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Kim Kardashian has come under fire from followers on her social media pages for sharing posts about a party she held on a private island for family and friends amid the pandemic.

The reality star celebrated her big day with a special instalment of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, filmed prior to the Covid-19 crisis, earlier this month but, taking to the Internet on Tuesday, she shared snaps from her recent festivities.

In the photos, it appears the party was attended by a large number of people in close proximity to one another without wearing masks – despite the ongoing health scare.

In one of the captions of the post, the star said that she had asked all of her guests, including siblings Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian, Kendall and Kylie Jenner and mum Kris Jenner, to quarantine and undergo several “health screens” before she surprised them by flying them to a private island to celebrate her special day. According to the New York Post’s gossip column Page Six, her husband Kanye West joined for the final two days, as he continues his U.S. presidential bid.

“After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time,” one tweet from Kardashian read.

The tone deaf wording of the message led thousands of Twitter users to post their own version of the same tweet, using Kardashian’s exact words with their own photos. Many of the photos involved horror movies, or movies set on islands, or both.

After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time. pic.twitter.com/PyhfxSGG8e

— Jack Whitehall (@jackwhitehall) October 28, 2020

"After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time." pic.twitter.com/K0CHPippGX

— The Sims (@TheSims) October 28, 2020

“After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.” @KimKardashian #KimKardashian pic.twitter.com/jWXqqitJAs

— Melissa Gilbert (@MEGBusfield) October 28, 2020

After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time. pic.twitter.com/oo2RLHtN52

— Katy Brand (@KatyFBrand) October 28, 2020

“I realize that for most people, this is something that is so far out of reach right now, so in moments like these, I am humbly reminded of how privileged my life is,” Kardashian had added, but that didn’t stop fans expressing their frustration over her apparent lack of regard for the ongoing public health crisis and its financial impact.

“Very selfish when people are dying and loosing (sic) their jobs,” fired one follower. “Also doubt it very much that all 20+ people that attended isolated prior.”

Another added: “Brilliant observation! This kind of vacation is out of reach for most people COVID-19 or no COVID-19.”

“I haven’t seen ma (sic) family in 4 months because I work a public-facing job and I’m absolutely terrified of the possibility of passing Covid on to my vulnerable parents,” lamented a third fan.

“I hope you had fun pretending things were normal, but spare a thought for those of us staying in the real world.”

FREDERICTON — The man on trial for a 2018 mass shooting in Fredericton says he thought the end of times had begun and he might have to use his guns to fight his way out of his apartment.

Matthew Raymond, 50, is on the witness stand for a second day, testifying in his own defence.

He faces four counts of first-degree murder in the Aug. 10, 2018 deaths of Donnie Robichaud, Bobbie Lee Wright and Fredericton police constables Robb Costello and Sara Burns.

The defence admits Raymond shot the victims but is trying to prove that he should be found not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.

Raymond told the court Wednesday that he thought the other residents of his apartment complex were all “demons” and that his mother was too and she had shared keys to his apartment. He said he had barricaded himself inside his apartment and interpreted noises he was hearing as threats.

“I thought I’d have to use my gun to fight my way out,” he told the court. “I thought the whole complex were now demons.”

Raymond said he thought people had been coming into his apartment unannounced and that the landlord could enter and take his guns. He said he was not sleeping and thought everyone was against him because he had staged a protest opposing immigration.

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Defence lawyer Nathan Gorham showed notes and calculations Raymond had in his apartment. Most had calculations ending with numbers that Raymond said were indications of serpents and demons.

One of the notes read: “You serpents picked the wrong man to test. I am not alone. He’s watching.”

Raymond said the calculations also told him that he was going to have to leave the apartment, “otherwise I was going to die there.”

Raymond said he is unable to interpret many of the calculations and notes today, because he no longer holds the strong belief in demons that guided his actions in 2018.

“I don’t know what the heck this gibberish means,” he said. “It’s gone out of my mind. I don’t believe in it anymore.”

A lawsuit alleges that billionaire investor Bill Gross played the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song on a loop to harass his neighbours after they filed complaints about his large art installation.

Gross, the co-founder of PIMCO — an investment management firm —  who’s worth $1.5 billion , and his partner Amy Schwartz, a former professional tennis player, installed an art piece on the property line of their Laguna Beach home. Their neighbours, Mark Towfiq, a tech entrepreneur, and his wife Carol Nakahara complained to the city that the tall, light-up glass installation — and the netting that protects it — partially blocked their view of the ocean.

The city’s investigation found that the art installation, along with the protective netting, violated city codes and lacked the necessary permits.

In retaliation, Gross began to blare music at all hours of the day in an attempt to get his neighbours to drop their complaints. Now, litigation is working its way through the courts after Towfiq and Nakahara filed a suit claiming they were the recipients of a “targeted campaign of harassment and abuse.”

More bizarre still, Gross and Schwartz beat Towfiq to the legal punch, filing a lawsuit against him on Oct. 13, which accused him of “peeping” on him and his wife, asking for a temporary restraining order. On Oct. 14, Towfiq and Nakahara filed their own lawsuit.

“Mr. Gross is an entitled billionaire who is used to getting his way by bullying coworkers, family and neighbours,” Jennifer Keller, the attorney who represents Towfiq, told CNN Business . “Gross filed his own complaint merely as a pre-emptive strike after learning my clients intended to seek relief from the court.”

Naturally, Gross’ lawyer had a different view of events.

“Mr. Towfiq has harassed and invaded the privacy of Mr. Gross and his life partner Amy Schwartz,” said Jill Basinger, the attorney who represents Gross, to CNN Business.

In response to the musical harassment, Towfiq and Nakahara say they had to stay either with relatives or in a hotel room twice. They were granted a temporary restraining order against Gross and Schwartz on Oct. 15. In the application, Towfiq cites a text message sent to him after he asked Gross to turn down the music.

“Peace on all fronts or (we’ll) just have nightly concerts big boy,” read the message from Gross, according to the application.

The artwork that began all the trouble was installed in 2019. It was created by artist Dale Chihuly and features tall, ornate glass-blown reeds mixed in with fish and squat spheres. Problems began this year, after damages to the piece caused Gross and Schwartz to put up the tall protective netting around the sculpture. The netting was at removed but later put back up. According to Towfiq and Nakahara’s lawsuit, Gross and Schwartz refused to discuss and resolve the problem.

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A hearing is set for Nov. 2 to determine if civil harassment restraining orders will be issued. Gross has been given an extension until Nov. 16 to obtain the proper permits for the sculpture. He is “in the process of getting it permitted,” Gross’ lawyers told CNN Business.

In 2014, Gross was fired from PIMCO, the firm he co-founded in 1971. Gross sued the company for wrongful dismissal in 2015. The case was settled for $81 million, which went to Gross’ charitable foundation.

It’s no crystal ball, but when trying to predict when something is likely to happen, one approach is to tap the “wisdom of the crowd” — ask many people their opinions and average their responses.

When a McGill University-led team asked 28 experts, each with an average 25 years experience working with vaccines, when a COVID-19 vaccine is most likely to be available to the general public in the United States and/or Canada, their best-case guess was June 2021 for the soonest, but more likely fall of 2021.

The experts believed there was a three-in-10 chance a safety issue would be discovered only after the first vaccine is approved that would require a boxed warning, and a four-in-10 chance that the first large field study will report a null or negative result.

“Experts predicting that there’s only a 40 per cent chance of a negative result, that to me actually sounds pretty optimistic,” said Jonathan Kimmelman, a professor and director of the Biomedical Ethics Unit at McGill University, and the brief paper’s senior author. Historically, fewer than five per cent of non-pandemic flu vaccines tested in humans ultimately go on to get approved.

Still, “a four-in-10 chance of an undesirable thing happening, those aren’t low odds, either,” said Kimmelman, who has been puzzled by the extreme optimism of credible public health officials like American coronavirus czar Dr. Anthony Fauci who believe an effective vaccine is almost certainly near at hand, that help is on its way to lead us out of the COVID darkness.

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Despite the cheering on of the groups in the vaccine race, it’s not a sure thing that the vaccines reaching phase III trials — the final stage before potential approval — are going to deliver us back to normal. Questions are being raised about proposed FDA and international standards for COVID-19 vaccines, about how good is good enough, about the sheer logistical challenges of distributing a two-dose vaccine and getting it into tens of millions of humans in Canada alone, and about persuading the young and people at low risk of the virus to be vaccinated as an act of solidarity .

Canada is already preparing the logistics for a possible roll-out in the first half of 2021. Ottawa has signed pre-order agreements with AstraZeneca, Moderna, Quebec-based Medicago and other companies for up to 358 million doses of different COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

“Work is underway in collaboration with the provinces and territories to review the capacity and capability of the existing vaccine supply chain,” Health Canada said in an email to the National Post . “Any capacity gaps will be addressed to ensure the safe and timely delivery of vaccines,” the department said, likely in an effort to avoid the massive line-ups and botched shortages during the country’s vast H1N1 flu vaccination campaign in 2009. One of the challenges with two-dose vaccines: how to get people to come back for the second dose.

