The head of Metrolinx is acknowledging the provincial transit agency has spent too much time embroiled in legal battles with its contractors, pledging a new approach after finally finishing the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.

The light rail route carried its first passengers on Feb. 8, roughly six years after it was originally scheduled to open, bringing to a conclusion a messy period of Metrolinx’s history marked by delays, cost overruns and legal skirmishes.

The consortium building the Crosstown, Crosslinx Transit Solutions, took the government to court over delays during the COVID-19 pandemic and again over how the TTC had involved itself in testing for the line.

The group behind the Finch West LRT also took Metrolinx to court over how the TTC was involved in testing the line. Meanwhile, the consortium currently working on the Hurontario LRT found itself involved in legal battles with its subcontractors.

On Thursday, Metrolinx CEO Michael Lindsay said one of the key lessons from the Eglinton Crosstown LRT was to work more collaboratively with the construction firms — and only head to court as a last resort.

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“It’s part of the reason we have a more progressive form of contracting now, where we’re sitting investing with the private sector partner in design, identifying constructability issues,” he told reporters. “That’s probably the most important thing to avoid downstream claims.”

Lindsay replaced former Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster last year, moving from another Crown corporation, Infrastructure Ontario.

“We have to always remember that our primary objective is to bring these transit lines into being as opposed to sitting on our rights, insisting on a legal strategy,” he added.

“That’s the thing that we are trying to do as we show up in these projects. And to the credit of our private partners, I think they’re trying to do the same.”

The lessons will be tested in real time for Lindsay, with several major transit projects still in the ground.

The Scarborough Subway Extension is currently halfway through tunnelling, while a western extension to the Eglinton Crosstown LRT is also being built. Stations are being hollowed out underground for the Ontario Line, and work is also taking place to extend the Yonge Street subway into Markham.

Lindsay insisted that avoiding legal claims would not result in the government or Metrolinx rolling over to the demands of builders, prompting cost overruns.

“We’re never being disrespectful of taxpayer money,” he said. “There’s a balance here that needs to be struck between insisting upon the performance that we have contracted for and dealing with unknown issues when they arise.”

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MILAN – Canada’s Secretary of Sport knows what it is to be an Olympian, albeit in a summer sport.

Adam van Koeverden, an Olympic kayak champion, said the fan came out in him at the Milan Cortina Winter Games, particularly while watching his favourite winter sport of cross-country skiing.

“Not just Canadian athletes, but all athletes,” he said Friday at the Canadian consulate in Milan. “I watch them, and I have a degree of educated awe that I can feel.”

The Liberal MP for Burlington North-Milton West, who was the 500-metre champion in 2004 and owns three more Olympic medals, was handed the sports post in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first cabinet just under a year ago.

Van Koeverden served six years as parliamentary secretary to successive sport ministers after first being elected in 2019.

Canadian athletes, and by extension the national sport system, are under a hot spotlight at the Olympic Games as successes and misses are magnified in the biggest multi-sport stage on the planet.

With three silver medals and four bronze, Canada had yet to win gold on Friday, which was the deepest a Canadian team had gone, not standing atop the podium since the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary, where the host team was shut out of gold.

The Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees have lobbied the federal government on behalf of national sport organizations (NSOs) for an increase in core funding, with the latest ask a $144-million raise in 2025.

Core funding is money all NSOs count on to fund operations, athletes, coaches and support staff, and they say it hasn’t increased since 2005. It’s been described as the “blood in the veins” of an organization.

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Two federal budgets have passed without an increase, although athletes saw a $410 raise in their monthly athlete assistance cheques in the 2024 budget.

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Chief executive officer David Shoemaker has said that Canada’s athletes “are having to increasingly do more with less.”

Van Koeverden maintains there’s been considerable investment in athletes by the federal government, which spends $266 million annually on sport.

“In the last seven years, we’ve managed to increase the athlete assistance program by 45 per cent,” he said, adding there have also been increases in mental health services, support for student-athletes and funding at sport institutes that provide science and medical resources.

“It has been dwelled on that one stream, which represents about 15 per cent of our sport funding, has remained the same, but the total sport budget and all of the things that I just mentioned, since the time when a lot of organizations have been indicating, about 20 years, has more than doubled.”

The sport system must also do more than build Olympians, van Koeverden said.

“That’s one reason that we fund sport, but there’s a dozen others too,” he said. “My main sort of policy obsession is making sure that everybody has an opportunity to play regardless of your financial background, your situation, where you live, who your parents are, how much money you got, whether you have a disability or not, whether you feel like you belong, let’s lower all those barriers.

