National News

MONTREAL — Quebec is investing $603 million over the next five years to counter what its French-language minister describes as the decline of the French language in the province.

MONTREAL — Jean-Pierre Ferland, the singer-songwriter who became a fixture of Quebec's cultural landscape over a career that spanned more than six decades, died Saturday at the age of 89.

MONTREAL — The number of microdistilleries in Quebec has boomed in the last decade, growing from less than a dozen to about 70.

OTTAWA — Corporate boardrooms. Military barracks. Federal government offices. They're not locales with a reputation for fostering diversity. Anita Anand has been trying to change that.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows Canadians aren't listening. He knows his defence against Conservative attacks over his signature climate policy isn't working, at least not yet. But he plans to keep trying.

MONTREAL — A costly program offering free public transportation fares to Montreal seniors is paying off, the city said in a recent report as it documented a spike in transit use among people age 65 and older.

Montreal's port authority says a man has died after an apparent accident at one of its wharves.

LACHUTE, Que. — Quebec provincial police say a 51-year-old woman has died after a head-on collision in the town of Lachute, roughly 50 kilometres west of Montreal, early this morning.

CALGARY — The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.

Ottawa has plans to finally stop blocking Canadian development aid to Afghanistan this year. But by the time its new system is fully up and running, the Taliban will have been in control of the country for about three years.