Will the shots save lives or prevent bad outcomes? We don’t yet know. According to BMJ associate editor Peter Doshi, current trials aren’t set up to tell. More than 200 vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are under development; 11 are in phase III studies, each involving tens of thousands of volunteers, yet “none of those trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or death,” Doshi wrote last week.

The trials are double blind and placebo-controlled. No one knows who is getting the real vaccine or a pretend one. The studies are designed to end after 150 to 160 COVID infections or “events” have occurred among the study volunteers. A data safety and monitoring board would then look to see whether there were fewer infections among the vaccinated group.

Even mild infections could qualify as an “event,” Doshi wrote. “In Pfizer and Moderna’s trials, for example, people with only a cough and a positive laboratory test would bring those trials one event closer to their completion.”

What we should care about is whether a vaccine is going to prevent deaths, ICU admissions or hospitalizations, and not  mild symptoms, because they don’t matter as much from a public health standpoint, Kimmelman said. “Even if you have 50 per cent protection, we still won’t know whether these vaccines actually move the needle on the things we need to move the needle on.”

The difficulty is, hospital admissions and deaths from COVID-19 are uncommon, and it would require a large population over a longer period to accumulate enough deaths to see a difference between the vaccine and placebo group, Kimmelman said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set a minimum target of 50 per cent efficacy for a COVID-19 vaccine, meaning a vaccine would have to be 50 per cent better than a placebo at preventing disease.

In an early-stage study, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine produced neutralizing antibodies in 45 healthy, 18- to 55-year-olds who received two vaccinations, 28 days apart, the company reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Side effects — fatigue, chills, headache or muscle aches — occurred in more than half the participants.

Dr. Jacqueline Miller, head of Moderna’s infectious diseases development, told last week’s FDA advisory panel meeting that more than 25,000 people have received both doses of its study vaccine, or a placebo, and that the vaccine was designed to evaluate Americans “at the highest risk of severe COVID disease.” Forty-two per cent of study participants are older adults or people with heart disease, diabetes or other underlying conditions, Miller added.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine, developed with Oxford University, has produced an immune response in both the young and old, Reuters reported this week. Less clear is how well an antibody response translates into how well any vaccine can actually fend off COVID.

“We just don’t know what to expect,” said Medicago president and CEO Bruce Clark. “You start asking yourself very practical questions: If something doesn’t work 50 per cent (of the time), then do we really have something? Maybe we do as an emergency response initially, but a 50-per-cent level we would have to imagine over time has to get better than that.”

But even a vaccine that works half the time offers a shot at knocking down the potency of the epidemic, Clark said, especially if it can prevent severe disease and deaths.

It’s possible vaccines with protection as low as 30 per cent could receive emergency authorization under FDA and international standards. The debate then becomes, how low can you go?

“The problem you could create is the following: You push a low-efficacy vaccine out on the grounds it’s better than nothing. Right now, you’ve got zero. Thirty per cent protection? Better than zero,” said Dalhousie University philosopher and university research professor Francoise Baylis.

“The problem then becomes what if vaccine number two is 50 per cent effective, and you’ve now already invested how much in terms of distribution to get the first vaccine into people? What do you do to the confidence of the general public and those who have already received the vaccine,” Baylis said.

“It’s a really difficult question to know at what point do you say, ‘it’s good enough.’”

It’s also not clear how well the first vaccines will prevent person-to-person spread.

SARS-CoV-2 is a lethal pathogen, Baylis said. “What’s the ideal? The ideal is we totally understand how this virus works, we get a vaccine, we know that it will stop this pathogen from being able to infect humans and we know that it lasts for a specified time, for example, 10 years, and then you get a second vaccine,” Baylis said.

The reality is that anything that gets rolled out is going to be rolled out with uncertainty. “You can’t wait until you truly understand the scope of the problem because people are dying,” Baylis said.

Authorities need to communicate those uncertainties and the public needs to understand and tolerate them, Kimmelman said. “In medicine we license drugs and vaccines all the time, despite lingering uncertainties regarding impact and safety,” Kimmelman said.

We can’t wait for absolute certainty. “The point is to make the best choices we can given the evidence we have and to continue collecting evidence so that we can revise our choices if the data turn southward.”

• Email: skirkey@postmedia.com | Twitter: sharon_kirkey

OTTAWA — A former American envoy to Canada says trade relations between the two countries are unlikely to substantially improve regardless of who wins the U.S. election, suggesting a Joe Biden presidency could be “more protectionist” than the last four years under Donald Trump.

David Wilkins, a former Republican ambassador who served under George W. Bush, said a $700-billion spending package proposed by Biden would include a raft of so-called “Buy American” provisions that would prioritize domestic manufacturers over foreign ones.

The former ambassador and other experts are largely in agreement that Canada’s trade relationship with the U.S. would be less volatile under Biden, after a bellicose Trump administration over the past four years slapped tariffs on Canadian supplies of steel and aluminum, and threatened to tear up the previous North American trade pact.

But Wilkins warned that Biden’s “build back better” plan could point to broadly protectionist instincts, which in turn would “significantly adversely impact Canadian businesses and exports.”

“Despite the tariffs on softwood lumber and aluminum and steel by the Trump administration, I think a Biden Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, if he does get that, will be much more protectionist than a Trump administration,” said Wilkins, who was taking part in a panel discussion hosted by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.

The populist economic vision includes $700 billion in subsidies for manufacturing, clean energy, biotech and artificial intelligence, built where possible using U.S. materials and know-how “to ensure that the future is made in America, and in all of America,” the proposal says.

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The former ambassador’s comments come as Ottawa continues to grapple with Trump’s protectionist trade policies, under which U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer has placed levies on Canadian raw steel and aluminum, citing “national security” concerns.

In September, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland effectively accepted quotas on Canadian exports of unwrought aluminum into the U.S. until the end of 2020, which experts say could restrict the Canadian market should the Trump administration win re-election.

On Sept. 15, hours before Canada was preparing to unveil a number of counter-tariffs aimed at a range of American aluminum products, Lighthizer issued a surprise announcement saying that he would remove all tariffs against Canada. In return, he would limit the volume of raw aluminum Canadian manufacturers can export into the U.S. until the end of the year.

Freeland implicitly accepted the new market caps despite claiming in a press conference that “Canada does not accept quotas.”

Biden’s platform hints at removing so-called “Section 232” national security tariffs against Canada but does not mention aluminum quotas.

Also partaking in the Canadian Chamber of Commerce discussion was David MacNaughton, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2016 to 2019. He urged all trading partners in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to look past recent trade rifts and to increase ties in order to hasten a pandemic recovery.

“I just hope that everybody doesn’t retreat into their corner of the sandbox and play by themselves because this will cause both health risks and economic collapse,” he said.

All panelists were overall optimistic on the outlook for U.S.-Canada trade, even as disputes over softwood lumber and other products persist. The two countries share common interests on big questions like democratic freedoms, and are deeply dependent on one another in their respective supply chains, they said.

“We’re going be fine traders,” said Thomas Donohue, head of the United States Chamber of Commerce. “When the dust settles we’ll all get back to the business of the Canada-U.S. relationship.”

Donohue and many other industry groups in the U.S. lobbied hard against the Trump tariffs, arguing they would only increase costs for American consumers.

One of the most direct trade-related outcomes from the election is likely to be the future of the Keystone XL pipeline, proposed by Calgary-based TC Energy. Trump has long supported the project and is pushing for its progress, while Biden recently said the pipeline amounted to “tarsands we don’t need” in the U.S.

Also discussed on the panel was what a Biden versus Trump presidency would mean for the relationship between America and China, which has also soured on the trade front after leaders in both countries slapped tariffs on tens of billions in traded products.

The U.S. has been pressing its allies to resist the adoption of Chinese-made technologies, particularly the bid by Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to build a next-generation mobile network in Western nations.

“The reality is that there’s a consensus within the United States about the China situation, and I think that we’re in for at least a decade long struggle in terms of redefining the relationship between the West and China,” said MacNaughton.

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

Lily talks almost matter-of-factly now about some of her mother’s beliefs, sounding more fatigued by it all than flabbergasted.

“ ‘Nicole Kidman is a Satanist, Hillary Clinton has children hanging in her basement and Reese Witherspoon is eating children,’ ” the Queen’s University student recounts.

And there is no way to persuade the woman she’s wrong, says Lily. “It’s cognitive dissonance. It’s the most heavy case of cognitive dissonance you could ever imagine.”

Yet the 21-year-old is just one among a surprising new cohort: Canadians whose lives have been turned upside down after a family member or close friend became immersed in QAnon and its outlandish conspiracy theories.

