The union representing workers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and some farming groups are firing back at Ottawa over abrupt job cuts and closures. 

The Agriculture Union said Monday the decision to shutter seven of the department's research operations will set the sector back by decades. 

“We have been warning the federal government for months about cutting an already-decimated department. There is simply no more room to cut," Milton Dyck, national president of the Agriculture Union, said in a news release. 

"While our partner nation to the south is slashing research, we should not be.”

China is moving quickly to import Canadian canola and beef after Ottawa struck a deal with Beijing to reduce tariffs, Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald said Tuesday. 

MacDonald told reporters in Ottawa a Chinese importer has ordered 60,000 metric tonnes of canola seed, and he's aware of a company shipping its first load of Canadian beef to China next week.

It's expected be the first time China has purchased Canadian canola seed and beef since it imposed measures to block the products.

"That's how quickly this whole process has taken place," MacDonald said. "When the door opened, it opened."

The Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal has upheld a $10,000 fine handed to the British Columbia ostrich farm whose flock of more than 300 birds was culled last fall, nearly 11 months after the confirmation of an avian influenza outbreak.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued the fine alleging Universal Ostrich Farms violated the Health of Animals Act by failing to report sick and dying birds on the property in southeastern B.C. in December 2024.

The tribunal's decision says the CFIA was instead alerted by an anonymous caller saying they believed the ostriches were sick with avian flu on Dec. 28 that year.

The decision posted online and dated Dec. 11, 2025, says the farm requested the tribunal review the CFIA's violation notice, arguing it "did its best" given the owners thought the ostriches had a non-reportable disease and they had attempted to reach at least two veterinarians who were not available at the time.

On the darkest nights of winter when the cloud cover is just right, there's a purple haze above parts of Metro Vancouver and it has nothing to do with Christmas or Jimi Hendrix. 

Cathy Latremouille said she looked outside her Crescent Beach home in Surrey on Friday night to see what looked like a "great big candy floss sky."

"I've never seen anything like it before," said Latremouille. "It's a good thing I don't face south, I would have thought the United States was going up in flames."

The magenta glow was a puzzle.

VANCOUVER - Mink farmers in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada are dropping their legal challenge over a pandemic-era ban in the province due to legal fees they say are "far beyond their means."

The British Columbia Mink Producers Association and the Canada Mink Breeders Association had been petitioning for a judicial review of the province's ban on mink farming and had been challenging the policy decision, which dates back to November 2021.

In a statement, the mink farmers say they remain angry at the move by the province, which they describe as driven by "an aggressive anti-fur lobby."

The farmers say they have fought the province unsuccessfully in several separate court attempts while no financial compensation has been offered to operators who had to tear down their farms.

ABBOTSFORD - The mayor of flood-struck Abbotsford, B.C., says he is disappointed and frustrated with the federal government over what he calls "inaction" on cross-border flooding that has repeatedly inundated his city.

Ross Siemens said he had not been contacted by the federal government about this week's flooding, which has forced hundreds of households to evacuate, inundated poultry barns and forced livestock relocations.

Siemens told a news briefing Friday he was pleading for flood mitigation to be addressed, that authorities across the border in Washington state needed to "wake up," and for the issue to be part of an international treaty.

Flooding can result in the Fraser Valley when the Nooksack River in Washington overflows its banks, as it did Wednesday, sending water pouring north and potentially inundating the farmlands of the Sumas Prairie.

HALIFAX - Canadian farmers plan to lobby the federal government to implement a guaranteed annual income and a cap on the profits of the major grocery store chains in the country. 

The lobbying plans were adopted as a part of nine resolutions approved by members of the National Farmers Union who met at an annual conference in Moncton, N.B., last week.

A number of the farmers spoke at the conference about how it is becoming more difficult for them to conduct business in Canada every year. 

David Thompson, executive director of the union, says over the last two decades, profits for small and mid-scale farmers have sunk, costs for equipment and inputs have risen, and the price of land is now unattainable for many farmers. 

Rumours that farming equipment giant John Deere is leaving Canada spread this week on social media alongside a video claiming the company would be moving its factories to the United States. 

In fact, John Deere hasn't manufactured farm equipment in Canada since 2009 and the company says the claims in the video are false. The video comes from a YouTube channel that appears to use artificial intelligence to produce spam news content. 

THE CLAIM

"John Deere didn't quietly cut production. They packed up the future of Canadian manufacturing and moved it straight into the United States," said the narrator in a 17-minute-long video posted to YouTube, where it reached more than 200,000 views in two days.