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Aaron Hagen of Bruce County, Ont., says he’s frustrated a social media video of a man appearing to trick an alcohol ignition interlock, allowing him to drive drunk, wasn’t taken down after Hagen contacted Meta with concerns it encouraged impaired driving.

Hagen said he first saw the video last week while scrolling Facebook, which presented it to him as a recommended reels video. 

The video, which had more than five million views and nearly 20,000 likes, showed a man sitting behind the wheel of a vehicle, swigging from a bottle, using a leaf blower to trick the device and then starting the ignition.

“It’s not like it’s a small, you know, ‘Five people saw it, nobody cares,’ kind of thing. A lot of people have seen this,'” Hagen said. “Why is it being promoted? Why did it ever make it past one view?”

Ignition interlock devices (IID) require a driver to prove sobriety with a breath sample before starting a vehicle. In Ontario, they’re mandatory in vehicles of people convicted of impaired driving or suspended for impaired driving offences three or more times within 10 years.

CBC News has seen the video, which was uploaded in January by an account that mostly reposts other people’s content, but was not able to connect with the video’s creator.

Hagen said that after reporting the video, Meta told him it didn’t violate the platform’s community standards, which determine what content is allowed. 

“I was in a vehicle that was driven by a drunk driver when I was a kid and that was the scariest time of my life. I never want to be in a vehicle like that and I don’t want anyone else to be,” Hagen said.

CBC News reached out to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, for comment, but did not receive a response before publication.

Meta’s community standards say it prohibits the facilitation, organization, promotion, or admission of certain criminal or harmful activities by users, and prohibits “co-ordinating, threatening, supporting or admitting to vandalism, theft or malicious hacking,” with exceptions. 

It’s not known how old the IID in the video is, but Eric Dumschat, legal director of MADD Canada, said one interlock manufacturer told him they spend a lot of effort on finding ways to prevent tampering.

Modern models can analyze breath patterns, air pressure and temperature to ensure it isn’t being tampered with — something that can lead to additional penalties and charges.

Dumschat expressed disappointment about what the video portrayed.

“They don’t just give these out for the hell of it; it’s because this person has a problem with alcohol and with driving,” Dumschat said. “The fact that you’d try and get around it, knowing that you only have this because you’ve got a problem — it’s disappointing, but not surprising.”

Tougher impaired penalties 

Ontario has enacted tougher impaired driving rules, but MADD would like to see the province introduce an immediate roadside prohibition program, or IRP, like that in B.C. and Manitoba, he said. 

Drivers with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08, and who haven’t also committed another offence — like causing bodily harm or death, or being a repeat offender — would have their licences suspended, vehicles impounded and be enrolled in an anti-impaired driving program.

“Not only does it save lives, but it is significantly more efficient for the justice system,” Dumschat said. 

Rates of impaired driving have fallen over the decades, according to Statistics Canada data. In 2023, the national rate was 178 incidents per 100,000 people, compared to 290 in 1998, the earliest data available.

While rates are down, Dumschat said, progress has plateaued and more work is needed.

Hagen agreed not enough is being done to combat impaired driving. In his area of Bruce County, he said, he occasionally finds empty beer cans at the roadside, suggesting people continue to drink and drive.

In Ontario, penalties for impaired driving depend on the level of intoxication and other factors, like previous offences. A criminal conviction for impaired driving comes with steeper fines and jail time, longer interlock requirements and licence suspensions, and a medical evaluation.

The United States reported the first outbreak of the deadly H7N9 bird flu on a poultry farm since 2017, as the country continues to grapple with another bird flu strain that has infected humans and caused egg prices to hit record highs.

The spread of avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has ravaged flocks around the world, disrupting supply and fuelling higher food prices. Its spread to mammals, including dairy cows in the U.S., has raised concerns among governments about a risk of a new pandemic.

The strain that has caused most damage to poultry in recent years and the death of one person in the U.S. is H5N1.

But the H7N9 bird flu virus has proved to have a far higher death rate, killing nearly 40 per cent of the humans infected since it was first detected in 2013, the World Health Organization said.

The latest outbreak of H7N9 was detected on a farm of 47,654 commercial broiler breeder chickens in Noxubee, Miss., the Paris-based World Animal Health Organization said in a report on Monday, citing U.S. authorities.

“Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H7N9 of North American wild bird lineage was detected in a commercial broiler breeder chicken flock in Mississippi. Depopulation of the affected flock is in progress,” the report says.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), along with state animal health and wildlife officials, “are conducting a comprehensive epidemiological investigation and enhanced surveillance in response to the detection,” it added.

Nearly 500,000 fewer travellers crossed the land border from Canada into the U.S. in February compared to the same month last year, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the latest sign that President Donald Trump’s taunts and tariffs have shaken bilateral relations.

The number of travellers entering the U.S. in a passenger vehicle — the most common way to make the trip — dropped from 2,696,512 in February 2024 to 2,223,408 last month, reaching levels not seen since cross-border travel normalized in the post-COVID-19 era.

In fact, the number of travellers driving over the U.S. land border is the lowest it’s been since April 2022, according to CBP data. The Canadian government didn’t lift all travel-related restrictions, like testing and quarantine measures, until October of that year. The fact that the current flow of travellers is at the same level as when travel was much more arduous is revealing, experts say.

The data shows there was a sudden reversal in February, just as Trump was launching his trade war and ramping up his annexationist rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state.

The number of cross-border travellers headed for the U.S. in October, November, December and January were all well above the numbers reported for the same month the year prior — but in February there was a clear break in the upward trend.

Len Saunders is an immigration lawyer in Blaine, Wash., a town of about 6,000 people right on the border with B.C.

He said the decline in Canadian day trippers is evident at every turn in a town that caters to cross-border travellers.

“This is like COVID all over again,” he said in an interview with CBC News. “With the rhetoric coming from Trump — people just don’t want to come down here.

“If you’re not buying American liquor in B.C., you’re definitely not coming here to save 20 bucks on gas. There’s just a huge reduction in Canadians — you can see it in the Costco parking lot, at Trader Joe’s. Canadians are voting with their wallets right now. That’s what’s happening,” he said.

Saunders said the 51st state taunts, the tariff threats and the reports of Canadians being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are all driving people away.

“We’re only two months into a four-year administration. If they keep this up there will be no Canadians coming down here — there will be a 100 per cent boycott of this country,” he said.

Barbara Barrett is the executive director of the Frontier Duty Free Association, a group that represents 32 independently owned duty-free shops that dot the Canadian side of the land border from coast to coast.

She said the travel decline is “catastrophic” and the mostly family-run stores she represents are seeing sales drop off dramatically.

She said sales never really recovered after the pandemic and now, with the recent disruptions, are down about 80 per cent compared to pre-2020 figures.

“Without hyperbole, it’s a dire situation. It’s very worrying,” Barrett said in an interview with CBC News. “It’s pandemic-level stuff for sure. It’s dramatic — the borders are just not seeing the traffic.”

The poor Canada-U.S. exchange rate, which is partly driven by Trump’s trade policies, has made jaunts over the border less attractive for many Canadian tourists and bargain-hunting shoppers.

But Barrett said cross-border traffic declines are not because of the bad exchange rate — she thinks it’s driven by the anti-tariff sentiment that’s led many Canadians to drop travel to the U.S. while the country is in this fight with Trump.

“We’ve seen the dollar fluctuate up and down before and we haven’t seen this sort of dramatic decline,” she said. “If it was all about the dollar — we’d have a flood of Americans coming over and we’re not seeing that.”

Beyond passenger vehicles, there are other signs of a travel drop-off in the CBP data.

The number of truck drivers making the cross-border trip fell from 493,000 in February 2024 to 473,000 this year.

There are relatively few pedestrians crossing the border by foot in the dead of winter, but those figures were also lower. CBP reported the number of walkers fell from roughly 117,000 in February 2024 to 99,000 last month.

The number of passengers travelling by air to the U.S. held steady and increased slightly compared to the same month last year — 50,000 more people made the trip — but even air travel hit a multi-month low.

Air travel is usually booked weeks or months in advance and is generally harder to cancel than a day trip by land. Some airlines have also since reported a slump in U.S. bookings.

Statistics Canada data backs up what the CBP is reporting.

In February, the number of Canadian residents returning from the U.S. by automobile dropped 23 per cent compared to the same month in 2024, according to the agency.

There were about 1.2 million return trips last month compared to 1.5 million the year before.

The federal agency described those figures as a “steep” decline, comparable to the drop-off registered during the health crisis when cross-border travel ground to a halt.