With tie-ins to U.S. politics and adherence to bizarre, unfounded accusations against liberal, Jewish and Hollywood elites, the movement would seem like a quintessentially American phenomenon.

But on a growing Reddit forum for relatives and friends of devotees, called QAnonCasualties, numerous Canadians share tales of how the “cult” has fractured their families or marriages.

Unlike in the U.S., QAnon seems to have limited impact on Canadian politics, but relatives say it is exacting a deeply personal toll, throwing once-loving relationships across the country into disarray.

Relatives spend hours watching videos, reading social media posts or talking to other adherents, while angrily rejecting attempts to refute their strange ideas, loved ones say. And though not directly part of the QAnon mythology, believers tend to aggressively reject wearing masks and other precautions against COVID-19, even when it might put family members at risk.

Some say their Canadian family members want to vote in the U.S. presidential election, legally or not, so they can back Donald Trump.

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Two Canadians affected by the phenomenon agreed to interviews this week, though they asked that their full names not be published, fearing further family strife, ill effects on a business or abuse from Q followers.

Sarah, 35, a southern Alberta entrepreneur, said her parents are unshakeable in their beliefs, showing more faith in YouTube videos by “some guy sitting in his mom’s basement,” than verifiable facts.

“They look at us like we’re the idiots who believe the message from above without questioning it,” she said. “You can come at them with academic articles and news sources from a variety of different places, and all they’ll say is, ‘That’s the elite’s agenda,’ and they don’t believe it because it’s fake news.”

On the Reddit page, another Canadian woman painfully describes how she tried to get her husband to abandon his obsession with QAnon and work on repairing their relationship, to no avail. A few days days ago, she posted that she was going away for a month and undergoing therapy.

“He’s always ranting on the phone, scrolling on Twitter, YouTube on speaker,” she wrote. “He says he loves me and his family but he can’t give up QAnon. It is the hill he will die on … 7 year relationship destroyed with 2 kids under 3, all for this bullsh–.”

Lily says QAnon appears to have spread in Canada. In addition to her own mother, she cites a former boss and his wife, high school friends and fellow university students who have been drawn into the network.

“You’d be surprised how many people are silently watching this sh– in their basement,” she said. “I know people in my personal life who are university educated, in Queen’s Commerce, who are in this. It’s not all hillbillies and hicks and conservative weirdos … That’s the most astounding thing about it to be honest.”

Criticism of the left by the right, and vice versa, is a natural and healthy part of democracy. QAnon is something else. The loosely connected web of conspiracists is convinced that a “cabal” of Democratic Party politicians and other liberal elites are kidnapping, sexually abusing and even cannibalizing children. They see Donald Trump as a sort of saviour working to defeat the evil. The theories have been traced back to an anonymous poster — Q — on the 4Chan website who claimed to be a senior U.S. government official with top-secret clearance.

About two dozen Republican congressional candidates in the Nov. 3 election have voiced support for QAnon, while Trump himself has refused to disavow the movement.

Yet the FBI has called it a potential domestic terrorism threat, and a bi-partisan bill in the U.S. House of Representatives condemned the fantastical ideology.

QAnon has had some peripheral impact on Canadian public life. Before a man was charged with ramming a truck full of guns into the grounds of Rideau Hall, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is living, the company he owned had posted QAnon material on Instagram. In Quebec, conspiracy theorist Alexis Cossette-Trudel espoused QAnon beliefs on popular YouTube videos, which were removed by the site’s owner recently for spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

A September anti-mask protest in Montreal featured a plethora of QAnon signs and T-shirts.

Lily describes a gradual evolution in her mother’s mindset, from being a liberal, feminist single parent as recently as 2015, to believing vaccines are dangerous, developing a hatred for government and, this spring, diving deep into QAnon.

She’d spend eight to 10 hours a day on her smartphone, alienating most of her extended family and friends, the daughter says.

In March, she insisted Lily come home early from university, warning that the military was planning to force people into quarantine.

“I sobbed,” she recalls. “I have to worry about getting sick and dying, I have to worry about my exams. I have to worry about all these real world things, and then I have to worry about my mother who has joined a cult.”

Sarah said her own parents have always been “alternative” and skeptical of government but also liberal, supporters of alternative energy. But as the pandemic lockdown began this spring, they too embraced QAnon, believing that all Democrats — politicians in another country — were evil and that elites were draining the bio-chemical adrenochrome from babies, another peculiar aspect of the theory.

And they insist COVID-19 is nothing to fear, refusing to wear masks or social distance, even though their daughter is now pregnant and therefore immune-compromised. Sarah says she, her husband and toddler may boycott family Christmas as a result.

The situation is “heartbreaking,” but she said she had one hope for a better future with her parents — Trump’s defeat next Tuesday.

“If he does not … continue to be president I hope it will be a quick fizzle,” she says about the movement. “Because QAnon will have less fuel to add to its fire.”

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

OTTAWA — A bill that requires sexual assault training for federally appointed judges has been amended by MPs to also include training on “systemic racism and systemic discrimination” — a change some see as a troubling sign politicians will keep venturing further into judicial training.

The legislation, which has now gone through three versions in four years, has seen widespread debate in the legal community over its constitutionality. Judges are self-governed through independent bodies to insulate them from political pressure, and already have their own training programs, including on sexual assault.

Supporters of the bill argue this is simply Parliament signalling that more must be done to protect the rights of sexual assault complainants and avoid basic legal errors. They note that judicial organizations are still responsible for creating the actual training content.

But critics worry the bill represents politicians trying to inject their policy preferences into judicial training, and that once the door is opened through this sex-assault training bill, future governments will pile on with their own political priorities, such as national security.

As it turns out, MPs have not even waited for the bill to get through the House of Commons before adding to it.

Liberal MP Greg Fergus told the Commons justice committee on Tuesday that his amendments are in order because the bill already required the training to consider the “social context” around sexual assault. The new language specifies that social context includes “systemic racism and systemic discrimination.” It does not include any other topics, and does not define those terms.

“I found that this offered us a good opportunity to…include other groups into the purpose of the bill,” said Fergus, who chairs the parliamentary Black caucus. “Those are the reasons why I proposed some small modifications,” he said, speaking in French.

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The amendments were carried with Liberal, Conservative and NDP support, though they still need to pass in the full House of Commons and the Senate. Only Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin voted against them, saying they stray too far off track.

“It’s like we’d gone off to buy potatoes at the store, and we returned home with strawberries,” Fortin said in French. “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work…If we want to work on a different bill than the original one, which was for training on sexual assault, and we want something different on systemic discrimination, that’s fine and well, that can be something we could do. But we’ll have to make another bill completely or reopen the witness list.”

Fortin also argued that the term “systemic racism” is a politically popular phrase right now, but it’s not clear to everyone what it means.

Arif Virani, the parliamentary secretary to the justice minister, responded that there is wide social consensus around the phrase as it applies to institutions, and it “reflects sort of where we are as a nation, as a continent.”

Liberal MP James Maloney said that Fortin’s concerns about judicial independence could also be applied to the original bill, which Fortin supports. “We’ve crossed that threshold, Mr. Fortin,” Maloney said.

The legislation amends the Judge’s Act to require judges “undertake to participate in continuing education” on sexual assault and social context, and requires that the Canadian Judicial Council develop the training “with persons, groups or organizations the Council considers appropriate, such as sexual assault survivors and groups and organizations that support them.” It requires the Council to report to Parliament on when the seminars were given and how many judges attended.

The first version was introduced by former Conservative leader Rona Ambrose in 2017, but it stalled in the Senate in 2019 over concerns of judicial independence. It was largely rewritten in the Senate, mainly by Sen. Pierre Dalphond, a former Quebec judge, who scaled back some of the more intrusive parts of the bill.

However, procedural wrangling kept the bill from advancing and it died on the 2019 election call. Justice Minister David Lametti revived it in February as government legislation, but that bill also died when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prorogued Parliament in August.

Dalphond told National Post that from what he understands of the amendments, they’re acceptable to him since they only mention systemic racism as one part of the social context, not the whole definition. He also said that in his experience, systemic racism is already an important part of judicial training. But he warned that Parliament must not go too far in attempting to direct the training or influence the content.

“The shorter the better,” Dalphond said about the legislation.

Asked for comment, Ambrose replied with a statement that did not mention the systemic racism amendment. “I know victims of sexual assault are thankful that MPs are working together to get this bill passed,” she said. “I hope it passes without delay.”

Lametti’s office also did not comment directly on the amendment, but said the justice minister “fully agrees with the need to take action to address systemic racism in Canada’s justice system.”

A spokesperson from the Canadian Judicial Council said that “Canada has arguably the best program of judicial education in the world,” and for that reason the Council has always thought the bill is unnecessary.

“That said, the Council is pleased that the (justice committee) appears to have accepted the judiciary’s suggestions on how to improve the bill to ensure it meets its laudable objectives while still preserving judicial independence,” the statement said.

