An hour before the sun is up in Ontario on Sunday, restaurants and bars will be allowed to start serving alcohol to excited hockey fans.

To coincide with the Canadian men’s ice hockey gold medal game, the provincial government will temporarily change licensing rules to allow alcohol sales to begin at 6 a.m.

“The entire country will be watching on Sunday morning as our men’s hockey team plays for Olympic gold,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford wrote in a social media post after Canada narrowly beat Finland to advance.

“To help us all celebrate Team Canada, the province will be allowing bars and restaurants across the province to sell alcohol starting at 6:00 a.m. EST. Let’s all come together, support local businesses and cheer on Team Canada!”

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Ontario normally allows alcohol sales from 9 a.m. until 2 a.m., with extended hours for New Year’s Eve.

An exemption in the act allows Toronto to decree its own opening times, which have been set to 6 a.m. since the beginning of the Olympics.

The gold medal game will begin at 8:10 a.m. on Sunday.

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B.C.’s Premier David Eby is set to speak at 12:45 p.m. PST on Friday to respond to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Trump overstepped his presidential authority by imposing tariffs on Canada, Mexico and other countries under emergency powers, striking down a central economic and diplomatic strategy that has upended global trade.

A majority of the justices sided with lower courts that had found Trump improperly used tariffs to respond to national emergencies he declared over fentanyl trafficking in North America and international trade deficits, the latter of which led to so-called “reciprocal” tariffs against dozens of nations.

The law Trump used to exercise that authority, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEPPA), “does not authorize the President to impose tariffs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

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Eby has always been very vocal against Trump’s tariffs and the impact on B.C.’s economy.

“We are not going to accept these continual threats, this continued uncertainty. We are going to stand up for Canadians. This is unacceptable,” Eby said last March.

Trump can still impose tariffs under other authorities, including a national security clause known as Section 232 that targets specific industries rather than countries. Those tariffs on goods, including steel, lumber and automobiles, remain in place.

This story will be updated following Eby’s press conference on Friday afternoon.

— With files from Global News’ Sean Boynton and Ariel Rabinovitch

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will be holding a press conference in Calgary on Friday morning to discuss her government’s plans to hold a provincial referendum this fall that will ask Albertans’ opinions on various immigration and constitutional issues.

Smith announced her plans in a provincewide television address on Thursday evening.

The vote will be held on Oct. 19, and the premier said there will be nine questions on the ballot, including whether the Government of Alberta should push to have the federal Senate abolished, whether the Canadian constitution should be amended to allow provincial governments to select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts and whether the constitution should be amended to give provincial laws dealing with areas of shared constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws.

However, the most controversial questions focus on giving the province more control over immigration, including whether the province should introduce a new law mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an “Alberta-approved” immigration status will be eligible for provincially-funded programs, such as health care, education and other social services.

Critics have assailed the province’s plan as “weaponizing” the issue of immigration to win votes.

In an interview with Global News, Bradley Lafortune, executive director of Public Interest Alberta, reacted to the government’s referendum plans by saying, “This is a Trump-style, MAGA government that is doing their best to imitate the current Republicans in the United States.”

Smith announced the referendum plans one day after the executive director of her Calgary office, in a post on social media, railed against Canada’s immigration policies, saying, “unsustainable mass immigration into Canada” fills him “with profound disgust.”

In the post on X, Bruce McAllister also asked,”‘Why import from nations with failed systems when our Judeo-Christian heritage and principles have worked so well here?”

Global News will be livestreaming the premier’s Friday morning press conference online starting at 11:30 MST/13:30 EDT.

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Quebec’s justice minister has reversed course in the face of strong criticism of his plan to enshrine abortion rights in his constitution bill.

Simon Jolin-Barrette says on social media that after hearing from legal experts and women’s rights groups he made the difficult decision to withdraw the abortion section from the legislation.

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The minister had wanted to codify the right to abortion in Quebec’s new constitution, which has not yet been adopted by the legislature.

But critics had put immense pressure on him, warning that legislating on abortion could potentially open the door to legal challenges from anti-abortion groups.

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They say abortion is already decriminalized in Canada and adequately protected by the Charter and case law.

Jolin-Barrette says his intention was never to incite fear but to ensure abortion rights are protected.

