Maple Express | November 14, 2026: Five Hospitalized, Three of Them Children, After Burlington House Fire

1. Five in hospital with life-threatening injuries after Burlington house fire

Five people, including three children, were rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries after a fire broke out at a home on Maple Crossing Boulevard in Burlington early this morning. Halton Regional Police said officers responded to the address, near 1300 Maple Crossing Boulevard, when the fire started shortly before 7 a.m. on Nov. 14.

Police said the victims are an adult man, an adult woman and three children — one about 12 years old and two believed to be five or younger. Speaking to reporters at the scene, Const. Ryan Anderson called it a "really, really tragic scene" and credited Burlington Fire crews with quickly extinguishing the flames and getting the occupants out of the home.

Anderson said the fire did not spread to any neighbouring homes. Investigators will now look into the circumstances, including where the fire started and whether smoke alarms were present. "They're going to look into everything: smoke alarms, where it started, what took place. It's just too early at this point to know any of that," he said, adding that he hopes the victims and their families pull through.

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2. Thousands of flights cancelled Saturday after longest U.S. ground stop in 25 years

Airlines across the United States worked to recover on Saturday after the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, which cancelled thousands of flights and stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers. FlightAware said more than 4,100 flights had been cancelled; Cirium put the number above 3,200.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said airports were slowly returning to normal, with planes taking off and landing, but that the effects could be felt for days. Officials expect the system to be back to normal in time for the Thanksgiving travel rush. Duffy said new technology being added to the air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment and caused "intermittent" communications and radar gaps, leading to a shutdown of more than four hours.

The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023 and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Aviation consultant Andrew Charlton said Friday's stoppage affected about a quarter of the 45,000 flights in the U.S. each day. "The knock-on effect of that is incredible," he said, noting that aircraft move from one route to the next rather than simply flying from A to B and back. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said no one was in danger and more than 3,000 flights in the air at the time of the grounding order landed safely.

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3. Man dead after stabbing inside Mississauga home

A man has died after a stabbing inside a residence in Mississauga early Saturday morning. Peel Regional Police said officers responded to a reported altercation inside a home in the area of Lakeshore Road East and Fergus Avenue shortly before 5 a.m.

Const. Amanda Steenson told reporters at the scene that officers and emergency services provided medical assistance to the victim, but he succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. "We do believe that this is an isolated incident and that there's no threat to public safety," she said.

Investigators have not released a suspect description and are still working to identify anyone who may have been involved. Steenson said it is too early to determine whether the victim and the suspect knew each other. Police are asking anyone who was in the area at the time, or who has dashcam or surveillance footage, to come forward.

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4. Toronto's accessible taxi fleet projected to fall from 200 vehicles to five

Some Toronto residents with disabilities say they are facing growing difficulties finding reliable, wheelchair-accessible transportation, raising concerns about getting to work, appointments and everyday commitments. Their concerns come as Beck Taxi warns its accessible fleet is on track to shrink to just five vehicles by March 2027, down from roughly 200 in 2015-2016.

Jennifer Conroy, who lives in the Distillery District and uses a wheelchair, told CTV News Toronto that accessible taxis often need to be booked about an hour in advance, with passengers sometimes waiting longer. "It's vitally important to have an accessible taxi because if they're not accessible, then I can't get to work," she said, recalling a time her Wheel-Trans trip fell through and she was told another ride would take about two hours; a Lyft vehicle arrived on short notice, while the Beck taxi never showed up.

Beck Taxi's Kristine Hubbard said the fleet has shrunk as drivers retired or switched to standard vehicles. Drivers invested about $75,000 in accessible vehicles after the city introduced a licensing system in 2014, she said, while comparable vehicles with ramps and other upgrades now cost $100,000 to $130,000 and are paid for solely by the driver. The city says it has provided more than $7.6 million in direct funding to taxi owners and drivers through its Accessibility Fund Program since 2020, and that in July 2026 it raised its one-time grant for newly converted accessible vehicles from $25,000 to $55,000, alongside an annual grant and incentive of up to $5,000.

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5. Muslim council calls Blue Jays meeting 'a positive step'

The National Council of Canadian Muslims says an initial meeting with the Toronto Blue Jays this week, held after the Anthony Santander controversy, was an important step. Santander shared anti-Muslim posts on Nov. 4, in the aftermath of the U.S. midterm elections, and deleted them the next morning.

Steven Zhou, the NCCM's media and communications lead, said the meeting between Blue Jays brass and members of the Muslim community was a chance to turn a negative into a positive. "I feel more strongly about that now," he said. "Now that we've had a first meeting, we've gotten on the same page about why this kind of narrative is not just annoying and upsetting. It poses real dangers in a place like Canada."

Santander apologized on Friday afternoon, saying the content caused hurt and fell short of his own convictions. The Blue Jays are the only MLB team in Canada, a country with more than 1.78 million Muslims according to 2021 census data from Statistics Canada; about 10 per cent of Toronto's 2.8 million residents identify as Muslim. Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro apologized to the Muslim community and fans on Thursday, following the meeting with community leaders. It remains unclear whether the team will discipline Santander.

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6. Microsoft says services fully restored after hours-long global outage

Microsoft said Saturday that services were fully restored after a massive outage that lasted for hours. "We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions," the company said in an update on X.