Many in the legal profession are deeply concerned about the precedent the bill sets. Gib van Ert, a lawyer who was executive legal officer at the Supreme Court of Canada from 2015 to 2018, wrote in Maclean’s in February that governments should not be legislating training for judges, because once it starts it might never end.

“Why not put a few more required courses on the judges’ curriculum?” van Ert wrote rhetorically at the time. “Why not train our judges in systemic racism, Indigenous laws and rights, climate change, national security and counterterrorism, border security and unlawful migration?”

His essay turned out to be prescient.

“Of course, judges should learn about sexual assault and systemic racism,” van Ert told the Post on Tuesday. “They already do, through their own judge-led training programs. The problem lies in the training being mandated by politicians. When people go to court they need to feel their judge isn’t just thinking and doing what the government tells them to. They need to believe judges are independent. I continue to think this is a bad precedent.”

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

EDMONTON — The merger of Cenovus Energy Inc. and Husky Energy Inc., announced Sunday, is going to have a spillover effect into the downtown core of Calgary, where high-rise office space has sat vacant for months and years as the economic downturn and the COVID-19 pandemic have battered the oil and gas industry, clearing out commuter traffic and having a devastating effect on business and culture in the city’s core.

The two companies said Tuesday the merger would result in roughly 2,100 layoffs as Husky joins Cenovus, a $3.8-billion deal that will make Cenovus the third-largest energy company in Canada. It’s not clear what jobs, specifically, might be lost.

“The downtown of Calgary is the goose that lays the golden eggs in terms of the operation of our city and these job losses will hurt in a number of different ways,” said Coun. Evan Woolley, whose ward encompasses half of downtown Calgary.

Tuesday’s news is just the latest blow Calgary in general, and downtown Calgary in particular, has faced. Adam Legge, the president and CEO of the Business Council of Alberta, said the downtown vacancy rate is close to 30 per cent, and any further reduction will mean fewer downtown workers frequenting small businesses such as restaurants and dry cleaners in the city centre.

“Any time we see layoffs of that magnitude, there’s a concern for a whole host of things, including the livelihoods of those affected and what it means for a downtown that is already struggling,” Legge said.

Downtown Calgary, unlike many other large cities, is heavily commercial, with few residential properties. This means, simply, the businesses and organizations downtown rely, in large part, on commuter traffic to put bums in barstools and cash on counters.

“While we started from this incredible high level of downtown commercial activity, it means we had a long way to fall,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said in an interview.

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The vacancy’s effects are clear enough, even just looking around. The Plus 15s, the nearly 16 kilometres of pedestrian walkways with 83 bridges that connect buildings in downtown Calgary, are practically deserted.

“What were once bustling networks, particularly in the winter, are quiet,” said Woolley.

In Calgary’s specific case, much of that premiere downtown real estate is — or was — occupied by oil and gas giants.

“To suggest that the oil and gas industry will fill up that vacancy any time soon, or ever, is a faulty assumption. If this isn’t the wakeup call in the sense of the oil and gas industry is not going to save Calgary, then I don’t know what is,” said Dan Harmsen, partner and senior vice-president at Barclay Street Real Estate.

Harmsen said there’s an excess amount of office space in the city that will take years to absorb, but added the situation has led to an attractive rental market, where premium office space can be had for 20 per cent to 40 per cent cheaper than any other city in North America.

Commercial realtors in Calgary have seen some companies outside the oil and gas industry take advantage of lower costs and lease additional space in recent months.

Rachel Notley, the leader of the New Democrats, told the  Post  that this is a trend that isn’t going to stop, even with COVID recovery or as oil prices rebound.

“As it relates to the downtown of Calgary, just generally, what we need to be doing is looking at ways to diversify the economy and attract other businesses back to Alberta and of course to Calgary,” Notley said. “In terms of job creation, what we need to be understanding then is that we have to look for other eggs to put in our baskets — in fact, we need more baskets, is a better way to put it.”

The layoffs at Cenovus-Husky aren’t even the first in recent weeks.

TC Energy, the company behind the Coastal GasLink pipeline through northern British Columbia, announced an unspecified number of layoffs some weeks ago, followed by Suncor, which said it would shed 2,000 jobs over the next 18 months.

In total, the energy industry dropped 23,600 Canadian jobs in just three months this spring.

The downsizing of Calgary’s energy industry, while it has obviously affected thousands of Calgarians directly, has several other spillover effects; the city itself has lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of downtown vacancies affecting property tax returns. That tax revenue, in turn, needs to be made up elsewhere through, say, residential property taxes.

The lack of commuter traffic affects revenues from parking, or bus tickets and passes, for example. And, obviously, having fewer people in office spaces affects other businesses downtown, whether that’s cultural groups and non-profits or bars and restaurants. There has also been an increase in crime downtown, said Woolley.

What is trickier to sort out, though, is the effects more recent layoffs have had because it’s in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most people are already working from home and not travelling downtown for work.

Karen Ball, the interim president and CEO of Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, said there have been effects on volunteerism and the not-for-profit sector because fewer people downtown means that office-based volunteerism and donations — such as the United Way campaigns — are harder to maintain when workers aren’t in the office.

“It’s an unfortunate thing, because, the timing being such, the pandemic has affected everyone in Calgary and certainly in Alberta,” Ball said. “For non-profits it means there’s been an increase in the demands for their services.”

It’s especially acute for the cultural non-profits, most of which are based downtown, she said.

“Of course people working downtown creates a vibrancy 5 to 7 and 7 beyond for bars and restaurants and also live in-person events and so the arts sector is tied to, in some ways, the vitality of the downtown core.”

Still, in spite of the doom and gloom, there are bright spots: On Monday, Suncor announced it would be relocating employees at its branch offices in the Toronto area to Calgary, essentially bringing 700 positions to Calgary.

“Yesterday, Suncor’s leadership spoke with our Downstream employees and let them know that over the course of 2021, we’d be moving our Downstream head office from Mississauga and Oakville to Calgary,” Suncor spokesperson Sneh Seetal said in an email.

Nenshi said that Suncor moving people to the city is good news, evidence of the city’s appealing real-estate market, compared to overheated business markets such as Toronto, something he hopes will bring even more business to the city.

“That’s really the pitch that we’re making to a lot of firms,” said Nenshi.

Woolley, for his part, also remains optimistic: “There is hope, I am a hopeful, optimistic Calgarian, I believe in our city, but it really does speak to the importance of us taking a look at economic diversification,” said Woolley.

With files from Geoffrey Morgan

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

Another incumbent provincial government wins a resounding majority.

But the federal party loses support in two Toronto byelections.

Opinion polls suggest the Liberals would regain their own majority if an election were held today.

Yet, nearly half of the electorate say they don’t want an election next year, or even the year after that.

Justin Trudeau is caught in a Hamlet-like dilemma – should he stay or should he go?

The historic fourth majority for Scott Moe’s centre-right Saskatchewan Party reinforces the message from the recent provincial elections in British Columbia and New Brunswick (in which minority governments won majority status) – voters in the grip of a pandemic want stability.

The Liberals are weighing whether the circumstances that existed at provincial level would hold federally.

Those provinces kept the virus under control but there is no guarantee that voters in the pandemic hotspots of Ontario and Quebec would respond as favourably to an unwanted election.

The byelections in Toronto Centre and York Centre suggest an enthusiasm gap for the Liberals. Former journalist Marci Ien retained Bill Morneau’s former seat for the government but the share of the vote dropped to 42 per cent from 57 per cent last year. New Green leader Annamie Paul came in second, with 32 per cent of the vote.

In York Centre, small business owner Ya’ara Saks had a close shave in her contest with Conservative Julius Tiangson, winning 45.7 per cent of the vote to her rival’s 41.8 per cent – again with a reduced share of the vote.

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Trudeau dismissed suggestions that lost support is a sign he needs to change his political strategy. “(Ien and Saks) will help to continue the great work our government is doing,” he told reporters.

On turnouts of 31 per cent and 25.6 per cent respectively, it would be foolhardy to read too much into the results but if you are a young prince, with honour and a crown at stake, it might make you even more cautious.

There is no shortage of voices around the prime minister advising him that he should go to the Governor General and ask her to dissolve Parliament.

Opposition parties worried that the almost hysterical Liberal reaction to this week’s motion, to have the health committee examine Canada’s pandemic response, was a harbinger for a short trip across the grounds of Rideau Hall. Access to future vaccines could be jeopardized and lives endangered, the Liberals claimed, which would constitute suitable grounds for a just war. They may be yet.

But the enthusiasm for hostilities seems to have abated.

Last week, Trudeau appeared hell-bent on going to the polls when he declared a vote on an opposition motion a matter of confidence and did not negotiate support from the NDP.

But sources claim he genuinely does not want an election, something he seemed to indicate when he said on Tuesday that his party would “work with Parliament” on the COVID-19 response inquiry.

