Good evening, readers.

We start the newsletter with the housing minister and the finance minister’s latest announcement.

The federal government is proposing a $1.7-billion fund to help provinces and territories lower the cost of homebuilding.

The federal funding is meant to help provinces reduce development fees or other levies on new housing to speed up the pace of construction in Canada.

The money can also be used to boost productivity in construction and reduce internal trade barriers between provinces and territories to help get more homes built.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Housing Minister Gregor Robertson are announcing the spending plan today on Parliament Hill.

While Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government has set an ambitious goal of doubling the pace of homebuilding in Canada, the hodgepodge of regulations, zoning restrictions and other barriers across provincial and municipal jurisdictions has been an obstacle to scaling up construction.

The Canadian Press has more. 

Also, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada might join efforts to ensure ships can move freely through the Straight of Hormuz if there is a ceasefire in the Persian Gulf.

“There are conversations with our NATO partners — some NATO partners — concerning what we can do with a ceasefire, at the moment there is a ceasefire, in order to restore the movement of vessels,” Carney told reporters Thursday in French.

“That’s the conversation. These are ongoing conversations,” he added at a news conference in Halifax, where he was announcing that Canada had hit it’s NATO spending target for the first time.

Tehran blockaded the strait in response to the U.S. and Israel launching a war on Iran a month ago. On March 19, Canada issued a joint statement with allies and partners expressing a willingness to contribute to efforts to reopen the strait.

Carney’s comments provide the clearest scenario Ottawa has offered yet of how it might get involved, after saying multiple times that it’s taking part in conversations with partners about some sort of assistance.

Carney also defended Thursday the limited information his government has released about the war, saying proactive disclosure could endanger troops.

CP’s also got this one. 

On another note, the government is proposing some sweeping update to the Canada Elections act to strengthen security against foreign interference, tighten political financing rules and address emerging threats against AI-generated deepfakes.

Bill C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act, follows recommendations from the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions. It reflects what the government describes as a broader effort to modernize rules in response to evolving risks.

Minister of Transport and Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon said Thursday the legislation is part of a wide effort to better safeguard Canada’s democratic system.

The proposed changes make a shift in how Ottawa approaches election security. It looks to criminalize deepfakes and coordinated disinformation, and tighten restrictions on foreign funding and third-party activity. It would also make it an offence to knowingly spread false or misleading information about the voting process with the intent to disrupt an election with a higher monetary penalty.

More specifically, the maximum amount of penalty will increase from $1,500 to $25,000 for an individual and $5,000 to $100,000 for organizations.

More from Sydney Ko. 

In Other Headline

Internationally

Elsewhere, passengers across the US have had their travel plans upended by the latest Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which has triggered widespread staffing shortages at airports as security employees go weeks without pay.

“We are returning from St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, to Boston today and it took fully three hours to get through US customs. Absolutely insane,” Boston-based passenger John Hildebrandt told the Guardian.

“I’ve traveled for business over the last 30 years and never experienced motionless queues like the one we just exited. If it weren’t for a rather insistent transport dispatcher who strongly suggested that we leave for the airport three and a half hours early, we would have never made our flight.”

Major airports nationwide have seen security lines stretch for hours due to the recent and ongoing funding impasse on Capitol Hill over immigration enforcement and reform. The shutdown has prompted many of the unpaid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers, who fall under DHS, to increasingly refuse to report for duty or quit. Nearly 500 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began last month.

The Guardian’s got the scoop. 

Meanwhile, at President Trump’s inaugural Board of Peace meeting in Washington last month, his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, unveiled a promising new partnership with Pakistan.

It was not a governmental decree against terrorism or war. Rather, it was an unorthodox real estate deal involving a shuttered hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

A former real estate developer now assigned to negotiate peace around the world, Mr. Witkoff brokered the unusual arrangement between the United States and Pakistani governments to explore the redevelopment of the Roosevelt Hotel, a once glamorous building that Pakistan owns.

While the Trump administration has not made the terms of the deal public, a White House official briefed on the matter described it as a potentially lucrative partnership between the two governments to co-own the property.

It was the latest bond that Pakistan forged with the Trump administration, part of a broader strategy of wooing the president and his inner circle.

Read more from the New York Times. 

In Other International Headlines

The Kicker

All for one, and one finally found. Archaeologist may have uncovered the remains of D’Artagnan, the famed French musketeer, at a church in the Netherlands.

This may potentially solve the mystery of the hero’s final resting place more than three centuries later.

Archaeologists said the physical evidence matches with the historical records, which reported that D’Artagan, whose full name was Charles de Batz de Castelmore, died after being shot in the throat by a musket ball during the French siege of Maastricht in 1673.

Find out more about it on CNN.