Provincial and Territorial Update – January 17, 2025
Provincial and Territorial Update: An overview of the Provincial Legislative and Territories Legislative Updates for the week of January 17, 2025. Written by Wes McLean.
New Brunswick
- As N.B. Liquor enters its second week with its digital payment systems down, it is limiting bars and restaurants to purchasing alcohol on tap from a small list of breweries. The government-run alcohol and cannabis stores across the province were hit by what the Crown corporation describes as a “potential cyber threat” on Jan. 7. Stores are still open, but they’re only accepting cash as payment.
- Drug coverage for four drugs used to treat some rare diseases was announced in Fredericton on Wednesday under a $32 million deal signed by the federal and provincial governments. Under the agreement, New Brunswick will get $10.8 million a year for the next three years, said provincial Health Minister John Dornan. “As an endocrinologist, I have seen first hand how devastating it can be for patients with a diagnosis of a rare disease,” said at the Stan Cassidy Centre for Rehabilitation.
- As Canadian premiers work on a plan to deal with the tariffs threatened by incoming U.S. president Donald Trump, snow crab producers in New Brunswick worry about how tariffs would affect them. The U.S. market a huge one for snow crab fishermen and processors in the province, and tariffs could have a “very significant impact,” said Gilles Theriault, head of the New Brunswick Crab Processors Association.
- There’s relief in Saint John and across New Brunswick that the province’s biggest exporter is staying put. There’s also no clear answer why Irving Oil made the decision not to sell. The century-old company announced in June 2023 that it was launching “a strategic review” of the company, including a potential full or partial sale. That raised the prospect of a new out-of-province owner scaling back operations in Saint John, including at the company’s head office.
Nova Scotia
- Industries that have relied on newcomers to take hard-to-fill jobs say Ottawa’s drastic cuts to immigration programs are “short-sighted” and “irresponsible,” and suggest they will have a devastating effect on Nova Scotia’s construction and hospitality sectors. Ottawa announced last fall it would slash the number of immigrants coming to Canada but only communicated the extent of those reductions this week. Nova Scotia’s two most significant immigration programs will only be able to bring half the number of people to the province that it did the last two years, with the total allocation for both programs being cut from 6,300 to 3,150.
- Premier Tim Houston said thousands of Nova Scotia jobs could be affected by the tariff U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is threatening to impose. Trump has repeatedly said his incoming administration would introduce a 25 percent tariff on all goods coming into the United States from Canada. Houston said he is worried about how Nova Scotian businesses that export to the U.S. would fare with a tariff that high.
- Less than two months into the Progressive Conservative government’s new mandate, opposition leaders are already expressing concern about decreasing transparency. Speaking to reporters following a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Premier Tim Houston said that although officials in his government continue to discuss the “goals of the mandate,” they’ve yet to decide if those goals will be written down in traditional mandate letters for cabinet ministers. Whether those goals take the form of mandate letters or something else, Houston said he’s not sure if they’ll be made public.
- After a barrage of criticism over a plan to transfer baby eel quotas away from longtime licence holders, the federal Fisheries Department is delaying information sessions on the pilot project. In December, Ottawa announced a plan to redistribute 27 per cent of the total Maritime catch of about 10,000 kilograms of baby eels — known as elvers — from nine commercial license holders to 120 people who would operate on their own.
Prince Edward Island
- Health P.E.I. says some progress has been made in easing the strain on the Island’s hospitals and emergency rooms, but it’s preparing for an expected spike in flu cases in the coming weeks. Earlier this month, Health P.E.I. issued a news release saying hospitals and emergency departments were being stretched to their limits as the entire health-care system faced overwhelming demands. Officials said the situation has been exacerbated because all of the province’s ERs have more admitted patients stuck waiting for beds than usual.
- Prince Edward Island is rapidly losing valuable agricultural land to residential development and the provincial government is failing to act, warns the P.E.I. Federation of Agriculture. Executive director Donald Killorn said this has been a problem for years, and farmers are increasingly frustrated about the province’s lack of action. “It’s becoming harder for them to grow their operations. It’s becoming harder for them to empower the next generation of farmers with farmland, and they increasingly see good farmland lost,” he said. “This is growing into a crisis.”
- The Conservative Party of Canada says it will not allow former P.E.I. cabinet minister Doug Currie to run for the party’s nomination in Charlottetown, citing what the party calls “serious misrepresentations and violations” of its rules. In an emailed statement to CBC News on Friday, the CPC said Currie had provided “contradictory answers” on his nomination application, that it had found “troubling evidence of inappropriate behaviour,” and that Currie did not disclose an ongoing lawsuit.
