Provincial and Territorial Update – March 9, 2025
Provincial and Territorial Update: An overview of the Provincial Legislative and Territories Legislative Updates for the week of March 9, 2025. Written by Wes McLean.
New Brunswick
- Dawn Arnold, the mayor of Moncton, has been appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Announced late Friday afternoon, a news release from Trudeau’s office described Arnold as “an accomplished public servant with over 30 years of experience in municipal government, community development, and publishing.”
- New Brunswick will receive an estimated $614 million from three tobacco giants for health-care costs related to smoking, with about $147 million “up front” and the remainder “over time,” Health Minister Dr. John Dornan announced Friday. It’s part of a $32.5-billion settlement between Canadian provinces and territories and the tobacco companies — JTI-Macdonald Corp., Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., and Rothmans Benson & Hedges in a legal battle that dates back decades.
- Leaders in New Brunswick’s fishing industry are not mincing words when it comes to the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the constant back and forth of tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump. “Oh, it’s painful. It’s painful,” said Geoff Irvine, executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada, in an interview with CBC Radio’s Shift, just minutes after Trump delayed tariffs on Canada for a second time. “It’s almost worse with the tariffs being on the back and forth and the up and down. It’s very difficult for businesses to deal with this,” Irvine said.
- Miramichi-Grand Lake Conservative MP Jake Stewart will not be a candidate in the federal election expected to be called soon, Stewart announced in a social media post Thursday. Stewart wrote that as he enters his 18th year in electoral politics, “I have come to realize the toll it’s taken on my family and my health. Therefore, I will not be re-offering in the upcoming election.” Stewart has not responded to an interview request.
Nova Scotia
- Nine months after officials with Northern Pulp started examining the viability of a new mill in Queens County, Premier Tim Houston says it is his understanding that the work continues. Houston announced last May that his government and officials with Northern Pulp’s parent company had reached a settlement agreement that ended years of legal wrangling and would allow time to explore the viability of constructing a new mill at or around the site of the former Bowater mill near Liverpool.
- Amid a flurry of last-minute senate and judicial appointments, the Liberal government quietly announced Saturday it has signed an $8 billion implementation contract for the construction of the Royal Canadian Navy’s new destroyers. It is only the first step in the long-delayed process to replace the navy’s aging frigates, and the contract with Nova Scotia’s Irving Shipbuilding is essentially a downpayment on only three of the highly sophisticated warships.
- The Nova Scotia government is set to receive $809 million from tobacco companies for the impact smoking has had on the health-care system. Nova Scotia joined the country’s other provinces and territories in suing the companies for health-care costs related to tobacco use. A mediated settlement was approved by the Superior Court of Ontario on Thursday.
- Nova Scotia’s newest member of the Senate is former Liberal MLA Tony Ince. Ince was one of five people appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. He said Trudeau called him on Thursday night with the news. “I can tell you from where I stand right now, I’m honoured,” Ince said Saturday. “I am looking forward to really doing good work there.” He’ll be the second African Nova Scotian in the Senate, joining Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard, who was appointed in 2016.
Prince Edward Island
- Prince Edward Islanders charged ahead in 2024, setting a new record for recycling their used batteries. Jon McQuaid, the vice president of marketing, communications and innovation at Call2Recycle Canada, said 48,000 kilograms of batteries were recycled in the province last year, “another increase year-over-year on the Island.”
- The federal government has announced more than $30 million over four years to help pay for diabetes medication and supplies and contraceptives for Prince Edward Islanders. The details of the deal aren’t clear, but the province said the new money will cover 18 drugs for diabetes, as well expand coverage for test strips used to measure a diabetic person’s blood sugar. The federal government said there will be no copays under P.E.I.’s system, but provincial officials said on Friday that some small copays will remain.
- How immigration cuts are affecting newcomers, businesses and communities on P.E.I. P.E.I. has definitely been affected. The federal government has slashed the Island’s nominee allocation for 2025 under the Provincial Nominee Program and the Atlantic Immigration Program by half, reducing it to 1,025. That decision came after the province voluntarily reduced its own nominations last year, issuing just 1,590 nominations out of its allocation of 2,050.