“It’s a question of do you want to fund Olympic performance for Olympic performance or do you want to fund sport for all the great reasons in the way that will benefit children, youth, families, seniors, communities, for all of the reasons and all the ways we know it can? What you get out of that is also Olympic performance. That’s my vision.”

Where the federal government has opened the coffers for sport, van Koeverden says, is in the infrastructure money in the 2025 federal budget to build and revitalize pools, arenas and fieldhouses.

“It used to be a be like a $200-million fund, and now it’s a $51-billion fund,” he said. “It’s shared with waste water and public transit, but the availability of funding for sport infrastructure is vastly broadened and increased.

“We’ve got good facilities in our country, but we need to build more. The prime minister is not shy about wanting to build Canada, and that includes sports facilities.”

As for Canada hosting another Olympic Games or a multi-sport event such as the Pan American or Commonwealth Games, van Koeverden said the push does not come from the federal government.

The feds provide financial support for such ventures, such as the $320 million for FIFA World Cup matches in Toronto and Vancouver later this year.

Van Koeverden is a believer in the public legacy pieces that multi-sport events leave behind.

He points to the Milton velodrome in his riding, built for the 2015 Pan American Games, where Olympic track cyclists train, and parents push strollers when it’s snowing outside.

“Before we get too wrapped up in how much the Games cost to implement and do, let’s also look at how timely that infrastructure comes to fruition when we have a deadline and a Games to host,” he said.

“It is a matter of working together with all levels of government to make sure it’s a priority, to make that it’s utilizing existing infrastructure, to make sure the public money that goes into it is going to serve Canadians for decades.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2026.

&copy 2026 The Canadian Press

The B.C. government’s wolf cull program is facing new opposition due to a ‘Judas’ wolf being spotted on First Nations territory.

The Gitxsan First Nation, near Hazelton, B.C., reportedly captured footage of a wolf on a snowy trail with what appears to be a collar around its neck.

“These are what’s called a Judas wolf,” Ian McAllister of Pacific Wild told Global News.

“So the government has been putting collars around the necks of wolves, and then in the snow follows them to reveal the rest of their pack where they’re killed by snipers and helicopters.”

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The wolf cull has been taking place in B.C. for about 10 years and hundreds of wolves are killed every winter in order to protect threatened caribou herds.

The program has been divisive on both sides, but the Allied Clans Coalition, Gitxsan Titleholders and caretakers of its Lax’yip (territories) have now written a letter to Randene Neill, B.C.’s Minister of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship, stating that the government is not authorized to use collared Judas wolves and other predator management activities within their territories.

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“Within Gitxsan law and governance, Gibuu (Wolf) is not only a predator in our territory, but a central kin and teacher in our Adaawk and in our understandings of family, cooperation, territory, and balance,” the letter states.

“The health of wolf populations, and the way they are treated, is directly connected to how we understand our own responsibilities as caretakers of the Lax’yip and all that lives within it.”

The Allied Clans are requesting confirmation from the B.C. government to ensure that no wolf cull or predator management activities are authorized or carried out on their lands.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship told Global News that no government-led predator reduction takes place in Gitxsan Territory.

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Last week, a study from the University of British Columbia found that the wolf kill program may not be as effective as previously thought, finding that in some places where wolves were removed, other predators like grizzly bears and wolverines were still a threat to caribou.

In addition, a coalition of environmental organizations announced its intent to sue the Canadian government for delaying the full mapping of critical habitat for threatened caribou for more than 11 years.

“Southern Mountain Caribou have been listed as a threatened species for over two decades. Under SARA, (Species at Risk Act), the federal government must fully identify the critical habitat the species needs to survive and recover so they can take steps to protect that habitat,” a press release from the Wilderness Committee stated.

“But effective habitat protection cannot happen without full, accurate maps — and those maps remain unfinished.”

The Gitxsan First Nation did not respond to Global News’ request for an interview.

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford is backing down from his threat to remove Crown Royal from the shelves of the LCBO after the government said it reached a $23-million agreement with the company that includes new investment but won’t replace the jobs lost.

Months after Ford poured out a bottle of Crown Royal in protest of the company’s decision to shut down a bottling plant in Amherstburg, Ont., impacting roughly 200 jobs, the government said the two sides came to an agreement to avoid the upcoming escalation.

Ford said the $23 million, including everything from ingredient purchases to local economic development investments and advertising, is made up of new investments that “Ontario would not otherwise have seen” if it had not threatened the prohibition.

“By standing firm in our plan to protect Ontario workers, we’ve secured nearly $23 million in investments,” Ford said in a statement. “These investments will help keep Ontario workers on the job, strengthen provincial supply chains and support the local community in Amherstburg and the surrounding area.”