- After Team P.E.I.’s trade mission to the northeastern United States earlier this week, Dennis King was in Ottawa to meet with Canada’s premiers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday. The leaders met to discuss Canada’s response to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose trade tariffs. In a communique signed by 12 of the premiers and Trudeau, the first ministers said they will do all they can to stop Trump’s proposed 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods entering the U.S. — even if time is running out with the president-elect set to be sworn in Jan. 20.
Newfoundland and Labrador
- Port of Argentia nervous Trump will halt offshore wind energy plans. The port stores wind turbine materials for the United States. Trump is a supporter of the U.S. oil and gas industry. NPR reported late last year that the president-elect had adopted the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill” to highlight his plans to increase fossil fuel production and scale back renewable energy initiatives.
- A mischief charge against Peter Penashue has been dismissed, after the former MP agreed to a year-long peace bond and the Crown agreed to call no further evidence during a court date on Thursday. The Innu leader was charged with mischief over $5,000 in March, after smashing out a car’s windows outside of a home in Sheshatshiu. At the time, Penashue said he bought the home for his son and grandchildren but his son relapsed and sold the house to drug dealers for cocaine and cash.
- The federal government is slashing allocations of economic immigration spaces for Newfoundland and Labrador in half, a decision that has the province’s immigration minister warning of grave implications for professional recruitment. Immigration, Population Growth, and Skills Minister Sarah Stoodley told CBC News she received the news in a letter from federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller on Wednesday night, informing her of the change for 2025.
- Top officials with N.L. Hydro believe a proposed new deal for energy sales to Hydro-Quebec, and the development of additional hydroelectric capacity on the Churchill River, will power a fresh surge in mining activity in Labrador, generate significant jobs and revenue for the province, and help meet the growing global demand for so-called “green” steel. That’s in addition to the billions of dollars in investment and thousands of new construction jobs over the next decade as energy production on the river expands by nearly 4,000 megawatts.
Quebec
- Donald Trump is “picking the wrong target” by threatening Canada with sweeping tariffs, Quebec’s premier says. As Francois Legault wrote Wednesday in The Hill, a U.S. political news website, the president-elect’s proposal of a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian exports “can backfire.” “Canada will not become the 51st state in the union, but our economies are so intertwined that in terms of trade, we already have a customs union,” Legault wrote in his opinion piece.
- Québec Solidaire (QS) is urging François Legault’s government to leverage the price of our hydroelectricity in negotiations with U.S. president-elect Donald Trump. QS Co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal said if the U.S. president-elect wants to impose tariffs, the province should threaten to hike the price of electricity. “We don’t need to wait [after other premiers and the federal government] … We are the only people who can defend the interests of Quebec, and this is the responsibility of Mr. Legault,” she said Sunday.
- Former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre took advantage of his filing of his candidacy for the Liberal leadership on Friday to announce that he intended to serve a formal notice on Revenu Québec, which he accuses of “unacceptable abuse of rights.” Coderre spent the first part of a Friday press conference in Quebec City explaining the current status of his tax problems and threatening legal action against Revenu Québec. He said he has reached a “global agreement” with the federal and provincial revenue agencies to resolve his debts, and insisted the controversy will not compromise his campaign.
- The Supreme Court of Canada will announce next week whether it will hear a challenge to Quebec’s secularism law, known as Bill 21. The groups seeking leave to appeal say they have been informed the country’s highest court is expected to publish its decision on Thursday. In 2024 the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the law, which prohibits some public sector workers such as teachers and police officers from wearing religious symbols on the job.
Ontario
- The cheque is now in the mail. With an eye toward a snap provincial election this winter, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has started sending out $200 “tax rebate” cheques to 15 million Ontario adults and children. Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy announced Friday he has begun issuing the cheques so people should receive the payments in their mailboxes in coming days.
- It was difficult to miss Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s message to would-be American expansionists on Wednesday: He wore it right on his hat. Speaking to reporters in Ottawa ahead of a premiers’ meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to discuss Canada’s response to the threat of U.S. tariffs, Ford wore a navy peaked cap emblazoned with the words “Canada is not for sale” in white block letters. The design clearly evoked the “Make America Great Again” slogan popular among supporters of president-elect Donald Trump.
