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A Russian task force said the ceasefire would start today, the 12th day of the war, for civilians from Kyiv, the southern port city of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and Sumy. It was unclear clear if fighting would stop beyond the areas mentioned in the task force’s statement, or when the ceasefire would end.

However, some of the evacuation routes lead toward Russia or its ally Belarus, according to published media reports.

A senior Ukrainian official rejected the possibility of people going to Russia or Belarus. “This is an unacceptable option for opening humanitarian corridors,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said at a briefing.

Two previous attempts at a ceasefire to get civilians out of Mariupol, from which the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated 200,000 people were trying to flee, collapsed. Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the failure. 

WATCH |  Russia bombards city near Kyiv, officials say civilians killed: 

Russia bombards city near Kyiv, officials say civilians killed

Meanwhile, Russian forces opened fire on the city of Mykolaiv, 480 kilometres south of Kyiv, Ukraine’s General Staff said Monday. Rescuers said they were putting out fires in residential areas caused by rocket attacks. Shelling also continued in the suburbs of Kyiv, including Irpin, which has been without electricity, water and heating for three days.

The fighting in Ukraine has seen 1.5 million people flee the country, which the head of the United Nations refugee agency called “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.”

Read the full story here.

Fleeing to safety

(Markus Schreiber/The Associated Press)

A woman wraps herself in a blanket to keep warm as she waits in a crowd of refugees after fleeing from Ukraine and arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, on Monday. Read more here about the refugees who’ve fled the fighting in Ukraine.

In brief

Harry Bond still doesn’t know exactly when a gunman killed his parents, Joy and Peter Bond, a couple who had retired to a quiet corner of Nova Scotia steps from the Bay of Fundy shore. They were two of 22 people killed by a man disguised as a Mountie in April 2020. Police didn’t discover the bodies of the Bonds for about 16 hours, something Harry still finds troubling. Making things worse, police did not confirm their deaths to him until two days later, when he finally got fed up waiting for information and drove to Portapique, N.S., from his home a few hours away. “Everything about this, it’s changed my outlook on life,” Bond said. “It’s changed my outlook on the RCMP, unfortunately. And that’s why this public inquiry — to do the public inquiry properly — is so important. There was mistakes and they need to learn from them.” The lack of faith in institutions — from the police force meant to protect, to the inquiry tasked with examining whether it failed to do so — has been a common thread in the nearly two years since the mass shooting. The commission mandated to shine light on what happened will resume deliberations today on whether to call individual front-line officers, and discuss when the commanding officers who was oversaw the response will be called. Read the full story here.

Jessica Rochon of Ottawa says she has always been good with her money, so she was floored to find out she and her wife had been denied a mortgage pre-approval because of someone else’s bad credit — a woman with almost the same name who lives in Quebec. The two Rochons are not related and have never met, but their Equifax credit history appears to have been mixed into one file, causing financial problems — and a lot of headaches — for Jessica Rochon. She says her pristine credit score plummeted and there was a collection added to her file at some point that isn’t clear from the report. She found out at the worst time: when she and her wife were looking to buy their first home together last August. By the time Rochon contacted Go Public, she’d been fighting for five months to get Equifax to correct the record, having to explain the situation over and over again to different Equifax agents but getting nowhere. Rochon is one of dozens of people contacting Go Public, who say the country’s two major credit bureaus Equifax and TransUnion — both private companies — are failing to deal with errors on credit reports, leading to serious problems for some. Read more on this story here. 

WATCH | Credit report mix-up leaves Ottawa couple priced out of housing market: 

Credit report mix-up leaves Ottawa couple priced out of housing market

The Georgian Peaks Ski Club, near Collingwood, Ont., has a history of producing winners — three of its racing alumni were on the slopes at the the Winter Games in Beijing. But “the Peaks” — one of Canada’s most exclusive private clubs, with an initiation fee of $43,000 — has had much more to celebrate this season, including an unprecedented surge in new members and the opening of a “state of the art” $13-million lodge. Not to mention $1.37 million in taxpayer-supplied federal COVID relief, which helped propel the club to a $1.54-million budget surplus, three times greater than the year before. Financial statements for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2021, obtained by CBC News show that Georgian Peaks received $1.203 million under the Canada emergency wage subsidy and a further $166,885 from the Canada emergency rent subsidy. It’s not clear why the club felt it necessary to apply for the federal wage and rent subsidies. The financials note that the funds helped support “over 270 employees,” but they also report that an Ontario government-ordered ski hill shutdown starting on Boxing Day 2020 triggered the layoffs of most of its food and beverage workers. Read the full story here.

