Canadian News

Wab Kinew says he will look at releasing more information about government travel expenses, which would bring his province in line with some other jurisdictions.

The woman arrested in August as a suspect in four of the deaths of nine people who drowned last year in an effort to smuggle humans across the Canada/U.S. border at Akwesasne was denied bail on Friday at the Montreal courthouse. Read More

Two people are facing a host of charges in connection with shots being fired at a Jewish girls elementary school in North York last weekend, Toronto police say.

After lots of warm, dry weather so far this fall in Alberta, there's a dramatic shift in the forecast on the way — including the possibility of snow.

Her comments come ahead of what promises to be a tense meeting of the Liberal caucus in Ottawa next week as a growing number of MPs try to convince Justin Trudeau to step down.

The province now says 'environmental factors' have made its plan no longer feasible, and a drawdown of the reservoir is set to end shortly.

New Brunswick Liberal Leader Susan Holt discussed her election promises for health care today, but her two main opponents said her cost estimates are unrealistic.

A number of incumbents have gone down to defeat in Nova Scotia's municipal elections, including some high-profile mayors and a 30-year veteran of municipal politics.

Ottawa Senators goalie Linus Ullmark says he feels good, but the team won't confirm he will start in a Saturday afternoon home game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Read More

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Montreal's Gabriel Diallo advanced to his first career ATP Tour semifinal with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, upset of Chile's Alejandro Tabilo on Friday at the Almaty Open tennis tournament. Read More

Félix Auger-Aliassime was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the European Open tennis tournament with a 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6) loss to Spanish veteran Roberto Bautista Agut on Friday. Read More

Catholic advocacy groups are concerned after The Ottawa Hospital cancelled daily mass. Read More

So it’s a hot day in late spring at La Ronde. A crowded Saturday, asphalt melting under your feet, kids shrieking on wild rides, parents thinking they could use a stiff drink. Read More

Given the seemingly bottomless depths of human depravity, it’s hard to imagine that the world was ever able to come together and create something as inspired as the United Nations.

But, fresh from the horrors of the Second World War, there was a hunger for an international body that could bring the world’s nations together in pursuit of peace, create global programs to protect human rights, provide humanitarian aid and improve living standards and also help maintain a rules-based system of international law.

Sadly, the UN hasn’t fully succeeded. Still, given the difficulty of the task, it’s amazing that it’s made a difference at all. Or, in words attributed to Winston Churchill: “The UN was not designed to take us to heaven, but to prevent us from going to hell.”

By that lower yardstick, it deserves a solid B-plus.

So it’s disheartening that the world community, notably the West (including Canada), is doing so little to safeguard the UN in the face of Israel’s open hostility and scorn for the international body.

The most recent examples of Israel’s antagonism toward the UN are its repeated attacks this month on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, injuring five peacekeepers. Rather than promising to stop the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded UNIFIL leave the Lebanon border where it has had a UN mandate to keep the peace for almost five decades, but where its presence now hinders Israel’s invasion plans.

This flagrant disregard for international law and its institutions has been met with criticism from the West (including Canada) but no penalties, sanctions or boycotts that could apply international pressure on Israel.

In an unprecedented move earlier this month, the Netanyahu government blocked UN Secretary General António Guterres from entering Israel. This prompted a protest signed by 104 nations — including France, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland — but not Canada.

And last May, when the UN General Assembly voted to back a Palestinian bid for UN membership, Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan angrily denounced the vote and fed pages of the UN charter into a mini-shredder. He later called for the UN headquarters to be “wiped off the face of the earth.”

Israel has long been hostile toward United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the UN’s aid agency for Palestinian refugees. It has accused UNRWA of harbouring militants from Hamas, which invaded Israel last year, killing 1,200 and kidnapping 250. UNRWA fired nine employees for possible involvement in the Hamas attack, on the basis of Israeli evidence.

In response to the Hamas attack, Israel has bombed and starved Palestinians, killing more than 40,000 in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It has also destroyed UNRWA schools and aid centres, causing the death of almost 230 UNRWA workers — by far the most UN personnel killed in a single conflict since the UN’s creation, said Guterres.

The Israeli Parliament has also given preliminary approval to a bill banning UNRWA from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which Guterres said would be a “catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

Israel’s open contempt for the UN and its agencies has the effect of undermining the international body’s authority. By accepting Israel’s defiance of the UN, Western nations (led by the United States, but including Canada) are failing to uphold vital principles of international law and the very notion that it applies to all nations.

