In the news today: AI strategy, B.C. killer discharged, Blue Jays sign Twins pitcher

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said this week the government’s new strategy will look to build trust in AI, empower workers and help build Canada.

The government has said new privacy and online safety laws will be an important element of building that trust.

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How high pandemic-period immigration papered over the cracks in Canada’s economy

Critics say the link between weak economic data and declining immigration rates shows how high immigration masked Canada’s economic challenges over the past few years.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday that when immigration and population growth drops, the gross domestic product declines as well.

Nathan Janzen, a Royal Bank of Canada economist, says high immigration rates in 2023 and 2024 “absolutely” helped to prop up Canada’s GDP in the face of other economic headwinds, such as post-pandemic inflation.

He says Canada is in a unique situation because its sharp cut in population growth will make the economy look weaker than it is.

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B.C. Review Board grants conditional discharge for child killer Allan Schoenborn

The British Columbia Review Board has granted a conditional discharge for a man convicted in the brutal slayings of his three children.

Chairperson Geneviève Boudreau says Allan Schoenborn is to attend a psychiatric clinic for treatment and stay at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam, B.C., if ordered to do so by the board.

Boudreau’s written disposition says Schoenborn must also report any intimate relationships, he must be on good behaviour, and not possess or use any weapons or drugs.

In 2010, Schoenborn was found not criminally responsible for the stabbing and smothering of his three children — aged five, eight and 10 — at their Merritt, B.C., home in 2008.

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New Yorker poetry editor Kevin Young wins Griffin Poetry Prize

Kevin Young, the poetry editor of the New Yorker, has won the $130,000 Griffin Poetry Prize for his collection “Night Watch.”

Young took home the award at a poetry reading at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on Wednesday night.

Jurors call the collection his most experimental so far and praise it as “melancholic and haunting,” tackling loneliness, grief and “racial legacies that are deeply American.”

Young has written 16 books of poetry and prose, and hosts the New Yorker’s “Poetry Podcast.”

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Blue Jays acquire RHP Simeon Woods Richardson from Twins for cash considerations

The Toronto Blue Jays have acquired right-handed pitcher Simeon Woods Richardson from the Minnesota Twins in exchange for cash considerations.

Woods Richardson is 0-7 in 12 appearances (10 starts) this season for the Twins, posting a 7.74 earned-run average in 47 2/3 innings.

The 25-year-old was initially selected by the New York Mets in the second round of the 2018 first-year player draft before being traded to the Blue Jays in 2019.

He was then dealt to the Twins at the 2021 trade deadline and has spent the entirety of his five-year Major League career in Minnesota, appearing in 65 games (61 starts) with a 4.76 ERA and 258 strikeouts.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2026.

The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

In the news today: AI strategy, B.C. killer discharged, Blue Jays sign Twins pitcher

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