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The day before employees at the Crown Royal bottling facility in Amherstburg, Ont., were told their jobs were about to be eliminated, the company behind the Canadian-made whisky reached out to Premier Doug Ford’s office to offer the government a “heads up.”

Internal emails, obtained by Global News through freedom of information laws, reveal how the government initially planned a subtler response to the job losses, before the premier decided to intervene.

After the closure was made public, coverage intensified, culminating with Ford emptying a bottle of Crown Royal onto the ground after an event. The premier threatened to ban the whisky and eventually retreated this month when the company agreed to spend $23 million to offset the job losses and lower the temperature with the government.

But before Ford raised the stakes, emails between senior premier’s office staff and a public relations firm representing Diageo North America show a pleasant relationship going as far back as 2023, when the government was rolling out sweeping changes to the province’s alcohol retail rules

The company sent the premier a letter to show the company’s “appreciation” for the alcohol modernization plan and invite “continued dialogue between Diageo and the Premier’s Office.”

The tone changed last August, when the company emailed Ford’s principal secretary asking for an urgent meeting to update him on a “time-sensitive matter.”

“We are looking to ensure the Premier’s Office is briefed before the matter becomes public,” the Aug. 27 email from Diageo Canada’s corporate relations director read.

The email was sent at 6:47 p.m. that day. The next morning, the closure of the bottling plant was made public.

Sources told Global News that while companies will often give the province advance notice on plant closures or workforce changes, it only comes one day in advance.

In Diageo’s case, company officials laid out the changes over a 10- to 15-minute Microsoft Teams call and suggested that the decision was made months in advance, with little the Ontario government could do to change the outcome.

The courtesy call, according to the emails seen by Global News, appeared to be taken at face value.

“Thank you for the call and the heads up. As promised, I am sharing the statement our labour minister will be issuing in response to this,” a senior staffer in the premier’s office wrote to Diageo on Aug. 28, hours after the announcement was made public.

The response shared with the company indicated the province was “disappointed” with the decision but offered no hints at the escalation to come.

When asked by Diageo whether the government’s statement was going to be issued “proactively” or “reactive to media inquiries,” the premier’s office sought to reassure the company.

“Just reactive. We have a handful of local requests at the moment,” the senior staffer wrote.

Then, the tone shifted.

The next day, a staffer in the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade wrote to Diageo’s public relations firm asking to set up a call or meeting with the premier.

“Premier Ford has asked our office to put him in touch with the President of Diageo Canada. Would you be able to assist me in getting them connected?” the email read.

Sources told Global News the request for a call came after Ford was briefed on the situation and started getting calls from stakeholders. On the Friday before the Labour Day long weekend, the premier and a Diageo representative hopped on a phone call that, sources said, “wasn’t positive.”

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“[The premier] came into it saying what can we do to make this work?” the source said. “The answer was basically, you can’t make it work.”

The anger stemming from the phone call resulted in Ford’s public protest.

The premier, who was scheduled to hold a news conference in Kitchener, brought along a bottle of Crown Royal for a loosely choreographed demonstration, which critics later labelled a “stunt.”

“You guys are about as dumb as a bag of hammers for doing this,” Ford declared as he poured out the bottle.

The situation only continued to escalate from there, with threats from the premier to strip the LCBO of Crown Royal, and even other Diageo brands, when the plant in Amherstburg closed for good at the end of February.

Sources said that while “both sides” started looking for ways to de-escalate the situation, the deadline created more “willingness” from Diageo to “bring more to the table.”

“There were multiple rounds of offers,” one source said before Diageo and the Ford government agreed to $23 million in spending.

The investment includes a million-dollar investment in the Windsor and Amherstburg area, along with purchase agreements from manufacturers in eastern Ontario, Toronto and Scarborough, plus $5 million on Ontario-based marketing and advertising.

While NDP Leader Marit Stiles highlighted that the agreement “doesn’t replace the jobs that we’re going to lose in Amherstburg,” Ford defended the agreement as positive for the province.

“If I didn’t fight, that $23 million, they wouldn’t get anything at all,” Ford said. “And that was my rationale right from the get-go.”

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The NDP leadership candidates began the final official debate with a general acknowledgment they agree on policies, but have different visions for how to achieve their most existential goal — rebuilding the party.

