TORONTO, Dec. 3  -- Toronto city councilors voted to impose a 5-cent fee on plastic shopping bags at supermarkets next year to help with landfill costs.

After the 30-13 vote that included other environmental measures, Toronto Mayor David Miller said the concept of "free" bags was a fallacy, the Toronto Star reported.

"There's a cost to the city and the people of Toronto in disposing of them, there's a cost to the environment and there's a cost to the retailers," Miller said.

The measure will go into effect in June.

Montreal - In a stunning reversal of political fortunes, the leader of Canada's official opposition, Stephane Dion, was poised to become the country's next prime minister despite having lost the October 14 federal election.

Dion, who just six weeks ago was forced to step down as Liberal leader after the party's worst-ever electoral performance, emerged as the compromise candidate to lead a centre-left coalition formed Monday among the Liberal Party and the socialist New Democratic Party (NDP), aiming to unseat the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Ottawa, Dec. 2 : In a political coup, Canada''s three opposition parties have joined hands to oust the just elected minority government of .

Leaders of the country''s three main opposition parties presented their plan to topple Harper''s minority government at a press conference in Ottawa late on Monday afternoon.

According to the Globe and Mail, the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois publicly signed a coaltion accord and sent a letter to Governor-General Michaëlle Jean saying the opposition has lost confidence in the Conservatives.

Quebec City, Canada - Many travellers to Scandinavia are familiar with ice hotels, edifices of frozen water that beckon guests with the prospect of an overnight stay in arctic-like cold. There is one such hotel in North America - in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.

This winter, it will be open from January 4 to March 29.

The only warm things at the Hotel de Glace are the candles on the bedside tables. The air is so cold you can see your breath, which adheres in tiny droplets to the opening of your sleeping bag. The tip of your nose feels numb - almost as though it were frozen. Getting up for a little while, drinking a glass of milk or going to the toilet seem impossible without risking death.

Stephen Hawking, the famous international physicist, has been appointed to the post of distinguished research chair at a quantum theory and cosmology institute founded by Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

The institute issued a statement, in which it was informed that regular stays would be conducted by Hawking at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, starting in the summer of 2009.

Vancouver (Canada), Nov. 29 : A Canadian businessman, who was held hostage by terrorists inside the Trident-Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai said that he was saved from being killed by terrorists because he drifted off to sleep and ignored a mysterious knock to his door.

Vancouver-based Jonathan Erlich, 40, told the Globe and Mail newspaper that he decided to give a miss to a friend’s invitation for a nightcap in the Oberoi Hotel''s plush lobby on Wednesday night, drifted off to sleep and only woke up after hearing a loud explosion on the street below.

He said that when he went to turn on a light, a second, more powerful blast rocked the hotel. He peered in the hall and heard a guest say something about a bomb.