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Government of Canada invests $21.6 million in first-of-its-kind clean energy project in Manitoba

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WINNIPEG, MB, June 22, 2026 /CNW/ – While building Canada into a clean energy superpower, we are working with northern and remote communities to develop clean energy projects, in particular those that are reducing diesel use for electricity generation. This approach will strengthen our energy security, reduce our emissions and create jobs and prosperity for northern, rural and Indigenous communities.

Today, the Honourable Rebecca Chartrand, Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs and Minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, on behalf of the Honourable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced $21.6 million in federal funding for a suite of projects that will transform how electricity is generated and managed in Sayisi Dene First Nation, located in the community of Tadoule Lake in northern Manitoba.

This is the first phase of a First Nation–led initiative to develop Manitoba’s first integrated renewable energy microgrid, combining bifacial solar photovoltaic (PV) power and battery storage with a microgrid controller, to generate clean electricity. Once commissioned in fall 2026, the microgrid will reduce emissions by an estimated 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year and lower power costs for the community over time.

To build Canada strong, all communities must have secure, reliable energy. By supporting projects like these, the Government of Canada is working with Indigenous leadership and building a more prosperous, sustainable economy for generations to come.

Quotes

“Our government is proud to support Sayisi Dene First Nation as they lead the way toward cleaner, more reliable energy for their community. Projects like this one reflects the Nation’s vision for greater energy independence, a cleaner future and lasting prosperity.”

The Honourable Rebecca Chartand
Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs and Minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Member of Parliament for Churchill–Keewatinook Aski

“Canada Strong for All means working in partnership with Indigenous communities to reduce reliance on diesel and build a cleaner, more resilient energy future. Projects like Sayisi Dene First Nation’s microgrid demonstrate how innovation and collaboration can deliver real results across the Prairies and in the North.”

The Honourable Tim Hodgson
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources

“By supporting projects like this one in Sayisi Dene First Nation, we are championing Indigenous-led climate solutions. First Nations have been stewards of this land for generations, and we acknowledge their continued leadership on climate action. This initiative demonstrates once again how Canada is working hand-in-hand with partners to build a more resilient and sustainable economy for all.”

The Honourable Julie Dabrusin
Minister of the Environment, Climate Change and Nature

“Sayisi Dene First Nation is demonstrating how Indigenous-led clean energy projects can strengthen community resilience, advance self-determination and create lasting benefits for future generations. Indigenous Services Canada is proud to support the community’s vision for a cleaner, more reliable energy future that reduces reliance on diesel while supporting sustainable economic development.”

The Honourable Mandy Gull-Masty
Minister of Indigenous Services

“I have been involved in this renewable energy project from the beginning, serving in various roles throughout its development. Our community is looking forward to the benefits that will come with construction and commissioning this fall. Revenue generated from solar power will go toward community needs as we strive to become more sustainable and reduce our emissions. We also look forward to showcasing this project to other off-grid First Nations, sharing our learnings and experience executing the project.”

Chief Kelly-Ann Thom Duck
Sayisi Dene First Nation

“This project sets the stage for continued progress. By expanding renewable solutions and reducing diesel reliance, we are strengthening a more affordable, reliable and resilient energy future for communities across Manitoba.”

Allan Danroth
President and Chief Executive Officer, Manitoba Hydro

“We know reliable energy is essential, especially in northern communities, and this investment will help strengthen the autonomy and long-term energy security for Sayisi Dene First Nation. Investments like these reflect our broader commitment to building a clean energy grid that lowers emissions and keeps rates affordable for all Manitobans.”

The Honourable Adrien Sala
Minister of Finance and Minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro

Quick Facts

Natural Resources Canada’s Clean Energy for Rural and Remote Communities (CERRC) program has invested $453 million to reduce reliance on diesel and other fossil fuels for heat and power in Indigenous, rural and remote communities.CERRC has supported over 230 renewable energy projects across Canada, including 82 projects in the North. Collectively, these projects are adding more than 67 MW of clean energy to remote grids by 2027, reducing fuel use by approximately 28 million litres annually and avoiding over 75,000 tonnes in GHG emissions each year. These investments have strengthened local capacity, supported economic opportunities and advanced innovative solutions.The Energy Innovation Program (EIP) advances clean energy technologies that will help Canada maintain a competitive, reliable and affordable energy system while transitioning to a low-carbon economy.Natural Resources Canada provided $10,714,414 through its CERRC program and $4,200,000 through the Energy Innovation Program (EIP).Environment and Climate Change Canada contributed $6 million through its Indigenous Leadership Fund.The Low Carbon Economy Fund is an important part of Canada’s climate action plans, helping put Canada to build a sustainable net-zero emissions economy by 2050.Indigenous Services Canada is contributing up to $1,471,670 to support this initiative, including $971,670 through the Manitoba Indigenous Clean Energy Initiative and $500,000 through the Community Infrastructure Program.On May 14, 2026, the Government of Canada launched a new national Electricity Strategy. This plan will double the capacity of our grid by 2050 and supply clean, reliable, affordable power across the country for decades to come.To develop this strategy, the government is launching consultations with provinces, territories, Indigenous Peoples, utilities and unions to work together to identify the actions needed to double our grid most effectively and affordably.

