Canadian News

Jagmeet Singh waded into the U.S. election on Tuesday, saying U.S. President Donald Trump had failed to control the COVID-19 pandemic, putting Americans and the rest of the world at risk.

“I think it would be better for the world if Trump loses and I hope he loses today,” said Singh.

The leader of Canada’s New Democrats said Trump has flirted with white supremacy and endorsing violence, and emboldened racism and division “to an extent that we’ve not seen before.”

VOTE HIM OUT

In 4 years Donald Trump has:

• Placed kids in cages

• Fanned the flames of hatred and division

• Failed 230,000 Americans, left dead because of COVID-19

Trump makes the world a more dangerous place for all of us and I hope to see him lose.#Elections2020

— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) November 3, 2020

Other Canadian leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have remained studiously quiet regarding the U.S. election. Trudeau said he would watch from the sidelines, and that he stands ready to work with whomever heads to the Oval Office after Tuesday’s election.

Erin O’Toole, the leader of the Conservatives, concurred, saying “this is a vote for Americans, not Canadians,” and added that were he prime minister, he’d work with either candidate.

Singh, though, broke with this logic and instead implored Americans to vote Trump out.

“We’re not in normal times,” Singh said. “What President Trump has done is so far beyond what is normal that it is a moral imperative that we have to speak out and make it really clear that what he has done in his presidency is wrong.”

Pollster Nate Silver has said that if Joe Biden doesn’t win Pennsylvania, he’s got a rough road to victory.

While that all may or may not be true, Pennsylvania is one of the swing states that pundits and analysts are paying attention to — and, there’s a weird quirk, because it’s possible, likely even, that we won’t even know the outcome in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. That’s because of a probable delay in counting mail-in ballots.

The reason for this delay: Absentee ballot counting begins there on election day, whereas many other states started organizing ballots in advance. (Both the state’s governor and secretary of state have said this in recent days, saying the wait would be “days” to find out who won in Pennsylvania.)

• U.S. presidential election 2020 live: Mysterious robocalls urge people to 'stay safe and stay home'
• Pollsters say Trump can still win despite what their numbers show

But anyhow: Pennsylvania was one of the states Donald Trump won in 2016; prior to that, it had consistently voted Democrat for president. And, when Trump won it, it was by less that one percentage point. Going into election day, Biden had a five point lead in the polls.

That might sound big, but in reality it could be a polling error; in 2016, as Silver points out, polls in this same state were off by 4.4 per cent. More to the point, perhaps, a few weeks ago, Biden had a seven point lead in the polls — so things have tightened up.

Basically, the way pollsters are looking at Pennsylvania, that state’s 20 electoral college votes could decide the election. Without getting too far into the nitty gritty of things, NPR is reporting that, basically, if Biden and Trump win the states they’re expected to win, they could end up with a 259-259 tie in the electoral college, meaning Pennsylvania would be the likely tiebreaker state.

Here’s the other thing: Silver also argues Pennsylvania matters as something of a bellweather. It is economically and demographically similar to other important swing states, such as North Carolina and Florida.

In other words, if Biden has a terrible night in Pennsylvania — or Trump a good one — that might suggest the same thing is happening in some of the other critical swing states. It would also raise some questions about Biden’s success in other Rust Belt states.

To win, Biden needs a variety of these states and, to put it mildly, he could really, really use Pennsylvania. If he doesn’t get it, the question of which states he will get is harder to answer, according to Silver’s analysis.

He has, in short, no “Plan B,” no second pathway into the Oval Office. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen. But it does make it trickier.

Oh: Polls close at 8 ET in Pennsylvania.

With COVID-19 precautions in place across the U.S., open space for voting stations is at a premium. From bars, to laundromats to car showrooms, here are some of the strangest locations that have been co-opted to act as polling stations across the country.

Friends Bar — San Francisco, California

• Raymond J. de Souza: The takeaway from election 2020 — maybe the best of America has come and gone
• If 2016 was about the electoral college, in 2020 it is about the early vote

Su Nueva Lavanderia Laundromat — Chicago, Illinois

Grand Central Market — Los Angeles, California

St Louis City Library — St Louis, Missouri

Sam’s Auto Sales — Chicago, Illinois

Pantages Theatre — Los Angeles, California

Kings Theatre — Brooklyn, New York

Museum of Ice Cream — San Francisco, California

Shiekh Shoes — San Francisco, California

Outside of a building — Portland, Oregon

OTTAWA — Conservative MPs protested the Liberal government’s new assisted dying bill on Tuesday, grilling a trio of cabinet ministers who appeared at the justice committee to defend the legislation.

The Conservative caucus is split on the bill, with 78 of their 121 MPs voting against it at second reading, including Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. All other MPs voted in favour of the legislation, making it likely to pass the House of Commons easily.

The Liberals created the assisted dying regime in June 2016 in response to a Supreme Court of Canada decision, Carter v. Canada. The new legislation, Bill C-7, responds to a different Quebec Superior Court ruling in 2019 that found that the original law unconstitutionally restricted assisted death to terminally ill patients; if a person’s death was not “reasonably foreseeable” they could not have an assisted death, the ruling deemed, regardless of their level of pain and suffering.

The Liberal government decided not to appeal the Quebec decision. Bill C-7 expands the assisted death regime to comply with it, along with making a few other changes around the process of consenting to an assisted death.

At Tuesday’s committee, where Justice Minister David Lametti, Health Minister Patty Hajdu, and Employment and Disability Inclusion Minister Carla Qualtrough all appeared, Conservative MPs criticized the government for not fighting the court ruling.

“Instead of appealing, as we called on them to do, instead of appealing as the disability community called them to do, this government chose at the first possible opportunity to, in fact, not defend their own legislation,” said Conservative justice critic Rob Moore. He pointed to a letter signed by 72 disability advocacy organizations that was sent to Lametti protesting the removal of the foreseeable death requirement.

“The message that this legislation sends — that no longer do you need to be dying to access assisted dying — is a fundamental change in our country.” Moore said.

Lametti told Moore it was a difficult decision to accept the court ruling.

“We did hear various voices, including voices from the disability community,” Lametti said. “We took the decision, put quite simply, to reduce suffering. It was hard to see cases like Nicole Gladu and Jean Truchon, and Julia Lamb out west, and not see the suffering that they were going through with no recourse to medical assistance in dying that other Canadians had.”

Gladu and Truchon both had incurable degenerative diseases and their cases were the basis of the Quebec court ruling, while Lamb is a B.C. woman in her twenties with a neurodegenerative disease who had also challenged the law.

The Conservatives are also criticizing changes in Bill C-7 that relax some of the safeguards for people who are close to death.

The changes include dropping the requirement that a person must wait 10 days after being approved for an assisted death before receiving the procedure. The bill would also reduce the number of witnesses required to one from two, and drop the requirement that a person must be able to give consent a second time immediately prior to receiving the procedure.

Lametti said these changes were prompted in part by the case of Audrey Parker, a Halifax woman who had her assisted death earlier than she wanted to — before spending a final Christmas with her family — because she worried her mental capacity would deteriorate too much to give final consent if she waited.

“It was a gut-wrenching set of facts,” Lametti said. “And it resonated across the country, in English and in French, there was an outpouring of support for Audrey Parker and for the ability to give an advanced consent, or waiving final consent, as we have framed in this legislation.”

O’Toole, speaking with reporters in French earlier on Tuesday, said the Conservatives will be seeking amendments because Bill C-7 doesn’t do enough to protect vulnerable people.