- Canada’s automotive industry was given a month-long reprieve from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Wednesday afternoon, but some Prince Edward Islanders say they’re concerned about what could happen if the levies return in 30 days’ time. At Centennial Nissan in Charlottetown, Trevor Leeco said he’s watching on a day-to-day basis to see what will happen next. “If this does happen, plants’ closures would be imminent, and price and inventory issues would arise probably in the next month or so,” said Leeco, the general manager of the dealership.
Newfoundland and Labrador
- Both the province’s education minister and the teachers’ union are worried about far-right ideologues targeting schools and attacking teachers both in person and online after a series of incidents across the province. Most recently, within the last week, a group of adults — including the parents of students — entered both Holy Trinity High School in Torbay and Carbonear Collegiate to confront staff angrily.
- The top executives with government-owned utilities from Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador will meet in Churchill Falls on Monday as both sides work toward formalizing a historic new energy deal between the two provinces. Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro CEO Jennifer Williams and Hydro-Québec CEO Michael Sabia will tour the company-owned town, and the massive Churchill Falls generating station. It will be Sabia’s first visit to Churchill Falls.
- Both candidates in the race for the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Party leadership — a contest that will automatically elect the province’s next premier — promised this week they’ll make all their campaign donations and expenses public. But neither John Abbott nor John Hogan are actually required to do so under the contest’s rules — and the timing and nature of the disclosure is still entirely up to them, thanks to a loophole in the province’s elections law.
- Labrador MP Yvonne Jones has ended the speculation: She will not seek the leadership of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador. “After a great deal of thought and reflection, I have decided not to enter the … leadership race,” Jones wrote on social media on Friday morning. Jones said the encouragement she received in the days since Premier Andrew Furey announced his upcoming departure from politics “truly touched my heart” and that she carefully considered entering the race.
Quebec
- There is no question of residential electricity rates increasing by 3.6 per cent as of April 1, Premier François Legault has decided, reiterating his desire for the increase to be limited to 3 per cent. On Thursday, the Régie de l’énergie rejected Hydro-Québec’s proposal to cap the increase in residential electricity rates at 3 per cent and instead opted for an increase of 3.6 per cent as of April 1. Reacting to this decision on Thursday evening, Legault took to social media to hammer home that “it is out of the question.” “As long as I am premier, residential rates will not increase by more than 3 per cent annually. I will find a solution with the government team and Hydro-Québec,” he said.
- Quebec will provide local companies with up to $50 million in liquidity loans for 12 months to help them survive and reposition themselves to be less dependent on trade with the United States. Premier François Legault held a news conference in Montreal on Tuesday afternoon with provincial Economy Minister Christine Fréchette and Treasury Board President Sonia Lebel to announce a series of measures aimed at softening the blow of U.S. tariffs on the province’s economy.
- Saying it will use every lever necessary to protect the economy from American tariffs, the Legault government has announced a series of countermeasures, including a 25-per-cent penalty for American firms bidding on Quebec government contracts, hauling U.S. alcohol off the shelves and a new fund to help small Quebec companies diversify. And Premier François Legault has not excluded still harsher measures if the tariff saga drags on, including threatening to turn off power exports as Ontario Premier Doug Ford has.
- The Quebec government is grappling with a controversy that observers say could be the biggest political scandal in the province since the Charbonneau commission, which found deep corruption in the construction industry, observers say. The fiasco over the digital transformation of Quebec’s auto insurance board, involving half a billion dollars in cost overruns, has dominated headlines in Quebec since the auditor general published a damning report nearly two weeks ago. It has already claimed one minister in the province’s Coalition Avenir Québec government.
Ontario
- Following the results of the 2025 Ontario general election, Premier Doug Ford and the Executive Council will be sworn in by the Honourable Edith Dumont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, on Wednesday, March 19, 2025. The Legislature will be called back on Monday, April 14, 2025, to begin the 44th session of Parliament. The government’s plans and priorities for the new session will be outlined in the Speech from the Throne, to be delivered by the Lieutenant Governor on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
- Ontario Premier Doug Ford is steaming ahead with his pledge to impose 25 percent tariffs on electricity sent to the United States starting Monday, despite President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend most tariffs on Mexico and Canada on Thursday afternoon. The move is an escalation of the trade tensions between the two countries after Trump has repeatedly threatened and withdrawn tariffs against Canada, which is the U.S.’ biggest energy trading partner.