- Ontario Premier Doug Ford says provincial officials estimate that U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canadian goods could cost up to half a million jobs. Trump has said he would sign an executive order imposing a 25 per cent tariff on all products arriving in the United States from Canada and Mexico on his first day back in office. Ford says the actual number of Ontario jobs affected by the tariffs will depend on what sectors are targeted, but the ministries have told him it could be between 450,000 to 500,000.
- Wait and see. That’s the message from Premier Doug Ford on whether he’ll take Ontario into a snap winter election. It all depends on what incoming U.S. president Donald Trump does with his threat to put 25-per-cent tariffs on goods imported from Canada, which Ford has warned could throw as many as 500,000 Ontarians out of work. “We may have to put tens of billions of dollars into the economy to keep people moving, keep people afloat,” Ford said after a speech Thursday to the Mississauga Board of Trade.
Manitoba
- Manitobans can request a modernized plastic health card online to replace their existing paper cards, the province’s health minister says. The provincial government is working to move the health card system into the modern era, Uzoma Asagwara said in a Wednesday news release. Premier Wab Kinew previously said people would be able to apply for the new cards in December, but that was pushed back in part by the strike by postal workers, he said.
- No charges have been laid following an altercation in Ottawa involving the grand chief of an organization that represents First Nations in southern Manitoba, a police spokesperson says. Southern Chiefs’ Organization Grand Chief Jerry Daniels was hospitalized following the incident, which happened in the early morning hours of Dec. 3 in Ottawa, where the Assembly of First Nations was holding a gathering. Ottawa previously said they were called to the city’s ByWard Market area around 2:30 a.m. that day for a disturbance, after which a man was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
- The provincial government says consultations are underway in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas neighbourhood on its proposed supervised drug consumption site. Members of the business community from around the proposed location at 200 Disraeli Fwy. met Thursday with members the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre, as well as representatives from Manitoba’s ministry of housing, addictions and homelessness. Although not invited, some community members showed up to the consultation at the Sport Manitoba building after a picture of a letter signed by the deputy minister circulated on social media.
- An industry association representing more than 300 manufacturers in Manitoba’s agri-food sector says it’s concerned about escalating protectionist rhetoric as Canada’s first ministers weigh how to hit back against U.S. threats. On Wednesday, Justin Trudeau and 12 of the country’s premiers including Manitoba’s Wab Kinew, signed a communique in which they pledged to do all they can to stop Donald Trump from imposing punitive tariffs on Canadian goods. The U.S.-president elect has vowed to slap a 25-per-cent levy on the imports.
Saskatchewan
- Saskatchewan’s Official Opposition says the provincial government must be transparent about lobbying efforts around the acquisition of the grain-handling business Viterra by U.S.-based Bunge Ltd. Agricultural producers in the province have criticized the $8.2-billion deal, which was approved by the Canadian government this week, saying it raises concern over industry competitiveness and sustainability.
- The Saskatchewan government has announced a plan to strengthen security along the province’s border with the U.S., ahead of tariffs threatened against Canada unless it tightens its borders. In November, president-elect Donald Trump threatened a 25 percent tariff on all products imported from Canada and Mexico unless those countries clamp down on the movement of drugs and migrants across their borders.
- Most of the country’s premiers stuck to a Team Canada narrative after the meeting on U.S. relations and the threat of tariffs on Wednesday in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came out saying they had a commitment to “stand together on a path forward.” The unity appeared to extend to Premier Scott Moe, who hasn’t been shy about his disagreements with federal policies in the past. When asked by a reporter at the closing news conference about the prime minister’s precarious political status going into possible negotiations, Moe talked about agreement around the table.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last week his intention to step down following the selection of his replacement. He also moved to prorogue (meaning suspend) Parliament until March 24 while the Liberal party conducts a leadership race. “A number of the policies that Prime Minister Trudeau and the Liberal government brought forward, they’re, I’d say, harmful to Canadians and harmful to how we create wealth ,” Moe said Tuesday, adding the policies have been “counterproductive” and he feels Trudeau’s time in government has been a net negative for Saskatchewan.
Alberta
- Danielle Smith breaks with premiers on Trump tariff response. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith refused to sign a joint statement of unity from Canada’s premiers against U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threat. Smith says she’s opposed to using Alberta energy as a bargaining chip, but the prime minister says everything is on the table.
- The Alberta government has cut funding to three self-advocacy groups for people with intellectual disabilities more than a year before the expiry of their contracts. The Self Advocacy Federation in Edmonton, Disability Action Hall in Calgary, and Southern Alberta Individualized Planning Association (SAIPA) in Lethbridge, learned of the funding cuts last week and say they likely can’t continue with their work.
