Canada Government

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien overhauled his Cabinet on Tuesday, dismissing seven ministers and bringing 10 new faces into the government just a day after the country was stunned by the resignation of a popular Cabinet member who had been Chretien's presumptive heir.

Canada's quiet Victorian-era capital may seem serenely unchanged, but officials and citizens agree that the political landscape here has been dramatically and perhaps permanently transformed. There are the minor but symbolically important inconveniences: No longer, for example, can Canadians drive up to the doors of their ornate Parliament building or wander freely in its corridors.

Canadian activists and labor leaders Wednesday filed a constitutional challenge to a controversial clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement that allows private firms to sue governments over alleged trade discrimination.

Acknowledging the importance of hockey to Canadian culture, the Canadian government announced Tuesday it is prepared to provide up to $2 million to each of the country's six NHL franchises each year to ensure that they do not move to the United States.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien set national elections for Nov. 27, gambling that a big budget surplus and the emotional outpouring over Pierre Elliott Trudeau's death will help bring him a third straight term. Chretien, 66, had until mid-2002 to hold the vote. His governing Liberal Party opted to call the elections to take advantage of an economic boom and strong poll ratings. Chretien's announcement came less than three weeks after the funeral in Montreal of Trudeau.

Voters returned Prime Minister Jean Chretien to a historic third term Monday as leader of a majority government in Canada's national election. The question for voters was never really whether Chretien would stay in office. Rather, it was how easy they would make it for him.

China's most wanted criminal has suddenly become Canada's most unwanted guest. Lai Changxing, accused by Beijing of masterminding a massive smuggling operation that spread to the government's topmost levels, must remain in a Vancouver jail while Canada ponders whether to send him back to China, Canadian immigration officials decided Tuesday. But the case presents Canada with a conundrum: If he goes, he's likely to face a firing squad.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien was reelected Monday with a reduced majority in Parliament after an election campaign that deepened the regional animosities pulling this country. Late returns showed Chretien's centrist Liberal Party, running on its economic record, winning 155 of the 301 seats in the House of Commons by piling up votes in central Canada, particularly the populous province of Ontario.

Summers are fleeting in Canada, and so are respites from the great national debate over whether Quebec's separatists can rend the country by leading their French-speaking province to independence. Already last Sunday, it was gray and damp and the temperature was in the 40s when the elected leaders of the nation's 11 English-speaking provinces and territories gathered here at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

The Canadian government extended a hand Wednesday in apology for more than a century of mistreatment of aboriginal peoples--but the gesture was rebuffed by some as not going far enough. A "statement of reconciliation" was the centerpiece of Ottawa's response to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. It was accompanied by a pledge of $420 million for native peoples over the next four years on top of current funding.