The fear of appearing opportunistic seems to have constrained the prime minister to this point, with the result that senior advisers on both sides of the aisle think, if we survive until Christmas, we could be in for a minority government to rival Lester B. Pearson’s second 960 day term of office.

That could change in a heartbeat if the Conservatives overplay their hand. The “anti-corruption” committee proposal last week was very nearly a political Darwin Award winner – an uber-partisan proposal that could have provoked an election which polls suggest new leader Erin O’Toole would have lost.

If this is not to be the Conservative leader’s “Mr. Harper, your time is up” moment (the occasion when former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff proved to be all hat and no cattle), he will have to tone down his language, at least until advertising has introduced him to more Canadians.

For their part, the New Democrats are in no mood or condition to fight an election.

In 2005, Jack Layton propped up Paul Martin’s minority until the Gomery report on sponsorship made the Liberals undesirable bedfellows. Layton subsequently demanded that the government bar the privatization of healthcare, Martin refused and an election followed.

(For the record, Liberals contend the health care story is bunk and the New Democrats merely used it as an excuse to blow up the government after the Gomery report landed).

Jagmeet Singh’s NDP needs an “on-brand” reason to remove its support. But it also needs time and money.

The party will have paid off its 2019 campaign debt by the end of the year and is in the process of opening candidate nominations. But it is still a long way from being campaign ready.

The news that there will be no fiscal anchor in Chrystia Freeland’s fall update suggests a smorgasbord of spending that the NDP will be able to support, buying it some time.

But the government may not want support.

The hawks around Trudeau are urging him to force an election for good reason – the auspices for electoral success diminish in the new year.

The ethics commissioner’s report is likely to further taint Trudeau’s nice guy image; millions of people who received government benefits will discover they are taxable come spring; and, fiscal pressures will force the Liberals to start unwinding temporary relief programs by the summer.

Those are powerful reasons for Trudeau to go to an election now.

But the fact he did not do so when he had the chance suggests it is more likely that we will have a durable minority than a snap election.

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

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Tuesday that Christmas celebrations are in jeopardy as he told Canadians to expect a long winter dealing with COVID-19.

Canada has now seen more than 220,000 cases since the pandemic began and the country on Tuesday reached 10,000 total deaths. Trudeau said the coming months would be hard, but pleaded with Canadians not to allow COVID fatigue to set in.

“We are in an unprecedented global pandemic. That really sucks, it’s tough going through the second wave,” he said. “It’s frustrating having shut down all of our lives through the spring, and now be forced to make more difficult choices and knowing there’s going to be a tough winter ahead as well.”

He said Canadians need to keep following public health guidelines to protect holiday gatherings.

“It’s frustrating knowing that unless we are really, really careful. There may not be the kinds of family gatherings we want to have at Christmas.”

Last month in a national address, Trudeau issued a similar warning saying Thanksgiving celebrations would need to be small, but said at the time “we still have a shot at Christmas.”

Trudeau shared that his youngest son had asked if COVID-19 was permanent and was attending a Grade one class where singing was not allowed.

Despite the gloomy outlook Trudeau said he was confident Canadians could rally and turn the course of the pandemic around.

“Vaccines are on the horizon. Spring, and summer, will come and they will be better than this winter,” he said. “Nobody wanted 2020 to be this way, but we do get to control how bad it gets by all of us doing our part.”

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Many of the most recent cases have come from so-called “super spreader” events where large gatherings lead to many cases. Public health officers across the country have also said that when doing contact tracing they are finding infected people have been in contact with dozens of people.

Trudeau said the government had a better understanding of the virus than it did in the spring and could target messages to different parts of the country.

“The federal government will be there to support people right across the country, regardless of the situation, regardless of the advice and the restrictions that have been brought in by public health,” he said.

Conservative health critic Michelle Rempel Garner said the PM’s message was flippant and ignored the reality Canadians were living in.

She said the lockdowns people would face over the winter could have been avoided if the government had invested in more rapid testing.

“Other countries around the world are not having to simply rely on social isolation and economic shutdown. Many countries around the world have deployed technologies like rapid testing, to keep things open,” she said.

Rempel Garner said the government should have developed a better response in the months since the pandemic began instead of relying so heavily on lockdowns.

She said she hoped the House of Commons health committee would be able to get more information and provide sound advice on a path forward after a motion she drafted passed in the Commons on Monday, asking for information and documents about the government’s response so far.

“The measures to prevent the spread of COVD-19 shouldn’t be static. They should evolve as best practices emerge and as we get data on what’s working and what isn’t.”

She said everyone should be following public health advice to keep gatherings small, wear masks and limit the spread of the virus, but said the government had to take some responsibility for helping with COVID fatigue.

Canada’s deputy chief public health officer, Dr. Howard Njoo, said the rising cases in the past few weeks were alarming, but so far the system was managing.

“At this point to date, we have not overloaded the health care system. But you can see in certain parts of the country, we are starting to cancel elective surgeries because beds are being filled up by COVID-19 patients.”

But he said staff were tired after the long fight with the virus.

“Many of them are exhausted after what they went through in the spring,” he said. “We depend on them in our time of need when we’ve become sick and I think now they depend on us to do the right thing.”

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

Newly confirmed conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett faces a barrage of politically fraught cases in her first days on the job, as the court weighs election disputes and prepares to hear a challenge to the Obamacare health law.

In brief remarks at a White House ceremony on Monday night, Barrett declared her independence from U.S. President Donald Trump and the political process, even as the president stood behind her.

“The oath that I have solemnly taken tonight means at its core I will do the job without fear or favour and do it independently of the political branches and of my own preferences,” she said.

Her confirmation as successor to liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last month, creates a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court.

Barrett, a federal appeals court judge and legal scholar, is Trump’s third selection for the court, enabling him to remake it in dramatic fashion as part of his success in moving the broader federal judiciary to the right since taking office in 2017. Trump’s other Supreme Court appointees are conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and Barrett now joins the conservative bloc on the court, comprised of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, all Republican appointees.

But just who is Justice Barrett, what are the major issues she may be called to rule upon, and how might she decide?

Background

Barrett grew up in a suburb of New Orleans and attended a Catholic girls’ high school before graduating from Rhodes college in Memphis, Tennessee, and Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Indiana. Her lack of the Ivy League pedigree typical of Supreme Court justices was one reason Trump chose Yalie Kavanaugh over her for the last vacancy on the court, according to a person familiar with the president’s thinking.

After law school, Barrett clerked for two conservative judges: Washington federal appeals court judge Laurence Silberman and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She returned to Notre Dame as a professor in 2002 and taught there full-time until Trump appointed her as a judge to the federal appeals court in Chicago in 2017. She still teaches at Notre Dame part-time.

Barrett identifies as Catholic and has often spoken publicly of the importance of faith in her life. In a 2006 Notre Dame Law School commencement speech, she urged graduates to direct their legal careers towards “building the Kingdom of God.” Barrett is also a member of a small, mostly Catholic “charismatic covenant community” called People of Praise that has adopted some Pentecostal practices such as prophesy and speaking in tongues.

During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee two weeks ago, Barrett, a favourite of Christian conservatives, irked Democrats by sidestepping questions on abortion, presidential powers, climate change, voting rights, Obamacare and other issues.

Now confirmed to the court, she will be tasked with ruling on some of those same issues.

Here is a look at how she may lean.

Election

Formally sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts on Tuesday, Barrett joins the court with two election issues already awaiting her from key battleground states, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Firstly Trump, who nominated her, has said he expects the court to ultimately decide the result of the election between him and Democrat Joe Biden. The Supreme Court has only once decided the outcome of a U.S. presidential election — the disputed 2000 contest ultimately awarded to Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

Trump has said he wanted Barrett to be confirmed before Election Day so she could cast a decisive vote in any election-related dispute, potentially in his favour.

The justices already have tackled multiple election-related emergency requests this year, some related to rules changes prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday night, the conservative justices were in the majority as the court on a 5-3 vote declined to extend mail-in voting deadlines sought by Democrats in Wisconsin.

Last week, in a stark sign of how Barrett’s appointment could affect such cases, the court split 4-4 in a case from Pennsylvania, handing a loss to Republicans hoping to curb the counting of mail-in ballots received after Election Day.

Republicans on Friday asked the court to block the mail-in ballot counting in Pennsylvania, knowing that Barrett was about to be confirmed.

The conservative majority even before Barrett’s appointment has generally sided with state officials who oppose court-imposed changes to election procedures to make it easier to vote during the pandemic.

Obamacare

One week after the election, the court on Nov. 10 hears a case in which Republicans including Trump are asking the court to strike down the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

The Obamacare case is the third major Republican-backed challenge to the law, which has helped roughly 20 million Americans obtain medical insurance. It also bars insurers from refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Republican opponents have called the law an unwarranted intervention by government in health insurance markets. The Supreme Court previously upheld Obamacare 5-4 in a 2012 ruling. It rejected another challenge by 6-3 in 2015.

