In the news today: Anand in Greenland, January job numbers, Olympics begin

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed…

Foreign affairs minister to open consulate in Greenland today

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is set to officially open the new consulate today in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk, where Canadian consular staff have been operating quietly for several weeks.

The launch of a new Canadian diplomatic mission in Greenland is sparking hopes for more collaboration on climate change, Inuit rights and defence in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s annexation threats.

Trump has demanded U.S. control of Greenland and only recently backed down from threats to use force to acquire the Danish territory.

Anand will be joined at the opening ceremony by Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and Canada’s Arctic Ambassador Virginia Mearns, both of whom are Inuit.

Statistics Canada set to release January jobs numbers

Statistics Canada is set to release jobs figures for January this morning.

A Reuters poll of economists expects employers to have added 7,000 jobs in the first month of 2026, good enough to keep the unemployment rate steady at 6.8 per cent.

RBC forecasts a decline of 10,000 jobs in January, giving back some of the strong employment gains seen in the final months of 2025.

Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said in a speech Thursday that he expects an “uneven” recovery in the labour market this year, as some sectors and occupations see gains while others face slower improvement.

Alberta hockey players wear, share stickers memorializing car crash casualties

A group of young hockey players north of Calgary will be donning and distributing stickers made in memory of three junior hockey players who died in an Alberta highway crash earlier this week.

A parent of the under-13, AA Airdrie Lighting hockey team requested nearly 100 stickers from a local vendor with the jersey numbers of the three players of the Southern Alberta Mustangs, as well as the team logo.

It is a way to memorialize the players after they died in a collision Monday near Stavely, Alta., a town of about 550 people south of Calgary.

Eighteen-year-olds JJ Wright and Cameron Casorso, both from Kamloops, B.C., and 17-year-old Caden Fine from Alabama, were heading to a practice when their vehicle collided with a semi truck hauling gravel.

Inside the ‘con code’, the unwritten rules that may be fuelling prison violence

The Correctional Service of Canada says there’s been an uptick in violence in prisons in the last few years involving both inmates and guards, some of which advocates say is fuelled by the so-called inmate code.

The service says there were 2,265 assaults in 2021-22, which jumped by about 45 per cent to 3,279 in the last fiscal year.

Reform advocates say a portion of that violence is fuelled by the inmate code, a long-standing and varied set of rules followed by prisoners that leads to beatings and murders.

John Randle, a spokesman for the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers for the Pacific Region, says the drug trade in prisons has been the No. 1 factor in prison violence.

Opening ceremony today, figure skating begins at Milan Cortina Winter Olympics

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics officially get underway today with a multi-site opening ceremony spread across northern Italy.

It will be an unusual opening ceremony, reflecting the most spread-out Olympics ever, with the main event in Milan and additional ceremonies and athlete parades in Predazzo, Livigno and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Moguls skier Mikaël Kingsbury and ski cross racer Marielle Thompson, both Olympic gold-medallists, will carry the Canadian flag in Livigno.

Figure skating begins today in Milan with Day 1 of the team event.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2026.

The Canadian Press