• Federal government requests more time to amend assisted dying law
• Chris Selley: Expanding access to assisted suicide shouldn't be left up to judges

However, with NDP and Bloc Québécois support, the bill is likely to pass the Commons largely in its current form. It will also need to pass in the Senate, where support is more difficult to predict. There is a deadline of Dec. 18 before the current law is no longer in force due to the court ruling, though the court has already extended that deadline multiple times.

NDP MP Randall Garrison criticized Lametti for not moving faster on a mandated parliamentary review of the assisted dying law that would consider some of the other controversial issues that aren’t currently included in the regime.

This includes expanding assisted dying to cover mature minors (people under age 18 who have the capacity to fully consider their circumstances), people who are solely suffering from mental illnesses, and a wider use of advance directives for people who expect their mental capacity to diminish.

“You know that I agree with you in principle, we’re committed to that other review,”  Lametti told Garrison. “But my priority is C-7…I’m sorry that I can’t say more than that right now.”

With files from The Canadian Press

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter: btaplatt

As Americans head to the polls to vote in what has been called one of the most divisive elections in U.S. presidential history, law enforcement are keeping an eye on armed vigilante groups planning to commit any acts of disruption or violence at polling sites.

Extremist groups have been planning actions in key states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which has been tracking extremists via social media. Those espousing an extremist right-wing idealogy have signalled that they will heed an earlier call by President Donald Trump for poll watchers to ensure the election remain fair. Meanwhile, left-wing groups have pledged to prevent people from engaging in voter suppression.

A report published last week by the MilitiaWatch and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project found that those three key states, along with Oregon and Georgia face the highest risk of experience violence from militia groups during the election. “Although many U.S. militias can be described as ‘latent’ in that they threaten more violence than they commit, several recently organized militias are associated with a right-wing ideology of extreme violence towards communities opposed to their rhetoric and demands for dominance and control,” the report states.

The report is titled “Standing By: Right-Wing Militia Groups and the US Election,” a reference to  Donald Trump ‘s “stand back and stand by,” which was viewed by many as an endorsement of far-right  hate group  the  Proud Boys .

Virginia, New Mexico, Texas, North Carolina and California were also listed as states at moderate risk of militia violence.

Throughout the summer, ACLED tracked the activities of at least 80 militia, most of which are right-wing armed groups. It concluded that any instances of militia activity would likely take place in capital cities, peripheral towns, medium-population cities and suburban areas with centralized zones.

Swing states in the 2020 election are especially at risk, researchers added, having observed election violence and unrest to be more common in ‘competitive spaces’. Of the five states listed as high-risk , four are perennial swing states  — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin.

The armed groups, the report explained, take action via ‘hybrid tactics’, which combined urban and rural combat with public relations, propaganda and ‘security operations’ on online and physical platforms to communicate with others not part of the militia group. Researchers also observed a trend in which armed groups assign themselves ‘public protection’ roles alongside police departments and act to ‘supplement’ the work of law enforcement.

The ACLED report named nine militias as the “most active” in the U.S. that could take action leading up to or after the election, such as Three Percenters, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Light Foot Militia, Civilian Defense Force, American Contingency, Patriot Prayer, Boogaloo Bois and People’s Rights.

The leader of a Three Percenters group in Georgia told USA Today he has “troops” ready to go to polling places if he hears reports of voter fraud. The Three Percenters movement based on the false claim that only three per cent of Americans fought in the Revolutionary War against the British.

“We’re going in undercover to start with,” Justin Thayer said. “We don’t want to intimidate anyone, and we’re not aligned with any political party, but if we do discover fraud, we have guys on standby, and if we need to shut down a precinct, we will.”

Even if the threats don’t come to fruition,  experts say they could be enough to keep voters from heading to the polls.

State and federal law enforcement however say they have planned for any and every scenario; from major cities to rural outposts, officials have drawn up plans and conducted drills. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said emergency management and law enforcement officials have prepared for situations including arson, COVID-19 outbreaks and violence from Election Day through the presidential inauguration in January.

• Matt Gurney: In the U.S. election, we should hope for a blowout either way
• Rex Murphy: The tinderbox that is American democracy

“Win or lose,” she said, according to USA Today, “someone’s going to be unhappy.”

Michael Harrison, Baltimore police commissioner and vice president of the Police Executive Research Forum warned disrupters against harassing or intimidating voters. “I have a very clear message for any person who wants to disrupt this election: Do not try it here in Baltimore or anywhere in the country,” he told USA Today. “Do not try to frighten, intimidate or harass any voter. Collectively, we will stop you and we will hold you accountable.”

Despite past competitiveness, several groups may have formed alliances in the months leading to the election, the report added.“Militia groups and other armed non-state actors pose a serious threat to the safety and security of American voters,” the study reads. “Throughout the summer and leading up to the general election, these groups have become more assertive, with activities ranging from intervening in protests to organizing kidnapping plots targeting elected officials.”

However Sam Jones, a spokesman for ACLED, told the Independent that higher risk does not mean violence is inevitable

“Voters should not be intimidated,” Jones said. “Rather, we hope people are able to use the data to evaluate their own threat environment and organize locally to stay safe, reduce polarization in their communities and, ultimately, mitigate the risk of violence.”

It has been 11 years since an Ottawa teen vanished without a trace.

Initially thought to be a runaway, there appears to be no indication of what happened to Justin Rutter.

Dave Breakenridge is joined by Ottawa Citizen reporter Taylor Blewett about the circumstances around Rutter’s disappearance, why his family has concerns about the investigation, and whether his mother feels she’ll ever get closure.

Background reading:  ‘What happened to Justin Rutter?’: The Ottawa teen vanished 11 years ago. His disappearance remains a mystery

Subscribe to 10/3 on your favourite podcast app.

#distro

Five American states could become battle grounds for militia groups carrying out acts of armed violence and protests on election day, a new study warns.

Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Oregon are at highest risk of experiencing violence from militia groups during the 2020 U.S. election, says the report by MilitiaWatch and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

The report is titled “Standing By: Right-Wing Militia Groups and the US Election,” a reference to  Donald Trump ‘s “stand back and stand by,” which was viewed by many as an endorsement of far-right  hate group  the  Proud Boys .

“Although many U.S. militias can be described as ‘latent’ in that they threaten more violence than they commit, several recently organized militias are associated with a right-wing ideology of extreme violence towards communities opposed to their rhetoric and demands for dominance and control,” the report states.

Throughout the summer, ACLED tracked the activities of at least 80 militia, most of which are right-wing armed groups. It concluded that any instances of militia activity would likely take place in capital cities, peripheral towns, medium-population cities and suburban areas with centralized zones.

Virginia, New Mexico, Texas, North Carolina and California were also listed as states at moderate risk of militia violence.

Swing states in the 2020 election are especially at risk, researchers added, having observed election violence and unrest to be more common in ‘competitive spaces’. Of the five states listed as high-risk , four are perennial swing states  — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin.

The report named nine militias as the “most active” in the U.S. that could take action leading up to or after the election, such as Three Percenters, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Light Foot Militia, Civilian Defense Force, American Contingency, Patriot Prayer, Boogaloo Bois and People’s Rights.

The armed groups, the report explained, take action via ‘hybrid tactics’, which combined urban and rural combat with public relations, propaganda and ‘security operations’ on online and physical platforms to communicate with others not part of the militia group. Researchers also observed a trend in which armed groups assign themselves ‘public protection’ roles alongside police departments and act to ‘supplement’ the work of law enforcement.

