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These are the top stories:
Adam Capay’s 1,647 days in solitary: New details emerge with the lifting of a publication ban
The Ontario government has decided not appeal a judge’s decision to abandon a charge of first-degree murder against Capay. The publication ban has been lifted now that Ontario has consented to Justice John Fregeau’s ruling from last month. Here’s what we can now share:
- The 26-year-old from Lac Seul First Nation spend a total of 1,647 days in solitary, 11 more days than previously reported.
- Fregeau said the procedure for reviewing Capay’s segregation was “meaningless” and violated protections against arbitrary detention in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
- Fregeau faulted the Ministry of Corrections for allowing a term of solitary that was "prolonged, egregious and intolerable.”
- Capay was born to a family with severe alcohol dependency that seemed rooted in residential school attendance.
- When Capay was 10, his father put a loaded gun to his head and asked Mr. Capay to pull the trigger. By then, Capay had already been drinking, smoking marijuana and doing inhalants for several years.
- Capay’s formal education ended in Grade 7 or 8 after assaults on a teacher and police officer.
- In 2012, while serving a five-month sentence in a Thunder Bay jail, Capay sneaked toward Sherman Quisses, who was in bed, and fatally stabbed the 35-year-old in the neck with a pen.
- Capay’s lawyers conceded that he stabbed Quisses, but argued his mental state at the time will never be known because staff failed to do reviews of his detention or send him to psychiatric assessment.
- Within a day, he was transferred to notorious isolation quarters with a toilet that could only be flushed from outside the cell.
You can go here to read all the details from the lifted publication ban. Here is a look at a cell Capay was placed in for a portion of his time in solitary:
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Justin Trudeau agreed to Jody Wilson-Raybould’s terms for her SNC testimony
The Prime Minister has waived solicitor-client privilege, allowing the former attorney-general to testify about everything in the SNC-Lavalin affair except for her conversations with the director of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (for subscribers). That stipulation is “in order to uphold the integrity of any criminal or civil proceeding” against the engineering company. Wilson-Raybould is expected to testify before the House of Commons justice committee this week about sustained pressure to influence the prosecution of the Quebec firm.
“She basically got what she wanted,” said University of Ottawa law professor Errol Mendes, who added that the wording will allow her to discuss any conversation she had with Trudeau and his senior staff.
Trudeau’s communications director says the order also frees up anyone else in government who discussed SNC with Wilson-Raybould, including chief of staff Katie Telford and former principal secretary Gerald Butts.
Campbell Clark says it will be up to the public to judge the SNC saga: “There is no judge in this case. At the justice committee hearings into the SNC-Lavalin affair on Monday, experts dissected the principles involved. But there is a practical issue: There is no one to provide the definitive judgment that matters.” (for subscribers)
Meanwhile, SNC is facing new legal action as investors allege the firm failed to disclose in a timely manner the decision by the prosecutions director not to negotiate an out-of-court settlement. (for subscribers)
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has won a seat in the House of Commons
(Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
Singh won the Burnaby South by-election in comfortable fashion, securing 39 per cent of the vote compared with 26 per cent for his Liberal rival. The victory will quell talk within the NDP about Singh’s troubled leadership; he now faces the task of renewing his caucus as the clock ticks down toward October’s federal election.
And while Singh was successful in the Burnaby race, the NDP lost the Outremont riding to the Liberals in one of the other two by-elections yesterday. Tom Mulcair held that seat for the NDP from 2007 until his resignation last year. North of Toronto, the Conservatives once again won the York-Simcoe riding.
Three women who support the Coastal GasLink pipeline have been stripped of their hereditary titles
Another twist has emerged in the complicated battle over the fate of TransCanada’s planned $6.2-billion project running through northern British Columbia. The women behind the Wet’suwet’en Matrilineal Coalition say they were unfairly stripped of their titles by male hereditary chiefs who were behind the Unist’ot’en blockade, which made headlines last month amid a standoff with the RCMP. (for subscribers)
“Our system is broken," said Darlene Glaim, one member of the coalition. “Our hereditary and elected band council systems don’t have a way to come together to agree or disagree.”
A lawyer representing two of the Unist’ot’en supporters criticized the coalition as having “individuals who have improperly represented themselves as hereditary chiefs.”
The pipeline project has been approved by five elected band councils belonging to the Wet’suwet’en Nation, while hereditary chiefs administering their unceded territories are opposed.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Cardinal George Pell, the Pope’s top financial adviser, has been convicted of child sexual abuse by an Australian court. Pell has been found guilty of molesting two choirboys moments after a Mass in 1996. The 77-year-old faces a potential maximum 50-year prison term.