There was also a decline in Americans coming to Canada by automobile, but the drop was not as dramatic, StatsCan found, with a 7.9 per cent slump recorded.

Trump first launched his trade war with Canada on Feb. 1, which prompted former prime minister Justin Trudeau to respond with retaliatory tariffs and a call for Canadians to buy local products and travel within Canada.

Trudeau urged people to “choose Canada” to send a signal to the White House that the country won’t stand for punishing tariffs that have the potential to torpedo the economy.

“It might mean changing your summer vacation plans, staying here in Canada and exploring the many sites, national parks and historical destinations our country has to offer,” he said.

Trump has imposed 25 per cent tariffs on some Canadian goods to supposedly spur action on drugs and migrants at the border. He later added another tariff layer with a 25 per cent levy on steel and aluminum imports.

The president is also expected to hit Canada with more “retaliatory” tariffs on April 2.

Canada punched back with its own countermeasures, which Prime Minister Mark Carney has said will remain in place “until the Americans show us respect.”

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday visited the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he took a tour and chaired a meeting of its board of directors.

It was his first time at the marquee arts institution since he began remaking it at the start of his second term in office.

Trump fired the previous board of the Kennedy Center, writing on social media that they “do not share our vision for a golden age in arts and culture.” He replaced them with loyalists, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice-President JD Vance, and installed himself as chairman.

The Republican president’s allies have complained that the Kennedy Center, which is known for its annual celebration of notable American artists, had become too liberal and “woke” with its programming.

Speaking to reporters ahead of Monday’s board meeting, Trump complained of “tremendous disrepair,” saying the centre “represents a very important part of D.C. and actually our country.”

He expressed displeasure with the recent expansion of the complex, known as “The Reach,” which features studios, rehearsal spaces and meeting facilities, suggesting he would move to close up the spaces because they lack windows.

Trump also discussed plans to “improve very greatly” the Kennedy Center and its upcoming artistic programming.

“We are going to have some really good shows,” he said, adding, “The thing that does well are Broadway hits.”

Several artists and productions, including Broadway smash Hamilton, have backed out of performances at the Kennedy Center in protest of the Trump takeover.

“I was never a big fan, I never liked Hamilton very much,” Trump said in response.

Trump also complained about staging costs at the centre, saying musician Lee Greenwood wanted to perform Monday at the first board meeting he chaired, but it would cost $30,000 US to “move a piano.”

The Kennedy Center, which sits on the banks of the Potomac River, opened in 1971 and has enjoyed bipartisan support over the years.

However, Trump has a fraught relationship with it, dating to his first term as president. He skipped the annual honours ceremony each year.

Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan of Nova Scotia was named one of three recipients of music’s Polar Prize on Tuesday, along with Herbie Hancock and Queen.

The committee for the Sweden-based award cited Hannigan’s ability to push boundaries and broaden listeners’ horizons through her artistic choices.

“Her exceptional musicality and courage make her one of the world’s foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music,” the Polar Prize said.

Hannigan’s unique stature as a singer and conductor was a process that began about 15 years ago.

“I didn’t set out to have a career change and be a conductor. I simply agreed to a couple of gigs in 2011 to test the waters as to whether this was something I wanted to do,” she told CBC’s Q in 2019.

The Polar Prize was founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, the late publisher and manager of the Swedish band ABBA. Previous winners have spanned musical genres and have included Paul McCartney, Metallica, Yo-Yo Ma and Ravi Shankar.

WATCH l Hannigan speaks to CBC’s Q in 2019: 

Grammy, Juno winner

Hannigan, 53, joins the likes of Cecilia Bartoli and Renée Fleming among prominent vocalists who have won the prize, and becomes just the second Canadian recognized as a Polar laureate, following Joni Mitchell in 1996.

Hannigan told Q in 2019 that Mitchell’s versatility was an inspiration to her, praising the way the singer-songwriter “used her voice, however she wanted and needed to use it, like she wasn’t attached to a particular sound.”

It was the latest accolade for Hannigan, who was born in Waverley, N.S., and studied music at the University of Toronto before embarking on a career that has seen her collaborate with orchestras around the world and appear onscreen in Zorn III, a documentary film about the collaboration between avant-garde composer John Zorn, British pianist Steve Gosling and Harrington.

Her 2018 album Crazy Girl Crazy earned a Grammy in 2018 for best solo classical album. Both that release and 2019’s Vienna: Fin de Siècle, performed with conductor Reinbert de Leeuw, were Juno award winners in the classical album category.