Despite past competitiveness, several groups may have formed alliances in the months leading to the election, the report added.“Militia groups and other armed non-state actors pose a serious threat to the safety and security of American voters,” the study reads. “Throughout the summer and leading up to the general election, these groups have become more assertive, with activities ranging from intervening in protests to organizing kidnapping plots targeting elected officials.”

However Sam Jones, a spokesman for ACLED, told the Independent that higher risk does not mean violence is inevitable

“Voters should not be intimidated,” Jones said. “Rather, we hope people are able to use the data to evaluate their own threat environment and organize locally to stay safe, reduce polarization in their communities and, ultimately, mitigate the risk of violence.”

Michael Moore is definitely no fan of Donald Trump’s, but his comments last week would have made the president smile.

The polls showing Joe Biden enjoying a comfortable lead over Trump in Moore’s native Michigan, a key battleground state in Tuesday’s U.S. election, are undoubtedly over-stating the Democrat’s popularity, the filmmaker asserted .

“The Trump vote is always being undercounted … The Trump voter’s very suspicious of the ‘Deep State’ calling them and asking them who they’re voting for,” Moore told The Hill. “Whatever they’re saying the Biden lead is, cut it in half, right now, in your head.”

His assessment was not exactly scientific, but it had some credibility. The Roger and Me director made the same observation before the 2016 vote, when polls in such states suggested that Hillary Clinton would ease to victory.

Indeed, the survey misfire of four years ago continues to haunt U.S. politics and raises a nagging question: Could polls showing a consistent lead for Biden nationally and in swing states once again prove off the mark?

At least some pollsters have tried to fix problems identified in the wake of the 2016 debacle, while the Democratic candidate’s advantage is stable, barely changing over the last several months. But Trump’s unexpected election victory  underlined how difficult it can be to get polling right, and not all experts are convinced this year will be different.

“Maybe I’m just an anxious person, but it is possible that we would have another surprise on the order of 2016,” said Courtney Kennedy, director of survey research at the respected Pew Research Center. “Donald Trump, he’s a very unique candidate, and the type of voters he has turned out have proven tricky for pollsters to represent.”

• Same poll that hinted at Trump win in 2016 has him seven points up in swing state
• More than 95 million Americans vote early, which is already 69 per cent of the 2016 turnout

A scholar who has studied a long history of opinion-tracking missteps says it’s unlikely, but he would also not rule out a repeat of four years ago.

“Maybe lightning will strike twice,” said W. Joseph Campbell, a communications professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.

The first time lightning struck, it was by no means an across-the-board screw-up, despite public perception.

“In 2016, polls were about as accurate as they have ever been,” Doug Schwartz, director of the well-regarded Quinnipiac University Poll, insisted by email.

That’s true of the national surveys, certainly. As the campaign ended, they showed Clinton ahead by an average of about three percentage points and she wound up taking the popular vote by just over two points.

The problem was in individual battleground states, especially the upper mid-west ones that had been part of the Democratic “blue wall.” In Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, pollsters reported an edge of up to about 6.5 percentage points for the Democratic candidate. Trump ended up winning all three states, albeit by the narrowest of margins, about 77,000 votes out of 14 million cast. It was enough to capture a majority of electoral college votes, and the White House.

Trump’s surprise win was a “jarring” event for the industry, shocking even his own pollsters, says a post-mortem report by the American Association of Public Opinion Research.

What went wrong?

One major flaw centred around Trump’s famous success with white people lacking college degrees, the association concluded. Opinion surveys tend to have better luck connecting with voters who have more formal education, meaning pollsters should “weight” their surveys for the non-college types — adjust the results to reflect that under-representation. Many did not do that.

Also a factor, the association found, was a last-minute shift of undecided voters to Trump. That break to the Republican seems to have come too late to have been picked up by the last polls of the 2016 election.

Trump has often accused pollsters of being biased against him, but the industry group found no evidence of partisan prejudice, noting that polling underestimated Democratic support in 2000 and 2012.

Since the association’s report, research uncovered another problem: a surge in voting by rural Americans — benefitting Trump — that was different from behaviour in previous elections and not accounted for by polls, said Kennedy.

The question now, at least in part, is whether four years later those errors have been corrected. The answer is somewhat murky.

A late-arriving tide of Trump support seems not so likely in 2020. While undecideds were as high as 15 per cent toward the end of the 2016 campaign, they are a third of that or less now, said Kennedy. And the deluge of advance voting would tend to solidify current polling trends.

Schwartz said his firm has always adjusted for education and believes colleagues who didn’t in 2016 are doing it now.

“I am confident that our weighting is not missing any major factors,” said the Quinnipac pollster.

His organization’s most recent poll, released last Thursday, showed a tight race in Florida and Iowa, with Biden ahead in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Daron Shaw, a University of Texas professor who runs the Fox News poll, said the so-called “shy-Trump voter” issue — that people responding to polls are reluctant to admit they support the controversial president — could rear its head, but noted there are ways of avoiding that pitfall.

“I haven’t seen much in the 2020 data indicating that this is an issue,” Shaw said by email. “But we’re still very cognizant of it.”

The last Fox poll showed Biden with an eight-point lead nationally.

Meanwhile, prognosticators at The New York Times and Fivethirtyeight.com argue it would take a much bigger survey blunder in 2020 for Trump to win, given Biden’s wider lead.

Then again, some pollsters have said they did weight for education last time and still failed to accurately predict Trump’s breakthrough, said American University’s Campbell.

History suggests polling miscues, when they occur, each have their own unique twists, he said. In other words, there could be some other factor masking Trump’s support from pollsters — or Biden’s — that’s yet to be uncovered.

“These miscalls or flubs or fiascos, whatever you want to call them, don’t happen every election and don’t happen quite the same way every time,” said Campbell.

Kennedy said she’s not sure that all pollsters, especially smaller outfits producing the state-level surveys, have fixed the weighting issue. And she foresees another potential problem among firms that are using cellphone texting and other online methods as opposed to the traditional phone calls, to contact people.

Those communications mediums are favoured by urban, liberal people, and using them could skew results toward the Democrats, she said.

Pew itself, well aware of their limitations, has eschewed horse-race polls altogether, while still conducting other election-related surveys.

“We do not think that polls predict the future, and we don’t really want to give our audience that impression,” said Kennedy. “They’re a snapshot in time … It’s kind of concerning the extent to which people want polls to be crystal balls, and they’re just not.”

• Email: tblackwell@postmedia.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP

Nearly nine months into a global pandemic, comfort eating has become the order of pretty much every day. But with the U.S. presidential campaign reaching a fever pitch this week, many are preparing to nourish their emotions especially well on election night.

In the United States, Pizza to the Polls , a nonprofit organization, has already sent 33,006 pizzas to 1,256 polling stations in 40 states to feed voters waiting to cast their ballots. Fast-food chains are planning to capitalize on a wave of election day stress eating by offering discounts, free sliders, turkey subs and glazed doughnuts.

Using food to cope with difficult situations is an innate response, and our individual catalogs of comfort foods are built over a lifetime. Stress eating occurs on a spectrum, says Toronto-based registered dietitian Amanda Li . And while some people simply can’t stop eating when they’re under emotional strain, others can’t fathom putting anything in their mouths at all.

Whether you choose to call it emotional, stress or comfort eating, stuffing your face during times of tension may be ingrained in some, but it’s hardly ideal. “It’s never good for digestion. Period,” emphasizes Li.

We digest our food best — and absorb most nutrients — when we’re calm and relaxed, she explains. Stress not only hinders our ability to gain nutrients from our food, but it depletes our body of them as well. The best way to eat during stressful times, then, is to think about ways of fulfilling those depleted nutrients while simultaneously feeding your feelings.