At the close of the debate, each candidate was asked if they are running to rebuild the party or become the prime minister. Four of the five candidates said they are running to rebuild the party, while Ontario organic farmer Tony McQuail was the lone candidate who said he is eyeing the Prime Minister’s Office.

During opening remarks in the Vancouver-area debate, Alberta MP Heather McPherson said the party needs someone who knows how to turn NDP policies and values into electoral wins. She said she has a track record of beating Conservatives in her home province and can expand that nationally.

Following the debate, she said that the NDP has always been the party of “big ideas” but to get them implemented you need get people elected.

“What we really need to do is look across the country and pick up seats where we have lost support, and I think we can do that,” McPherson said after the debate.

“I think there are many areas across the country where we have seen New Democrats are strong, where people actually thought they were electing — they were voting for something they didn’t get,” McPherson said after the debate, alluding to votes lost to the Liberals in 2025.

She then pointed to areas she sees as winnable for the NDP including Vancouver Island, Metro Vancouver and southern Ontario.

Documentarian Avi Lewis said the same approaches seen in past elections will not work and the NDP needs to be putting forward big, bold ideas. He said this can be a winning strategy as his campaign has pulled in the most donations, nearly $780,000 as of Dec. 31, 2025, and is getting significant member support.

Lewis disputed the assertion that they all agree on what the NDP needs to do, and talked about his push for government-run options in groceries, telecoms and banking as a means of addressing affordability.

“We’ve raised almost as much money on our campaign as all the other campaigns combined, we have signed up new members in 338 out of 343 ridings and we have giant events packed with hundreds of people across the country. So something about our offer is resonating,” Lewis said after the debate.

Dockworker union leader Rob Ashton disputed this, and said people need quicker fixes to address the affordability crisis and establishing these new Crown services will take too long.

Ashton said in his opening statements that the party needs to go back to its working-class roots if it wants to try and win back ridings that it lost in the last election to the Conservatives and Liberals. Ashton said that without that support, their ideas will remain ideas.

He later took a shot at Lewis for his authorship role in the Leap Manifesto, saying it killed the Alberta NDP’s chances of being re-elected under former premier Rachel Notley.

“The part that I disagree with is not communicating with the provincial NDP, the Alberta NDP, before bringing it forward, before dropping it on the table in Alberta,” Ashton said after the debate.

“Because that’s when the sitting government, sitting NDP government had to fight and defend themselves.”

Lewis defended the Leap Manifesto saying it had wide union buy-in and was adopted as a resolution by three-quarters of NDP members as a federal policy resolution at the party’s 2016 convention in Edmonton.

McPherson said that the party only agreed to look at the Leap Manifesto and it gave provincial conservative leaders, including former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, a cudgel to beat the NDP with.

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Social worker Tanille Johnston opened the debate saying that she is honoured to be the first Indigenous person to be on a federal leadership ballot.

She said Canada needs to bring in a universal basic income to pull people out of poverty, end fossil fuel subsidies and have proper government-to-government relations with Indigenous communities.

Johnston said that the party and leader need to physically go to more places they don’t have seats, speak to people and more importantly listen to those community needs.

“Not going to the places and spaces where we have big opportunities is not helping us. Prince Albert, huge opportunity in Prince Albert, (Sask.) and a lot of people might not see that. Prince Albert has a very high Indigenous population and people tell me all the time well Indigenous people don’t vote,” Johnston said during the debate.

“I’m like ‘well have you had a gone and had a conversation with them?’ … No we haven’t.”

McQuail said Canada needs a radical societal reworking to address climate change and the affordability crisis. He said Canada needs to redistribute wealth and shift the country’s capitalist, consumer society to a more sustainable system.

“We have to talk about how do we not only change the economy and transition it to renewables, but how do we redesign to drastically reduce the amount of energy and resources that economies use,” McQuail said during the debate.

“Because our economic growth, which has been promoted for the 45 years since I got involved in politics is actually becoming a cancer on the planet.”

Yves Engler, a Montreal activist who was not allowed to run in the race, and a small group of protesters tried to enter the studio during the debate. They banged on the doors, shouting “Let us in!”

Local police arrived at the studio in New Westminster, B.C., to remove the protesters.