Barrett has criticized previous rulings upholding Obamacare but said during her confirmation hearing she had no agenda to invalidate the measure.

In Biden’s statement after Barrett’s confirmation, the former vice president said Trump has been “crystal clear” about wanting to “tear down” the Affordable Care Act.

During Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Democrats focused on both Obamacare and election cases in voicing opposition to her confirmation and urged her to step aside from both. Barrett refused to make such a commitment. Justices have the final say on whether they step aside in a case.

Abortion

Barrett’s past writings and remarks on the intersection of faith and the law could again become a flash point, raising questions about whether she would overturn Supreme Court precedents on abortion rights.

Whereas Justice Ginsburg, her predecessor, was a champion of preserving a woman’s right to an abortion, Barrett says abortion is “always immoral” and has already ruled as a circuit court judge to restrict the procedure.

Barrett, a Catholic mother of seven, wrote in a 1998 law review article that abortion and euthanasia “take away innocent life.”

She joined an opinion that suggested support for two Indiana abortion laws: a requirement that clinics bury or cremate fetal remains, and a separate ban on abortions based on the fetus’s race, gender or risk of a genetic disorder such as Down syndrome. Barrett said the full Seventh Circuit should have reconsidered part of a three-judge panel’s decision to strike down the two measures.

The Supreme Court later revived the fetal-remains provision but refused to hear Indiana’s bid to reinstate the second law.

On the court, Barrett will be a new face for originalism, which focuses on the original meaning of the Constitution’s words and casts doubt on Roe v. Wade. Yet it’s not 100 per cent clear that she would overturn Roe. v. Wade; in a 2013 speech, she expressed doubt that the key 1973 decision on abortion would ever be overturned.

Until now the biggest skeptics of reproductive rights on the court have all been men. In 2014 when the court ruled 5-4 that companies can refuse on religious grounds to offer their workers the free birth control promised under the Affordable Care Act, five men were in the majority and all three female justices dissented.

Policing

In her three years as a federal appeals court judge, Barrett has consistently sided with police or prison guards accused of using excessive force, a Reuters review of cases she was involved in shows.

Barrett has written opinions or been a part of three-judge panels that have ruled in favour of defendants in 11 of 12 cases in which law enforcement was accused of using excessive force in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Reuters review illustrates Barrett’s record on police use of force at a time of reckoning in the United States.

In five cases, the panel on which Barrett took part considered a request by police or corrections officers to be shielded from the lawsuits alleging excessive force through a controversial legal defence known as qualified immunity. The court granted those requests in four of the five cases.

A Reuters investigation published two weeks before George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police found that the immunity defence, created by the Supreme Court 50 years ago, has been making it easier for cops to kill or injure civilians with impunity.

The report showed that federal appellate courts have been granting police immunity at increasing rates in recent years.

Barrett last year threw out a lawsuit by three Black men who sued Chicago cops for pulling them over while investigating a drive-by shooting near a school. The men, who had nothing to do with the shooting, said they were targeted because of their race, citing the “racialized nature of the mockery and threats” made by one of the officers. The driver, Marcus Torry, told the cops that he was complying because he feared police brutality.

Barrett granted the officers qualified immunity because it was not “clearly established” that the officers’ actions were unreasonable, noting that the plaintiffs matched the description of the suspects “in number, race and car colour.”

In other cases, she has shown a willingness to side with plaintiffs.

In 2019, she wrote a ruling rejecting immunity for a police officer who used false statements in making the case against a murder suspect. She also joined a ruling denying immunity for officers who were accused of falsifying evidence that caused a man to be jailed for two years.

German police have tweeted that a 600-person “fetish party” that they broke up probably ended “unsatisfactorily” for the attendees, after cops said it was “time to go home.”

Alte Münze, a converted performance venue and club, hosted the party as an open-air event in the Mitte district, a borough of Berlin. Attendees purchased tickets in advance for the gig, which   allowed for a maximum of 250 people.

Police, though, shut the party down, saying that it had reached 600 attendees, many of whom were — ironically enough — not wearing masks or following COVID-19 distancing precautions.

Für ca. 600 Gäste einer Fetisch-Party in #Mitte endete diese vermutlich unbefriedigend.
Wir lösten die Feier in Amtshilfe für das @BA_Mitte_Berlin auf. Die Kolleg. der @bpol_bepo machten anschließend nochmal deutlich, dass es Zeit ist nach Hause zu gehen.#GemeinsamGegenCovid19 pic.twitter.com/sGwzHFN3L3

— Polizei Berlin Einsatz (@PolizeiBerlin_E) October 24, 2020

Alte Münze posted a statement on its site condemning the police response, arguing that the party had stayed well below the 5,000 person government-mandated maximum for outdoor events.

“It was always our top priority while planning to be compliant with the current guidelines to contain the coronavirus,” the statement read.

The statement also criticized the language in the tweet from the Berlin police, saying:

“The event served as a meeting point for the community. We find it reprehensible to declare this a ‘fetish party.”

Germany is currently caught in the midst of a rising second wave of COVID-19. On Sunday, the country registered more than 10,000 new cases for the fourth day in a row, bringing the total to 430,000 cases since the pandemic began.

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COVID-19 restrictions in Berlin include an 11 p.m. curfew on pubs and restaurants and a limit of 10 people for gatherings in public areas.

“We must call especially on young people to do without a few parties now in order to have a good life tomorrow or the day after,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a statement on Oct. 14.

The popular Germany Christmas markets — as many as 2500 across the country — are also being shut down in anticipation of the spread of COVID-19. Frankfurt became the latest city to announce the cancellation of its market. The city joins Berlin, which already announced the cancellation of its famous Christmas market at Gendarmenmarkt.

A new Day of the Dead Barbie is reigniting arguments over whether the Mexican-themed doll is a tasteful ode to the country’s traditions, or a cheap commercial grab.

Conversation began last year with the first entry in the “La Catrina” series . Now, the debate is bubbling back to the surface, with the release of the second instalment.

Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a holiday celebrated in Mexican where families gather to remember those who have died. The multi-day holiday begins in early November and is marked by visits to graveyards — not in mourning, but in celebration.

In 2019, toy company Mattel began its “La Catrina” collection of Barbies, named for the decorated skeletons created by Mexican illustrator José Guadalupe Posada. Barbie is dressed in frilly white and pink lace, her face painted to look like a skeleton in the “calavera” or “skull” style. The doll also bears a slight resemblance to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

With the dolls listed at $75 USD on the Barbie site, the collection is aimed at adult collectors rather than children.

The doll was created by Mexican-American designer, Javier Meabe. According to the U.S. toy manufacturer , the Dia de Muertos doll “honors the traditions, symbols and rituals” of the Mexican holiday.

“My hope for these dolls is that they’re able to bring more awareness to the Dia de Muertos celebration,” Meabe told CNN . “I am beyond grateful that Barbie is now celebrating traditions and cultures that mean so much to so many people.”

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Others, though, see it differently, with experts and social media users accusing the toy company of cultural appropriation.

“The cultural, hereditary and symbolic importance that this holiday has for Mexico opens up in the eyes of the market opportunities that are exploited by these firms,” sociologist Roberto Alvarez told AFP . The Day of the Dead “should be a solemn subject,” he said.

Day of The Dead is #Iconic in Mexico - a #Barbie, in my opinion, is a degradation. https://t.co/TVMR18mqBI

— Marg Needham (@MargNeedham) October 27, 2020

 

Damn @Mattel and @Barbie quit thieving and appropriating my culture for profit.

— Lucy Morales (@lucyratops) September 11, 2020

The release of Disney’s animated feature Coco in 2017 marked another instance of a U.S. company commercialized Mexican heritage, with Disney facing an initial backlash after Disney attempted to patent the words “Día de los Muertos.”

Other U.S. brands have also bought into the hybridized Mexico-American culture. The “Catrina” Minnie Mouse and a Nike Day of the Dead collection both similarly commercialize the holiday.

For the first time, researchers in the United States have duplicated a living brain aneurysm outside the human body — a feat that could potentially alter the ways in which brain surgeons treat the condition.

It is hoped the move could reduce the time taken to decide and perform life-saving surgical procedures personalized to each patient, and so improve survival rates and patient outcomes.

An aneurysm looks like a bulge or balloon in a weakened point on the wall of a blood vessel, either in the heart or the brain. If the wall ruptures, it can lead to internal bleeding with life-threatening consequences for the patient. Aneurysms are especially difficult to both find and treat, given the delicate areas where they commonly occur.

Now, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and scientists from Duke University and Texas A&M, have developed an external, artificial duplicate in the hopes of imitating the real-life environment in which aneurysms occur.

“We looked at the problem and thought that if we could pair computational modelling and experimental approaches, maybe we could come up with a more deterministic method of treating aneurysms or selecting treatments that could best serve the patient,” William Hynes, senior study author and engineer at the laboratory, told Science Alert.

