PressProgress

After record high temperatures in Ontario this week, a prolonged heat wave across the province several weeks ago and the fifth anniversary of the deadliest heat event in Canada, experts are saying not enough is being done to prevent deaths during heat waves. The heat wave in Ontario two weeks ago brought temperatures that felt like 48 degrees Celsius with the humidex. During this time, Toronto Public Health reported 39 heat-related emergency room visits.

BC Nurses Union leadership is considering expanding picket lines to healthcare facilities beyond the Lower Mainland, after nurses escalated job action by picketing outside Vancouver General Hospital (VGH). Union president Adriane Gear told PressProgress that the bargaining unit was in talks with the employer until midnight on Monday, with talks expected to resume midweek. “I would say that conversations were very respectful and productive to some extent.

The United States’ ambassador to Canada celebrated America’s 250th anniversary by welcoming Canadian far-right activists, right-wing alternative media personalities and other questionable characters into his house. Pete Hoekstra, President Donald Trump’s controversial and abrasive envoy to Canada, hosted the American Embassy’s annual Fourth of July party this weekend at his official residence in Ottawa’s tony Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood.

NEWS Carla Caxaj and her coworkers at Oxfam Canada didn’t expect to spend so much of their time at the bargaining table arguing for paid leave for workers pursuing gender-affirming care. Caxaj, a monitoring, evaluation and learning officer at Oxfam Canada and a member of the bargaining committee, is one of nearly 60 Oxfam Canada workers who has been on strike since June 11.

Out at a cattle ranch in Alberta, amongst cows grazing in pastures and farmers tilling the land, researchers from the University of Calgary have been setting traps for the past two years. Once rodents — mainly deer mice and some voles — enter these traps, researchers take blood samples, mark the animals with tags and release them in the same place they had been found initially.

Podvcast Why 5 Ontario Education Unions Served Notice to Bargain with Doug Ford’s Government At the Same Time OSBCU President Joe Tigani explains why Ontario's education unions are getting ready for a labour battle with Doug Ford Five of Ontario’s Education Unions representing over 250,000 workers have served notice to the province to begin bargaining ahead of next school year, in a move some are calling “unprecedented.” Union leaders involved in the announcement have described this...

On April 16, representatives from the federal government contacted the major unions that represent federally-regulated workers to tell them that the very next day, a consultation process on the laws that regulate their work would open — for just 30 days.

Uber drivers in Victoria, BC, have become the first app-based workers in Canada to gain the protections of a collective agreement. In May, Victoria-based Uber drivers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1518 ratified their collective agreement, less than a year after certifying their union.

News Feature Down the street from the Kitchener GO station and beside a busy four-lane arterial road, exposed to traffic, the elements, and anything else that comes its way, sits a sandy lot. Tents nestle throughout. A few fences covered in tarps provide a small amount of privacy for sections. Garbage bins and portable washrooms have been placed in the middle, creating a small clearing where people can gather.

PODCAST What encampment residents would say to Doug Ford 'We’re not doing this for fun. This is all we actually have.' “The homeless are not Other. They are Us,” Ontario’s Superior Court declared last month. In a ruling that had advocates cheering, Justice Michael Gibson affirmed that unhoused people are entitled to the same Charter rights as any other Canadian — and that a bylaw targeting a specific encampment for removal had therefore amounted to anti-homeless discrimination.