Explosion and fire at Alberta's CFB Wainwright, MP reporting 'significant casualties'
An Alberta member of Parliament says he's hearing there are "significant casualties" after an explosion and fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright southeast of Edmonton.
Dane Lloyd, who represents a riding west of Edmonton, asks in a social media post for people to pray for the soldiers and their families.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Danielle Smith also say on social media that they are in contact during the evolving situation.
STARS air ambulance says it has dispatched two air ambulances to Wainwright, from Saskatoon and Edmonton.Â
The base is 200 kilometres from the Alberta capital, just outside the town of Wainwright.
Itâs one Canada's busiest military training bases, used mainly to train soldiers and prepare units for combat operations.Â
It's also the site of the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre, which prepares military units to operate together in realistic battlefield conditions, and the 3rd Canadian Division Training Centre, which provides basic infantry training.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Expert says bus model involved in deadly Calgary crash considered âextremely safeâ
An expert on low-carbon transportation says the roughly 1,000 compressed natural gas buses running in Canada are still considered âextremely safeâ after one such bus was involved in a deadly crash in Calgary that claimed the lives of three people.Â
On Thursday, a chain-reaction crash happened when a transit bus hit several vehicles before rear-ending a parked bus, igniting an explosion that also left more than a dozen others injured.Â
Calgary police said one officer was taken to the hospital with injuries after running towards a bus as fire erupted.Â
One of the 12-metre-long buses involved in the crash was powered by compressed natural gas, a kind of fuel considered cheaper and more environmentally friendly than diesel gas.
Buses that run on compressed natural gas are common in public transit and have been in operation for the past two decades, said Josipa Petrunic, president and CEO of Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC), a national non-profit focused on low-carbon transit research and planning.Â
âIt's considered extremely safe technology, so we all need to find out what happened to create an unsafe environment in a crash situation,â Petrunic said.
There are 958 compressed natural gas-powered buses operating in Ontario, Alberta and B.C., according to a CUTRIC database report.Â
Petrunic said there are several heavy-duty safety mechanisms involved in building these buses, including a series of tools and technologies designed to manage leakage and reduce the risk of fire. Their tanks are also designed to withstand heavy impacts.
Usually, the most unsafe part of these buses, and any form of public transportation, is the lack of seatbelts, Petrunic said.Â
A spokesperson from Nova Bus confirmed that it was the manufacturer of the bus that was rear-ended in Thursdayâs crash and the company is in contact with Calgary Transit.
The spokesperson also said that it was âpremature to speculate on the cause before a thorough investigation has been completed.â
âSafety remains Nova Bus's highest priority, and we are offering our full cooperation to Calgary Transit and the relevant authorities as they work to establish the facts.âÂ
Calgary Transit procures its buses from manufacturers that go through Altoona testing, a rigorous certification process for any new bus model to assess its durability and reliability before being rolled out into their fleet, said Petrunic.
The agency has nearly 250 CNG buses, which represents about 20 per cent of its fleet, according to the agencyâs website. The website says the city plans to buy about 150 more this year to replace diesel buses.
As investigators continue to look into the cause of the crash, Petrunic said industry leaders will be looking into what factors went into the collision.
âA series of events had to have occurred in tandem for this cataclysmic event to occur leading to death,â said Petrunic. âA transit crash shouldn't result in passenger deaths.â
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
By Sadeen Mohsen | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
More than one in four Montreal-area adults experienced poverty over eight years
More than one in four adults in Greater Montreal experienced poverty at some point between 2016 and 2023, according to a new study suggesting poverty is more widespread than annual statistics indicate.
The study, conducted by Quebec's Institut national de la recherche scientifique in collaboration with Centraide of Greater Montreal, found that 26 per cent of adults in the metropolitan area -- which includes Montreal, Laval and surrounding suburbs -- lived below the poverty line for at least one year between 2016 and 2023.
"Poverty really affects a lot of people," said Tasha Lackman, president and CEO of Centraide of Greater Montreal, a charity that funds community organizations fighting poverty and social exclusion.
While annual poverty rates have hovered between 10 and 12 per cent since 2020, the study released Thursday found that financial hardship affected a much larger share of the population when measured over several years.
Using Statistics Canada data that tracked people's circumstances over several years, researchers found that 14 per cent of adults experienced poverty for at least three years, while another 12 per cent lived below the poverty line for one or two years.
Lackman said escaping poverty can be difficult because even seemingly minor expenses can become major obstacles.
She pointed to families struggling to afford public transit fares so their children could participate in educational activities, or adults unable to cover transportation costs to attend job interviews or get to work before receiving their first paycheque.
The study found that persistent poverty was particularly common among immigrants, affecting 22 per cent of recent immigrants and 20 per cent of those who had lived in Canada for more than a decade.
Poverty has also become a longer-term problem for seniors. Among adults aged 65 and older, the proportion who spent seven or eight years below the poverty line rose from one per cent between 1992 and 1999 to 11 per cent between 2016 and 2023.
Xavier St-Denis, a professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique and the study's author, said Canada has been relatively successful at reducing poverty among seniors through programs such as Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
However, significant wealth inequalities remain, he said, particularly among seniors who reach retirement with little savings and do not own a home.
The report recommends increasing government benefits, particularly social assistance payments, to help reduce poverty.
Single adults under 65 are especially disadvantaged compared with seniors and families, who receive greater government support.
In Quebec, a single adult without health-related employment limitations can receive $845 a month in social assistance, compared with $1,014 for someone with qualifying health-related limitations, according to the provincial government's website.
The report argues that neither amount is sufficient to escape poverty.
St-Denis said concerns that increasing benefits would discourage employment have not materialized in the case of government support for families.
"Benefits increased without having a negative effect on mothers' participation in the labour market," he said, adding that the payments had a particularly positive effect on reducing poverty among single mothers.
Lackman also emphasized the importance of social housing, saying the study found that people living in neighbourhoods with more social housing were less likely to fall into poverty.
She welcomed the focus on homelessness by the Parti Québécois, which won Quebec's Oct. 5 election and is preparing to form a minority government. Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has pledged to make reducing homelessness a priority.
"We need to make sure our politicians and society in general understand the urgency of the situation when one in four people has experienced poverty," she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
By Stéphane Rolland | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.