Using gelatin-fibrin hydrogel, the team 3D-printed a structure in the shape of an aneurysm and then carefully added hCMECs — human cerebral microvascular endothelial cells — to the frame. The cells spread out over the next seven days and lined the aneurysm structure, forming a living 3D-printed aneurysm.

Once the living structure was created, the team experimented on it by pumping cow blood plasma through the structure and then performing their own endovascular coiling — an operation in which a catheter is threaded through the body, to the aneurysm, via an artery in the groin. Once threaded, a coil is pushed through the catheter into the aneurysm. It is one of two methods by which doctors attempt to stop blood flow to the area of an aneurysm to prevent it from swelling and rupturing.

As a result of the coiling, a clot was formed at the site and disrupted blood flow, which meant the model worked.

“Now we can start to build the framework of a personalized model that a surgical practitioner could use to determine the best method for treating an aneurysm,” Hynes said.

There is still a long way to go before the model can be used by professionals in the field, the team stressed in its paper. The computer model of clots still needs to be finessed to both refine the living structures and better mimic the stresses placed on the walls of the impacted blood vessels.

The team also plans to feed real-world patient brain scans into the data to further refine the system’s accuracy.

Brad Wall tells an anecdote about the first time he won an election, in 1999, as a candidate for the nascent Saskatchewan Party, watching the results roll in on TV and seeing the party had won an urban seat.

“I was so jacked to get elected in my hometown,” Wall recalled in an interview with the National Post on Monday, as  Saskatchewan was headed to the polls in a provincial and pandemic election. “Turned out it was me — Swift Current was the urban seat. The definition may have shocked people and surprised people in Swift Current.”

The Saskatchewan Party has steadily grown ever since, rising from a party with a rural base to one that cruised on Monday night to its fourth straight majority win. Since 2007, when Wall first became premier, the party has dominated provincial politics, taking seats in Regina and Saskatoon and throughout the rest of the province.

The party is now headed by Scott Moe, who took over the top job in 2018, and Monday won his first victory as leader and premier. The party’s lasting popular appeal with voters doesn’t mean there are not cracks in foundations, some of them stemming from the very roots of the party itself, born out of a coalition of  Saskatchewan Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and Reform Party members.

Unlike Alberta, which has decades of conservative rule, broken up by only four years of Rachel Notley’s New Democrats, Saskatchewan has had a more varied political history — much of it dominated by the New Democrats and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which held power in the province in a significant majority of elections since 1944.

That all changed after the Saskatchewan Party was formed. And once Wall became premier in 2007, the party has hung on to power ever since and added seats each time they went to the polls: 38 out of 58 seats in 2007, 49 of 58 in 2011, and 51 of 61 in 2016.

As of Monday night, the Sask Party was leading in more than 40 constituencies, with more than 61,000 mail-in ballots yet to be counted. It is more than the 31 needed to control the 61-seat legislature. Some races in Saskatoon and Regina were too tight to call, including the Saskatoon constituency of NDP Leader Ryan Meili.

There are a number of factors that have gone into the growth of the Saskatchewan Party. One of the biggest is timing.

The Saskatchewan Party came along and rose to power when the prairie province began to turn around economically. The provincial population was growing. It became a “have” instead of a “have not” province.

“The mentality of thinking we’re the poorer neighbour to our richer cousin on the other side of the border in Alberta … that’s gone,” explained Greg Poelzer, a professor in the school of environment and sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan and an observer of provincial politics. “And I think Brad Wall was transformative for the province in changing that kind of outlook.”

Wall, the first Saskatchewan Party premier, said the economy formed the “north star” of the party’s approach to governance. And while it focused on the economy, he said the party didn’t ignore its social obligations, such as health care.

“A little good fortune helps, you have a good economic plan, focus on it and then make sure you demonstrate you understand it’s not all about pie charts and GDP — it’s about people,” said Wall, who retired in 2018.

Moe campaigned over the last month on a message to recover the economy from the COVID-19 pandemic and to introduce millions of dollars in tax credits and rebates.

• Saskatchewan Party elected to fourth straight majority government and first under Scott Moe's leadership

During Wall’s time as leader, the party also put a considerable amount of effort into winning urban seats, finding good candidates and overhauling the party platform.

“We basically said, ‘we’re not changing the principles of the party, but we’re going to start with a clean slate on policy,'” said Wall.

Understanding the party’s popular appeal means knowing where it came from.

The party emerged in August 1997 as a coalition of former Liberals and Progressive Conservatives who’d been trampled by NDP Premier Roy Romanow in elections through the 1990s.

“You had provincial Liberals, provincial PCs and federal Reformers, and that’s a formidable coalition,” Wall said. “They just laid that all aside, and said it’s important for us to have a united alternative to the NDP.”

That it’s a coalition, that Saskatchewan isn’t as resolutely conservative as is often thought, is a salient fact, says Poelzer. The risk, he explained, is if the harder line Saskatchewan has been taking with regards to Ottawa will alienate people in the all-important coalition.

“Where the Sask Party … has been very successful was building a broad coalition of federal Liberals and federal Conservatives,” said Poelzer. “Right now, I would argue that (the) Sask Party is on the verge of where that is starting to unravel.

“Without that liberal-centre vote and centre-right vote, the NDP would dominate elections.”

At the same time, the Buffalo Party has popped up on the right wing of Saskatchewan politics, rising on the heat generated from western alienation. There’s also the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan to contend with.

“What they’re doing is fragmenting the vote on the right and hiving it off from the Sask Party and alienating the left part of the Sask Party base,” said Poelzer.

The right does have a power base in Saskatchewan, Wall said, but he points to evidence the coalition still exists: One candidate, Chris Guerette, for example, campaigned for the federal Liberals in 2015.

“It’s got to continue to be a … big tent party,” said Wall.

With files from the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and The Canadian Press

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

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals survived a confidence vote over a Conservative push to dig deeper into the WE Charity affair.

Canadians may be spared a fall election, but the political games are far from over.

Dave is joined by National Post political reporter Chris Nardi to discuss why the Liberals seemed keen to push us close to a pandemic election, why this move poses a problem for the NDP, and whether this hampers the Conservative efforts to hold the government to account.

Subscribe to 10/3 on your favourite podcast app.

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Netherlands war museums have been hit by teams of raiders bent on stealing their Nazi artifacts, leading a number to beef up security.

The Guardian reports that organized thieves are moving in on Dutch institutions that house Waffen-SS gear and other memorabilia linked to the Adolf Hitler regime — gear which appears to be in increasing demand worldwide. No arrests have been made over any of the raids.

In recent weeks an overnight burglary at the Oorlogsmuseum in Ossendrecht saw a trove of SS equipment taken, with one pilfered rifle worth almost $80,000. Jan de Jonge, the museum owner, told the Guardian:

“They drilled holes in the door to get the handle down from the inside. I didn’t hear anything while I was sleeping on the other side of the wall.

“SS uniforms, daggers, helmets, emblems, caps, parachutes, firearms, binoculars, you name it. There’s nothing left. The firearm is very rare, but I was able to display it in this museum.

He said the robbers had a target country in mind when they broke in.

“(It was all) German stuff, they didn’t take anything from the allies,” he said. “A French corner, English, Canadian: all intact. German material, especially clothing, is rare.”

“They took items that can be traded internationally. The collection was private property and not insured. At least 15 dressed mannequins with military uniforms were taken.”

Robbers targeted museums in a number of other Dutch cities, with museums moving, as a result, to take famous artefacts out of public view. In Loon op Zand, the local 1940-1945 War Museum put in a better security door, and took away cutlery once used by Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.

“Yesterday I took stuff from the Hitler Youth, and uniforms of the SS are also being removed,” Frans van Venrooij, owner of the museum, told the Guardian .

John Meulenbroeks of Hooge Mierde’s Museum De Bewogen Jaren, told the Guardian: “It seems like this is on request. Maybe (the items) are already with a collector who is wealthy.”

In August, the Guardian reports, some $2.3 million worth of items were robbed from Beek’s Eyewitness Museum. The men knew what they were after, the owner said; after the door was rammed in by a team of six, they made their way to certain artefacts, cutting away glass to get at the riches. Another museum in Limburg was also targeted.

“The collection consists only of original pieces and a number of masterpieces that are very rare and precious,” Wim Seelen said. “The only thing I can come up with is that someone ordered it. Many of the stolen items are so unique that you cannot sell them. Our world is a small one. As soon as something emerges from Beek or Ossendrecht, it will be immediately known.”

Is the pine-scented aroma of your Christmas tree not lifting your holiday spirits during the pandemic? Maybe a firelog scented like fried chicken might do the trick, KFC suggests.

As part of a partnership with Enviro-Log, KFC has launched its trademark 11 Herbs and Spices Firelog in Walmart stores in the U.S. on Monday for the third consecutive year as a quirky alternative for those looking to — literally — spicy their holiday season up.

