In the News

The accidental drug overdose of a Nova Scotia man is shining a light on so-called "research chemicals" that are making their way into the illicit drug market.

Police deal with a marijuana possession incident every nine minutes in Canada, according to 2014 figures, but a CBC News analysis found that where you live plays a big role in determining whether you would have faced criminal charges.

The Harper government is touting its $1.9-billion surplus for 2014-15 as an indication of sound fiscal management. But to get there it made major cuts to vital public services, which in some cases compromised public safety, says Bruce Campbell today in The Toronto Star. 

Canada's prison officials have known for years that psychological tests used to determine whether inmates are likely to reoffend are unreliable for aboriginal offenders, but they've done nothing to address the problem, a federal judge has found.

Despite stock-market turmoil and unease in the venture-capital community, cyber security companies are raising large rounds of financing from investors, whose tremendous appetite for high-tech defenses against cyber attacks is not expected to subside even in a market correction.

The Canada Border Services Agency is recruiting employees for temporary duty assignments in the Middle East to help speed up the flow of Syrian refugees to Canada.

Gartner has forecast worldwide spending on information security will reach $75.4 billion in 2015, which the research firm suggests is driven by government initiatives, increased legislation, and high-profile data breaches.

At least 1,500 Canadian passports have been produced under a flawed new system that has opened the door to fraud and tampering, according to documents obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada.

Few executives, if any, will openly confess that their company’s cybersecurity strategy stinks. Instead, they slap on a brave face to quell mounting concerns that there’s no reprieve from hackers in a connected world.

A battle over whether Ontario’s firefighters should be able to administer six “symptom relief” medications — including aspirin — is heating up across the province.

The two men seeking to replace Stephen Harper as prime minister are focusing on security and safety, one day after the Conservatives announced changes to more quickly bring Syrian refugees to Canada this year.

Justice critic Mike Farnworth says more leadership is needed on public safety after a Surrey school was sprayed with bullets this week in yet another eruption of gun violence in B.C.’s fastest-growing city.

At the forefront, it’s time to re-organize Canada’s foreign and defence policies around the umbrella concept of sustainable common security, says H. Peter Langille.

Upgraded security measures at City Hall are ruffling a few feathers among some council members who say the screening process is too extreme.

The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service says it can save taxpayers $17 million -- by closing five stations. That's hardly good news if it means reduced fire protection. The fine print in this story, however, revealed something that has not been pressed hard enough at city hall. Innovation.

AM General was awarded a $428 million (US) firm-fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract for new M997A3 Humvee Ambulance Chassis Vehicles for the US Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard's disaster relief missions.

The federal government is bringing in major changes to the way Canadian passports are issued, changes that could speed up the renewal process but also invite forgery, fraud and identity theft at a time of heightened global security.

Security concerns are not a good enough reason to prevent the Canadian government from bringing thousands of Syrian refugees into the country, argues former immigration minister Ron Atkey. Atkey, who served under Prime Minister Joe Clark in 1979 and 1980, says the Progressive Conservative government then managed to help 60,000 refugees from Indochina come to Canada after the end of the Vietnam War.

In the year leading up to the terrorist attacks in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and Ottawa, the section of the federal public safety ministry in charge of anti-terrorism was completely dysfunctional because of a rotten work environment, according to a top secret investigation conducted by the former head of the RCMP at the request of the government.

The Ottawa Citizen is running material about what each political party is promising to do in the areas of security and defence. Here is the view of the Conservative Party.

Irving Shipbuilding has started building Canada's first Arctic offshore patrol ship at the company's massive shipyard in Halifax. Hundreds of employees gathered Tuesday in the new assembly hall as a huge sheet of cut steel was hoisted into place and a special ceremony was held to mark the occasion.

Ontario Community Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi pledged Tuesday to draft a regulation to crack down on arbitrary “police interactions with members of the public.” Speaking in Toronto at the final public meeting in a province-wide review of police street checks — more commonly known as carding — Naqvi said his government opposes all “arbitrary or random stops by police.”

The province of Ontario has launched a new set of traffic laws as part of its "Making Ontario Roads Safer Act". Bill 31 came into effect today, two months after being unanimously approved at Queen's Park. The new legislation means changes to existing traffic laws, and stiffer fines and penalties for those who break them.

Canada has received approval to install search and rescue repeaters on the U.S. Air Force’s next generation Global Positioning System satellites.

An RCMP database on missing persons and unidentified remains, touted by the Harper government in 2010 as "concrete action" for the problem of murdered and missing indigenous women, is still incomplete and far over budget five years after it was announced.

The Canadian border got dragged into the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign on Sunday, with a prominent candidate appearing to entertain the notion of building a giant wall on the 49th parallel.

The Conservatives are using former members of the Canadian military to act as security guards at their election campaign events, in addition to the RCMP officers who are assigned to the Stephen Harper’s personal detail.

The Vancouver Police Department has erected temporary surveillance cameras in a neighbourhood on the city’s east side, and although the department says the cameras are being used to fight gang violence, it won’t say which groups are being targeted or why that specific location was chosen.

As security gains greater visibility in boardrooms and C-suites, security professionals are increasingly asked to provide metrics to track the current state of a company's defenses. But which numbers really matter?

Jacon Modglin is part of a new cadre of "community paramedics" working in a dozen pilot programs across California. Their jobs are to treat patients before they get sick enough to need emergency care. The paramedics are still first responders, just deployed to prevent a crisis rather than react to one.

Scam artists, extortionists have emerged in the aftermath of the Ashley Madison hack, Toronto police said Monday. Toronto Police, alongside the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, FBI and U.S. Homeland Security, are probing the hack, which saw the personal information of more than 30 million site users released last week.

Statisticians can glean insightful information from Facebook posts, tweets and other online social media communications that may help improve public safety, researchers have said. Michiko Wolcott and colleagues evaluated social media traffic posted during and the days following typhoon Haiyan striking the Philippines in November 2013 to develop a set of social media analytics for emergency response managers.

Hundreds of military personnel and embassy staff could be at risk after Islamic State (ISIS) leaked what is believed to be their names, email addresses and passwords online.