Users reported that Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams and the AI assistant Copilot, were interrupted. Downdetector said it received outage reports from users in more than 70 countries and territories. Governments including those of Japan, Singapore and Australia said some of their operations were affected, and in Britain the outage brought a halt to a trial in Manchester, where Judge Maurice Greene sent jurors home.

Microsoft said the outage was "not related to cyber" or artificial intelligence agents, and that the incident "was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced" following a recent network change. More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps, according to the company. Problems started appearing around midday Thursday in the U.S.; Microsoft apologized on Friday for the disruptions. British police said they were unable to receive crime reports online, and the National Pharmacy Association warned of delays in getting medication.

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7. Stelco recalling 175 laid-off workers to Hamilton plant by Dec. 1

Hamilton steelmaker Stelco is recalling its 175 workers that had been laid off earlier this fall. The company said in a news release on Friday that the workers would be back in the factory by Dec. 1, and that it would retroactively pay them for the time they were laid off.

The American parent company, Cleveland-Cliffs, announced in September that it planned to lay off as many as 500 workers as it idled certain steel production at Stelco. Ron Wells, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1005, told CBC News Network that Friday's announcement was a "pretty good victory." "They're forced to live up to their commitments and we're happy with that," he said.

The federal government said any move to lay off workers would violate "binding commitments" Cleveland-Cliffs made when it bought Stelco in 2024. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly wrote to the Ohio-based company in mid-October, demanding that it reverse the layoffs or face possible legal action; just before Stelco's announcement, she said she would seek a court order to force Cleveland-Cliffs to sell the Hamilton plant if she did not hear from the company by the end of the day. Stelco's statement cited U.S. tariffs, weak demand for Canadian steel and competition from imported steel products.

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8. CFB Wainwright incident spotlights reserve pay disparities

A former director general for the Canadian military's reserves and cadets says the incident at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright casts a spotlight on disparities in pay and benefits for reservists. John Milne, a retired major-general, told The Canadian Press that reservists on short-term contracts get less compensation than the regular force members they train with, and that the training accident shows those reservists face the same risks.

Four soldiers died and 39 others — including several reservists — were injured when a fire suddenly overtook a training area at CFB Wainwright last month. Milne, who has written academic papers on military pay structure, said the formula Ottawa uses to calculate daily reservist pay has amounted to an earnings penalty of roughly 32 per cent for part-time reservists compared with the regular force. He called it a "matter of equity" and said the daily rate for reservists should match what regular force members receive.

Milne sent a submission to the House of Commons national defence committee and wrote directly to Defence Minister David McGuinty. A response letter from the minister's office said the military's pay structure is complex and involves "specific military considerations" different from civilian pay, and denied that Milne had identified pay inequities. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a military pay hike last year that included a 13 per cent boost for some reserve force ranks, but it did not address how pay is structured. Three separate investigations into the Wainwright tragedy are taking place.

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9. Ottawa and Ontario push 'aggressive package' to stop Brampton plant sale

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly says the federal and Ontario governments are trying to stop the sale of the Stellantis auto plant in Brampton by offering the company an "aggressive package" of support. She revealed the plan in Woodbridge, Ont., at an announcement about retooling a Honda plant in Alliston. "We've put an aggressive package to Stellantis to prevent the sale. And we are still in solution mode to prevent the sale," Joly said.

Joly said the next move is for her, Unifor — the union representing workers at the plant — and Ontario Minister of Economic Development Vic Fedeli to meet with Stellantis global CEO Antonio Filosa to pitch the plan. Fedeli said Unifor has come up with more than one scenario for how the sale can be stopped and the plant "kept warm" until new Stellantis product lines can return. "These are men and women who have built products at Stellantis's Brampton plant for decades. They know exactly what needs to happen in that plant," he said.

Three industry sources told CBC News they were surprised to hear Joly and Fedeli say there is an "aggressive package" on the table, saying Stellantis has had intense talks with the government over the past year and has been clear about what it needed to keep the plant open. In October, the federal and Ontario governments announced an $8.7-billion support package for the steel, critical mineral and auto sectors, with $2.5 billion earmarked for the auto sector over two years; Fedeli said part of that fund is available for the solution. More than 2,000 workers at the Brampton plant have been out of work since the company halted operations in 2023; Stellantis announced Monday it was selling the facility to Canadian armoured vehicle maker Roshel Inc., which said Friday it wants to build a "centre of excellence for advanced automotive and defence manufacturing" with the "potential to create over 2,000 jobs as production ramps up."

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10. About 800 Amazon workers in B.C. covered by first union contract in North America

A union representing about 800 Amazon workers in Delta, B.C., says they are now covered by the first binding collective agreement for the retail giant's workers in North America. Unifor and Amazon both say an independent arbitrator imposed the terms of the three-year deal on Friday.

Unifor says the agreement includes wage increases that bring hourly rates to $29 by its conclusion, enhanced severance protections and an additional week of vacation for workers with 10 years of service. "Amazon told everyone a union contract would never happen, but workers proved them wrong," Unifor national president Lana Payne said in a statement, praising the "courage" of workers who "stood up to one of the most powerful companies on Earth."

Amazon says the deal was imposed without giving workers a chance to vote on it. Amazon vice-president J. Ofori Agboka said in an online posting that the process was "improper, unfair and defies common sense," and that the company would take its concerns to court if necessary. He added that union dues meant workers "could actually take home less money than they did before." British Columbia's Labour Relations Board ruled in August in favour of using binding arbitration to settle the dispute, despite the company fighting the idea.

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