Britain’s control of its last African colony is “unlawful,” the International Court of Justice has ruled. The Chagos Islands should be ceded to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible,” it said. The decision isn’t legally binding, but experts say it could force Britain’s hand on the international stage. (for subscribers)
R. Kelly is pleading not guilty to 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse against four females, three of whom were minors. The R&B artist has faced sexual misconduct allegations for decades, and was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008. A recent Lifetime documentary detailed a “sex cult” Kelly had allegedly run. (Read Denise Balkissoon’s January column on Kelly and the documentary.)
Sweeping changes to Ontario’s health-care system are set to be announced today. The plan could see nearly 20 agencies collapsed into a single organization that would oversee everything from cancer services to organ transplants to home care. The changes come as the Progressive Conservative government continues to face backlash over its handling of the province’s autism program.
Tim Hortons opened its first location in China today as it looks to expand to 1,500 shops there over the course of a decade. While Canadiana branding will feature prominently, there will also be Chinese touches like a salted egg-yolk Timbit. Success there is far from a guarantee: Starbucks has operated in China for 20 years. (for subscribers)
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks slump
World shares took a breather on Tuesday having scaled a five-month high, while Britain’s pound charged to a one-month top on renewed speculation that U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May was being bundled towards delaying Brexit. Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 0.4 per cent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and the Shanghai Composite each slipped 0.7 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down by between 0.3 and 1 per cent by about 7:20 a.m. ET. New York futures were also down.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Barrick’s promises of golden synergies won’t be enough to snag Newmont
Eric Reguly: “Barrick Gold just traipsed into a potentially nasty battle short of ammunition. On Monday morning, John Thornton, Barrick’s executive chairman, and CEO Mark Bristow unveiled a nil-premium, all-share offer for Colorado’s Newmont Mining. Hostile offers generally come with juicy premiums or else they don’t work, and this bid is already not working.” (for subscribers)
A shot of reality for mandatory vaccinations
André Picard: “If we’re serious about mandatory vaccination, we need to put our money where our mouth is. We need to fund public health properly to do a job that requires an army of nurses and enormous resources. If we’re serious about keeping our children safe from the growing threat of infectious diseases, we will make that investment.” (for subscribers)
When it comes to sexual abuse, the Church is devil-may-care
Michael Coren: “They came, they spoke, they left – and nothing changed. Pope Francis and 190 prelates gathered last Thursday for an unprecedented four-day summit in Rome to discuss the church’s sexual-abuse crisis, and the result is very much business as usual. Nothing had been guaranteed, but the sheer optics of the event implied that something, at long last, might be done to respond to a circus of horrors that unwraps by the week.” Michael Coren is the author of The Future of Catholicism, and Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart & Mind Over Same-Sex Marriage.
LIVING BETTER
Nine ways your life changes when you’re raising five kids
In a First Person essay, Gisela Koehl shares lessons she’s learned as a mother of five boys. Here’s her view on getting ready for childbirth:
- First child: You practise your breathing exercise religiously. Hehe. Haha. Hoho.
- Second child: You no longer practise, as you know by now that it won’t help anyway.
- Every child after that: You demand to have an epidural during your eighth month of pregnancy.
Go here to read the full piece.
MOMENT IN TIME
Solar eclipse sweeps across Western Canada
(Henry Groskinsky/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)Henry Groskinsky/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
Feb. 26, 1979: Canada’s last total solar eclipse of the 20th century began at dawn over the Pacific Ocean as the moon’s rapidly moving shadow tracked eastward touching parts of the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana before veering north into the Canadian Prairies. By the time the shadow hit Brandon, Man., near the centreline of the eclipse, it was mid-morning and bitterly cold but also beautifully clear. As the last sliver of sunlight vanished behind the moon, viewers witnessed a 360-degree sunset while up above, in a deep twilight sky, the sun’s corona – its tenuous outer atmosphere – shone like a glowing wreath around the moon’s circular, black silhouette. The total portion of the eclipse lasted under three minutes. Thousands traveled to place themselves in the path of the midwinter spectacle, a pilgrimage later recounted in the opening of Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X. Eclipse chasers with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada chartered two planes from Toronto and witnessed the event on the airstrip of Gimli, Man. The eclipse then moved on to Northern Ontario, Hudson Bay and Baffin Island. Not until April 8, 2024, will so many Canadians have an opportunity to view a total solar eclipse in their own backyards. – Ivan Semeniuk
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