Iron, magnesium and vitamins B and C are all depleted during times of stress, says Li. And the foods that contain them —  proteins, nuts and seeds, legumes and non-starchy vegetables (such as leafy greens, cauliflower and broccoli) — aren’t typically the ones that come to mind when we think about stress-snacking. We’re much more likely to tear open a bag of chips, polish off that cauldron of Halloween candy or snack on slices of pizza than tuck into a salad.

So, if you tend towards emotional eating, what are some ways to stress-eat smarter on U.S. election night?

“A nice hearty stew” would be ideal, says Li. (Try Joe Beef’s pot-au-feu d’hiver , Dorie Greenspan’s subtly spicy, softly hot, slightly sweet beef stew , or Laura Wright’s sweet potato and coconut milk stew with lentils and kale .) “Number one, especially when it’s cold outside, it’s very comforting. It’s very easy to make but will also allow you to achieve all those nutrients.”

Chili would also fit the bill ( Pati Jinich’s Tex-Mex chili with two types of meat, pinto beans, warming spices and chilies is a favourite), as would baked or air fryer chicken wings with a dry rub and vegetables on the side. (Serious Eats’ Xi’an-style oven-fried chicken wings are great.)

If you’ve been “baking the vote” with Bakers Against Racism , Li recommends lower-carbohydrate, “keto-friendly” baked goods for election night (like Wholesome Yum’s almond flour keto shortbread cookies ). Because when you’re stressed-out, your insulin sensitivity goes down.

• Cook this: Pot-au-feu d'hiver – a classic French beef stew – from Joe Beef
• Cook this: Subtly spicy, softly hot, slightly sweet beef stew from Everyday Dorie
• Cook this: Bagna cauda — warm garlic and anchovy sauce with crunchy vegetables — from Tortellini at Midnight

“Essentially, you end up being in an insulin-resistant state, similar to someone who has prediabetes or diabetes,” says Li. “The sad part is, when we’re stressed, the go-to foods are always high-carb … and your body is actually in a state where you can’t metabolize the carbs well. So that also works to our disadvantage.”

You may be craving junk food on U.S. election night, but keep in mind the strain stress has on your body. “Because you’re getting so depleted of those nutrients,” says Li, “it’s not really the best, wisest decision to go for those ‘junk’ or ‘snack’ foods.”

OTTAWA – After weeks of debates, filibustering and two failed motions, a parliamentary committee may finally be able to study the invoices for paid speeches that Justin Trudeau and his wife did for WE Charity as part of a new study on the WE scandal and a slew of other potential Liberal conflicts of interest.

It’s taken roughly 20 hours of debate since Parliament returned from prorogation in late September, but the federal ethics committee may actually manage to relaunch the study of the WE scandal.

Monday, NDP MP Charlie Angus brought forward a motion to the committee to continue its review of “the safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest in federal government expenditures.”

The study would focus on the highly controversial and now-defunct deal between the $543.5 million deal between the Trudeau government and WE Charity to administer a student volunteer grant program. The committee was already engaged in a similar study before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prorogued parliament in August.

The motion also ensures the committee will study:

• The dealings between Rob Silver, husband to the prime minister’s chief of staff, his employer and cabinet. In August, Vice and National Post reported that Silver had pressured the government to make changes to its pandemic wage subsidy program so that his employer would be eligible.
• The government’s handling of a $237 million ventilator contract that involves Baylis Medical Company, owned by former Liberal MP Frank Baylis.
• The government’s relationship with controversial data mining giant Palantir Canada and its president, David MacNaughton. He is Canada’s former ambassador to the U.S. and a close contact of Trudeau’s.
• How the Trudeau Liberals may have used partisan resources during the allegedly non-partisan federal judge appointment process, thus possibly violating nominees’ privacy rights.

As it stood, the motion seemed to have the support of all three opposition parties, a necessary condition to it passing a vote.

• Bloc MP sides with Liberals, attempt to unearth Trudeaus' WE Charity speaking contracts fails by one vote
• Ethics watchdog clears Bill Morneau of failing to disclose gift from WE Charity

But the Liberals quickly took offence to part of the motion, proposing an amendment that removed both the study into Rob Silver and the judge nomination process from the text.

To many observers’ surprise, that amendment quickly passed when Angus voted with the Liberals to gut nearly half of the studies contained in his motion.

“I had significant concerns about [the judge appointment study], so I’m very happy to see that removed,” noted Liberal MP Francesco Sorbara after that vote.

Then, as part of the WE scandal study, Bloc Québécois MP Marie-Hélène Gaudreau proposed a new amendment that would have the committee order a copy of all WE Charity speaking contracts involving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife.

This was the third time some members of the committee tried to order the documents, and the second time that day that Gaudreau was trying her luck.

Late last week, a motion entirely dedicated to obtaining those invoices was defeated by one vote when another Bloc MP, Julie Vignola, voted against the initiative… by mistake.

The other opposition parties were surprised by the outcome, but none were as furious as the NDP’s Angus, who accused the Bloc of having voted against the motion because they had a backroom deal with the Liberals.

The Bloc refuted that allegation, arguing that technical and translation issues were the cause of Vignola’s misunderstanding all the while desperately trying to have the vote cancelled.

Monday, the chair of the ethics committee, Conservative MP David Sweet, denied the Bloc a re-vote because it would set a “bad precedent.”

But he did allow the Bloc to submit a similar-but-slightly-different motion, which was surprisingly defeated five votes to four by the Liberals because Angus decided to abstain from voting.

Angus offered no explanation as to why he likely knowingly allowed the motion to be defeated by the Liberals.

But he then voted in support of the Bloc’s proposal to add the study of the speaking invoices to his motion.

Many Liberal expressed their displeasure after Gaudreau’s amendment to include the Trudeau’s WE Charity speaking invoices was added to Angus’ motion.

“I think we had a consensus around the table. So to bring back again something that we had already decided on … just does not make sense to me,” MP Patricia Lattanzio said.

Gaudreau was quick to respond that all of this debate would have been avoided had the Bloc simply been allowed to review its mistaken vote.

“You’re right, we’re turning in circle right now,” Gaudreau said. “We are an ethics committee that is tasked with studying conflict of interest and lobbying laws. When some stretch out their speaking time, try to hide things, say something or another isn’t good, and question what we’re trying to study, then it really makes you wonder ‘what are they trying to hide’?,” the MP asked her Liberal colleagues at the end of the meeting.

“I am really disappointed in you,” she concluded as the meeting came to an end.

The debate on the amended motion will continue on Tuesday.

• Email: cnardi@postmedia.com | Twitter: ChrisGNardi

OTTAWA – It may take long past Tuesday to decide who their next president will be, but for the Canadian officials in charge the last time America’s choice was disputed, the advice to the Liberal government is simple: Stay quiet.

Americans go to the polls Tuesday, but with so many voters choosing to cast their ballots through the mail it could take days to determine a winner.

On top of that U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear he could contest election results in the courts, potentially setting up a weeks long timetable to come to a clear result. He has suggested in advance he believes mail in ballots will lead to fraud.

The 2000 U.S. election was similarly stuck for weeks without a winner as the result in Florida was subject to recounts and court challenges ultimately ending in mid-December when the Supreme Court issued a decision suspending a recount and paving the way for President George W. Bush to take office. Then vice-president Al Gore conceded shortly after the court decision and Bush took office in January.

