Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said on Saturday he was "horrified" by the violence in Syria as he visited a desert refugee camp in neighboring Jordan.

"We are tremendously horrified to learn of this experience that so many people here face, the horrifying experiences that cause them to leave," their country, Baird said during a tour of the Zaatari refugee camp outside the northern Jordanian city of Mafraq.

Four Lebanese-Canadians are running in the upcoming National Assembly’s elections in Quebec as candidates for the upstart “Coalition Avenir Québec.”

The four candidates Johnny Kairouz, Abel-Claude Arslanian, Walid Hadid and Carla el-Ghandour will represent some 200,000 Lebanese-Canadians who are mostly localized in Quebec and Montreal.

Canada's immigration ministry on Wednesday rescinded a deportation order for a Portuguese man living in the country for 32 years.

A crackdown on immigration fraud had unwittingly snared Jose Pereira, 58, who said he was ordered out over an administrative gaffe.

Dust and aerosol pollution from Asia travels across the ocean and sullies the air in the United States and Canada, possibly worsening the effects of climate change, a NASA-backed study showed Thursday.

About half of the aerosol particles in North America come from foreign sources, and most are just from naturally occurring dust rather than from burning coal or other fossil fuels, said the research published in the journal Science.

Two people were killed and several including an infant were injured in a shooting in Canada's largest metropolis Toronto late Monday, police said.

"2 people killed in gunfire that broke out during party," police said in a Twitter message. "Deceased are a male and a female," said a second message by Police Chief Bill Blair.

Caterpillars belonging to a species of butterfly previously unknown as far north as Canada have been discovered in Montreal, in a sign that this country's cool climate is warming, researchers said Monday.

The city's botanical garden and insectarium said the giant swallowtail butterflies (Papilio cresphontes Cramer) were recently found for the first time on a prickly ash plant there.

Seventeen people were injured and taken to hospital Sunday after lightning struck a tent pole at an outdoor food festival in eastern Canada during a storm, police and officials said.

"There was a strike to one of the tent poles," Whitby Ribfest organizer Colin O'Regan told public broadcaster CBC, adding the injured had been eating inside the tent when the incident occurred.

A Lebanese woman in Quebec, who has been accused of supplying weapons parts to Lebanon, is now facing a terrorism charge, the national news agency, The Canadian Press, said.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said Friday the charge follows an investigation that alleges Mouna Diab committed offences for the benefit of a contact linked to Hizbullah which is considered a terrorist organization in Canada.

Scientists held a mock funeral march Tuesday marking the "death of evidence" in Canada, accusing the ruling Tories of muzzling government scientists to advance a political agenda that ignores research findings.

The procession of 200 scientists in lab coats lead by pallbearers carrying a coffin winded silently through downtown Ottawa's streets to Parliament, where a mock funeral service was held for scientific programs cut in recent budgets.

More than 800 nuclear scientists and engineers went on strike on Monday, warning of "dire consequences" for Canada's nuclear industry after contract talks broke down with Candu Energy Inc.

No nuclear power plants will be shut down as a result of the labor strife, union spokeswoman Michelle Duncan told Agence France Presse.