To combat climate change, cities will need to control urban sprawl and intensify population density. However, in the past two decades, the urbanized areas of major Canadian centres have grown by 34 per cent and their population density has fallen by six per cent. In all, 1,700 square kilometres have been added to the country’s nine biggest metropolitan areas since 2001. It’s as if the country’s urban areas have increased by three-and-a-half times the size of the island of Montreal. Check out our interactive tracking the growth of urban sprawl in Canada’s major cities.

In the current roar of high inflation, last week’s quarter-point increase in interest rates by the Bank of Canada will likely be a whisper too quiet for most Canadians to hear, writes business columnist Don Pittis. According to a flurry of statements and speeches, including testimony to a parliamentary committee, Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem has begun his long-awaited attack on inflation that’s meant to convince Canadians they should not expect price increases to continue. Rate hikes, Macklem said, were “needed to keep inflation expectations well anchored and to limit the broadening of inflationary pressures so that inflation falls back as supply disruptions ease.” But while the central bank battles to quell inflation expectations, the world economy is conspiring to send a very different message. Read the analysis here. 

Canada’s Natalie Wilkie struck gold while teammate Brittany Hudak won a bronze medal in the women’s visually impaired 15-kilometre cross-country skiing race on Monday at the Beijing Paralympics. The 21-year-old Wilkie, of Salmon Arm, B.C., crossed the finish line in 48 minutes, 4.8 seconds to edge American Sydney Peterson, who claimed silver with a time of 49:00.2. Hudak completed the race in 49:27.8. For Wilkie, the win is a great improvement on her sixth-place finish in the event at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, where she was the youngest of the Canadian cohort. As for Prince Albert, Sask., native Hudak, this is her second podium finish in her third Paralympics, having won bronze in the 12.5km biathlon in 2018. Read more and watch the video of Wilkie’s win.

Now for some good news to start your Monday: As soon as Carter Nobrega, 6, gets on the phone with 80-year-old Marilyn McNamara, he tells her about how he won a prize in math class earlier that day. “Is that right? Well, that’s super,” McNamara says, a smile in her voice. The two are not related; they’ve become pen pals over the past year. Last April, their church in Trenton, Ont., encouraged young members of the community to write letters to older members of the congregation. Nobrega wrote to McNamara, who was so tickled by his letter, she wrote him back and taped a toonie inside. Now, nearly a year later, and after Nobrega’s family moved to Cambridge, Ont., the two continue to write to each other. She sent him a Christmas present and he sent her flowers for Valentine’s Day. Read more about the duo’s connection.

Opinion: The professor’s paradox: Improving education by refusing to teach

When I stop teaching today’s students for better teaching conditions tomorrow, I do so thinking of what a good undergraduate education can and should be, writes Darryl Whetter. Read the full column here.

First Person: I marched in solidarity with Ukraine. Across from us, there was another ‘Freedom Rally’

The juxtaposition of the fight for freedom in Ukraine against the so-called Freedom Convoy’s grievances made Tanya Pacholok, a third-generation Ukrainian Canadian, reflect on the use of loaded words like freedom and tyranny. Read the column here.

Front Burner: The information war in Ukraine

A new battlefield in Ukraine has opened up as each side fights to control the narrative of the ongoing war.

Some experts say Ukraine and its allies are winning the information war by implementing a multifaceted strategy that includes pushing David and Goliath stories — even ones that may not be true — and creating a phone line where Russian parents can check in on their conscripted sons.

On the other side, Russia — a country known for its relative success in shaping international media narratives — is clamping down.

Today on Front Burner, Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow with the New America think-tank, takes us to the front lines of the information war and explains why this fight matters.

Today in history: March 7

1878: The Western University of London, Ontario is incorporated. The school later changed its legal name to the University of Western Ontario, but since 2012 has been branded as Western University.

1936: Nazi Germany violates the Treaty of Versailles by re-occupying the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone.

2000: Boston Bruins defenceman Marty McSorley is charged in B.C. with assault with a weapon for slashing Vancouver Canucks forward Donald Brashear on the head during a game the previous month. McSorley was later tried, convicted and received a conditional discharge.

2010: Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director. Her film The Hurt Locker also won in five other categories, including Best Picture.