Eddie Goldenberg was a senior advisor to then prime minister Jean Chrétien at the time. He said they knew instinctively to stay out of the fray down south and he suspects Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will do the same.

“It’s for the Americans to decide who has won, that’s not for another country to decide who has won. I’m sure the prime minister would be very careful on that,” he said. “There’s not a lot that any other country can do. We sit and watch.”

John Manley had just taken over as foreign minister just before the 2000 election and said Canada had no choice but to stay quiet.

“In 2000, we waited it out. I mean, there was counting going on in Florida until the very end.”

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Chrétien called Bush on Dec. 14 to offer his congratulations after Gore conceded and the court cases were resolved.

Michael Kergin, Canada’s ambassador in Washington at the time, said the embassy kept a close eye on things, but they had little to say in public. He said they got advice and information about how the Florida process would play out, but they were careful not to say anything that might indicate favouritism.

“We were getting as much advice as we could from legal people as to how the process was going to unfold,” he said. We’re being pretty quiet and pretty discreet. And I suspect that’s what’s going to happen with this government as well.”

Kergin said the embassy also had information about both candidates policies, so the government could be prepared for whoever came to office and he is confident the current embassy staff will have done the same.

Trudeau said last week he has confidence in the American system and will wait until the dust clears before having anything to say.

“We will of course be watching Election Day unfold in the United States with confidence in American democracy and their democratic traditions that have managed this event every four years for a very, very long time successfully.”

Goldenberg said as much as 2000 was a disputed election, both sides respected the process and it was easier for Canada to stay on the sidelines until the issues were settled.

“It’s not analogous at all to what’s happening now, because both Gore and Bush had respect for American institutions.”

Manley said many might still disagree about the result in 2000, but it was a clear choice and everyone involved respected the process.

“After the Supreme Court decision, Al Gore came out and said, It’s over. It’s time for the healing to begin. It was in, in my view, a great moment in American democracy.”

He said he worries about the challenge ahead because Trump doesn’t appear to have the same respect for the rules.

“We have a president who is somewhat unfamiliar with objective fact. I mean, he creates realities out of his head,” he said. “I think it’s a lot trickier situation than we faced then.”

Both Goldenberg and Manley say that when the election is settled Canada should be quick to reach out. Manley said the relationship is simply too important to wait a long time to connect with the new administration.

“I remember very clearly, because it happened to be my daughter’s birthday. We were in the White House for dinner on February 5, so less than two weeks after the inauguration.”

Goldenberg said there will be tensions between Canada and the U.S., but he believes it will be easier to manage the relationship with a Biden win.

“You’ll be dealing with people you can disagree with, and you can talk to.”

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

Canada and like-minded Western-style democracies are engaged in a “values war” with China, “whether we like it or not,” according to report released on Monday by an association of U.K. Conservative MPs known as the China Research Group.

The report, written by veteran British diplomat Charles Parton, makes clear that the U.K. needs a new structure to deal with China – something that is patently true of Canada too.

When François-Philippe Champagne was appointed global affairs minister last year, he was briefed by his department that Beijing has “demonstrated readiness and ability to use aggressive political and economic measures to punish Canada…and to propagate norms of international relations inimical to Canada’s interests.”

A review of the existing “comprehensive engagement” policy was set in motion, with the minister promising a new prism through which to view the relationship by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, our man in Beijing, Dominic Barton, appears to have a quite different mandate from the prime minister. The former managing director of McKinsey & Co. was charged with restoring relations with China and deepen person-to-person relationships. “We need to do more in China,” he told an economic policy forum in September – a sentiment that sounds hopelessly out of sync with Canada’s foreign policy professionals.

Let’s hope the new Canadian framework that emerges is more coordinated than the policy potpourri that prevails at the moment.

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Parton’s paper says that, in Xi Jinping’s view, Western-style democracies undermine the Communist Party leadership, prompting a struggle to ensure that socialism with Chinese characteristics assumes a dominant position over capitalism.

Yet instead of “de-coupling,” the buzzword for dis-entangling economies into two separate blocs, Parton advocates a “divergence” that maximizes cooperation where interests overlap but severs links where they do not.

He makes specific recommendations that should be looked at closely by Canadian policy-makers, including creating a watchdog office similar to one that already exists in Australia, with the goal of countering foreign influence and interference across business, politics and academia.

Canada is certainly not immune from China’s interference. This country’s National Security and Intelligence Committee said in its March report that China and Russia “target ethno-cultural communities, seek to corrupt the political process, manipulate the media and pose a significant threat to the rights and freedoms of Canadians.”

David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador in Beijing, said new machinery aimed at countering foreign interference could prove useful, if there was sufficient political buy-in.

Another of Parton’s recommendations is aimed at foiling “elite capture,” the practice of offering ex-ministers and former senior public servants “life-changing amounts of money” to work for companies or entities that benefit foreign powers. Anecdotal evidence suggests similar practices are perpetrated here. Mulroney said Canada should require people leaving government to be transparent about whose interests they represent – for life, if they were senior enough.

“We need to take it seriously and we haven’t been,” he said.

Parton was also concerned about technology co-operation between universities and companies in the West with their Chinese counterparts. “Greater authority is needed to prevent the risk of developing dual use technology that might potentially strengthen a hostile state,” he said.

Mulroney said the Canadian government also needs to work more closely with its universities. “The Chinese strategy is to gather information in bite-sized portions. Each small contract might seem anodyne on its own but when you connect the dots, you can see that a lot of information is being hoovered up,” he said.

Mulroney said he agreed with Parton about the need for a more thoughtful relationship than the “diplomacy on auto-pilot” that has characterized the comprehensive engagement strategy.

But he was less convinced about Parton’s recommendation that the U.K. and like-minded countries should tell the Chinese that they will break off diplomatic and trade relations, if China invades Taiwan.

“The Chinese would risk everything to secure Taiwan,” said Mulroney. “They realize they will be outcasts but I don’t think that would be enough to stop them.

“The most important thing we can do is show solidarity and step up our engagement with Taiwan,” such as recent efforts by the Royal Canadian Navy to ensure the freedom of navigation by sending the frigate HMCS Ottawa through the sensitive Taiwan Strait in September, he said.

Parton concluded his report by quoting former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd who said the Communist Party “despises and takes advantage of weakness, while it respects strength.”

Canada’s China policy under the Trudeau government has been characterized by weakness and the Chinese have capitalized.

Whatever specific policies are adopted in Canada’s new framework, it is past time for a new tougher Canadian strategy that dumps the McKinsey sales pitch about opportunities in a fast-recovering China and explicitly recognizes the values war that we have been pitched into by the Chinese.

• Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter: IvisonJ

With Halloween behind us, the government of Canada is hoping a willing bidder might be in a Christmas mood and have at least $10,000 to spend enhancing it.

The government online auction site, GCSurplus, which usually sells used office furniture and other items the government no longer needs, has hundreds of nutcracker dolls for sale right now, 18 pallets worth that were abandoned.

“The assorted nutcracker Christmas decorations that are listed on GCSurplus were abandoned by their importer at one of Canada’s ports of entry. As a result, they became Crown assets and are being sold. A wide range of assets can become Crown-owned through similar scenarios,” said Public Services and Procurement department spokesperson Jeremey Link.

The government didn’t provide any more details on the massive shipment of Christmas spirit, but pictures online show many of the dolls stamped with the Bombay company logo. The chain of home decor stores declared bankruptcy in 2018 and has since shuttered its locations.