Canada was among the founding members of the UN in 1945 and for decades played an active role in UN peacekeeping missions.

Washington’s endless supply of weapons has emboldened Netanyahu, leaving the rest of the international community, including Canada, as the only hope for applying sufficient pressure to restrain his government.

As Yael Berda, an Israeli professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recently tweeted to the world: “Please do everything you can to stop this. We Israelis [who] oppose Netanyahu’s regime cannot stop this from within. There is no formal opposition. Help.”

This article was originally published by the Toronto Star.

The post Canada should not allow Israel’s defiance of the UN to go unchallenged appeared first on rabble.ca.

Last month, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh ripped up a supply and confidence agreement that committed his party to propping up the minority Liberal government in exchange for concessions. Without Singh’s 25 MPs, the Liberal government could fall, sparking an election, if another non-confidence motion was proposed by the opposition Conservatives, who currently enjoy a big lead in the polls. But another party in the House — the Bloc, with 33 seats — also holds the balance of power. Its leader, Yves-François Blanchet, has spelled out conditions in exchange for backing the Liberals, invoking an Oct. 29 deadline. Read More

Ottawa police are looking for the driver of a four-door Hyundai Tundra who "may have crucial information" concerning a fatal crash on Old Richmond Road on Sept. 26. Read More

Google Translate is adding a new language to its platform that could serve thousands of people in Ottawa as well as Canada's North: Inuktut. 

OTTAWA — Federal spending on financial supports during the height of the global pandemic in Canada greatly outpaced that of other developed countries, enough to actually raise household incomes at a time when the economy was in free fall.

A new report by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) shows that household incomes in Canada increased by 11 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, while incomes in other developed nations including the U.K., France and Germany decreased. The boost came despite a more than 10 per cent contraction in the Canadian economy over the same period, shortly after strict lockdowns were introduced across the country.

The figures underscore the immense scale of the Liberal government’s emergency aid spending, prompting economists to contemplate what level of fiscal response is necessary to cushion the Canadian public against economic fallout.

“It raises a very serious question about whether we overdid it,” said Jack Mintz, economist at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “It’s one thing to help people bridge the pandemic because they lost income. But it’s another thing to actually make them richer.”

The report by the OECD comes weeks after another report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that Canada’s deficit as a percentage of GDP will be the single-largest of any country in 2021, at 19.9 per cent. The U.S. (18.7 per cent) and U.K. (16.5 per cent) are expected to run the next-largest shortfalls.

Experts are widely in agreement that some level of fiscal support was needed in order to keep businesses afloat and replace the lost income of unemployed people. But Mintz and others have long suggested that federal support programs could have already been trimmed back as a way to incentivize workers and not avoid overspending.

“In terms of lost income, the appropriate thing is probably to be flat,” he said. “But certainly not increasing.”

• Economists call for improved spending transparency as Trudeau again refuses to set fiscal anchor
• Expansion of COVID-19 programs the latest example of Ottawa's struggle to wind down spending
• Trudeau outlines $19 billion in COVID-19 relief spending for provinces and municipalities

The Liberal government introduced a number of emergency programs early in the pandemic, widely supported by businesses and the general public. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) gave unemployed people $2,000 per month, while the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) paid up to 75 per cent of wages for businesses as a way to keep people employed.

Combined, the two projects will cost over $150 billion by the end of December, according to government estimates. The federal deficit is  projected to reach $350 billion in 2021, then decline sharply in the following years.

“Canada was more generous than most other countries in providing quick stimulus,” said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC.

Economists are broadly in agreement that current spending measures will need to be wound down sooner rather than later, or risk slowing an eventual recovery. Ottawa in late summer made moves to reduce payments under the CERB from $2,000 to $1,600 per month, but ultimately abandoned those plans after facing pressure from the NDP.

It has since transitioned to the new $2,000-per-month Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), which Shenfeld said includes some provisions that should better incentivize return to work.

“As the economy improves, ideally, we want to gradually make unemployment benefits less available and less tempting, and build in more incentive to accept to work,” he said.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has offered few details about how she will sketch out a return to pre-pandemic budgets, and has declined to provide an updated fiscal anchor in her upcoming budget update.

In her first major speech as finance minister in late October, Freeland did hint that spending would eventually be wound down.

“Our fiscally expansive approach to fighting the coronavirus cannot and will not be infinite,” she said.

The OECD report also had the United States posting a rise in household incomes in the second quarter at 10 per cent, largely due to the emergency CARES Act passed by Donald Trump in April. However, the OECD said the bump is likely to be “temporary” as new fiscal spending plans remain stuck in Congress.