The broadcast of the debate was not interrupted by the protest.

Engler had promised to disrupt the race after his candidacy was not approved.

The race will be decided through a ranked ballot vote. Voting opens on March 9 and closed on March 28 at 7 p.m. Voters will be able to cast their ballot online, by phone or mail.

The next NDP leader will be announced on March 29 during the party’s convention in Winnipeg.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says out-of-control immigration levels are overwhelming the province’s core social services and has announced a referendum will take place nine months from now, asking residents to weigh in on nine questions addressing both that and possible changes to Canada’s Constitution.

(Scroll down to see the questions)

In a televised speech Thursday night, Smith said the Oct. 19, provincial referendum will be primarily focused on finding out how Albertans want the government to “deal with the issue of immigration, as well as steps we can take as a province to strengthen our constitutional and fiscal position within a united Canada.”

Smith said the changes her UCP government has determined the province needs to make to immigration are a significant departure from the status quo.

“These were far and away the issues most strongly identified by Albertans during last year’s Alberta Next panel town halls and online submissions, and in my view, it is time to act on them,” Smith said in a 13-minute televised speech that the government paid to air during the 6 p.m. primetime news hour.

“The fact is, Alberta taxpayers can no longer be asked to continue to subsidize the entire country through equalization and federal transfers, permit the federal government to flood our borders with new arrivals, and then give free access to our most-generous-in-the-country social programs to anyone who moves here,” Smith said.

The premier noted the province will be unveiling a large deficit in next week’s budget and lower oil prices have contributed to less revenue.

According to the Alberta government, each $1 drop in the price of oil means roughly $750 million fewer royalties for the province.

However, Smith said social services costs going to more new residents is making Alberta’s budget woes even worse.

“This is not only grossly unfair to Alberta taxpayers, but also financially crippling and undercuts the quality of our health care, education and other social services.”

Mount Royal political scientist Lori Williams challenges that assertion.

“To suggest that this budget deficit is primarily caused by immigration — that non-citizens who come to Alberta are filling emergency rooms and classrooms and that’s where problems coming from — it creates, I think, a distorted picture of what’s actually going on,” Williams said after Smith’s speech aired.

Danielle Smith has been Alberta premier since 2022 and Williams believes Thursday’s speech aimed to redirect public attention away from the province.

“People are concerned very much about affordability, they’re concerned about health care, and they are concerned about education. And the government has invested in some areas, has been addressing some of the problems that have been raised — but they persist.”

“People, when a government has been in power for years, start to notice if promises aren’t fulfilled. They start ask questions and they start make more demands of a government.”

Bradley Lafortune, executive director of Public Interest Alberta, said a bad news budget is not unheard of in a province that gleans so much of its income from oil and gas royalties.

“That’s nothing new in Alberta. But what is new, I think — at least with this degree of focus and tone — is the shift in blame towards immigration and newcomers,” he said after listening to the speech.

“Fundamentally, this is a Trump-style, MAGA government that is doing their best to imitate the current Republicans in the United States,” Lafortune said.

“And what that means is blaming newcomers, cutting services, reducing taxes, and then telling everyone that we need to do more with less, at the same time as friends and insiders are receiving massive amounts of grift on the public dollar.”

Lafortune thinks Albertans should prepare for a “very bad budget” next Thursday that he predicts will contain more cuts to frontline services and the administration of them.

“What I mean by bad is it’s going to be bad for Albertans, working middle-class Albertans. I think its gonna be very bad.”

Smith said in the short-term, the government will not be implementing drastic cuts in the 2026 budget but will instead be cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, improving efficiencies in program delivery (such as more income testing for social programs) and prioritizing needs before wants as much as possible.

“The approved wage increases for our doctors, nurses, and teachers will remain in place so we can continue to attract the skilled professionals needed to catch up with our growth,” Smith said.

According to Statistics Canada, Alberta’s population surged by 202,324 residents in 2023. That’s the largest annual increase in the province’s history, the equivalent of 550 people moving to Alberta every day.

While the bulk of the growth came from international migration, Alberta also shattered a national record for interprovincial migration, most of whom came from Ontario and B.C.

The province’s population growth peaked in the third quarter of 2023, with it dropping off significantly in 2024 and 2025, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data.

