Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
The latest developments in the war in Ukraine
A Russian missile attack on a café and grocery story in a village near Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine has killed at least 51 people who had gathered for a memorial service.
Among the dead was a six-year-old child, and at least seven other people were wounded, Ukrainian authorities say.
It’s one of the deadliest wartime attacks on civilians in recent months and came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attended a summit of European leaders to shore up support for his country’s fight against Russia.
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Next round in Rogers-Natale battle
Former Rogers CEO Joe Natale, who was ousted in 2021 during a high-profile power struggle in the telecom’s upper ranks, says the company altered board meeting minutes in an “egregious violation of ethics.”
The allegation is part of a court filing today in their continuing legal dispute. Natale has sued Rogers for at least $24-million for wrongful dismissal and breach of contract.
One of the key issues in the legal battle is whether Robert Dépatie, the former chair of the board’s human resources committee, remained a director of the company when changes were made to Natale’s employment contract.
The dispute between Natale and Rogers is a rare instance of a former CEO and a high-profile, blue-chip company openly going to war and airing their grievances in public. Neither side’s allegations have been proven in court.
Ottawa seeks to scale back outsourcing with new guidelines
Ottawa has announced new guidelines aimed at cutting back on the use of outside consultants, a move that is part of an effort to shave about $15-billion from existing spending plans.
Treasury Board President Anita Anand released a new “manager’s guide” for public servants who are responsible for signing off on billions of dollars in outsourcing and procurement each year.
The announcement comes one day after The Globe and Mail reported that the RCMP is investigating allegations of misconduct involving an outsourced IT project at the Canada Border Services Agency. The Globe report also said the agency received warnings about cozy ties between IT consultants and federal officials.
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Pledge on food prices: Canada’s five major grocery chains will offer some discounts, price freezes and price-matching campaigns as an initial step to stabilize prices, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne says. But he provided no other details.
John Tory fallout: The former Toronto mayor broke ethics rules in his affair with a subordinate and in voting on a council matter that related to her, the city’s integrity commissioner has found.
Governor-General apology: Governor-General Mary Simon has apologized for the appointment to the Order of Canada of Peter Savaryn, a veteran who served in the same Nazi-led Waffen-SS division as Yaroslav Hunka, who received standing ovations in Parliament during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit last month.
Behind the scenes at Laurentian: Michael Mueller resigned as chair of Laurentian Bank of Canada earlier this week as an act of protest over the abrupt termination of CEO Rania Llewellyn, two sources tell The Globe and Mail.
Nobel winner: Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, whose work tackles birth, death, faith and the other “elemental stuff” of life, has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature for writing that prize organizers said gives “voice to the unsayable.”
MARKET WATCH
Canada’s main stock index closed higher for a second straight day, buoyed by utility and telecom stocks, as bond yields eased back from recent highs. Wall Street’s three main indexes pared early losses to trade little changed before a much-anticipated U.S. jobs report tomorrow.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index rose 103.00 points or 0.54 per cent to 19,137.81. The dollar traded at 72.94 U.S. cents.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 9.98 points or 0.03 per cent to 33,119.57, The S&P 500 index dropped 5.56 points or 0.13 per cent to 4,258.19, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 16.18 points or 0.12 per cent to 13,219.83.
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TALKING POINTS
Toronto Blue Jays have a new historic flub to complain about as they’re eliminated from playoffs
“After Toronto’s latest headfirst swan dive into an empty pool on Wednesday, the Blue Jays have a new historic flub to kvetch about – that time Vlad Guerrero Jr. fell asleep in the middle of an elimination game.” - Cathal Kelly
Read more: Jose Berrios gets early hook, plan backfires as Twins top Jays 2-0 to complete sweep
By playing gutter politics, the Manitoba PCs deserved to lose
“When you are campaigning on not searching a landfill site where police believe the remains of murdered women were buried – and what’s more, when you turn that message into an actual billboard – what does that say about your party?” - Marsha Lederman
Fed up with career politicians? Mark Carney could be the cure for that
“He would be a source of economic credibility for the [Liberal Party] and could help restore its reputation on the world stage. He would signal a changing of the guard that the party sorely needs.” - Lawrence Martin
LIVING BETTER
Thanksgiving is so close, you can almost taste it. When it comes to choosing which side dishes to prepare, it can be hard to narrow down the list. To help you decide, readers have been asked to vote for their favourites in this bracket. It’s down to two: stuffing vs. mashed potatoes. Vote now and we’ll find out which reigns supreme.
TODAY’S LONG READ
Toronto’s fossil hunters are unearthing the history of the city
One of Joe Moysiuk’s more notable finds was a trilobite, an extinct class of arthropods. He estimates the foot-long specimen is 'about 445 million years old.'Supplied
Toronto may not seem like the ideal place for fossil hunting. Fossil country is out west, where more than 100 species of dinosaurs have been found in Alberta alone.
But Toronto’s many creekbeds still turn up surprising finds for urban fossil hunters. Joe Moysiuk, a paleontologist completing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, discovered his love of the past while picking through streams as a child. He would take his specimens to the Royal Ontario Museum’s fossil identification clinic where experts helped classify them. “They got me really excited about the things that I was finding,” he said.
Toronto’s youngest fossils are less than 6,000 years old and are from animals that still live in Southern Ontario, like beavers, wolves or squirrels. There are also extinct animals, like mammoths. The ROM even contains the only-known specimen of a caribou-sized deer that died about 11,315 years ago, nicknamed the Toronto Subway Deer because it was found near Islington station. Read the full story by Tahmeed Shafiq
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