OTTAWA (Reuters) – Proposals to ban trade in polar bear furs will do little to ensure the animals’ long-term future, Canada’s Arctic Inuit and two major conservationist groups both say.

The United States wants the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) to list the bears as endangered at its meeting in Bangkok this week, a move that would prohibit international trade in their body parts and fur.

OTTAWA, March 1 (Reuters) – Canadian Finance Minister Jim
Flaherty expressed rare public frustration with the United
States on Friday, saying it was regrettable that Canada’s main
trading partner kept lurching from crisis to crisis.

Political deadlock in Washington means the U.S. government
is due to start imposing $85 billion worth of automatic federal
spending cuts on Saturday. Canada sends 75 percent of all its
exports to the United States and is very reliant on the economic
health of its southern neighbor.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada expects to be able to make enough medical isotopes through non-nuclear methods by 2016 to replace those now produced by an aging reactor and better assure an uninterrupted supply for medical imaging, a government minister said on Thursday.

To that end, the federal government will fund three research institutes developing cyclotron and linear accelerator technologies for production of isotopes on a commercial scale, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said.

OTTAWA, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Canadian Natural Resources
Minister Joe Oliver said on Thursday he does not expect the
United States to reject TransCanada Corp’s proposed
Keystone XL pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to Texas.

U.S. officials say they expect the government to make a
final decision on the northern leg of the $5.3 billion pipeline
by the middle of the year.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – France is still ready to start pulling its forces out of Mali next month despite a rebel attack on the key northern town of Gao, the French head of the armed force said on Friday.

Admiral Edouard Guillaud, chief of the defense staff, told reporters after a speech in Ottawa that he was not surprised by Thursday’s attack in Gao, when 15 Islamists were killed by French and Malian troops.

OTTAWA, Feb 22 (Reuters) – The Canadian economy registered
its lowest inflation in more than three years in January and its
largest decline in retail sales in almost three years in
December, a double whammy of data that depressed the Canadian
dollar and bond yields.

“All of this would feed into a dovish Bank of Canada and
Canadian dollar weakness,” said Camilla Sutton, chief currency
strategist at Scotiabank.

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan resigned unexpectedly on Friday after admitting he had inappropriately written a letter to a tax court on behalf of a constituent.

Duncan leaves a month after thousands of unhappy natives mounted protests across Canada about poor living conditions.

OTTAWA, Feb 14 (Reuters) – Canada said on Thursday it was
close to unveiling long-delayed rules on greenhouse gas
emissions from the oil sands, a move that could help persuade
U.S. skeptics that Ottawa is serious about curbing climate
change.

High-profile protesters, citing what they say is Canada’s
poor green record, want President Barack Obama to block
TransCanada Corp’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline from
the Alberta oil sands to the Gulf Coast.

OTTAWA, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Canada will impose significant
additional financial penalties on United Technologies Corp’s
Sikorsky unit for delays in delivering search and rescue
helicopters, Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose said on Monday.

Canada signed a C$5 billion ($5 billion) deal with Sikorsky
in 2004 for 28 Cylcone helicopters, the first of which was
supposed to be delivered by early 2009.

OTTAWA, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Canada and the European Union
failed to settle their differences on a proposed free trade deal
this week at top-level talks to hammer out an agreement that is
already well behind schedule.

Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast and EU Trade Commissioner
Karel De Gucht spent Wednesday and Thursday in Ottawa discussing
contentious issues including agricultural exports, intellectual
property and public procurement.