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The collection includes Christmas Eve nutcrackers, shopping Diva nutcrackers, Silver and Gold King nutcrackers and Rock Star nutcrackers. The government is hoping that whoever wins the auction can take them off the government’s hands within five days. The auction listing also notes that all sales will be final.

Link said when the government has no use for such items they are put up for sale on the government’s surplus website.

“Since there is no Crown operational requirement for them, they are being disposed of.”

If you close your eyes and picture the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, what do you see? A patient on a ventilator? A doctor wrapped in PPE? Maybe a long line at a testing centre, the patients all six-feet apart, staring at their phones, trying to not to cough?

What you probably don’t picture, and that’s OK, you can only picture what you’ve been shown, is a place like the Black Creek Community Health Centre, in a mall at the north end of Toronto, right at the corner of Jane and Finch. Admittedly, it doesn’t look much like a scene from ER or Contagion. For one thing, there’s a Dollarama down the hall. But if there is an actual front line in this fight, a place where health professionals and community leaders are meeting the disease where it lives, it’s a place like Black Creek. Last week, staff from the centre were busy setting up the latest in a long series of community testing clinics in the neighbourhood. First they found the space, always a challenge, in a community centre next to an apartment complex and near a bus stop. Then they found the nurses to administer the tests, and all the supplies they needed: PPE, swabs, signs. And then came the hard part: getting people to come. Ontario’s daily COVID testing numbers have been up and down since hitting a peak around 48,500 in early October. On some days since, fewer than 25,000 patients have been swabbed in the province. At the same time, the number of positive cases in Ontario hasn’t been falling, and the percentage of positive tests has actually been going up. That has some experts worried that after significantly over-testing in the summer, the province could be doing the opposite now. “It’s like going fishing, right,” said Dr. Joel Lockwood, the co-director of the COVID Assessment Centre at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “If you’re getting a lot of positive tests, there’s a lot of fish that you’re probably missing.” One significant worry is that people who should be getting tested now, people who have COVID symptoms or who have been near a confirmed COVID case, aren’t doing so in the same numbers they were before. Some could be avoiding the test because they just don’t want to know. Others may be worried about having to self-isolate and miss work or keep their kids home from school. Others still may be haunted by the long lines and epic turnaround times that dogged the testing system earlier this fall. It’s a hard thing to track with stats. How do you quantify the number of people who aren’t doing something as opposed to those who are? But anecdotally, people who work on the ground say it is happening, at least to some extent. “I certainly have heard that … (there is) some reluctance on the part of members of the community to get testing,” said Dr. Eileen De Villa, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health. “But not directly. It’s been through other partners.” Cheryl Prescod, the executive director of the Black Creek Community Health Centre, has seen it first hand. It was never easy getting people tested in her community, which has seen some of the highest rates of COVID-19 in all of Canada. But when the province moved from walk-up testing to an appointment system earlier this fall, it got a lot harder still, she said. “What we heard on the ground from community members was difficulty getting appointments,” she said. “Number one, going online was not accessible to everyone because not everyone has a computer and not everyone has wifi or Internet access. And when they called, the phone lines were busy, they couldn’t get through.” Just convincing people they should get tested has been its own challenge, Prescod said. Many of the people who are most vulnerable to the virus — factory workers, bus riders, people who live in multi-family or multi-generation homes — are the same ones who have the most to lose from a two-week quarantine. “A lot of the essential workers we’re talking about that may be at most risk don’t have paid sick days and they might not be able to take time off work,” Prescod said. In their minds, getting tested might mean “losing pay. And we’re talking about people living in fairly precarious conditions.” And then there’s the information battle. Ontario’s COVID messaging has been hard enough to follow if you speak perfect English and follow the mainstream news. For new immigrants and refugees, who often speak English as a second language and often rely on less formal sources of news, it’s been a problem on a whole other scale. “The word on the street for many folks is, ‘you know what, this is just something to scare us,’” Prescod said. “Or ‘if I get tested, I will get the disease.’ That’s actually the most popular one.”

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Lawrence Loh, the medical officer of health in nearby Peel Region, has heard the same things. “There are other people who say ‘if I get a test they are going to take me away from my family or my children.’” The only way to push back on that, Prescod said, is to speak to people one-on-one, to lean on community leaders, to go to people’s doors and keep pushing the message that COVID testing is necessary and safe. “The folks that we hire to do outreach in the community, they’ve actually taken the test to convince their neighbours, their peer groups, whoever they hang out with ‘look, I took it and I’m still here and I didn’t get it,’” she said. Of course, this is not just a problem in Peel Region or Black Creek. Lockwood, for his part, thinks the overall testing message has become blurred. The lines are shorter now, and in many cases they’re non-existent. The testing turnaround times have sped up. Lockwood wants to get the message out “that really if you’re having symptoms, really anything that could be COVID — meaning a cough, a cold, allergies that are worse than usual, flu-like symptoms, or you’ve been in contact with someone that has had COVID for greater than 15 minutes — then you should get tested,” he said. At this point, there’s no excuse. rwarnica@nationalpost.com

twitter.com/richardwarnica

A manipulated video of Joe Biden appearing to forget what state he was in was viewed more than a million times on Twitter over the weekend, before the social media giant clamped down on the misinformation.

The unedited, original video shows the Democratic presidential nominee greeting a rally with the words ‘Hello Minnesota’ with signs behind and in front of him reading “Text MN to 30330” — evidence that Biden was in fact addressing an audience in Minnesota.

However, in the misleadingly edited video, the signs were changed to read “Tampa, Florida” and “Text FL to 30330”, making it seem that Biden had forgotten where he was during his campaign rally. The video was shared on Twitter by a person who accused Biden of forgetting what state he was in.

By Sunday evening, Twitter had labelled the video “manipulated media” and the user who posted the video, took it down. However, by then, the edited video had been viewed over 1.1 million times, in a span of 24 hours.

A FALSE video claiming Biden forgot what state he was in was viewed more than 1 million times on Twitter in the past 24 hours

In the video, Biden says "Hello, Minnesota."

The event did indeed happen in MN -- signs on stage read MN

But false video edited signs to read Florida pic.twitter.com/LdHQVaky8v

— Donie O'Sullivan (@donie) November 1, 2020

The manipulated video was also shared by prominent Minnesota Republicans, including party chair Jennifer Carnahan and state House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt.

Carnahan later deleted the video, stating that she did not realize it was fake when she shared it.

Trump has not shared the video to his Twitter page. However the president and his team have a long history of promoting false videos that argue that Biden is senile and not fit for office.

In September, campaign staff posted a eight-second video appearing to show Biden forgetting the Pledge of Allegiance. The clip in fact had been taken from a 26-minute video of Biden addressing Trump’s response to the outbreak, in which he referenced the pledge, but did not fully recite it.

Last week, the campaign also promoted another clip that made it seem as if Biden said he was running against George Bush, not Trump, when in fact it had been taken from an interview between Biden and comedian George Lopez. The clip was shared widely and has been used by Trump supporters as an argument against Biden’s capability of assuming the presidential office.

“He forgets where he’s at, he forgets who he’s running against, he forgets what he’s running for,” a woman told CNN prior to a Trump event in Wisconsin, last week, citing the clip.

In an example of how fraught tensions are surrounding the upcoming U.S. election, authorities at the White House are set to erect a non-scalable fence around the building, in anticipation of protests.

The fence is the same as one erected when protests raged over police brutality in recent months, and covers a number of streets adjacent to the White House.

The move, CNN reports , comes as authorities brace for resistance to the result from one side or the other. The network cited a source familiar with events, and said the Secret Service has not returned requests for comment.