Associated Links

Clean Energy for Rural and Remote CommunitiesIndigenous Leadership FundManitoba Indigenous Clean Energy InitiativePowering Canada Strong: A National Strategy for an Electrified Canadian Economy

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Robot.com Launches R-noid, a Humanoid Built For the Work That Burns People Out. No Legs, All Lift to the Bottom Line.

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Five solution categories. Nineteen deployable tasks. One platform that goes from initial site visit to autonomous operation in months — ready to show its work at Automate 2026.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Robot.com®, the company putting robots to work in the real world, today announces its entry into humanoid labor solutions with the commercial launch of R-noid™, a robot purpose-built for the repetitive, multi-shift, and hard-to-staff jobs. Deployed under a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, Robot.com can go from the first visit of a customer’s site to autonomous on-site R-noid operation in as few as eight to twelve weeks.

The R-noid launch commences with five initial solution categories — Restaurant Assistant, Packer, Picker, Folder, and Host — deployed across six industry verticals, including industrial, logistics, healthcare, food services, lodging, and experiential. These solutions target the roles operators chronically struggle to fill.

Robot.com will showcase R-noid alongside its proven R-kiwi™, R-kiwi+™, and R-cargo™ solutions at Automate 2026 in Chicago from June 22–25 at Booth 1592 in the Humanoid Pavilion.

The problem R-noid fills is structural and pervasive. Quick-service restaurants experience staff turnover upwards of 130%. Warehouse picker tenure averages just 1.2 years. More than 67% of hotel operators report critical staffing gaps in both housekeeping and laundry. These staffing shortfalls put customer experience at risk as the jobs simply don’t stay filled. R-noid never resigns.

“The future of work isn’t fewer people. It’s people freed from the parts of the job that grind them down, doing more of what they’re good at,” said Felipe Chavez Cortes, CEO and Co-Founder. “We build the robots that make that trade real, taking the repetitive physical work off your team so they can focus on craft, care, and the customer.”

Launching with support from NVIDIA Robotics, Astribot, FieldAI, Formic, Physical Intelligence, Robots for America, and Yukai Engineering, R-noid brings humanoid labor solutions to Robot.com’s broader fleet — R-kiwi for delivery, R-cargo for transport, and R-kiwi+ for advertising — all running on the same software stack and five-phase engagement model.

Robot.com is working with FieldAI to bring its general-purpose Field Foundation Models (FFMs) to R-noid as the autonomy brain. FFMs serve as an operational AI layer that generalizes across robots and environments and serves three roles: enabling safe and reliable operations in dynamic, real-world spaces without prior information or supporting infrastructure; preventing model hallucinations through physics-grounded AI models; and coordinating multiple robots working together.

The body that work runs on is built for reach and stability: dual 7-degree-of-freedom (DoF) arms, a 4-DoF articulated torso with 0 to 1.9m of vertical reach, and a holonomic mobile base that lets R-noid reposition in tight, busy spaces.

For the robot’s design language and character, Robot.com partnered with Yukai Engineering, a Japanese studio known for emotionally expressive consumer robots. Yukai advised on materials, manufacturing, and interaction design, and the collaboration produced R-soul, the expression and behavior system designed to earn people’s trust in seconds. It’s a goal Robot.com has pursued since 2017: building robots that open people’s hearts and minds to the future of technology. R-soul lets the robot communicate intent, status, and personality.

The dexterity comes from Physical Intelligence. R-noid runs on π0.7, Physical Intelligence’s vision-language-action model built for generalist manipulation. It reads a natural-language instruction, looks at the scene in front of it, and produces the arm and hand movements to carry out the task, adapting as objects, layout, and order change. One model spans packing, picking, and folding, so adding a task means extending the same system rather than engineering a new robot for each job.

