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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What went wrong?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The motion also ensures the committee will study:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The debate on the amended motion will continue on Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• More than 95 million Americans vote early, which is already 69 per cent of the 2016 turnout
• White House to erect non-scalable fence as authorities fear worst after election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A Serious Canada: Standing up to China – what price are we willing to pay?
• Academic who blew the whistle on China's influence on Australia says Canada is in even worse trouble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Feds make cool $35k from warehouse surplus sale, but diamond bracelet, barber chairs and horse tack could still be yours
• Federal government spent millions on 631 new cars for G7 summit. Now, it's trying to sell most of them

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

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

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

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

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

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

twitter.com/richardwarnica

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fundraising slows

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

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

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

But investor concerns remain.

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

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

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

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

How can things seem so different to different people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The wild card, obviously, is a virus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Canadian Armed Forces have identified 29-year-old Cpl. James Choi as the soldier who died in a live-fire training exercise at CFB Wainwright on Friday.

Choi, who joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 2016. died on Saturday from the gunshot wound he sustained during the training exercise around 10 p.m. on Friday. Choi belonged to the Royal Westminster Regiment based in New Westminster, B.C. and during the exercise, he was working with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry on core light infantry skills.

Choi was treated at the scene and airlifted to an Edmonton hospital following the shooting.

My deepest condolences to Corporal James Choi’s family, friends, and @CanadianForces colleagues. As you mourn this tragic loss, know that we are here for you. We will never forget Corporal Choi’s service and sacrifice. https://t.co/NhUQnmoMml

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) November 1, 2020

The exercise was suspended and the incident, according to the Department of National Defence, is under investigation.

On Sunday, Lt. Gen. Wayne Eyre called Choi a “dedicated, hard-working and highly-respected soldier.” His loss, Eyre said, is “devastating.” Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance added that Choi “represented Canada with honour, dedicating himself to his profession.”

Tributes also came in from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan.

“My deepest condolences to Corporal James Choi’s family, friends and Canadian Forces colleagues,” Trudeau wrote in a tweet. “As you mourn this tragic loss, know that we are here for you. We will never forget Corporal Choi’s service and sacrifice.

“The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces will be there for his family during these difficult times as we grieve alongside you,” Sajjan said.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says Canadian workers have been betrayed by political and financial elites, and bemoans the falling rates of private sector unionization as industrial jobs have migrated to China.

His remarks, given in a virtual speech to the Canadian Club Toronto on Friday, are another example of how O’Toole is changing the party’s message since being elected leader in August.

O’Toole’s speech noted that private sector unionization has “collapsed,” observing that one in three private sector workers were union members in the 1950s but today it’s “closer to one in 25.”

“It may surprise you to hear a Conservative bemoan the decline of private sector union membership,” said O’Toole. “But this was an essential part of the balance between what was good for business and what was good for employees. Today, that balance is dangerously disappearing. Too much power is in the hands of corporate and financial elites who have been only too happy to outsource jobs abroad. It’s now expected of a shareholder to ask a CEO: ‘Why are we paying a worker in Oshawa 30 dollars an hour when we could be paying one in China 50 cents an hour?'”

O’Toole, whose riding is in the Oshawa area where General Motors plants have steadily scaled back and threatened to close entirely, has made championing workers a key part of his rhetoric as leader. He said he’s seen his hometown of Bowmanville “hollowed out” over the past few decades, a situation made worse by the economic chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I want to tell you that everything is not okay,” O’Toole’s said, echoing a line that was in a recent Conservative advertisement.

He said Canadian workers used to be able to expect full-time employment, a steady salary and a pension, but that now feels like a “bygone era.”

“Do we really want a nation of Uber drivers?” he asks. “Do we really want to abandon a generation of Canadians to some form of Darwinian struggle? A future without the possibility of home ownership? A sense of inevitability? While some benefit, millions are losing hope and resentment is growing.”

O’Toole said the Conservatives recognize that during the pandemic, unusual measures are needed to protect vulnerable Canadians.

“We understand the need for deficit spending at a time of national emergency,” he said, and pointed to the precedents set by spending during the World Wars and, more recently, the 2008 financial crisis.

“This is not something I would support in normal times, but these aren’t normal times” he said. “We are facing more than a health crisis. We are facing the greatest economic crisis of our lifetime.”

But he warned the Liberals are attempting to use this crisis to “launch a risky experiment with our economy,” moving Canada sharply to the left. “Exploiting understandable concerns for the environment, they want to implement vast green energy experiments,” he said.

O’Toole’s concluding section of the speech argued that political, financial and business elites have been insulated from economic turmoil as they steadily let China take over more manufacturing jobs.

