Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
Neil Doef, a 17-year-old from Smiths Falls, Ont., was a few shifts into the biggest hockey game of his life when he crashed headfirst into the boards. It was December, 2014, and Doef had been chosen to represent Team Canada East at the World Junior A Challenge, a top international tournament. The force of the collision crushed part of his spine, leaving him with extensive nerve damage below the waist and a left leg that remains mostly paralyzed.
That was eight years ago. Since then, Doef and his family have been fighting Hockey Canada for money to help pay his medical bills, including the future costs expected from a lifetime of paralysis. When the family sought help from Hockey Canada through the insurance coverage players pay for in their registration fees, they were blocked.
With the drumbeat of revelations about Hockey Canada this year – including millions of dollars spent to settle sexual assault claims, financial reserves totalling more than $143-million and vast sums of money held in obscure funds that are not fully disclosed – Doef and other injured players wonder why they have been refused help.
Read more:
- Ken Dryden: Dear Hockey Canada, the game belongs to those who play it
- Kirsty Duncan: Canada needs a countrywide sports inquiry
- Norm O’Reilly and Rick Burton: Hockey Canada must face its sins – but how does the organization rebuild?
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Ottawa vows to cut mining red tape as Canada risks falling behind in global critical minerals race
Ottawa is vowing to cut red tape in the mining industry to move large resource projects along faster after facing heavy criticism that Canada risks being left behind in the global scramble to secure critical minerals.
In the federal government’s long-awaited critical minerals strategy unveiled on Friday, Ottawa acknowledged that getting a Canadian critical mineral mine into production can take up to 25 years. That is far slower than other international mining jurisdictions that Canada is competing against, such as Australia.
Ottawa says it will attempt to harmonize, co-ordinate, and streamline the permitting and environmental review process, so as to avoid the duplication that often happens when both the federal and provincial government are involved.
Read more:
- Canada promises to toughen up scrutiny of foreign investment, citing national security fears
- Critical minerals hype doesn’t match reality in Canada, University of Calgary report warns
- Ottawa approves new Ontario critical minerals mine in bid to claw back Russian dominance in palladium
Inside the power struggles and staff turmoil at Canada’s National Gallery
The issues at the National Gallery did not start with the recent terminations of four senior staff members. Rather, interviews with 10 donors and current and former staff members reveal that resentment and disaffection among employees have been simmering ever since Sasha Suda became the gallery’s new director and CEO in 2019. Suda soon embarked on a wholesale reimagining intended to improve Indigenous representation at the institution and address a host of other historical wrongs.
Suda left a few months ago for another job. Angela Cassie took over as the gallery’s interim director and chief executive. And under her leadership, backlash to the changes has only grown.
The scale of the upheaval now puts the future of the gallery – Canada’s premier visual-arts institution – at risk. Some key donors have been so dismayed that they’ve made changes to their philanthropic plans, steering support away from what seems to be an institution in utter disarray.
Greg A. Hill, former curator of Indigenous art for the National Gallery of Canada, is photographed in front of his own art at his Chelsea home on Dec. 6, 2022.Sarah Dea/The Globe and Mail
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Premiers call for meeting with Trudeau on health care funding: Canada’s premiers are calling for a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about health care funding early in the new year as they demand more money for their buckling health care systems with no strings attached. Meanwhile, the Ontario government says it is notifying about 360,000 people whose personal information was involved in a vaccine database breach more than a year ago.
Brazil is out of the World Cup: Croatia knocked Brazil out of the World Cup on Friday, beating the five-time champions 4-2 in a penalty shootout to reach the semifinals for the second straight time.
Kyrsten Sinema leaves Democratic Party: Maverick U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, she said on Friday, just days after Democrats won a Senate race in Georgia and secured 51 seats in the 100-member chamber riven by deep political divisions.
Health Canada approves first bivalent booster for children ages 5 to 11: In a press release, Health Canada said that after the thorough review it has found the vaccine is safe and effective and that its benefits outweigh any potential risks when used as a booster dose.
MARKET WATCH
Wall Street ended lower on Friday as investors assessed economic data and awaited a potential 50-basis point interest rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve at its policy meeting next week.
The S&P/TSX composite index was down 22.12 points or 0.11 per cent at 19,947.07.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 305.02 points or 0.9 per cent at 33,476.46. The S&P 500 index was down 29.13 points or 0.73 per cent at 3,934.38, while the Nasdaq composite was down 77.38 points or 0.7 per cent at 11,004.62.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.37 cents US compared with 73.63 cents US on Thursday.
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TALKING POINTS
Most of the waste in government is on purpose
“Despite the cherished popular cliché about bickering economists, there is in fact a high degree of consensus in the profession about what counts as a ‘public good,’ the sort of thing people value and would be willing to pay for but which, for one reason or another, private markets fail to provide – a gap that must therefore be filled by government.” – Andrew Coyne
We cannot turn the page on our commitment to public libraries
“The last thing any public library needs is to be nickel-and-dimed and forced to deploy its already novella-thin resources to try to raise a few bucks.” – Marsha Lederman
It’s time Quebec started paying as much carbon tax as the rest of Canada
“The federal government seems to be trying to nudge Quebec into accepting a higher price more in line with the rest of Canada. But nudges won’t be enough.” – Gary Mason
Under the Trudeau Liberals, the CBC keeps cashing in
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, who have boosted CBC/Radio-Canada’s funding to more than $1.2-billion annually, and last month announced an additional $42-million top-up to the public broadcaster’s budget over this year and next, have allowed the public broadcaster to continue to stray aimlessly from its mandate.” – Konrad Yakabuski
LIVING BETTER
The best of 2022: From TV to theatre to music, here are The Globe’s top picks
Our critics sifted through the dearth of high-quality content released in 2022 to choose the best TV shows, movies, theatre shows and music to compile a guide on what is worth watching (and how to actually watch it.) An HBO show about a troubled young chef trying to build his career might be just what you’re looking to binge this holiday season. Cheerful! And if you haven’t already watched a certain Tom Cruise’s love letter to speed/himself in film form, what have you been doing?!
TODAY’S LONG READ
Climate change threatens to drown Egyptian city of Alexandria, destroy key farmland
Citadel of Qaitbay area in Alexandria, Egypt, on Nov 23, 2022.Aly Hazzaa/The Globe and Mail
Alexandria’s beach is covered with concrete blocks roughly triangular in shape; each has four stout legs and are akin to enormous “hedgehog” anti-tank barriers. They are hideous, numbering in the thousands, and have not only encroached upon the Citadel, one of Alexandria’s top tourist sites, but have obliterated most of the waterfront for kilometres in each direction along the Nile Delta coast.
The blocks, which first appeared in 2018, were installed to protect Egypt’s second city – founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC – from erosion as climate change raises sea levels and sinks the northern stretches of the Nile Delta. They were designed to break the power of the waves that can hit a coast with formidable force.
Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resource and Irrigation says that sea levels are rising faster than ever. At the same time, the land on which Alexandria sits is sinking at about the same rate. This slow-motion environmental horror show is a double-headed menace: It threatens to drown Alexandria – parts of the city are already below sea level – and to turn vast amounts of farmland in the Nile Delta, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the Mediterranean since antiquity, poisonous with salinity. As the problem increases, Egypt faces a long-term food crisis.
Evening Update is written by Prajakta Dhopade. If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday evening, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.