Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
Pope Francis formally apologized on Monday for the ways in which members of the Catholic Church participated in a system of cultural destruction and forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples, calling the effects of residential-school policies “catastrophic.”
Speaking to a gathering of thousands of residential school survivors and Indigenous leaders in Maskwacis, Alta., he apologized for the “colonizing mentality” that oppressed Indigenous peoples.
Many survivors have waited decades to hear the Pope’s apology. Francis is visiting the country in a six-day tour that will include stops in the Edmonton area, along with Quebec City and Iqaluit. The Pope has called it a “penitential pilgrimage” focused on healing and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
Read more:
- How the Vatican encouraged the colonization of Indigenous lands – and enabled the Crown to keep them
- Explainer: Here’s what to know about Pope Francis’s ‘penitential’ visit to Canada
- Live updates: Pope Francis apologizes for abuses at residential schools
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Three dead, including suspect, after shootings in Langley, B.C.
Two people were killed and two others injured after an early morning mass shooting in Langley, B.C., a suburban community near Vancouver. A suspect was also killed by police.
Residents were awoken just after 6:20 a.m. by a direct-to-cellphone alert warning of “multiple shooting scenes in the downtown core in the City of Langley, with one incident in Langley Township involving transient victims.”
Rogers CEO says separating wireless, wireline networks in wake of nationwide outage will cost $250-million
Rogers Communications Inc. CEO Tony Staffieri said in a parliamentary hearing Monday that it will cost the telecom at least $250-million to separate its wireless and wireline networks, but that the company knows “it is the right thing to do.”
The massive outage on July 8 left millions of Canadians without cellphone, internet or home phone service for at least a day. Rogers says the outage was caused by a coding error.
Earlier on Monday, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Mr. Staffieri should have reached out to him – and not the other way around – to inform him of the service disruption, which affected the Interac debit system and 911 services.
Read more:
- Rogers commits to new testing and oversight to improve reliability of network after nationwide outage
- Opinion: Rogers still has some explaining to do about its outage and the fallout for its Shaw deal
RCMP head Brenda Lucki denies political interference in N.S. mass shooting during parliamentary testimony
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki confirmed in testimony Monday that she notified the office of then-public safety minister Bill Blair that the Mounties would release details of weapons used in Canada’s worst mass shooting to leverage the Liberal government’s gun control agenda.
But Commissioner Lucki said this assurance, given prior to an RCMP press conference in Nova Scotia in late April 20, a little over a week after a lone gunman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia, was not made under duress.
The commissioner said she was not under political direction from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to release information on the type of firearms. But, she acknowledged, she felt an imperative to get out more information to public as quickly as possible on the tragedy.
She did however confirm that she told subordinates the nature of weapons used was relevant because of a Liberal government promise to ban assault firearms.
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Hockey Canada releases plan to combat ‘toxic’ culture ahead of parliamentary hearings: Hockey Canada’s action plan released on Monday includes the implementation by the end of September of a centralized tracking and reporting system for abuse complaints. The plan comes a day before the start of the second round of parliamentary hearings into the organization’s handling of sexual assault complaints.
Russia’s Gazprom tightens squeeze on gas flow to Europe: Gazprom said Monday it will reduce gas flow through the Nord Stream 1 to Europe to 20 per cent of capacity as of Wednesday. The move halves the current, already reduced level of gas flow. Gazprom says the reduction comes on instruction from an industry watchdog to halt the operation of a Siemens gas turbine at a compressor station.
Ontario government expects return to extracurriculars when classes resume, Lecce says: Ontario’s Education Minister says the government expects students to have access to extracurriculars when they return in September. The government is in the midst of bargaining with education unions before contracts expire at the end of August.
Myanmar junta condemned for ‘cruel’ execution of four democracy activists: Myanmar’s ruling military announced on Monday it had executed four democracy activists, sparking widespread condemnation of the country’s first executions in decades. The United Nations’ human rights chief called the executions a “cruel and regressive step.”
MARKET WATCH
U.S. stocks see-sawed on Monday and ended close to unchanged as investors girded for an expected rate hike at a Federal Reserve meeting this week and earnings from several large-cap growth companies. According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 4.95 points, or 0.13%, to end at 3,966.58 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 50.70 points, or 0.43%, to 11,783.41. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 85.05 points, or 0.27%, to 31,984.34. The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 121.56 points, or 0.64%, at 19,104.48 points.
The Canadian dollar traded for 77.81 cents US compared with 77.66 cents US on Friday.
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TALKING POINTS
Amid hockey’s reckoning, let’s not forget that sexual violence is a health issue
“The alleged sexual assaults are certainly bad enough in themselves, but these cases also reek of profound institutional betrayal. When we have powerful and supposedly respected sporting, cultural and legal institutions acting like the boys’ clubs of yore, the problem extends well beyond the so-called ‘bad apples.’ ” – André Picard
Vladimir Putin is the most brazen, powerful and wealthy mobster of all time
“Many Western analysts have attributed Mr. Putin’s Machiavellian nature to his early career as a KGB officer. That’s true – but only in part. It’s also the former street thug in Mr. Putin, coupled with his long-standing connections to prominent Russian organized crime figures, that makes him such a singularly dangerous player on the world stage.” – Douglas Century
Our allies need more access to Canada’s natural resources
“Canada’s natural resources sector should be poised to displace Russian critical minerals, oil and gas in response to global energy security issues arising from the invasion of Ukraine. Our country houses the third largest reserves of oil in the world, vast reserves of natural gas, one of the most prolific nickel mining camps globally, is home to the world’s largest uranium mine, and claims vast potential for critical minerals within the Ring of Fire.” – Candace MacGibbon
LIVING BETTER
Do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day?
The origins of the 10,000-step goal are far from scientific. As either a minimum requirement or a guarantee of good health, it’s clearly wrong. But its usefulness as a goal is trickier to assess. One study from this year found, as expected, that people who took more steps were less likely to die during the study’s follow-up period. However, the researchers also uncovered some surprising nuances. Read more about getting the most out of your steps.
TODAY’S LONG READ
Return to coal or reinvent itself? The simmering feud over an Alberta mining town’s future
The community of West Coleman faciung East towards the proposed mine site of Tent Mounintain. (West) Coleman is one of five communities in the region that make up the Special Municipal region known as Crowsnest Pass. July 14, 2018Kyler Zeleny/The Globe and Mail
For decades, John Kinnear and his family proudly mined coal from the towering mountains that form the border between Alberta and British Columbia. As a local historian in the nearby community of Crowsnest Pass, he has seen the bounty that coal brought for generations of families.
But he also knows how the country – and world – has soured on the dusty black commodity buried deep within the Rockies, and he has come to understand that point of view. Recently, when he visited Line Creek, a Teck Resources coal mine to the community’s west, he was struck by the desolation left in its wake.
Everything that made the landscape distinct – the alpine flowers below the ridges, the rabbits and mountain sheep – had disappeared.
“Now all I see is shovels, and trucks and mountains being decapitated,” he said. “I’m quite unsettled by it all.”
Mr. Kinnear and the thousands of residents of Crowsnest Pass – a storied Alberta region of rum runners, communist mayors and cursed gold mines – have found themselves at a crossroads. The community is deeply divided as it struggles to decide the future of the town and its forests and mountain peaks.
On one side of the divide are coal proponents, who say the community needs the jobs new coal mines would bring to town. On the other side are locals who believe the Pass can solve its economic problems without mines, by leveraging the area’s natural bounty in a very different way. Kyler Zeleny has the full story here.
Evening Update is written by Hope Mahood. 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.