In the past, the product has been a big hit with customers and sold out the past two years nationwide. Last year, the product sold out within three hours of launching, Fox Business reported.

KFC also plans to launch the product in Canada, although the date has not yet been determined.

“For the past two years we have warmed the hearts and homes of our fried-chicken fans during the holiday season with our 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog,” KFC U.S. CMO Andrea Zahumensky said in a press release.

“Although this year may look different, we hope that by expanding our exclusive partnership with Enviro-Log and Walmart, people can once again grab a fried-chicken scented firelog, order a bucket of chicken from KFC, and savor the tastes, smells and warmth of what has become our favorite holiday tradition,” Zahumensky continued.

KFC’s 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog from @envirologfire is BACK to make your yuletide smell like chicken! These sold out fast last year, so get yours now at https://t.co/2JhDqZI6du.

— KFC (@kfc) December 5, 2019

Ross McRoy, the president and founder of Georgia-based Enviro-Log, which focuses on environmentally-conscious consumer products, said fans will be ‘ravenous’ for the KFC product this holiday season. “Just don’t try to eat it!” he warned in the press release.

The product will be exclusively sold at Walmart stores in the U.S. The retail federation states that consumers will spend an average of $998 on “items like gifts, decorations and food to bring some much needed holiday cheer” to their friends and families. To do so, the NRF predicts that consumers will most likely head online or visit larger department stores.

The 11 Herbs and Spices Firelog will be available for purchase either online or in-store for $15.88 while availability lasts.

OTTAWA — The federal government’s refusal to set a new fiscal anchor reinforces the need for greater transparency around Ottawa’s towering pandemic spending plans, several economists and budgetary experts say.

In a talk with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it would be “premature” to set a new fiscal anchor in Ottawa’s upcoming fall economic update, due to a high level of uncertainty in both the national and global economies. The Trudeau Liberals are expected to table the update in November.

The move runs counter to what numerous economists and other experts have recommended in recent months, warning that Ottawa needs to outline its high-level spending plans as it risks sliding into a position of permanent budgetary deficits.

Fiscal anchors effectively outline targets for how much debt governments intend to assume. Ottawa had previously sought to maintain a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 30 per cent, which ballooned to 49 per cent this summer as COVID-19 spending continued to mount. Experts now say Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland need to re-establish a new anchor in order to sketch out their long-term budgetary plans for the country.

“There’s a cost to having effectively no fiscal plan,” said Kevin Page, head of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy and former Parliamentary Budget Officer. “And right now it’s fair to say we have no fiscal strategy.”

Page and others are sympathetic to claims by the Liberal government that the global economic outlook amid COVID-19 is so uncertain that drafting up long-term spending plans would be nearly impossible.

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But they also suggest that the failure to set a new fiscal target is part of a broader hesitancy in Ottawa to provide transparent information on pandemic spending. The federal government has not provided detailed updates on cash flows of some of its biggest programs, he said, and has instead stuck with highly generalized overviews that provide no detail about funding recipients.

Taken together, Page said, the situation amounts to an increasingly hazy fiscal outlook for the country.

“This is about where the government’s rudder is,” he said. “Where is the policy strategy that guides us through the pandemic, and to the post COVID-19 recovery? We’re missing that.”

Unlike other Western democracies including New Zealand and the U.K., Canada has yet to table a full budget since the beginning of the pandemic in March, citing economic instability. A brief budget update in early summer has served as the sole official document outlining spending plans.

The monthly fiscal monitor provided by Finance Canada outlines spending, but also doesn’t break down transactions into finer details, Page said.

His comments come after the Trudeau government had faced criticism even before the pandemic about its rising fiscal spending measures, which went toward a host of programs aimed at green infrastructure, social housing and other items. Even so, Ottawa largely kept its debt-to-GDP ratio stable as economic growth before the pandemic provided more opportunity to spend.

Rebekah Young, director of provincial and fiscal economics at Scotiabank, has recommended Ottawa set an updated fiscal anchor of 65 per cent of GDP, as well as provide itself with space to move should the economy sour amid successive viral waves.

“I would argue that because of the uncertainty, in fact, they could actually instill more confidence by providing an anchor for coming years,” she said.

“It’s another way to send a signal.”

While Canada’s federal and provincial debt levels continue to soar, however, most economists are largely in agreement that Ottawa maintains plenty of fiscal capacity to continue spending. Low interest rates have kept debt charges well below levels seen in the early 1990s.

The federal deficit in 2021 is expected to surge above $350 billion, according to the government’s last budget update.

The International Monetary Fund in its recent bi-annual economic outlook estimates that Canada’s budgetary shortfall in 2020 will reach 19.9 per cent of GDP, the highest among all Western democracies (the United States will run the second-largest shortfall with 18.7 per cent). By 2021 that shortfall is expected to fall to 8.7 per cent, but still among the largest in developed economies.

Doug Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal, says fiscal pressures from immense pandemic spending are uncommonly high at the moment, but don’t spell immediate trouble for the public purse.

He said longer-term spending adjustments will eventually be necessary, but said the announcement by Trudeau on Monday to defer a new fiscal anchor might be the correct course of action.

“I would say it’s not unreasonable, just because there’s so much uncertainty about where things are headed in the next six months,” he said.

“One of the worst things would be for them to reset the fiscal anchor and then have to reset it again. I think that would be pretty demoralizing for everyone.”

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

OTTAWA — After enduring nearly three weeks of Liberal filibustering, opposition MPs trying to acquire WE Charity speaking contracts involving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife were shut down Monday when a Bloc Québécois MP voted against the initiative — by mistake.

It was supposed to be a straightforward vote at the federal ethics committee to force the release of all invoices for the speeches Trudeau and his wife delivered to WE Charity in the past decade.

Opposition MPs want to verify how much money WE Charity and its affiliates have paid the Trudeau family in the years leading up to the now-defunct $543.5 million deal to have WE administer a student volunteer grant program for the government.

For weeks, the Liberal members of the committee tried to thwart the vote by filibustering, filling the time with lengthy and often irrelevant speeches, calling countless points of order and asking for more amendments on amendments than anyone would care to count.

The issue came to a head last week when the minority Liberals declared a Conservative proposal to create an “anti-corruption” committee to delve into the WE scandal a matter of confidence. Had the Liberals lost the vote, Canadians would be going to the polls.

The NDP ultimately voted with the Liberals but promised to continue studying the WE Charity scandal in committees such as ethics.

So Monday, after a bit more filibustering and a few more amendments, the Conservative motion at the ethics committee was set to pass with the support from all opposition members, who outnumbered the Liberals.

All was going as expected until the committee clerk called on Bloc Québécois MP Julie Vignola, who had replaced her colleague Marie-Hélène Gaudreau just a few minutes earlier.

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After a few seconds of silence, Vignola unexpectedly said: “I am against the motion.”

A visibly stunned NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus laughed incredulously as he cast the final vote for the motion. But it didn’t matter anymore, the nays (five) defeated the yays (four).

In a scrum minutes after the vote, Bloc Québécois House Leader Alain Therrien admitted it had all been a mistake. Their vote had literally been lost in translation, and the party was scrambling to see if there was a way to change it.

“There were many amendments that were proposed consecutively, and there were issues with translation, so there was a mistake in the vote we made. And now we are looking to see if there is a way to correct the mistake we made,” Therrien said.

In an interview, Angus said the Bloc’s vote felt like being “stabbed in the back.”

He didn’t buy Therrien’s explanation that the error was the result of translation and technical issues, particularly because the party had “unusually” swapped out Gaudreau for Vignola just before the vote.

“I can’t see that they would be that amateurish that on such an important vote, which held up the ethics committee since we returned in September., that they would send someone in and not tell her what the upcoming vote was. You know, you can’t run a ship like that. Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet knows what he’s doing,” Angus said.

The Bloc vehemently denied his allegations and said it was actively looking for ways to bring the motion back to the table.

Angus said he is planning to bring a motion to the ethics committee next week to continue studying the WE Charity scandal.

But because the committee just voted against requesting the speaking invoices, he said it’s unlikely those documents will ever make it to the committee.

“Three weeks of work that kept us up into the wee hours of the morning went out the window. And so now we are not going to get those Trudeau documents,” Angus lamented.

The Conservatives preferred not to criticize the Bloc, instead turning their frustration toward the Liberals.

“After weeks of stonewalling, the Liberals voted against transparency and blocked a parliamentary committee from receiving documents related to the WE scandal. It’s clear that Liberal MPs will do everything they can to hide the arrogance and entitlement of this prime minister,” Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett wrote in a statement.

“Conservatives promised Canadians that we would get answers on the WE scandal. We will keep this promise. I’ll leave it to the Bloc to explain why they didn’t vote for our motion at the ethics committee.”

The federal finance committee is also debating resuming its investigation of the WE Charity scandal; it’s possible that opposition members on that committee succeed in unearthing the Trudeaus’ speaking fee invoices.

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