- Social media users continue to claim that Ontario Premier Doug Ford flew to Florida on Feb. 28, the day after his election victory — but CBC News has confirmed that Ford was in Ontario when that flight took off. The claim originally surfaced after social media users pointed out that a charter plane that was used by the premier’s Progressive Conservative campaign was scheduled to fly to a Florida airport on Friday from Toronto at approximately 1:30 p.m. Flight tracking data confirms that the plane did fly to Florida, returning on Sunday morning.
- The Supreme Court of Canada has found an Ontario law that limits spending on third-party election advertising violates the constitutional right to vote. The country’s highest court dismissed the Ontario government’s appeal with a split 5-4 decision and struck down that part of the law. Before 2021, third parties in Ontario could spend up to $600,000 on advertising in the six months before a fixed-date provincial election call.
Manitoba
- Advocates for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people are praising the strength and determination of the families of two First Nations women who fought for a search of a Winnipeg-area landfill for their loved ones’ remains. Sheila North, the former grand chief of northern First Nations advocacy organization Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, said she was flooded with emotion Friday evening when the family of Morgan Harris and the provincial government confirmed Harris’s remains had been recovered at the Prairie Green landfill.
- The candidates to lead Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative Party condemned Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods on Friday but were more circumspect about their opinions of the U.S. president himself. PC leadership candidates Obby Khan and Wally Daudrich, who issued supportive statements about Trump earlier this winter, said Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats have undermined the Canadian business environment. “I’m uneasy about what Trump is doing right now,” Daudrich said Friday in an interview.
- A legal principle intended to ensure systemic factors that impact the background of Indigenous people are considered when they’re involved in the justice system is not helping to address their overrepresentation in Manitoba’s jails, legal scholars say. “We are still the worst of the worst in the country” in terms of that overrepresentation, said Marc Kruse, a lawyer and the director of Indigenous legal studies at the University of Manitoba’s Robson Hall law school. “As long as we don’t make any changes, we’ll still be the largest representation of incarcerated Indigenous peoples.”
- A union representing professors, librarians and instructors at the University of Manitoba reached a tentative agreement with the university’s administration early Saturday morning. The University of Manitoba Faculty Association, which represents approximately 1,300 members, set a bargaining deadline for Thursday, with a potential strike to start on Monday. Union members will now vote to approve the deal next week on Thursday, said president Erik Thomson in a news release.
Saskatchewan
- Saskatchewan farmers are feeling the weight of an escalating global trade war after China announced retaliatory tariffs on Canadian canola oil, peas and oil cakes. The move follows the federal government’s decision on Oct. 1 to impose 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and a 25 per cent levy on its aluminum and steel products. Bill Prybylski, president of the Agriculture Producers Association of Saskatchewan, says producers saw this coming.
- Manitoba’s northern port has a new out-of-province partner as trade uncertainties with the United States linger. Saskatchewan-based Genesis Fertilizers is partnering with Arctic Gateway Group, the consortium of dozens of First Nations and Hudson Bay communities that owns and operates the Port of Churchill, leaders from both groups announced at a news conference Friday.
- Saskatoon has seen a flood of overdoses in the past week, prompting a public alert from the Saskatchewan Health Authority and a direction to Saskatoon police that officers now respond to overdose calls. The Saskatoon Fire Department told CBC News on Thursday afternoon that in the past 24 hours, it had responded to 37 overdoses. Deputy Fire Chief Rob Hogan said that is a dramatic increase. Since late February, the Saskatoon Fire Department has been responding to an average of 19 overdose calls a day, Hogan said.
- Saskatchewan is one of only two provinces that have not yet signed a federal agreement for child-care funding. The other provinces and territories have signed onto a new federal child-care agreement that will see them split nearly $37 billion, extending the program until 2031. Alberta is the other holdout. In 2021, the federal government announced a $30-billion, five-year child-care plan to create 250,000 new affordable spaces. It said the plan would cut the costs of those spaces to $10 a day by 2025-26, when the federal government began providing a minimum of $9.2 billion annually for the program.