“I think the federal government started realizing that they’ve been pushing too strongly on the population growth through different types of migration, international migration,” Carleton University economics professor Christopher Worswick said of the decline that began in 2024.

“So we saw caps on the number of international students coming in. I think that needed to be done because the program was growing just way too fast.”

Premier Smith blames the former Justin Trudeau Liberal government for Alberta’s population woes, saying over five years almost 600,000 people moved to Alberta, pushing the population over five million people.

“Ottawa throttled our most important job creating industries and prioritized immigration away from economic migrants and instead focused on international students, temporary workers and asylum seekers,” Smith said.

In 2022-23, the province ran a $4.95 million “Alberta is Calling” campaign aimed at attracting skilled workers to the province from other parts of the country.

“Although sustainable immigration has always been an important part of our provincial growth model, throwing the doors wide open to anyone and everyone across the globe has flooded our classrooms, emergency rooms and social support systems with far too many people, far too quickly,” Smith said.

Overcrowded classrooms and a strained health-care system has been a documented issue in Alberta for well over a decade and Williams said blaming it on newer residents is a deflexion of responsibility.

“There’s no question that we have seen very large numbers of newcomers to Alberta. Part of that is because the Alberta government has invited people, citizens of Canada to come here and to work in Alberta.

“To somehow suggest that the problem has been created by immigration — as if these problems didn’t exist before those immigration numbers ticked up — I think is inaccurate.”

She fears it will create strife and inflame racial tensions.

“I think that impression is potentially quite problematic, particularly for those who are already struggling with people’s hostility toward them.”

The October referendum, a year before the province’s scheduled general election, could be even longer.

Last year, Smith promised a referendum on separation in 2026 if citizens gathered the required number of signatures on a petition.

One citizen-led petition to be put to lawmakers this spring could lead to a referendum vote on making it a provincial policy that Alberta stay in Canada.

Another petition effort, with a deadline for signatures in early May, seeks a referendum question about pulling the province out of Confederation.

Smith said Thursday that strengthening Alberta’s “constitutional and fiscal position within a united Canada” and immigration were the biggest issues her Alberta Next panel heard as it toured the province last year.

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One of the issues tabled for debate was whether Alberta should withhold social services from some immigrants. The panel was propped up by calls from in-person attendees who at times called for mass deportations.

In January, Smith’s United Conservative Party government walked back what it called a “premature” decision to cut off temporary foreign workers from provincial health-care coverage, including those who had already obtained work permits.

The ministry in charge said, at the time, the move was on pause pending review.

On Wednesday, Smith’s chief of staff, Rob Anderson, reposted a social media infographic about immigration numbers and invited readers to watch the premier’s televised address.

“This absolute insanity needs to stop. It will,” he wrote.

The executive director of the premier’s office, Bruce McAllister, also pointed to the same social media post to sound off on population growth.

“Does their contempt for Canada’s core values and traditions drive them to flood our borders with millions from societies not built on the same foundations that have made us thrive?” McAllister said on X.

“Why import from nations with failed systems when our Judeo-Christian heritage and principles have worked so well here? It almost feels like these elites are ashamed of what built this great country.”

Smith was asked Wednesday if her government shared McAllister’s values. She didn’t directly answer but said western society is based on “the Socratic Judeo-Christian tradition.”

“However, Alberta was also created since 1905 based on the immense diaspora communities that come here,” she said.

She said the federal government has made changes to refocus on economic migrants and that the previous system “broke.”

“It was the No. 1 issue that we heard,” she said, referring to the Alberta Next panel.

As it stands right now, the referendum in October will ask Albertans nine questions concerning immigration and the Constitution:

Immigration

1. Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?

2. Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta-approved immigration status will be eligible for provincially-funded programs, such as health care, education and other social services?

3. Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for social support programs as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring all individuals with a non-permanent legal immigration status to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincially-funded social support programs?

4. Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for public health care and education as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the healthcare and education systems?

5. Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate, or citizenship card, to vote in an Alberta provincial election?

Constitution

6. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts?

7. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to abolish the unelected federal Senate?

8. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education, and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs?

9. Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to better protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving a province’s laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws when the province’s laws and federal laws conflict?

With files from Lisa Johnson, The Canadian Press