“We made a mistake in allowing ourselves to de-industrialize totally,” O’Toole said. “Thirty years ago, the Western world’s political, financial and business elite made a bet: we would allow China to have unfair access to our market while they protected their own… Once it became a rich and prosperous country, we hoped it would turn into a good actor, would democratize, take human rights seriously, liberalize, and play by global rules. We all know that this has not happened.”

O’Toole went on to describe China as “state-owned juggernauts, Orwellian surveillance technology, cyber-theft on an industrial scale, hostage diplomacy, and increasing human rights abuses within its borders, and increasingly within its wider sphere of influence.”

He said it is not in Canada’s national interest to let China manufacture supplies like drugs, masks and ventilators.

“So, I will say this: when the most efficient outcome does not align with our national interest, a Conservative government will ensure that the national interest comes first,” he said. “Free markets alone won’t solve all our problems.”

O’Toole concluded by saying that GDP growth is not the “be-all and end-all of politics.”

“We need policies to shore up the core units of society — family, neighbourhood, nation,” he said. “We need policies that build solidarity, not just wealth.”

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

OTTAWA – A broadcasting advocacy group is urging the federal Heritage minister to put an end to the seemingly “cozy” and “unacceptable” relationship between senior officials in his department and Facebook after emails show the tech giant trying to recruit policy workers from the government.

In February, Facebook’s Canadian Head of Policy Kevin Chan emailed Owen Ripley, a senior official at Canadian Heritage, asking him if he knew of a “promising senior analyst” within the public service he could poach, according to emails obtained by the NDP and first published by The Toronto Star Wednesday.

In his message to Ripley, Chan says that Facebook is looking for potential applicants for a “challenging,” “fascinating” and lucrative job within Facebook’s public policy team.

“I am happy to circulate to a few people who might be good candidates,” replied Ripley, who is director general, broadcasting, copyright & creative marketplace at the department and is currently spearheading the government’s efforts to regulate internet giants such as Facebook.

The apparently “chummy” relationship between Facebook and a senior official of the federal department that is meant to regulate the company is of great concern to FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting, an independent media advocacy group.

“FRIENDS is alarmed to learn of the cozy relationship between one of Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s most senior officials … and Facebook’s most senior Canadian lobbyist,” the organization’s executive director, Daniel Bernhard, wrote in a letter to Guilbeault Thursday.

“This revelation is especially critical as it comes precisely as the Department of Canadian Heritage was drafting legislation that would have major impacts for Facebook.”

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Of particular alarm for Bernhard is the fact that Chan told Ripley that he was open to hiring public servants who took a temporary leave of absence from their department to come work for Facebook. They could then later return to their public sector jobs.

“Incredibly, Mr. Ripley saw no problem with Facebook’s suggestion that these staffers return to public office after a short stint at Facebook, so that they could resume regulating the company that had just paid them handsomely,” Bernhard wrote to the minister.

“As the country awaits long-promised amendments to the Broadcasting Act that could have a significant impact on Facebook, the appearance of a cozy, undisclosed relationship between Facebook and senior officials in your department could undermine public confidence,” he said.

FRIENDS is urging Guilbeault to publicly denounce Ripley’s “unacceptable” behaviour and to publish a list of meetings between Chan and officials at both Canadian Heritage and his office.

“To clear the air further, it would help to quickly introduce legislation that ends special treatment for Facebook and their ilk, by ensuring they comply with Canadian law, pay Canadian taxes, and submit to Canadian regulatory requirements, just like any other company,” Bernhard’s letter continues.

In a statement that didn’t refer to Ripley directly, Steven Guilbeault said that he fully trusted the public service to give “independent” recommendations and that it was up to the department to manage any human resource issues.

But he also warned that public servants must always steer away from any real or apparent conflicts of interest.

“Public servants also have a responsibility to minimize the possibility of real, apparent or potential conflict of interest between their current responsibilities within the federal public service and their subsequent employment outside of government,” the minister said in an email.

A spokesperson for Canadian Heritage sent a similar statement Friday, saying that public servants are free to pursue professional job opportunities sent by stakeholders outside of government so long as they “minimize” the possibility of conflict of interest. The department did not say if any sanctions or issues were raised with Ripley specifically.

Guilbeault also reiterated that his government is “strongly” committed to taxing web giants and making sure their revenues were shared “more fairly” with Canadian media.

It’s a request that has been made for years by the cultural sector, news publishers and broadcasters as well as industry analysts, who argue that web giants such as Facebook and Google eat up a majority of the country’s ad revenue all the while paying little to no taxes, or fees to content creators.