CNN reports that the area around the White House has been blocked off for much of this year, for reasons like construction and the protests after the May death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

The election has been marked by accusations from the side of President Donald Trump that the vote will be compromised, and if no clear winner is known on Nov. 4, authorities fear the worst.

Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that mail-in votes are prone to fraud, although election experts say that is rare in U.S. elections. Mail voting is a long-standing feature of American elections, and about one in four ballots was cast that way in 2016.

Patrick Burke, executive director of the Washington, D.C., Police Foundation, told CNN that police authorities have already been getting local officers ready for more than a year, as is standard at election time.

“If there’s no winner, you will see significant deployments of officers at all levels across the capital,” he said. “Officers will get cancellations of days off, extensions of shifts and full deployments of officers across the city.”

CNN reports that D.C. Metro Police Chief Peter Newsham has warned the local city council that some sort of unrest is expected. Businesses, meanwhile, have already taken to boarding up their storefronts.

Tuesday’s election has all the ingredients for a drawn-out court battle over its outcome: a highly polarized electorate, a record number of mail-in ballots and some Supreme Court justices who appear ready to step in if there is a closely contested race.

The only missing element that would send both sides to the courthouse would be a razor-thin result in a battleground state.

Americans have already cast nearly 60 million mail-in ballots that could take days or weeks to be counted in some states – meaning a winner might not be declared in the hours after polls close on Tuesday night. Some states, including battlegrounds Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, do not start processing mail-in votes until Election Day, slowing the process.

“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election,” Trump told reporters.

Democrats have pushed mail-in voting as a safe way to cast a ballot in the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump and Republicans are counting on a big Election Day in-person turnout.

Both campaigns have created armies of lawyers in preparation for post-election litigation battles.

A giant sculpture of a whale tail saved a Dutch metro train and its operator after the train broke through stop barriers at the end of an elevated track just past midnight Monday, The Guardian reports .

There were no passengers aboard and the conductor managed to free himself and escape to safety, with the front car hanging 10 metres above the ground.

At 12:30 a.m., the train ran through the holding track at De Akkers metro station in the city of Spijkenisse, just outside Rotterdam.

The plastic whale sculpture caught the train and prevented it from crashing to the ground.

The accident tore up the undercarriage of the train car and shattered the front windows, the Daily Mail reported .

“The metro went off the rails and it landed on a monument called Saved by the Whale’s Tail. So that literally happened,” Carly Gorter of the Rijnmond regional safety authority told AFP.

“Because of the whale’s tail, the driver actually was saved, it’s incredible.”

Artist Maarten Strujis installed the work of art in 2002, which features two 10-metre, polyester whale tails protruding from the water.

Strujis told The Guardian he was surprised the sculpture was able to prevent a disastrous crash.

“I am amazed that it is so strong. When plastic has stood for 20 years, you don’t expect it to hold up a metro train,” he said.

“I could never have imagined it that way, but it saved the operator’s life. The damage is an afterthought.”

Billionaire private equity executive Leon Black has denied he was blackmailed by dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, insisting that transfers his firm made to the financier were legitimate business transactions.

“Let me be clear, there has never been an allegation by anyone that I engaged in any wrongdoing, because I did not,” Black said on an earnings call for his firm Apollo Global Management Inc., the New York Times reported . “Any suggestion of blackmail, or any other connection to Epstein’s reprehensible conduct, is categorically untrue.”

Black, 69, said he regretted doing business with Epstein, even though other prominent people had done the same.

“Like many people I respected, I decided to give Epstein a second chance,” Black said on the call Thursday to discuss Apollo’s third-quarter results. “This was a terrible mistake.”

Black said he paid Epstein millions of dollars annually for his work from 2012 through 2017 and that there’s “substantial documentary support” for the services provided, including advice on estate planning, taxes, philanthropy and the structuring of art entities.

Epstein, whom Black first met in 1996, worked with many prominent people after he was first released from jail after a 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl. Black said that “the distinguished reputations of these individuals gave me misplaced comfort.” Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail last year, before he could be tried on new sex trafficking charges.

Black had admitted turning to Epstein for financial services after an Oct. 12 New York Times report about the pair’s links. Black, though, had previously attempted to describe their relationship as “limited.”

But the Times’ report , “The Billionaire Who Stood By Jeffrey Epstein,” showed Apollo clients had pushed Black for more details on his Epstein ties. It described their relationship as being, “deeper than Mr. Black let on: The two men often socialized and dined together, and Mr. Black was a lucrative client for Mr. Epstein over the final decade of his life.”

The report said Black wired Epstein at least $50 million in the years after the latter’s 2008 conviction.

Black and Apollo representatives have said Epstein never invested in the firm’s funds, and Black said in a letter to Apollo’s limited partners in the wake of the Times’ report:

“With the benefit of hindsight — and knowing everything that has come to light about Mr. Epstein’s despicable conduct more than 15 years ago — I deeply regret having had any involvement with him.

“None of the reporting in the New York Times article is inconsistent in any way with the information I shared with you over a year ago.

“Epstein provided professional services to entities affiliated with my family regarding estate planning, tax and philanthropic endeavors. I have never tried to conceal these facts.”

Black’s spokesperson Stephanie Pillersdorf, meanwhile, had told the Times:

“Mr. Black received personal trusts and estates planning advice as well as family office philanthropy and investment services from several financial and legal advisers, including Mr. Epstein, during a six-year period, between 2012 and 2017. The trusts and estate planning advice was vetted by leading auditors and law firms.”

She said their business relationship came to a halt in 2018 over a “fee dispute.”

The article didn’t accuse Black of breaking the law. But Apollo has faced mounting pressure over the affair.

Fundraising slows

Apollo raised $4 billion in the third quarter and expects fundraising to slow, co-founder Joshua Harris said on the call Thursday.

Last week, major consultants expressed reservations about giving new money to the asset manager and two public pensions said they were halting investments. That followed the New York Times report.

Apollo hired law firm Dechert LLP to conduct a review that’s expected to take 60 to 90 days.

But investor concerns remain.

Doug Strand, a trustee of the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois, which approved an additional $75 million commitment to Apollo in August, asked during a meeting Thursday whether the $54 billion pension fund would seek to take action regarding its exposure to the asset manager.

“We are watching and talking to the firm often,” Scottie Bevill, a senior investment officer, said in response. “We are basically waiting for the results of the Dechert report, which is doing a complete independent review of Mr. Black’s situation, so we are monitoring it closely.”

Polling conducted over the last two weeks offered up a curious tidbit. Fully a third of Americans think Joe Biden is so disabled by dementia he is not mentally capable of holding high office.

Most everyone else, on the other hand, wants to elect him president.

How can things seem so different to different people?

It is a lifelong riddle. School children learn about perspective. High school students start considering paradigms, how shared ways of thinking change. Maybe in college they encounter the German word “Weltanschauung,” or world view, for the set of basic assumptions and attitudes about what is real and true, or illusory and false, shared among a society or tribe, but not universally.

These are all useful concepts for zooming out on the anthropology of the U.S. voter, who next week makes an unusually momentous electoral decision.

From Canada, it can seem baffling at every level. Americans do not just see things differently than other Americans. They are not just thinking about things differently. People there are living in different worlds. This election is a measure of those worlds.

Harold Clarke is a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas who researches electoral choice in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. With colleague Marianne Stewart, he is running Cometrends, a large representative national survey of Americans, both before and after the election, with a local oversample for Texas, which has emerged in the final days as a potential swing state.

The survey polled 2,500 people online, for a nationally representative sample with a margin of error of two percent, in the last two weeks of October.

