Around Ontario

TORONTO — Food insecurity is soaring as a result of COVID-19, leading to a major spike in new food bank clients since the pandemic began, according to a report by a Toronto-based charity.

MONTREAL — The number of temporary Canadian Red Cross-trained workers needed in Quebec's long-term care homes is short of the 900 that were expected to replace departing Canadian military personnel.

TORONTO — Ontario's child welfare system will be redesigned to focus on prevention and early intervention, the provincial government said Wednesday.

Toronto city council has voted to enact a new bylaw making face coverings mandatory in all apartment and condo building common areas.

TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford declined to say Wednesday whether the province's newly launched commission into the effects of COVID-19 on the long-term care system would be empowered to make binding recommendations, prompting critics to question

TORONTO — Canada's largest university is defending its decision to hold some of its fall course offerings in person this September, despite mounting pushback from faculty members and students.

MONTREAL — The Canadian Association of Journalists is condemning harassment and intimidation of journalists covering anti-mask protests in Montreal and Quebec City last weekend.

OTTAWA — The Ottawa Aces have made French international halfback Louis Jouffret their first signing ahead of their inaugural rugby league season in 2021. The 24-year-old was most recently with Featherstone Rovers.

TORONTO — They came from around the world, and brought their cuisines with them, cultures mingling to give Toronto its distinctive flavour.

Toronto police say a man they've been hunting for two years in connection with a 2018 gang-related shooting that wounded two young girls playing at an east-end playground has formally been charged in the case.