According to a report published last week by News Media Canada, an alliance of major publishers including the Toronto Star and Postmedia Network Canada, which owns the National Post, Facebook and Google alone soak up roughly 75 per cent of digital advertising revenues in Canada.

“We will be announcing very good news soon, as the first step for a comprehensive and fairer digital regulatory framework in Canada,” Guilbeault added in his statement.

Facebook Canada did not respond to questions on Friday.

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

Canadians are being urged yet again to limit their contacts with other humans to prevent a resurgence of COVID-19. But while the second wave will require “weeks and months” of sacrifice, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed to be ruling out any repeat of the nationwide spring shutdown.

According to the latest federal modelling data, confirmed cases in Canada could exceed 8,000 daily by December if people maintain their current rate of contact with others. Expose themselves to more people, the pandemic will resurge even “faster and stronger.”

“We know what bad behaviour leads to,” Trudeau said at a media briefing Friday. “We know when people actually do follow instructions and manage to reduce their contacts and do the things that matter, we know that we do see better outcomes,” Trudeau said.

However, “We shut down our economy and our communities and our country in March, and yet the curve continued for a number more months, and that’s what we really have to remember,” he added.

“This is temporary but we have to get through it. We have to make sure that it’s not just, ‘OK, I’m going to hole down today and not see anyone, or hole down today, tomorrow and this week’ — we have to continue to engage in these behaviours, even as it becomes frustrating.”

The country has been able to avoid large-scale shutdowns because more is now known about the virus and how it spreads, said Trudeau. “We are able to do things now in a targeted way that is better able to prevent needing a very blunt instrument of a nationwide massive shutdown,” Trudeau said.

According to the latest federal projections, daily case counts of COVID-19 continue to increase nationally, the percentage of people testing positive is rising across the country, deaths are steadily increasing and confirmed infections are growing across all age groups, though they remain highest among the under 40-year-olds, the update shows.

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While growth in Quebec seems to be stabilizing, over the past two weeks British Columbia, the Prairies and Ontario all marked their highest daily case counts since the beginning of the pandemic, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said at Friday’s briefing. However, Ontario appears to be dodging its worst-case scenario for the second wave: although cases are still increasing, the growth of the pandemic appears to be slowing, according to provincial data released Thursday.

Nationally, the reproduction rate remains above one, meaning every 100 people infected are passing the virus to more than 100 others, “with each new generational spread getting larger,” Tam said. The epidemic dies out when each new case infects less than one person.

According to the short-term forecast, deaths could reach 10,400 by Nov. 8.

Early forecasts in April predicted Canada could see 11,000 to 22,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic, with fatalities easily topping 300,000 under the worst-case scenario, with no public health measures.

There’s been an increase in hospitalizations nationally — an average of more than 1,100 people with COVID-19 being treated in hospitals on any given day over the past seven days — but it’s below the peak of more than 3,000 cases a day during the spring wave.

The average age of death for people dying due to COVID-related illness is 84 in Canada; the youngest was 19, the oldest 107.

If Canadians reduce the rate of contact with other people by 25 per cent, the epidemic is forecasted to come under control.

“After Canadians worked with public health to hammer the COVID-19 curve in the spring, we had our first dance over the summer,” Tam said. Now, “some of us have lost our lead.”

“This virus will cut in anywhere and anytime we let it.”

Tam said people should keep to their household bubbles as much as possible and take “all the necessary precautions” if they have to buy groceries or pick up food.

Not everyone can stay at home. It’s hard to reduce contacts when people are working in low-income jobs that require public transit or living in congested housing. “Not everybody can keep to exact numbers,” Tam acknowledged. “But collectively we need to reduce contact as much as possible.”

National Post

Chief Mike Sack is on his way to Digby. In his pickup, skirting along Highway 101, it is two and a half hours of picturesque driving from his band’s reserve in central Nova Scotia to communities on the province’s southwestern coast, where lobsters grow plump and delicious in St. Marys Bay.

It’s a road he’s been on a lot lately, while his band, the Sipekne’katik First Nation, is embroiled in a stormy dispute with non-Indigenous lobster fishers over its claim of aboriginal right to catch lobster out of season, while others must keep their traps dry.

It’s not a great time for him to be away from home.

Monday is election day, when the 1,400 adult voters, about half the Sipekne’katik band list, elect a chief to lead the province’s second-largest Mi’kmaq community for the next two years.

“I haven’t had a chance to campaign. I haven’t campaigned at all. I’ve just been down there fighting for this, right,” he says as he drives. “But this is a big thing for our community, so I’m putting a lot of my energy here.” There are two women running against him, this time.

“I guess that will be my report card.”