Prior to that, in 2016, she was made a member of the Order of Canada.

On her Facebook page, Hannigan thanked commenters congratulating her on the win and said she looked forward to attending the ceremony, which is set to take place in Stockholm on May 27.

The Polar Prize committee receives nominations from the public as well as from the International Music Council, a UNESCO-founded non-governmental organization. According to music trade publication Billboard, the prize money for the laureates amounts to one million Swedish krona ($141,650 Cdn).

Queen was cited for its “distinctive and instantly recognizable sound that no one else can emulate.” The group known for hits such as We Are the Champions, Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, a decade after the death of lead singer Freddie Mercury at the age of 45.

“We are highly and deeply honoured to be given the Polar Music Prize this year,” the band said in a statement. The surviving members are guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bass player John Deacon.

The committee recognized Herbie Hancock, 84, as a “jazz scientist” who has not just inspired artists in that genre but as an artist who “influenced the development of R&B, funk and hip-hop.” Hancock was won 14 Grammy awards and an Academy award in a career that began in the early 1960s and included a yearslong turn that decade with the Miles Davis Quintet.

A U.S. federal judge on Monday pressed the Trump administration to provide details about hundreds of Venezuelans it deported despite a court order barring it from doing so, and gave the government until Tuesday to explain why officials believed they had complied with his order.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration deported more than 200 Venezuelans it claims were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has been linked to kidnapping, extortion and contract killings, to El Salvador over the weekend, even as Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked it from using a wartime law to carry out the deportations.

Boasberg had earlier instructed the government to provide details on the timing of the flights that transported the Venezuelans to El Salvador, including whether they took off after his order was issued.

He upbraided the government’s lawyer for the administration’s response during a hearing on Monday.

“Why are you showing up today without answers?” Boasberg asked.

The hearing followed a request by the government to remove the judge from the case. The Trump administration has challenged the historic checks and balances between the U.S. branches of government.

Since taking office in January, Trump has sought to push the boundaries of executive power, cutting spending authorized by Congress, dismantling agencies and firing thousands of federal workers.

Emergency session on weekend

Monday’s session was prompted by an emergency hearing on Saturday, in which the American Civil Liberties Union asked Boasberg to issue a two-week temporary block on Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out the deportations.

The White House asserted on Sunday that federal courts have no jurisdiction over Trump’s authority to expel foreign enemies under an 18th-century law historically used only in wartime, though it also said it had complied with the order.

In a court filing shortly before Monday’s hearing, the Trump administration said a spoken directive from the judge on Saturday to return any planes carrying the migrants was “not  enforceable” because it was not in a written order.

The administration said it did not violate Boasberg’s subsequent written order barring immigration authorities from removing migrants because the planes had already departed when it was issued.

But the judge said in court he still wanted to know when flights left, where they were going, when they left U.S. airspace and when they landed in a foreign country. He also asked when individuals were transferred to foreign custody.

“There is a lot of operational national security and foreign relations at risk,” said Abhishek Kambli, a Justice Department attorney, explaining why the Trump administration was resistant to sharing information.

Boasberg ordered the government by noon on Tuesday to provide details such as the timing of flight departures and arrivals in foreign countries, number of people deported and why the government did not believe it could make that information public.

Boasberg did not say whether the government violated his orders from Saturday.

The judge appeared skeptical at times at the Trump administration’s rationale for not returning the planes to the U.S. He repeatedly pressed Kambli, who repeatedly said there were matters he could not share publicly.

‘Borders on the absurd’

Some legal experts said the plane’s location in the air was irrelevant.

Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, said the argument “borders on the absurd” and was “contrary to well settled constitutional law” holding that federal officials are subject to the Constitution no matter where they are.

“A governmental plane on governmental business is not in a law-free zone,” Gerhardt said, adding: “If that is not the case, then the government can simply do anything it apparently wants to do so long as it is not operating any longer on American soil.”

With the Republican-controlled Congress largely backing his agenda, federal judges have often been the only constraint on his executive actions, putting many on hold while they consider their legality. In some cases, advocacy groups have said the administration is refusing to comply with judicial orders.