At launch, R-noid can perform 19 deployable tasks across five categories. Lighthouse deployments are already underway, demonstrating the new humanoids’ speed-to-impact on business performance. The R-noid Packer is live at an award-winning golf course, handling on-site order packing operations. The Packer category is also moving toward production at a major food manufacturing facility, with early results validating R-noid’s end-of-line capabilities at scale. The Picker is designed to integrate directly into existing pick ports across logistics operations, with no facility retrofit required. Formic serves as Robot.com’s deployment partner for humanoid solutions, helping customers pilot, deploy, and scale automation in production environments.

“Our answer to ‘how long will this take?’ is weeks, not years,” said David Rodriguez, Co-Founder of Robot.com. “With thoughtful hardware design, best-in-class software, and our proven platform, we can have a robot doing real work in your facility within weeks of the first conversation. No other humanoid platform can make that claim.”

Robot.com’s fleet is built on NVIDIA’s full robotics stack; the robots run on NVIDIA Jetson modules, which power the robot’s perception, planning, and control stack on-device — delivering the low-latency inference real-world operations demand. Across its development cycle, Robot.com uses NVIDIA Isaac Sim to simulate, validate, and stress-test each robot before deployment, ensuring reliability before any unit touches a customer floor.

In addition to its Automate debut, R-noid will be among the featured players in Robot.com’s first appearance at Cannes Lions, where the company is the official Robotics Innovation Partner for PMG’s AI & Tech Sandbox.

For demos, media availability, or to book time at Automate, contact robot@thekeypr.com.

About Robot.com
Robot.com Holdings Inc., doing business as Robot.com®, is a pioneer in practical robotics solutions powered by advanced AI. The company operates a dual-engine business: Robotic Services, delivering Level 4 autonomous robots for campus delivery, warehouse logistics, and inspection; and Robot.com Media, a national OOH advertising platform powered by its mobile robot fleet. With more than 500 robots deployed across the United States, Canada, Dubai, and MENA, and completing over 2.5 million tasks, Robot.com operates at enterprise scale every day in real environments. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Colombia, Robot.com partners with enterprise operators, including Sodexo, to solve workforce and logistics challenges today. Robot.com is a founding member of Robots for America, a national coalition advancing the adoption of robotics and American industrial competitiveness.

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, as amended, including those relating to certain industry metrics, Company performance metrics and other statements that are predictive in nature. These statements relate to future events, future expectations, plans and prospects. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking expressions, including, but not limited to, “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “estimate,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “would” and similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable as of the date made, actual results or outcomes may prove to be materially different from the expectations expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Meaningful factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, whether we will have adequate financial resources to enable us to pursue our business successfully, given that we will likely need more financial resources than the additional resources. These statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors. The Company does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law.

Media Contact:
robot@thekeypr.com 

For Investors:
Matt Kreps
Darrow Associates
+1-214-597-8200
mkreps@darrowir.com

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Media Advisory – NASA technical briefing: on-orbit repairs to Canadarm2

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LONGUEUIL, QC, June 22, 2026 /CNW/ – On June 25 at 2:00 pm ET, NASA will hold a technical briefing about an upcoming spacewalk to replace a wrist joint on Canadarm2. The spacewalk is scheduled for Tuesday, June 30, at approximately 8:35 am ET.

Experts from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and NASA will give a preview of the spacewalk from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Media interested in joining by phone must contact the Johnson Space Center newsroom at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov no later than Wednesday, June 24, at 5:00 pm. To ask a question, media must dial in no later than 15 minutes before the start of the briefing. United States-based media who want to attend in person must contact the Johnson newsroom by the same deadline.

Media who have questions or would like to speak with a CSA expert should contact the CSA’s Media Relations Office.

Date:       

June 25, 2026

Time:       

2:00 pm ET

Who:         

Jason Dyer, CSA deputy liaison manager, Houston

Bill Spetch, operations and integration manager, International Space Station Program (NASA)

Fiona Antkowiak, spacewalk flight director (NASA)

The briefing will be livestreamed on NASA’s platforms. For more information, please consult NASA’s media advisory.

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Minister Hodgson highlights launch of National Food Security Strategy

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KING CITY, ON, June 22, 2026 /CNW/ – The Government of Canada is focused on building a stronger economy and making life more affordable for Canadians. Today, the Honourable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, on behalf of the Honourable Heath MacDonald, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, highlighted the launch of the National Food Security Strategy in King City, Ontario.

Backed by more than $3 billion in investments over 10 years, this strategy will drive productivity and innovation, support independent grocers, and create greater competition across Canada’s food system to help lower prices for Canadians.   