Other countries posting higher incomes included Ireland (3.6 per cent), Australia (2.7 per cent) and Finland (1.1 per cent). Italy saw a seven per cent drop, while household incomes in the U.K. dropped 3.5 per cent.

• Email: jsnyder@postmedia.com | Twitter: jesse_snyder

OTTAWA – With Canada on track to see as many as 10,000 cases per day by December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pleaded with Canadians Friday to hunker down before the COVID-19 pandemic starts to exceed government resources.

“We have to reverse these trends now,” he said. “We must flatten the curve now before it gets any worse.”

Cases have been rising in most parts of the country for weeks and Canada set a new daily record of new diagnoses on Thursday.

More than 282,000 people have been diagnosed with the virus and an average of 55 people are dying from it everyday.

On Thursday alone, nearly 5,000 cases were found and 83 people in the country died.

“Fires are burning in so many different areas and right now is the time to get those under control,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer.

She said at the current pace Canada could expect to see 10,000 cases per day by early December. She said that will further strain health care resources that are already struggling with the surge.

“Hospitals are being forced to make the difficult decision to cancel elective surgeries and procedures in areas of the country, and healthcare workers everywhere are exhausted,” she said.

• COVID-19 testing numbers down more than 25 per cent, even as positive cases soar
• 'COVID is starting to win,' Jason Kenney warns as he stops short of severe restrictions in Alberta
• Industry groups call for tailor-made COVID-19 programs to support hard-hit sectors in second wave

Trudeau held a call with Canada’s premiers Thursday night. Earlier this week, he encouraged them not to be hesitant in imposing new restrictions and lockdowns if the data is moving in the right direction and said the federal government would be there to support businesses and workers.

He said acting early is much better than waiting.

“The science, the body of evidence that’s out there, across the country, and indeed around the world shows clearly what best practices are moving quickly and firmly, is far better than delaying and hoping that individual behaviour will itself bend the curve.”

Trudeau did offer Red Cross support to Manitoba, which has been hit particularly badly with a second wave and needs help for long-term care homes where dozens have died. Trudeau left it out of his initial statement about the meeting, but he also agreed to meet with provincial premiers in early December to discuss provincial health transfers. The provinces have called for the federal government to permanently pay for more of the cost of health care.

The federal government has offered additional testing capacity and contact tracing as well as access to PPE, but Trudeau said if cases escalate the government does not have unlimited resources to help.

“There is a threshold beyond which, when the cases spike too much, we might have to make really difficult choices about where to deploy the limited resources we have,” he said.

A source familiar with the conversation said the premiers were generally in agreement on the need for more restrictions to slow the virus, with new restrictions likely coming to hard hit provinces in the next few days.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford moved on Friday, lowering his government’s thresholds for imposing restrictions by more than half and putting most of the Greater Toronto Area into the red zone, the highest level of restrictions.

Those restrictions severely limit indoor dining and gyms, close movie theatres and other spaces. The only remaining level of restrictions for those health regions is a full and complete lockdown.

Modelling Ontario released on Thursday showed the government could be seeing 6,500 cases a day in a few weeks’ time, potentially overwhelming the province’s critical care bed capacity.

“The impact on our hospital would be absolutely devastating. As premier I can’t accept that and I won’t accept that,” said Ford. “These adjustments are necessary to respond to the latest evidence and we may need to make further adjustments.”

Ontario’s thresholds were originally higher than many public health experts recommended, including experts the government consulted who suggested they should be higher.

Ford pleaded with people to modify their behaviour and said he is prepared to go further if that is what is required.

“You have already sacrificed so much, but we need to be clear about what is at stake. We are staring down the barrel of another lockdown,” he said.

Ford has not been alone in ramping up restrictions, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister brought in tighter rules for his province on Tuesday.

And Alberta premier Jason Kenney has also taken some small measures to tighten restrictions in his provinces, forcing bars and restaurants to close earlier in the evening and suspending indoor fitness classes.

• Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter: ryantumilty

SeaDream 1, one of the world’s smallest cruise ships, departed Barbados on Nov. 7 with 53 passengers and 66 crew — the first cruise ship to venture back to sea in an industry docked since March by the global coronavirus outbreak.

But by the fifth day of the cruise, the ship was forced to halt what could have been a ‘watershed moment for the cruise industry’ after a passenger onboard tested positive for COVID-19.

“People are shocked,” Gene Sloan, a passenger on the SeaDream Yacht Club cruise, told the National Post.

Sloan, who had been writing about cruise and travel for the past 20 years, had boarded the ship on Saturday to see what it’s like to go on the first Caribbean cruise since the shutdown in March.

“The Caribbean is the world’s biggest cruise destination,” he wrote in an article for the Points Guy , “accounting for at least a third of all cruises taken in a normal year, and a resumption of sailings in the region is critical to the cruise industry’s long-term health.”

Standing in line to board the ship on Saturday had been a “strange” experience, Sloan said.

Each passenger had to undergo a COVID-19 test, a body temperature check, a pulse oximetry test; sanitize their hands, have their luggage sprayed with disinfectant as well as show several medical-related forms.

All passengers had been required by the SeaDream cruise line and the Barbados government to test negative for COVID-19 via a PCR test three days prior to boarding.

SeaDream also has started new cleaning and sanitizing measures on board the ships, with the help of ultrasonic foggers used by hospitals to disinfect rooms. They also installed a germ-killing UV light system.

While this would have been the first cruise in the Caribbean, SeaDream had already conducted some cruises in Europe, all of which went off without a hitch. Given the “level of rigorousness” with which the line had prepared its ships, it was easy to be skeptical of anyone coming down with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis once onboard, Sloan told the National Post.

After the exhaustive screening, the first few days aboard the ship had been “surprisingly normal'” Sloan said . People could still lounge by the pool, enjoying a drink by the bar, take a kayak out for a paddle or a swim. Most meals were served in the outdoor restaurant and people kept to their own groups.

The ship, he said, was built to serve 112 passengers; Carrying only 53, which amounts to 47 per cent of capacity, made it easier for passengers to maintain social distancing, as requested by staff.

Unlike in pre-COVID times, most activities off the ship would be planned on islands where passengers wouldn’t meet locals. Passengers were also required to have their temperature checked daily by staff — a reminder, Sloan wrote, of the pandemic.

Update: @SeaDreamYC has tightened its mask-wearing rules, with passengers now required to wear a mask on its ships when they can’t social distance from other passengers. The line already has a months-long track record keeping #covid off ships through frequent testing. #SeaDream pic.twitter.com/NrF7cAx4pR

— Gene Sloan (@CruiseLog) November 10, 2020

Initially, passengers were not asked to wear masks onboard the ship, a move that generated some controversy among those who saw photos of the cruise posted by passengers on their social media accounts. The cruise staff had initially reasoned that masks were not needed due to the rigorous testing passengers prior to casting off, but by Monday night had announced a change in policy that mandated masks be worn at all times.

Not all passengers were happy about the change, Sloan wrote, with some telling him that they had specifically booked the cruise because it did not require mask-wearing. However, in hindsight, not wearing a mask might have made it more likely for COVID-19 to be transmitted among the guests, Sloan said.

It’s still unclear how the virus found its way on to the ship.

Torbjorn Lund, the ship’s captain, informed passengers during a ship-wide intercom address on Wednesday afternoon that a passenger has tested positive for COVID-19. All passengers were asked to isolate in their cabins for the next 24 hours as medical teams came onboard and went door-to-door to test all passengers for any virus spread.

Sloan, who was standing outside his cabin when he heard the announcement, said he slipped into his room without seeing any of the other passengers. But, based on the few he spoke with via email during isolation, he noted that people appeared to be a “little shocked”, but not angry.

Quarantine lunch has arrived and, well, this is kind of amazing. How did they pull this off within two hours of a shipwide lockdown? #SeaDream @SeaDreamYC @thepointsguy pic.twitter.com/NqdIw3KMLu

— Gene Sloan (@CruiseLog) November 11, 2020

“The few people I talked to seemed to understand the necessity for a quarantine … to shut this kind of thing down,” he said. He commended ship staff for their smooth handling of the situation, from immediate testing to ensuring all passengers still got a gourmet lunch and dinner, delivered to their door, without having to interact with crew.

The seven day cruise, he said, was immediately cancelled and the ship docked at its home port in Barbados on Wednesday night.

There, another four people tested positive and passengers remained quarantined on the ship Thursday afternoon.

Sloan said the further four cases had been travelling with the original passenger to test positive.

The situation is ‘unfortunate’, he said, because the cruise line put a lot of work into a strategy for all worst-case scenarios. “They’ve spent a lot of time figuring out not just how to keep (COVID-19) off the ships, but if it gets on the ship, how to shut it down.”