The agreement, however, made no mention of the workers at the Amherstburg facility who are set to leave the facility when it shuts its doors at the end of February. While Ford had expressed hope that Diageo would replace the positions there, neither the government nor the company offered employment-related details.

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Through the fall months, Ford’s threat against Diageo intensified. At one point, he suggested he would ban other products made by the international drinks company, like Smirnoff vodka.

But pressure from across Canada began to mount at the end of the year, as political leaders in Quebec and Manitoba worried about what a ban on Crown Royal would do to the Diageo operations still employing people in their provinces.

Quebec’s finance minister said Ford’s plan to ban the whisky was misguided, while Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew mounted a campaign to get Ontario to back down. He visited a Crown Royal facility in his province and posted a video to social media, encouraging Ford to reconsider.

Ontario’s tone gradually softened and Ford began referencing an “olive branch” he said he was offering to Diageo. He moved from talking exclusively about the plant that was set to close to suggesting the jobs could be replaced in other ways.

“If Diageo comes and says, I’m going to replace these 200 workers by manufacturing bottles, doing their cartons, doing other things, more advertising, so on, so forth, and they can show me on paper. Then, we’ll sit down, and I’ll be open,” he said in January. “I’m pretty easygoing.”

The agreement the government eventually reached with Diageo will see various spending commitments across the province. The plan includes money for a spirit maker and read-to-drink beverage makers.

Just over 20 per cent of the commitment is for “Ontario-based marketing and promotion.”

A spokesperson for Diageo would not confirm what its advertising budget was in Ontario before the agreement, but thanked the government for backing down on its proposed ban.

“We thank Premier Ford and his team for their exceptional leadership and collaboration in reaching this resolution,” they wrote in a statement.

“Diageo is pleased that Crown Royal, an iconic Canadian Whisky, will remain on the shelves of the LCBO, and we remain committed to Ontario through our significant investment in the province.”

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There are mixed opinions at the National Assembly on just how much a report into possible wrongdoing during the last Quebec Liberal leadership race exonerates the party.

The result of an investigation by an ex-judge found no conclusive evidence of a vote-buying scheme within Pablo Rodriguez’s campaign, but critics say the report “means nothing.”

“I’m really happy that this day arrived,” said Chomedey MNA Sona Lakhoyan Olivier, following the release of retired judge Jacques Fournier’s 39-page report.

“From the beginning, I was saying it’s not my writing, but nobody was listening to me. So this inquiry helped me prove my innocence.”

Lakhoyan Olivier was excluded from the Liberal caucus amid allegations that her riding office was improperly used for partisan purposes. She was also accused of being involved in text messages published by the Journal de Montreal last year that pointed to “brownies,” or $100 bills being given to people who voted for Rodriguez.

Those allegations led the Liberals to order the independent inquiry.

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After interviewing more than a dozen witnesses, reviewing documents, emails and text messages, Fournier found no evidence that she was involved in a vote-buying scheme. He concludes the texts were “edited” and said he could not prove whether vote buying took place or not.

“The report proved that there’s no evidence at all supporting these allegations, and I think that it’s worth mentioning,” said interim Liberal leader Marc Tanguay.

Fournier found no proof that Rodriguez had any knowledge of wrongdoing. The former federal cabinet minister ended up resigning over allegations of impropriety during his leadership campaign.

“His report clearly demonstrates that my team and I never took part in, nor witnessed, any wrongdoing during the leadership race,” Rodriguez wrote on X on Feb 11.

The Liberals’ rivals, however, are attacking Fournier’s report.

“I think Justice Fournier is very honest by saying that he didn’t have the tools to do that task. He’s a toothless watchdog, and he said it as such,” said Parti Québécois Leader Paul St. Pierre Plamondon.

In the report, Fournier himself admits he had limited power.

“Having no institutional powers of coercion or investigation, this report is based on the voluntary statements of the various witnesses I contacted,” he writes.

Quebec Solidaire co-spokesperson Ruba Ghazal also diminished the report’s significance.

“This report doesn’t mean anything. The report said, ‘We don’t know.’ This is what the judge says. ‘I can’t have any conclusion, because I don’t have the tools to do this investigation.’” Ghazal told reporters.

In a statement, Journal de Montreal editor Dany Doucet said the newspaper stands behind its reporting on the text messages.

“The former judge does not know the identity of our sources and himself acknowledges that he did not have access to all of the information and text messages in our possession,” he said.

The Rodriguez leadership campaign is still being investigated by Quebec’s anti-corruption police unit, and the National Assembly’s ethics commissioner is still looking into Lakhoyan Olivier’s actions.

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