In the news today: Foreign spy agency, March job numbers, Artemis II returns to Earth

Prime Minister Mark Carney was welcomed by loud fanfare from grassroots supporters when the convention kicked off Thursday.

Carney has turned the party into a magnet for opposition MPs, winning his fifth floor crosser — former Conservative Marilyn Gladu — in as many months earlier in the week.

Internal memo flags the promise and pitfalls of expanding CSIS’s foreign spy role

An internal Canadian Security Intelligence Service memo says allowing the spy agency to collect foreign intelligence overseas would capitalize on its “existing footprint and expertise,” but might also invite a host of problems.

The memo says giving CSIS the capabilities of a foreign human intelligence service could raise governance, accountability and privacy concerns about what constitutes a threat, and about the possible targeting of Canadians.

The memo was drafted by CSIS in advance of a three-hour roundtable meeting organized by academics at the University of Ottawa last June.

Former national security and intelligence adviser Vincent Rigby, one of the roundtable organizers, said the time is right to revisit the long-standing question of expanding Canada’s foreign intelligence gathering.

What’s in store for Canada’s 2026 wildfire season?

Canada’s wildfire season may get off to a relatively quiet start, but lingering drought and a warm summer could tip the scales towards another severe year.

Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in B.C. says this year will be his litmus test for whether wildfire seasons, already in uncharted territory and fuelled by human-caused climate change, have entered a “new reality.”

Parts of Canada, including B.C.’s southern interior, northern Manitoba and the eastern Northwest Territories, have emerged from winter under abnormally dry or drought conditions, and long-range forecasts suggest much of Canada could be hotter than normal over the coming months.

Yet Richard Carr, a wildfire research analyst with Natural Resources Canada in Edmonton, says Canada still enters this season in better shape than some of the worst years in recent memory.

StatCan to publish March jobs data after labour market’s rough start to 2026

Statistics Canada is set to provide fresh labour market data for March this morning.

A Reuters poll of economists expects the Canadian economy added 15,000 jobs last month after shedding more than 100,000 positions over the first two months of the year.

RBC economists, who are predicting the jobless rate will hold steady at 6.7 per cent, say a weak pace of hiring could extend into the second quarter of the year as tensions over the war in the Middle East compound with ongoing trade uncertainty.

But RBC expects slowing population growth will lead to a recovery in the labour market later this year that brings the unemployment rate down before the end of 2026.

Canadian Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II crew to splash down after historic moon trip

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and his three American crewmates are on the homestretch of Artemis II’s historic lunar flyby earlier this week.

NASA says the four-person crew and their Orion spacecraft are to splash down tonight in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego, Calif., travelling at a mind-boggling 38,000 kilometres an hour.

Their return marks the end of a 10-day mission that saw humans examine the moon up close for the first time since the Apollo flights of the 1960s and ’70s.

Space officials say Artemis is ushering in a new era of space exploration, with hopes of planting boots on the moon by 2028.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 10, 2026.

The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press