Alberta
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said the provincial government will be “moving forward” with its response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs until he stops his ongoing threats against Canada. In a statement issued late Friday afternoon, Smith referenced new threats Trump made on Friday “to unilaterally place additional tariffs on other Canadian goods,” including hitting Canadian lumber and dairy with reciprocal tariffs as soon as next week.
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government is working on a deal to send its stash of unused children’s pain medication to Ukraine. Smith told reporters Friday that an unnamed group had approached the government with the idea to ship the medication to war-torn areas around the world. “We said we’d work with them,” Smith said. She added that the province is now seeking Health Canada’s approval to send the drugs to Ukraine. “They have children who have fevers and don’t have medications, and we have agreements with Ukraine to help them.”
- Alberta’s premier says the tentative deal between the province, the City of Edmonton and the Oilers Entertainment Group (OEG) meant to draw more visitors and residents Downtown demonstrates a commitment to fairness between the province’s two largest cities. The deal would be “absolutely transformative” for Edmonton’s Downtown, Premier Danielle Smith said at a news conference Friday.
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is making the rounds on U.S. television networks, saying Canada has to look out for itself in the tariff war. Alberta and other provinces have announced they will stop buying American alcohol and halt contracting with U.S. companies in response to sweeping tariffs imposed earlier this week. Smith, speaking on CNN, was asked to react to the parent company of American whiskey maker Jack Daniels, which called those moves a disproportionate response that is worse than a tariff. Smith says that given the tariffs are meant to hurt Canadian sales, her province needs to redirect its buying power to support Canadian suppliers.
British Columbia
- British Columbia is hitting back at economic threats from the United States by introducing tools to impose fees on U.S. truck traffic travelling through the province on the way to Alaska. Premier David Eby said the tolls may not be used, but warned that Canada needs to have tools available to fight the threat of tariffs coming from President Donald Trump until he backs down from his plans altogether.
- British Columbia Premier David Eby says his province is “all in” on a united Team Canada approach to counter U.S. President Donald Trump’s on and off tariffs on Canadian imports, including blocking or taxing electricity from his province headed south. “I think that it’s absolutely vital that the federal government work with premiers and bring us all along, if possible, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to send a strong message to the Americans,” Eby told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos in an interview airing Sunday.
- MLAs are leaving the B.C. Conservative Party after Dallas Brodie was kicked out of the party caucus. Jordan Kealy of Peace River North and Tara Armstrong of Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream both made the announcement on Facebook Friday evening. Kealy wrote that the party has become “toxic,” saying it was “eating itself alive,” while Armstrong wrote that leader John Rustad has “abandoned the truth and his moral compass in a quest for power.”
- The British Columbia and federal governments have signed a four-year, $670-million pharmacare agreement, giving universal access to contraceptive and diabetes medications. “Through this historic agreement, BC residents will receive public coverage for a range of contraceptives and diabetes medications at little to no cost,” the federal government said in a statement. “The funding from this agreement will also improve access to diabetes devices and supplies.”
Northwest Territories
- Three people from the Dehcho under the age of 50 have died in circumstances that were highly preventable, according to their families and N.W.T. politicians. Wesley Marcellais, 44, Hilary Norwegian, 34, and Avery Burke, 6, all died within the first six weeks of 2025. Their families say their treatments are examples of substandard health care for Indigenous people. A motion that MLAs passed at the legislature on Thursday calls for the territory’s health minister to appoint an investigator to look into the deaths. Kate Reid, the MLA for Great Slave, brought forward the motion. She said it speaks to inequity in the territory’s health-care system.
Yukon
- There’s been another leak of cyanide-contaminated water from the troubled Eagle Gold mine site in central Yukon. In a report this week to the Yukon Water Board, the receiver responsible for the site, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), said a leak was detected on Feb. 17 in a pipeline that connects a control pond to the on-site water treatment plant. An estimated 150,000 litres of toxic water made its way to nearby Haggart Creek over a couple of days, the report states.
Nunavut
- The federal government has committed to spend $1.5 billion over 10 years to carry out promises it made in the Nunavut land claim agreement. Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok, federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Jeremy Tunraluk signed the new Nunavut Agreement Implementation Contract in Ottawa on Saturday. The ceremony was held at Nunavut Sivuniksavut College. “This agreement means finally investing in the Inuit dream of Nunavut,” Akeeagok said.