The questions aim to measure qualitative factors about patriotism and politics, about what issues face the country most urgently, and what are the proper limits of democratic protest and presidential power.

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A deep societal fault line is clearly evident in the numbers.

Results this week closely tracked other national polling by showing Democrat Joe Biden leads Republican incumbent Donald Trump in voting intention 56-44 per cent.

Because of the intricacies of the Electoral College, however, the race is tighter than that suggests.

“American politics is deeply divided in terms of partisanship and ideology,” Clarke said in an interview. “The other part is the valence politics, the performance part.”

“It’s pretty intense this year. The thing is just the intensity of the emotions on both sides, particularly on the Democratic side. The hatred of Trump is really remarkable,” Clarke said. “This is an exaggerated version of the partisan and ideological division we typically see. It’s not different in kind, but it’s different in intensity.”

Some things are constant background, unchanging despite the turmoil of events. Racism, for example, was identified as the single most important issue by only 12 per cent of Democrats, four per cent of Republicans and eight per cent of independents.

A series of questions on “racial resentment” show reliable partisan effects. Democrats and Republicans look like mirror images when asked how strongly they agree that, for example, police treat minorities with courtesy and respect, or use excessive force.

A similar mirror effect shows up in whether Americans think “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for African Americans to work their way out of the lower class,” or that African Americans should “overcome prejudice and work their way up” as other minority groups have done.”

But those questions “tend to reinforce existing cleavages,” Clarke said. “In that regard, it doesn’t really change things. All that stuff’s still there at the individual level, and to some extent it gets reinforced this year because of Black Lives Matter. But that isn’t really what’s going to determine the election.”

The wild card, obviously, is a virus.

“The pandemic is the extra move,” Clarke said. “COVID didn’t kill Trump physically, but it may well have killed him politically.”

Trump’s re-election strategy was to rely on a strong economy to carry him through. The pandemic upended that plan, muting his message, affecting everyone. Dissatisfaction with his handling of the pandemic now cuts broadly, the survey project shows, such that even 75 per cent of Republicans list the pandemic as at least a top three issue.

“This is the issue that looks like it’s deciding the election,” Clarke said. “He’s way down, not just among Democrats but independents. This issue has really hurt him.”

In 2016, Trump won narrowly in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. “Move a few people away from him, and he loses,” Clarke said. This is what appears to have happened.

There are other important divides. The gender gap appears to be shrinking. Women moved away from Trump in 2016, and now men are moving away from him, such that women are 57-42 per cent for Biden, and men are 54-46 per cent for Biden. As Clarke put it, even one man in 20 moving away from Trump could determine a Biden victory.

Race also figures significantly. White people are 56-44 per cent for Trump vs Biden. Blacks are 90-10 per cent for Biden over Trump. Hispanics and Asians also skew strongly Democrat.

The lines between worlds are also not always perfectly clear. The survey shows there are ideological liberals who intend to vote for Trump, and proportionally more conservatives who intend to vote for Biden. Ideological moderates are a smaller demographic, and they lean heavily to Biden, 70-30 per cent.

But the notion of competing world views offers a unique perspective on how America got here and how division was key to the Trump presidency all along, according to Ronald Beiner, professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

He points to an observation that Steve Bannon, an architect of the Trump 2016 victory, made to Roger Cohen of the New York Times last year, about Bannon’s efforts to foster Trump-style nationalist political momentum in Europe: “This is not an era of persuasion. It’s an era of mobilization. People now move in tribes. Persuasion is highly overrated.”

“In other words, we don’t even aspire to share a common world,” said Beiner. “We simply fight it out, with the most powerful prevailing over the less powerful.”

This is a world view that, as Beiner says, recalls the tough guy Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, who argues that might makes right, that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger,” before Socrates eventually refutes him.

“Of course, all the vehicles of Trumpism and Bannonism, not just Breitbart (the news site Bannon once ran), are doing their utmost to discredit possibilities of shared truth, and drive people further apart, into self-enclosed ‘tribes,’” he said.

Next week’s election is more a referendum than a choice, Clarke said. Biden could have been anyone. It is a measure of Trump versus Non Trump, a test of allegiance.

Partly, this is because of the singularity of Trump’s character. But, according to this survey project, it is mostly because of the pandemic, and concern over how he has handled it.

COVID looms over all the other issues, dramatically. It is the only thing that comes close to being a unifying demographic force, and its effect does not benefit Trump. It is the single most important issue for 39 per cent of Americans, far ahead of the economy at 16 per cent.

“Biden is a very weak candidate,” Clarke said. “In normal times he would be defeated.”

EDMONTON — Alberta’s New Democrats will be calling on members of the provincial legislature on Monday to condemn Western separatism.

Albertans deserve to know where their representatives stand on independence, says Rod Loyola, the NDP MLA for Edmonton-Ellerslie, who is behind the motion. The NDP, he says, firmly opposes separation.

“Any move towards separatism is actually going to hurt Alberta’s economy,” said Loyola. “Albertans, constituents of ours, need to know for a fact where the UCP stands on this issue.”

Premier Jason Kenney has, repeatedly, condemned separatism, though within the ranks of the UCP — and from other right-wing parties — there have been both shouts and whispers about Alberta independence. A variety of polls show nebulous support for the idea of separation.

Polling from Angus Reid in February 2019 suggested 52 per cent of Albertans thought the province would be better off if it left Canada; 60 per cent of Albertans were in favour of joining a “Western separatist” movement. In September, further polling showed that UCP support was bleeding towards the Alberta Party (another centre-right party) and towards independence parties.

Western alienation and the attendant possibility of Alberta independence dominated some spheres of political conversation in Alberta prior to the pandemic, especially as new political parties espousing Albertan or Western independence were formed (though as yet have had little electoral opportunity or success). As with much else in politics, it had been relegated, somewhat, to the back-burner, along with such other issues as pipeline construction and the carbon tax.

Yet, the issue of independence hasn’t gone away.

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In Saskatchewan, which saw Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party returned to power, the vote was the first electoral test of the Buffalo Party, a party that believes Saskatchewan has the right to seek independence. It nabbed fewer votes than the Saskatchewan Party and the provincial New Democrats, but got a couple thousand more than the fourth-place Greens.

Alberta, too, has a new independence party, the Wildrose Independence Party, which joins the Independence Party of Alberta (which netted some 13,000 votes in the 2019 election) on the secessionist wing of provincial politics.

“We know that the movement is growing here in Alberta,” said Loyola. “Albertans want to know, we want to make sure that everybody is clear on where the UCP stands.”

Meanwhile, one United Conservative Party MLA, Drew Barnes, who represents Cypress-Medicine Hat, has become one of the more outspoken UCP caucus members when it comes to being, at least, willing to ponder separatism as a stick in the carrot-stick battle for more Alberta power within confederation.

Barnes has found himself a target of the Alberta NDP; its attempts to seek condemnation of independence in the legislature are tied, at least partly, to comments by the MLA. When the Fair Deal Panel — struck to study how to increase Alberta’s power within confederation — released its report, Barnes, who was a member of the panel, caused controversy by saying “independence should be on the table.”

Asked Friday by the National Post if he intended to be in Edmonton for the discussion Monday, Barnes said he was planning to be there and would talk about the “hope and potential” Alberta has.

“There are differences of opinion out there and there are certainly differences of opinion on how Alberta should go about getting a fair deal,” Barnes said. “Albertans, Canadians, so many people came here to build a future for their families, their communities, and where we’re at now is the federal government is not allowing that to happen.”

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson