Latest news with #Quebec
CTV News
4 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
Are job cuts impacting passport wait times?
The new Canadian passport is unveiled at an event at the Ottawa International Airport in Ottawa on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press) After laying off more than 800 Service Canada employees last month, Ottawa says the number of passport applications has stabilized, according to Noovo Info. Nearly 400 people were affected by these cuts in Quebec. Friday was their last day on the job. According to Alisha Kang, president of the Union of National Employees, the wave of layoffs will have a significant impact on Canadians applying for passports. 'It's difficult for members of the public to know how long it will take. You'll walk into a passport office and there will be a queue,' she says. 'These are major cuts in terms of services to Canadians.' However, Service Canada is seeing a downward trend in passport applications. During the pandemic, in 2020, only 3,000 passport applications were made in May. That number jumped to nearly 470,000 applications for the same month in 2024. This year, 100,000 fewer people tried to renew their travel documents at the same time. Éric Boissonneault, vice-president of the Quebec Travel Agents Association, explains the decline in part by the fact most Canadians apply for a 10-year passport. 'So we're in a transitional period where people don't need to renew their passports every five years as they did before,' he says. He also mentions that travel agencies have seen a slight decline in sales, which could also explain the drop in passport applications at Service Canada. Other factors could include inflation and the boycott of the United States due to the trade war, which is disrupting Canadians' travel habits. Currently, the wait time to obtain a passport has been reduced by 55 per cent compared to 2024, but it remains to be seen whether the layoff of 800 employees will have an impact on future wait times. With files from Noovo Info's Lila Mouch and Laurie Gervais
CTV News
4 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
Quebec woman says scammers mimicked RBC, taking $15,000 in a convincing fraud
A Quebec woman says scammers posing as RBC representatives drained thousands from her business account in a convincing fraud.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Rocks in Canada's Quebec province found to be the oldest on Earth
By Will Dunham (Reuters) -Along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in Canada's northeastern province of Quebec, near the Inuit municipality of Inukjuak, resides a belt of volcanic rock that displays a blend of dark and light green colors, with flecks of pink and black. New testing shows that these are Earth's oldest-known rocks. Two different testing methods found that rocks from an area called the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in northern Quebec date to 4.16 billion years ago, a time known as the Hadean eon. The eon is named after the ancient Greek god of the underworld, Hades, owing to the hellish landscape thought to have existed then on Earth. The research indicates that the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt harbors surviving fragments of Earth's oldest crust, the planet's outermost solid shell. The Nuvvuagittuq rocks are mainly metamorphosed volcanic rocks of basaltic composition. Metamorphosed rock is a kind that has been changed by heat and pressure over time. Basalt is a common type of volcanic rock. The rocks tested in the new study were called intrusions. That means they formed when magma - molten rock - penetrated existing rock layers and then cooled and solidified underground. The researchers applied two dating methods based on an analysis of the radioactive decay of the elements samarium and neodymium contained in them. Both produced the same conclusion - that the rocks were 4.16 billion years old. Future chemical analyses of these rocks could provide insight into Earth's conditions during the Hadean, a time shrouded in mystery because of the paucity of physical remains. "These rocks and the Nuvvuagittuq belt being the only rock record from the Hadean, they offer a unique window into our planet's earliest time to better understand how the first crust formed on Earth and what were the geodynamic processes involved," said University of Ottawa geology professor Jonathan O'Neil, who led the study published on Thursday in the journal Science. The rocks may have formed when rain fell on molten rock, cooling and solidifying it. That rain would have been composed of water evaporated from Earth's primordial seas. "Since some of these rocks were also formed from precipitation from the ancient seawater, they can shed light on the first oceans' composition, temperatures and help establish the environment where life could have begun on Earth," O'Neil said. Until now, the oldest-known rocks were ones dating to about 4.03 billion years ago from Canada's Northwest Territories, O'Neil said. While the Nuvvuagittuq samples are now the oldest-known rocks, tiny crystals of the mineral zircon from western Australia have been dated to 4.4 billion years old. The Hadean ran from Earth's formation roughly 4.5 billion years ago until 4.03 billion years ago. Early during this eon, a huge collision occurred that is believed to have resulted in the formation of the moon. But by the time the Nuvvuagittuq rocks formed, Earth had begun to become a more recognizable place. "The Earth was certainly not a big ball of molten lava during the entire Hadean eon, as its name would suggest. By nearly 4.4 billion years ago, a rocky crust already existed on Earth, likely mostly basaltic and covered with shallow and warmer oceans. An atmosphere was present, but different than the present-day atmosphere," O'Neil said. There had been some controversy over the age of Nuvvuagittuq rocks. As reported in a study published in 2008, previous tests on samples from the volcanic rock layers that contained the intrusions yielded conflicting dates - one giving an age of 4.3 billion years and another giving a younger age of 3.3 to 3.8 billion years. O'Neil said the discrepancy may have been because the method that produced the conclusion of a younger age was sensitive to thermal events that have occurred since the rock formed, skewing the finding. The new study, with two testing methods producing harmonious conclusions on the age of the intrusion rocks, provides a minimum age for the volcanic rocks that contain these intrusions, O'Neil added. "The intrusion would be 4.16 billion years old, and because the volcanic rocks must be older, their best age would be 4.3 billion years old, as supported by the 2008 study," O'Neil said.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Earth's oldest rocks date back 4.16 billion years
While rocks are not exactly living things, they are not immune to Earth's fury. Ever-shifting tectonic plates constantly devour and pulverize them, or some rocks get turned into diamonds from the immense pressure underneath our feet. While life on Earth has almost been wiped out at least five times, some rocks pre-date life on Earth and have stood the ultimate test of time. Gray rocks uncovered in northern Nunavik, Quebec, Canada may be the ultimate primordial find. The stones date back 4.16 billion years to the Hadean era and are the oldest known rocks on the planet. They are described in a study published June 26 in the journal Science. Earth was a ball of molten lava when it first formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists originally believed that Earth's first eon–the Hadean–ended when the first rocks formed. A golden spike–a geological marker indicates a boundary between time periods–that ended the Hadean eon is about 4.03 billion years old and located in Canada's Northwest Territories. The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, located over 1,000 miles southeast of the Hadean's golden spike, has long been known for its ancient rocks. However, researchers have disagreed about the true age of these plains of gray stone that line the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in Quebec. In 2008, researchers proposed that these rocks dated back 4.3 billion years. Other scientists using a different dating method contested, saying that contaminants from ages ago were altering the rocks' age and they were only 3.8 billion years old. 'For over 15 years, the scientific community has debated the age of volcanic rocks from northern Quebec,' study co-author and University of Ottawa geologist Jonathan O'Neill said in a statement. 'Our previous research suggested that they could date back 4.3 billion years, but this wasn't the consensus.' [ Related: How old is Earth? It's a surprisingly tough question to answer. ] This new study used rock samples from a different part of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt. The samples were collected in 2017 near the municipality of Inukjuak, Nunavik, by study co-author Christian Sole, while was completing his Master's degree. To determine the age of these rocks, the team combined geochemistry with petrology–a branch in geology that focuses on the composition, texture, and structure of rocks and the conditions under which they form. They also applied two radiometric dating methods to see how radioactive isotopes of the elements samarium and neodymium change over time. [ Related: Ancient rocks tie Roman Empire's collapse to a mini ice age. ] They found that both chronometers indicated that the rocks are 4.16 billion years old. Since the planet Earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, this puts the rocks within a few hundred million years of our planet's earliest day–somewhat close in geological time. Typically, primordial rocks like these are melted and used over and over again by Earth's moving tectonic plates. While scientists uncovered some 4 billion-year-old rocks in Canada's Acasta Gneiss Complex, finding them at the surface is not common. According to the team, this discovery opens a unique window on the early Earth, potentially offering up clues to its existence. 'Understanding these rocks is going back to the very origins of our planet,' O'Neill said. 'This allows us to better understand how the first continents were formed and to reconstruct the environment from which life could have emerged.'
CTV News
7 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
Quebec's deficit will be lower than expected
Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard responds to the Opposition during Question Period at the Quebec National Assembly, Thursday, April 24, 2025. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press) Quebec's Finance Ministry says it expects the 2024-2025 deficit will be $3.2 billion less than predicted in the March budget. During the budget announcement, Economy Minister Eric Girard said last year's deficit didn't hit the $11 billion mark it had first projected and was at $10.4 billon. In a new preliminary report released by the Ministry Friday, that number melted down to $7.3 billion for 2024-2025, representing 1.2 per cent of Quebec's GDP. That number takes into account $2.4 billion in payments to the Generations Fund, which is dedicated to repaying Quebec's debt. The exact amount of Quebec's deficit for the 2024-2025 fiscal year will be confirmed in the fall. The ministry attributes the revised numbers to a $2.3 billion decrease in government spending and a 'resilient' provincial economy. 'The financial situation for the 2024-2025 fiscal year has been revised positively thanks to an increase in revenue of nearly $1 billion and a decrease in expenditure growth from 7.7 per cent to 6.2 per cent,' Girard said in a statement. Meanwhile, economic growth was up by 1.3 per cent in 2024, compared to 0.6 per cent in 2023. The Ministry said it noted an increase in tax revenue from personal and corporate income taxes as well as consumption taxes. Hydro-Québec also saw an uptick in revenue. 'This positive revision is the result of measures taken over the past year to ensure more effective and targeted management of spending in order to stay within the allocated budgets,' the ministry said in a news release. Quebec noted it spent more than expected in health and social services, education, families and transportation. It spent less on employment and solidarity, housing and municipal affairs, energy, and the environment. The Coalition Avenir Québec has come under fire over budget choices, including its recent decision to slash $570 million from the education network and refusing to allow schools to run on a deficit. The health-care system also saw its budget slashed as the province tries to eliminate a $1.5-billion deficit in the network, leading to thousands of job cuts. Faced with global economic uncertainty, the government expected an $13 billion deficit for 2025-2026, one of the highest on record for Quebec. But Girard maintains he wants to return to a balanced budget within the next five years, even with American President Donald Trump's rollercoaster trade war. Also on Friday, Trump said he was ending all trade talks with Canada. The president imposed 50 per cent tariffs on aluminum and steel, which impacts Quebec's metal workers. As of March 31, the province's debt is 38.6 per cent of its GDP, which the government says is 0.1 per cent lower than projected in its 2025-2026 budget. In April, Quebec's Standard & Poor's credit was lowered and the company said it did not expect new measures to have any meaningful impact on its standing.