The Trump administration has variously described the deported Venezuelans as gang members, “monsters,” or “alien terrorists,” but has not provided evidence to back up its assertions.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said there were 261 people deported in total, including 137 who were removed under the Alien Enemies Act and more than 100 others who were removed via standard immigration proceedings. There were also 23 Salvadoran members of the MS-13 gang, Leavitt said.

The Trump administration has also found itself defending its actions in the deportation of a Rhode Island doctor to Lebanon last week.

U.S. authorities on Monday said they deported Dr. Rasha Alawieh after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” of the former longtime leader of Hezbollah and militants in her cellphone’s deleted items folder.

Alawieh had also told agents that while in Lebanon she attended the funeral last month of Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective” as a Shia Muslim.

The Justice Dept. provided those details as it sought to assure a federal judge in Boston that U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not willfully disobey an order he issued on Friday that should have halted Alawieh’s immediate removal.

The annual rate of inflation accelerated sharply to 2.6 per cent in February as the federal government’s temporary tax break came to an end mid-month, Statistics Canada said Tuesday. 

That marks a sizeable jump from the 1.9 per cent increase seen in January, when Canadians saw GST and HST taken off a variety of household staples, common gifts and restaurant bills for the entire month. February’s figures are well ahead of the consensus among economists polled by Reuters, which called for 2.2 per cent inflation in the month.

Statistics Canada’s consumer price index is based on final prices paid by Canadians, meaning sales taxes are included in the agency’s calculations. Statistics Canada calculations show that, without the tax break in place for half a month, inflation would have come in at three per cent in February.

With the tax holiday still in place until Feb. 15, restaurant food prices were down 1.4 per cent year-over-year. But Statistics Canada noted the reintroduction of the sales tax mid-month meant dining out was contributing the most to the acceleration in the overall price index in February.

Alcoholic beverages, children’s clothing and toys were also included in the tax holiday and saw their costs drop similarly in February, but not as much as in January.

February’s increase is a “massive” rise, Benjamin Reitzes, manager director and macro strategist with BMO Capital Markets Economics, said in a note to clients, “lifting inflation to an eight-month high.”

But the increase wasn’t solely due to the tax impact, he observed, noting that seasonally-adjusted CPI saw an increase of 0.4 per cent even without the mid-month return of GST/HST taken into account. 

“The headline inflation figures are subject to as much noise as we’ve seen in decades and that’s poised to continue for at least another couple of months, making it very challenging to interpret these figures,” he wrote. 

Increases seen in every province

The consumer price index rose in every province last month, with Ontario and New Brunswick facing the fastest accelerations.

While gas prices were up 0.6 per cent from January to February, Statistics Canada said the annual comparison showed a deceleration last month, helping to rein in the overall rise in inflation.

Elsewhere, Canadians were paying 18.8 per cent more year over year on travel tours last month, with Statistics Canada pointing to increased demand in travel to the United States over the Presidents’ Day weekend to explain the price hikes. This marked a 23 per cent increase in travel prices compared to the previous month. 

The Bank of Canada’s preferred metrics of core inflation came in “hotter than expected” in February and are poised to keep rising in the months ahead, TD Bank senior economist Leslie Preston said in a note to clients on Tuesday.

The February inflation figures do not directly reflect the imposition of tariffs or counter-tariffs between Canada and the U.S., which went into effect after a series of deadlines and announcements in March.

Katherine Judge, an economist with CIBC, warned in a note to clients that CPI could rise past three per cent year over year “in the coming months” as the impact of the tariffs begins to show up in the data. 

Report brings uncertainty for future rate cuts

The CPI report comes just a week after the Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate by a quarter point to 2.75 per cent to help manage inflation, continuing a series of cuts that started in June 2024. The next decision is set for April 16.

Economists are split on whether or not this sharp rise in the consumer price index could trigger a change to this trend.

Preston said that based on a forecast where U.S. tariffs remain in place for six months before abating, TD is calling for a pair of quarter-point cuts at the Bank of Canada’s next two decisions.

Reitzes says he believes that the Bank of Canada could see the CPI report as a sign to take a cautious tone as they seek to mitigate the impact of tariffs. 

“We’ll see what early April brings on the tariff front, but if the economic outlook doesn’t deteriorate further, the BoC will be considering a pause after cutting at seven straight meetings,” he said.

Whether we see a pause in cuts could hang on what happens on April 2, according to Judge — the day that U.S. President Donald Trump has promised another round of tariffs will come into effect.  

“If a 25 [per cent] tariff is avoided, the BoC will likely pause at the April meeting to gauge CPI pressures ahead,” she said. 

In the middle of an active volcano at the bottom of the world, dozens of fur seals bask in blowing wet snow. They are mostly unfussed by their two-legged guests. 

Around them lie cockeyed iron tanks and wooden boats from an early 20th-century whaling settlement, so weathered they’re nearly absorbed by the black sand beach. Traces of Chilean and British bases appear just as humbled.

On the surface, Deception Island’s Whalers Bay is still humanity’s biggest imprint on Antarctica, outside of its 80 or so research stations. 

But a climate scientist might say otherwise.

Studies on this fragile continent have documented how temperatures, glaciers, oceans and wildlife are reacting to the warming consequences of fossil fuel emissions. A place this remote and isolated makes a perfect laboratory for grasping the past, present and future of the Earth’s climate, according to many scientists drawn to Antarctica.

It’s a case study with high stakes, says Natural Resources Canada scientist Thomas James, who is leading the first all-Canadian expedition to the region. 

“What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay here,” he said, while recently walking the beach at Whalers Bay, as scientists gathered samples from the sand, snow and air around him.

Climate shifts ripple beyond Antarctica

It’s understood that climate change doesn’t acknowledge politically drawn borders. But James explains that Antarctica’s ice and cold oceans play an outsized role in regulating our climate. 

Just this month, researchers identified that melting freshwater from Antarctica’s glaciers is altering the water chemistry of the Southern Ocean. They predict that the changed salinity will slow the vital Antarctic Circumpolar Current by 20 per cent by 2050. The strongest current on Earth, the ACC’s influence extends to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, pumping water, heat and nutrients around the world. 

The current also protects Antarctica’s ice sheets — large masses of land-based ice — from warmer northern waters, preventing sea level rise, which would impact coastal communities around the globe. 

“We know that the Antarctic ice sheet is potentially unstable and could provide larger amounts of sea level change than the present models currently predict,” said James. “It’s a huge reservoir of fresh water.”

He’s studied Antarctica for more than 30 years, but his field work has mainly been in the northern polar region; this is only James’s second time in Antarctica.

“We think that spending some time understanding the Antarctic ice sheet and the implications for sea level change is very important for Canadians.”

It’s not just ice sheets that are melting. Sea ice (frozen sea water) at the poles has reached record lows three months in a row.

“The fact that we’re now seeing a reduction in Antarctic sea ice is really just one of many, many indicators that global climate change is happening,” said James. “It’s happening in all facets of the environment, and in many cases it appears to be accelerating.”

Team of strangers contribute to climate science

James’s team of 15 scientists — many of them strangers before this expedition — cross numerous disciplines of science. They are studying not only the ice sheet but glacial melt, the ocean floor, contaminants like microplastics and the sea water itself.

Aboard the HMCS Margaret Brooke, they are supported by the Royal Canadian Navy, which runs the winches, cranes and boats to help the scientists collect a mass of samples around the South Shetland Islands off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

It is part of the RCN’s larger Operation PROJECTION, to circumnavigate South America, strengthening alliances with other southern navies and gathering experience in the southern polar region. 

Militaries may only enter Antarctica’s boundaries if they are supporting scientific research, a rule set out in the Antarctic Treaty, which governs the continent.

The Arctic and offshore patrol ship will only cover a small fraction of the continent over four weeks of maritime transit from Chile’s Punta Arenas, but the voyage and science work takes enormous effort.

From early-morning trips on zodiac boats to glacier-lined coasts to late-night, deep-water collection using an elaborate crane, winch and boom system designed in Halifax, the science team is putting in long hours, determined to maximize their rare Antarctic access.

Brent Else is one of the scientists, here to study the ocean’s chemical properties.

“It turns out that oceans absorb a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” said the University of Calgary researcher. “If you look back over time, sort of since industrialization, they’ve probably taken up about the equivalent of about 40 per cent of all of the emissions that humans put into the atmosphere. So that gives us a huge break on climate change. What we really need to understand is, will the oceans continue to do that?”

Because of its cold temperatures, the Southern Ocean has the ability to sink carbon to significant depths — and keep it out of the atmosphere — for hundreds of years.

“It’s really important that we understand what’s going on in polar oceans, especially because they’re changing the fastest,” said Else. “So in an area like Antarctica, as we start to get more ice sheet melting, that’s going to put more freshwater into the Southern Ocean. And that might affect how all of these things interact.”

It’s why the interdisciplinary approach of this expedition is so advantageous.

“Most science, by its nature, is incremental. And what we’re doing is adding to that body of knowledge,” said James. 

The team will take back thousands of samples for analysis over the coming weeks and months. Many of them will go to other researchers back home in Canada.

Speaking about the groundbreaking expedition, James said, “It feels momentous.”

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith welcomed a promise from the Conservative Party of Canada on Monday to eliminate the federal backstop on industrial carbon pricing, if it were to form the next federal government. Although it appears unlikely the province would abandon its longstanding pricing system altogether.

“We fully support Pierre Poilievre’s commitment to return jurisdictional authority back to the provinces to regulate their own industrial emissions,” Smith said in a written statement.

Back in 2007, when Stephen Harper was prime minister and Ed Stelmach was premier, Alberta became the first jurisdiction in North America to put a price on industrial carbon emissions.

This policy is separate from the consumer-level carbon pricing — commonly known as the “carbon tax” — that Alberta adopted in 2017 under NDP premier Rachel Notley, then repealed in 2019 under UCP premier Jason Kenney.

Almost immediately after that, Alberta became subject to the federal carbon tax under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, which has now been effectively killed by Mark Carney’s Liberal government.

Throughout all this flux, Alberta’s industrial-scale pricing system has persisted. It has, however, undergone numerous changes over the years, including per-tonne price increases that keep it in line with the requirements of the federal backstop.

On Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pledged to eliminate federal carbon-pricing law altogether, including the backstop, if his party wins the next federal election. Provinces would be free to do as they like with their own industrial policies, he said.

How Alberta’s industrial carbon-pricing system works

Large-scale emitters — such as oilsands facilities, power plants, and other facilities with more than 100,000 tonnes of annual emissions — are subject to this industrial system of carbon pricing.

The carbon price only applies to the portion of their emissions beyond facility-specific “benchmarks” that are calculated by a complex formula.

At the same time, facilities can also receive credits for cutting emissions below their reduction targets.

Low-emitting facilities can sell their credits to higher-emitting facilities, which can then use the credits to avoid paying a portion of the carbon price they owe. This effectively creates both a carrot and stick within a single policy, with the carrot for low-emitting facilities being funded by the stick that applies to high-emitting facilities.

The money from facilities that do pay the carbon price goes into a fund that is administered by a provincial agency which offers grants to support projects and new technologies “that reduce emissions, lower costs, attract investment, and create jobs in Alberta.”

This approach to industrial carbon pricing has seen broad support from a variety of Alberta leaders, including former premier Jason Kenney.

“That fund, paid for by major emitters, I think is a good way of doing it,” Kenney said in 2018, even as he campaigned against Alberta’s consumer-level carbon tax.

Past support, future tweaks?

Smith, herself, has expressed support for the system, too, citing reductions in oilsands emissions intensity as proof of its effectiveness.

“We’re going to continue with an industrial carbon-pricing strategy because it is working,” she said last May.

Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz said Monday the province may look at tweaking the details of its industrial carbon-pricing policy, if the federal backstop were to be removed.

Noting Alberta’s system has been in place “long before the federal Liberals came into power,” Schulz said it has “historically worked well for industry.”

“However, I would say that the backstop and the carbon pricing put in place by the federal Liberal government has made our industry less competitive,” she added.

“So we’re working with industry right now to gather their feedback on how we could do better.”

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said Monday the federal government has mismanaged the consumer carbon tax but the industrial carbon price has “always worked,” in his view.

Getting rid of the industrial pricing system altogether “would be disastrous for the industry and disastrous for the environment,” Nenshi added.

Andrew Leach, an energy and environmental economist at the University of Alberta, said it’s “probably likely” that Alberta would keep its system in place, if a Poilievre-led government were to scrap the federal backstop.

“The question is whether it will remain as stringent and biting as it otherwise would have been,” he said, adding that a key issue is whether there will be enough pressure to ensure policies actually reduce emissions, if the federal policy were to be cancelled.

Who pays for the carrot?

As part of his announcement Monday, Poilievre also promised to expand eligibility for existing federal tax credits to “reward heavy industries who make products with lower emissions than the world average.”

He said his government’s approach would be “carrot, not stick.”