- The future of Alberta’s COVID-19 vaccination program is unclear with federal funding set to end this summer. Ottawa has been paying for the shots and distributing them across the country since they became available. But the Public Health Agency of Canada quietly announced, last week, the provinces and territories will take over purchasing their own supply of COVID-19 vaccines. “This approach is consistent with the approach for vaccines used in regular immunization programs,” a Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) spokesperson said in a statement emailed to CBC News.
- Jasper’s mayor said the need for housing grows more urgent amid the back-and-forth between levels of government. Richard Ireland told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday there is land ready to go for homes, but no word yet on when housing will actually arrive. In October, the Alberta government promised $112 million for interim housing in the town. It was originally expected to be available to rent this month. Ireland said he’s also aware of federal plans for temporary housing for both residents and work crews tasked with rebuilding the town. Parks Canada reports on its website that four parcels of land are serviced and ready for homes to be built.
British Columbia
- B.C.’s finance minister says president-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs would have devastating effects on the province’s economy and growth. Brenda Bailey said at a press conference on Thursday that tariffs would be “unprecedented in modern times.” She said there is still uncertainty around the scope and amount of potential tariffs but B.C. has prepared a high-level assessment of potential impacts with the assumption that the tariffs remain in place for Trump’s term and that Canada retaliates in kind.
- B.C. Premier David Eby hinted B.C. could slap an export ban on critical minerals produced in the province Tuesday if U.S. president-elect Donald Trump goes ahead with his proposed tariffs. In a prepared speech to the B.C. Natural Resources Forum in Prince George Tuesday evening, Eby said the province is working on a strategy to fight the 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods proposed by Trump.
- B.C. Premier David Eby signalled Thursday that a $1,000 rebate cheque — the single most expensive promise of the fall provincial election — could be on the chopping block as part of a government spending review. The premier has for weeks been walking back the timing of the “grocery rebate” cheque that would give the average single taxpayer $500 and average family $1,000 in 2025. Given the pending “economic war” with the United States as a result of president-elect Donald Trump’s threat of 25 per cent tariffs — as well as mandate letters tasking cabinet ministers with finding savings — it appears the $1.8-billion cost of the rebate program is under reconsideration.
- The B.C. government’s pledge to fast-track a second transmission line to bring power to a string of new critical mineral mines could break a stalemate that has stymied investment for years, a move aimed at unlocking billions of dollars of investment and providing the world with precious resources, says a mining industry spokesman. The announcement this week by Premier David Eby at a natural resources conference is a key part of a strategy to grow and diversify B.C.’s economy – a plan made more urgent in the face of threatened tariffs from its major trading partner, the United States. Michael Goehring, president and chief executive of the Mining Association of BC, welcomed the province’s commitment.
Northwest Territories
- Records from school boards in the N.W.T. have been opened up in a massive data breach that has hit Canada, the U.S. and other parts of the world, according to the territorial government. In a news release Thursday evening, the territory confirmed records stored in a cloud software program called PowerSchool — including names, addresses, contact details and student medical information — had been accessed without permission. The territory said the breach has hit the Beaufort Delta Division Education Council, the Dehcho Divisional Education Council, the South Slave Divisional Education Council, Yellowknife Catholic Schools and Yellowknife Education District No. 1.
Yukon
- A lawsuit against the Yukon government over its alleged mismanagement of the Takhini elk herd — and the damage the animals have caused local farmers — has been settled. Takhini Valley-area ranchers Wayne and Alison Grove took the territorial government to court in 2020, alleging that it failed to properly control the herd’s size and range. As a result, they argued, the animals have become a nuisance on agricultural land by damaging fences, trampling crops and threatening the health and food supply of livestock. The lawsuit, which a judge initially dismissed but which the appeal court reinstated, was set for a 10-day trial in Yukon Supreme Court this week. However, on Monday, lawyers for both parties told the judge that they’d agreed to settle the case.
Nunavut
- Some 450 teachers in Nunavik schools have been officially on strike since Thursday. They’re expected to be off the job until Jan. 21, saying contract negotiations have reached an impasse. A few dozen teachers formed a picket line in front of Jaanimmarik school in Kuujjuaq on Thursday, until the cold forced them inside. The teachers’ association is asking to accelerate the negotiation of their new collective agreement, which has been ongoing since October 2022.