While he is well-known in his community, most in Canada only recently noticed Sack, through the news and, for a certain demographic, online memes, both heroic and horrific, sparked by alarming events as the lobster dispute turned violent.

After a lobster pound housing the band’s catch was attacked, a van torched, and the chief himself assaulted, Sack, a youthful-looking 39 years old, walked over to speak with reporters, wearing a sweatshirt with a fish and moose logo and the large number 1752, the year of a peace treaty between the Mi’kmaq of Shubenacadie and the British.

On his head was a ball cap with a play on the industrial rock band NIN’s logo, cleverly changed to read NDN, meaning “Indian.” He understands the power of visual messages.

Sack told reporters that day, Oct. 15, he is sending a letter to the prime minister, calling for police to protect aboriginal fishers: “Does Trudeau care about our people? Does he care about reconciliation,” he asked. Those are a different kind of fighting words from the often-racist abuse thrown at him in the month-long dispute.

It’s a fight he watched growing up.

In 1999, 35 Mi’kmaq men were charged with cutting timber on Crown lands without authorization. They admitted to the logging but denied they needed permission. They said it was their treaty right. It led to a lengthy legal appeal to the Supreme Court.

One of those loggers was Carl Joseph Sack, the chief’s father.

“I used to cut for him in the woods as a kid. Their equipment was seized and their lumber,” says Sack. “It was the same thing — just wood instead of lobster, I guess.

“We’ve been fighting for this forever.”

Only it wasn’t the same.

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The lumber charges followed on the heels of a landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in a similar challenge, when a Mi’kmaq fisherman was charged with catching and selling eels out of season. That case, R. v. Marshall, 1999, accepted the centuries-old treaty that allowed the Mi’kmaq to continue to extract “a moderate livelihood” from its traditional trading activities.

The loggers were not as fortunate as the fisherman. The Supreme Court later differentiated commercial logging from fishing, saying it did not have the same tie to Mi’kmaq’s traditional trading.

The convictions were upheld but Carl Sack died before the final decision was delivered.

Sack came of age during his father’s treaty right dispute. He inherited his father’s fighting spirit and also his father’s businesses.

Sack became an active entrepreneur. He wholly or partially owned several local companies over the years — construction, management, contracting, excavation, seafood brokerage.

He was also involved in band affairs, serving as a band councillor on and off for years since 2004, and was first elected chief in 2016 — defeating the incumbent by just 26 votes.

This mix of business and politics didn’t always go smoothly. His companies did a lot of business for the band, receiving millions  of dollars in contracts over the years. Sack also lent the band money to help with cash flow, often with extremely high interest rates, which a financial audit released in 2014 called “questionable.”

At the time of his first election as chief, Sack had been under a cloud of suspicion. He was elected while owning a luxury house that was partially built with money stolen from the band.

An audit commissioned by the band found $790,000 of band money was unaccounted for between 2009 and 2012. The fraud was pinned on the band’s financial manager, who used some of the stolen money to buy property for a new house. He hired Sack to build it.

When police followed the missing money trail, they found Sack now owned the house. The manager was charged with theft, fraud, breach of trust by a public official and possession of stolen property. Sack was charged with possession of stolen property and perjury.

In 2016, a jury in Halifax convicted the manager. Charges against Sack were withdrawn, after he agreed to an adult diversion process. By Sack’s account, the manager hired him to build the house but halfway through construction couldn’t pay him. His lawyer arranged for him to take ownership of the house in lieu of payment.

While the prosecutor at the manager’s trial said Sack must have been wise to the manager’s schemes, Sack denies it: “I never knew where his money came from,” he says. By agreement, he paid what the manager spent of the band’s money on the house. Sack sold the house a few years ago, he says, having never lived in it. He called it “the house from hell.”

“I had to fight it in court and spend God-knows-how-much or I could (pay) that and it’d be done with. I had a hard time accepting that because I knew I did nothing wrong but, at the same time, I needed my life back on track.”

Once in Digby County, Slack visited the scenes of the lobster dispute and met with his fishers. Things had settled down by Thursday.

Sack hopes it stays that way. For him, this is how this ends, with a whimper not a bang. No more violence but no epic legal showdown, either. He doesn’t want to emulate his father’s plod through a court challenge.

“It’s going to take a long time for people to get used to it. People are uncomfortable with change, so over time, eventually they’ll adapt to it. They have no choice but to adapt to it.”

Sack says he wants to get home for the weekend, with an eye to Monday’s election.

“I don’t know how much I’ll get accomplished campaign-wise,” he says. He will do what he can before the vote.

Chief Mike Sack is coming home from Digby.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys