Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed …
LeBlanc to meet with Trump’s trade czar
The minister in charge of Canada-U.S. trade said he will be sitting down with U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade czar in the coming weeks to discuss the looming review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement.
Dominic LeBlanc on Wednesday said he spoke with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on the phone after he told “Fox Business” last week that Canadians had barriers that made it difficult to have bilateral trade talks.
“They refuse to sell U.S. wine and spirits on their shelves,” Greer said. “There are a variety of issues they have not addressed and aren’t addressing and this makes it a big challenge and an obstacle for starting real negotiations with them.”
Some Canadian provinces removed U.S. alcohol from their shelves last year after Trump hit Canada with tariffs and repeatedly threatened annexation.
Jeneroux becomes third Tory to join Liberal caucus
Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux is now the third Conservative to cross the floor to the Liberal caucus in recent months — and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is accusing him of betraying voters in his Alberta riding.
Jeneroux’s decision to cross the floor will avert a byelection in Edmonton Riverbend and nudge the Liberal seat count up by one in the current minority Parliament.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government remains three seats short of a majority, but that could change with three byelections expected in the coming months.
The prime minister has not yet set dates for those votes.
Carney met with Jeneroux in Edmonton on Wednesday to welcome him into the governing caucus. He said he has tapped the newly minted Liberal MP as a special adviser on economic and security partnerships.
Five things on New Brunswick’s upcoming budget
Staring down a record deficit of $1.3 billion, the New Brunswick government has warned that virtually every service and program risks facing cuts in next month’s budget.
For the government to continue investing in areas like health care and education, “we must be prepared to control our expenses and generate new revenues,” Finance Minister René Legacy told reporters earlier this week.
“The status quo is not sustainable in the long term.”
The Finance Department has released a list of options to save money or generate new revenue, and it’s calling on New Brunswick residents to send in comments on those ideas by the end of the week.
Fourth complainant to testify at Stronach trial
A fourth complainant is set to take the stand today at the sexual assault trial of billionaire businessman Frank Stronach.
Stronach, who is 93, has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges related to seven complainants. The charges stem from alleged incidents dating back as far as the 1970s.
On Wednesday, the court heard from a woman who says she grew to know and trust the auto parts magnate through the popular restaurant and nightclub complex he owned.
She testified that after having dinner with Stronach at the restaurant in the fall of 1977, he invited her to see his midtown apartment.
Sisters honour mom with Lunar New Year parade
The youngest dancer in this Sunday’s Lunar New Year Parade in Vancouver is just four.
“Hopefully they remember (the routine),” chuckled parade producer Lisa Ho of the tiny dancer and his fellow performers.
She and her sisters, Anabel and Valerie Ho, know what the young dancer is going through.
For decades, their mother Maria Mimie Ho was the driving force behind the parade in Vancouver’s Chinatown, and the sisters have been part of the show since they were babies, raised amid swirling silky sleeves and leaping lion dancers that go into one of Canada’s biggest Chinese community events.
Their Hong Kong immigrant mother was the founder of the Strathcona Chinese Dancer Company in 1973 and for more than 30 years dedicated herself to the parade.
Is this man for real? Trying to detect AI use while online dating
Sometimes when Nikita Kokal scrolls through a dating app, she’ll match with someone solely to ask if they used artificial intelligence to craft their profile.
She looks for hallmarks of ChatGPT — em dashes, lists of three items and emotionless writing, for example.
She sees it all the time, she says. People have got used to using AI to help them communicate since the technology is so readily available, and there’s a new crop of AI-powered applications designed specifically to fill out dating profiles and generate conversations.
“I don’t think we should be using AI to write and find our voice, especially in the early days of dating — actually, at any stage, really, of dating. For me, I find that to be an absolute non-starter,” she says.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 19, 2026
The Canadian Press
