.
- Saskatchewan’s health minister says his government has asked the organization that regulates doctors and the treasury crown tasked with protecting consumers to investigate concerns raised in a recent CBC investigation of a controversial health centre in Moose Jaw. He made those comments after being questioned by the provincial NDP about that story in the legislature. That facility, the Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Center, has claimed it has a 100 per cent success rate in halting and reversing the progress of ALS — a degenerative disease that causes gradual muscle loss. The centre is run by Dayan Goodenowe, who is not a medical doctor.
- Saskatchewan’s justice minister is rejecting the latest legislative proposal from the NDP Opposition, one that the NDP says is a necessary check on government power. On Thursday, the NDP introduced Bill 611, the Constitutional Questions (Notwithstanding Clause Referral) Amendment Act. If passed, the private member’s bill would refer any piece of future legislation that invokes the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the provincial Court of Appeal. The court would be asked to offer its opinion on whether the law violates sections of the Charter.
- It can take as long as six weeks to receive inpatient addiction treatment in Saskatchewan, according to data obtained from the province’s Ministry of Health. The data obtained by CBC News through a freedom of information request appears to contradict the claims of Lori Carr, the government’s minister of mental health and addictions. In public comments and in the provincial legislature, Carr has repeatedly said the government does not have wait-time data. “The [facilities] track them individually. So it’s really hard to reconcile all that is happening at this point in time,” Carr said on Monday.
Alberta
- A woman hoping to launch a recall petition to oust Alberta Premier Danielle Smith from her seat in the legislature says her campaign has been officially approved. Heather Van Snick says she has received a letter from Elections Alberta saying she will be getting the go-ahead to start the petition drive against Smith. She provided a copy of that letter to Global News. However, Van Snick cannot begin collecting signatures yet because Smith still has seven days to file a response before the three-month petition campaign can formally begin.
- An Alberta judge says a referendum proposal to have Alberta separate from Canada violates Charter and Treaty rights, in a decision issued less than 24 hours after the provincial government introduced legislation that would have ended the court proceeding. The province’s Bill 14, introduced Thursday, would end court proceedings on the issue once it comes into effect. The proposed bill would allow citizen initiatives to go ahead even if they might violate the Constitution. Court of King’s Bench Justice Colin Feasby, who has listened to several days of arguments about the independence proposal, had sharp words for the government’s move to change the law.
- Acute Care Alberta has extended its contract with a private surgical facility for another year, amid probes into health procurement and contracting. The provincial agency confirmed to CBC News this week that it has inked a new $34-million, one-year contract with Alberta Surgical Group (ASG) as of Nov. 1, 2025, until Oct. 31, 2026, to provide approximately 4,000 orthopedic surgeries. Acute Care Alberta posted the contract on its website after CBC News asked whether the relationship would continue beyond the previous contract’s expiration date.
- Two Alberta cabinet ministers say money was a key factor in the government’s decision to use the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to override teachers’ rights and shut down a provincewide strike. In a November letter to constituents, Infrastructure Minister Martin Long said the United Conservative Party government could not risk allowing the labour dispute to go to arbitration and risk paying out hundreds of millions of dollars. “An arbitrator would likely have sought a middle ground between the two proposals, leaving taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions, potentially billions, in additional costs,” he wrote.
British Columbia
- B.C. Premier David Eby says he is open to revising the province’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). His comments come after the B.C. Court of Appeal found that the legislation is incompatible with the province’s current system used to grant mineral rights. The ruling, released Friday, was in response to a legal challenge from the Gitxaała and Ehaattesaht First Nations against the province. The nations have argued that the current system of allowing mineral claims to be registered automatically for a small fee online violates the duty to consult impacted First Nations, as laid out by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
- The B.C. government is issuing new guidance for physicians when it comes to treating youth with overlapping cases of mental health and substance use challenges, clarifying the use of involuntary care in the process. In a guidance document issued Friday, the province directs physicians to notify parents, and potentially involuntarily detain youth if they’re unable or unwilling to seek care themselves. It follows updated guidance of involuntary care for adults with severe cases of mental health and substance use disorders, issued earlier this year by Dr. Daniel Vigo, the province’s chief adviser for psychiatry, toxic drugs and concurrent disorders.
- John Rustad has announced he will step aside as leader of the B.C. Conservative Party. Rustad said he didn’t want to risk “civil war” in the party and asked British Columbians to get behind the next leader of the Conservatives. Trevor Halford, MLA for Surrey-White Rock, will serve as interim party leader. Aisha Estey, president of the B.C. Conservative Party, said she expects a leadership election to be called in January and a new leader to be chosen in the next six months. Rustad had been dealing with turmoil in the party for months, and on Wednesday, a letter signed by 20 of the Conservatives’ 39 MLAs said they had “lost confidence” in his leadership.
- A state of emergency has been declared by the Squamish Nation over the toxic drug crisis, with the nation saying family members are grieving the loss of loved ones in the community. In a letter addressed to Squamish Nation members on Thursday, the nation’s council said the state of emergency is an urgent call to action. “In recent weeks and months, our community has suffered profound losses to the toxic drug crisis. These losses touch every family, every neighbourhood, and every part of our Nation,” states the letter. The Squamish Nation did not disclose the number of people who have died due to poisoned drugs. “We hold our hands up to all families and loved ones who are grieving. We grieve with you. Our people have carried too many losses for too long,” states the letter.
Northwest Territories
- On Wednesday evening the N.W.T. government turned to the public to discuss six abandoned mines around Yellowknife and what the options for clean up look like right now. The options for cleaning up the mines drew a large crowd on Wednesday evening, especially from residents that live by Cassidy Point, which includes the area around Tin Mine. Sandra Turner was one of the residents who attended. From the options presented, Tin Mine has an open pit that would need to be addressed, with either filling it in or maintaining existing fencing.
Yukon
- The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation in Dawson City, Yukon, says it’s suing the territorial government for violating its land claim agreement, related to mineral claims. In a news release, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in (TH) government said it filed the suit on Thursday in Yukon Supreme Court, seeking “significant damages.” The First Nation says it’s related to mineral claims that were staked in TH settlement land before the signing of its final agreement, in 1998. It says the Yukon government has not been managing these “encumbering rights” — claims in effect before the final agreement was signed — and that’s a violation of the agreement.
Nunavut
- The Qikiqtani Inuit Assocation says it’s “extremely disappointed” the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is looking to reissue fishing licences off Nunavut’s coast to non-Inuit operations. That decision from DFO was made despite a federal court judge saying the initial decision by Ottawa was unreasonable. In a news release Friday, DFO said that proposal is based on the department’s “preliminary analysis.” DFO did not state the contents of that analysis. In 2021, then DFO minister Bernadette Jordan reissued fishing licences to a coalition of seven Mi’kmaq First Nations, as part of the sale of Clearwater Foods to FNC Quota.