Minister Hodgson outlined the Strategy’s four main objectives:

Spur grocery store competition and create more choice for Canadians
Canada’s new government will invest $1 billion in food infrastructure – including new and expanded food terminals and hubs – to help independent grocers buy and move competitively-priced products without relying on supply networks owned by large retail chains. Additional funding will also provide the Competition Bureau and Competition Tribunal with more resources to investigate, prevent, and combat unfair business practices.

Boost domestic food production across Canada
For decades, we’ve been paying other countries to convert what we already have into what we really need. This Strategy changes that. This Strategy launches a new $1 billion Agri-food Project Finance Fund through Farm Credit Canada (FCC), and a $150 million Food Security Fund to help Canadian businesses grow, produce, and process more food in Canada. The Strategy will also create a $100 million Collaborative Food Innovation Fund to help producers make better use of what they already grow – expanding processing so more parts of each crop are used, and so more value is kept in Canada.

Grow fruits and vegetables year-round
We will invest $750 million to drastically expand year-round Canadian production of fruits and vegetables, through greenhouses, vertical farms, and other enclosed growing spaces, including in rural and Northern communities. The Strategy will reduce reliance on long, costly supply chains by expanding local food production.

Cut red tape across the agricultural supply chain
To reduce the regulatory burden on farmers and producers, we will modernise key regulations; speed up approvals for seeds, feed, fertilizers, and veterinary products; and reduce backlogs that slow down the system. This will help farmers access the tools they need sooner, increase productivity, and stabilise the food supply. The Strategy will also help provincially licensed food businesses meet federal requirements so that a Canadian- product made in one province or territory can more easily reach a shelf in another.

A country’s sovereignty depends on its ability to feed itself, fuel itself, and defend itself. And right now, Canada is not fully in control of our own food system. Our overreliance on foreign suppliers has left us vulnerable to global shocks – to conflicts overseas, to droughts, and to tariffs. Our new National Food Security Strategy is about changing that. It is about putting Canadians back in control of what we grow, of what we buy, and of what we put on our tables, so that we can build a truly strong, affordable, resilient Canada for all.

Quotes 

“The National Food Security Strategy is about giving Canadians greater choice, control, and access to affordable, locally produced food. Through this made-in-Canada approach we will be able to process more of what our farmers grow, creating new jobs, economic opportunity and more food self-sufficiency. By reducing red tape and helping innovative businesses get projects off the ground faster, we will unlock new opportunities for farmers, food processors, and entrepreneurs across the agri-food sector.”

–  The Honourable Heath MacDonald, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food

“The National Food Security Strategy will strengthen our entire food system from farm to table, so residents of King City and beyond can purchase and enjoy more affordable, locally produced food. By supporting innovation, upgrading infrastructure, and improving how food moves across the country, we are creating new opportunities for producers and ensuring a more resilient future for Canada.”

–  The Honourable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources

Quick Facts

The Strategy builds on federal measures already helping lower everyday costs for Canadians, including:Eliminating the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for first-time homebuyers on new homes up to $1 million and reducing it on new homes between $1 million and $1.5 million.Making the National School Food Program permanent, providing school meals for up to 400,000 children each year and saving participating families with two children in school an estimated $800 annually on groceries.Cancelling the federal consumer carbon price effective April 1, 2025, helping lower gas prices in most provinces and territories by around 18 cents per litre compared to 2024-25.Launching the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, providing a family of four up to $1,890 this year and about $1,400 a year for the next four years, and a single person up to $950 this year and about $700 a year for the next four years – reaching more than 12 million Canadians.To support Canadians while building a stronger domestic food system, the government is also:Providing $20 million to food banks and community food organisations across the country through the Local Food Infrastructure Fund’s Community Support Stream.Through Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and the Regional Development Agencies, the Government will call on industry leaders inviting them to put forward projects to improve the resilience and self-sufficiency in food processing by building new capacity, modernizing existing capacity and strengthening our support infrastructure. The Strategic Response Fund is to launch an early wave of its call for proposals in June 2026, followed by a second wave in the fall of 2026, in conjunction with Regional Development Agencies.Delivering immediate expensing for new or expanded greenhouse construction, providing upfront tax relief to help boost the domestic supply of fresh fruits and vegetables.Reforming the Nutrition North Canada program to improve food-related access, affordability, and long-term sustainability in Northern communities.

Additional Links 

National Food Security StrategyNational Food Security Strategy – placemat

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