But removing the carbon-price stick in favour of a larger tax-credit carrot also means taxpayers would cover more of the cost of that carrot, said Chris Severson-Baker, executive director of the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think-tank.

“This proposal really is to shift from a polluter-pays system … to taxpayer-pay system,” he said.

“It would be shifting entirely to a system of subsidies, rather than a mix of incentives to reduce emissions, combined with incentives to invest.”

In Severson-Baker’s view, the proposal also introduces “an enormous amount of uncertainty” into the decisions companies are trying to make around new investment in the country, at a time in which Canada is already grappling with a new landscape under U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The last thing we want to do is add to the uncertainty that investors are experiencing in Canada right now,” he said.

Federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Poilievre’s plan would also hurt Canada’s ability to expand and diversify its trading partners.

“I would say Mr. Poilievre actually doesn’t really understand how the industrial pricing system works,” he said.

Wilkinson noted that “the European Union is in the process of putting in place border carbon adjustments, which means that decarbonization is really important if we want to trade with Europe.”

“Long-term competitiveness and jobs and economic growth rely on us actually moving forward with decarbonization,” he said. “In Alberta, most of the money that comes from the industrial price is recycled to industry to actually invest in decarbonization projects.”

The Pathways Alliance, which last year publicly pressed Poilievre to clarify his position on industrial carbon pricing, told CBC News on Monday it had no comment on his promise to get rid of the federal backstop.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams departed the International Space Station early on Tuesday morning in a SpaceX capsule for a long-awaited trip back to Earth, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a roughly week-long test mission.

Wilmore and Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts and retired U.S. Navy test pilots, strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts and undocked from the orbiting laboratory at 1:05 a.m. ET, embarking on a 17-hour trip to Earth.

The four-person crew, formally part of NASA’s Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, is scheduled for a splashdown off Florida’s coast later on Tuesday at 5:57 p.m. ET.

Wilmore and Williams’ homecoming caps an end to an unusual, drawn-out mission filled with uncertainty and technical troubles that have turned a rare case of NASA’s contingency planning — as well as failures of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — into a global and political spectacle.

The astronaut pair had launched into space as Starliner’s first crew in June for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission. But issues with Starliner’s propulsion system led to cascading delays in their return home, culminating in a NASA decision last year to have them take a SpaceX craft back this year as part of the agency’s crew rotation schedule.

The mission has captured the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump, who upon taking office in January, called for a quicker return of Wilmore and Williams and alleged without evidence that former president Joe Biden “abandoned” them on the ISS for political reasons.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump, echoed his call for an earlier return. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is the United States’ only orbital-class crew spacecraft, which Boeing had hoped its Starliner would compete with before the mission with Wilmore and Williams threw its development future into uncertainty.

The astronauts will be flown to their crew quarters at the space agency’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston for several days of health checks, per routine for astronaut returns, before NASA flight surgeons approve they can go home to their families.

Living in space for months can affect the human body in multiple ways, from muscle atrophy to possible vision impairment.

Upon splashing down, Wilmore and Williams will have logged 286 days in space — longer than the average six-month ISS mission length, but far short of U.S. record holder Frank Rubio. His continuous 371 days in space ending in 2023 was the unexpected result of a coolant leak on a Russian spacecraft.

Williams, capping her third space flight, will have tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any U.S. astronaut after Peggy Whitson’s 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.

Swept up in NASA’s routine astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams could not begin their return to Earth until their replacement crew arrived, in order to maintain adequate U.S. staffing levels, according to NASA.

Their replacements arrived on Friday night — four astronauts as part of NASA’s Crew-10 mission briefly put the station’s headcount at 11.

“We came prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,” Wilmore told reporters from space earlier this month, adding that he did not believe NASA’s decision to keep them on the ISS until Crew-10’s arrival had been affected by politics.

“That’s what your nation’s human space flight program’s all about,” he said, “planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that.”

Wilmore and Williams have been doing scientific research and conducting routine maintenance with the station’s other five astronauts. Williams had performed two six-hour spacewalks for maintenance outside the ISS, including one with Wilmore.

The ISS, about 409 kilometres in altitude, is a football field-sized research lab that has been housed continuously by international crews of astronauts for nearly 25 years — a key platform of science diplomacy managed primarily by the U.S. and Russia.

Williams told reporters earlier this month that she was looking forward to returning home to see her two dogs and family.

“It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” she said.