Morning Update: Canadian government surprised by security pact struck by U.S., U.K., Australia, senior officials say

Good morning,

The Canadian government was surprised this week by the unveiling of a new security pact between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia – one that excluded Canada and is aimed at countering China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region, according to senior government officials.

Three officials, representing Canada’s foreign affairs, intelligence and defence departments, told The Globe and Mail that Ottawa was not consulted about the pact. It had no idea about the trilateral agreement until U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made the announcement Wednesday.

Referring to the pact as the new “Three Eyes,” one of the officials said Canada’s exclusion indicates that its closest allies consider Ottawa to be a “weak sister” when it comes to standing up to China. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the officials, because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

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Trudeau, O’Toole point fingers at each over Alberta’s COVID-19 response, Liberals’ decision to call mid-pandemic election

Justin Trudeau says Ottawa will send ventilators to Alberta as the province grapples with what he called a “heartbreaking” COVID-19 situation, while Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was tight-lipped on whether he still supports Premier Jason Kenney’s pandemic response.

The reverberations from Alberta, where spiking hospital admissions for COVID-19 patients prompted Kenney to declare a public health emergency and introduce a vaccine-passport system, hit the federal campaign trail on Thursday.

Trudeau took aim at O’Toole’s previous support for the Alberta Premier. O’Toole, in turn, went after the Liberal Leader for calling an election with the pandemic still raging, saying the estimated $600-million spent on holding the vote could instead have been sent to provinces to fight the highly contagious Delta variant.

More election coverage:

• Voter’s guide: The major parties’ platforms, explained
• Analysis: Even in the middle of a federal election, in Quebec, all politics is local
• Activists and candidates campaign to ensure Indigenous voices are heard in the Commons
• Listen to The Decibel: A sit-down with NDP’s Jagmeet Singh
• Analysis: Pandemic election pushes parties to put mental health in the spotlight

Western University reveals new measures to fight sexual violence on campus as students plan walkout

The University of Western Ontario has announced new measures to tackle sexual violence and address its campus culture after allegations of sexual assault and the death of a student shook the community this week.

University president Alan Shepard said the school had let its students and their families down. “We clearly have a culture problem that we need to address,” Shepard said.

The announcement came on the eve of a planned student walkout in protest against what they describe as a harmful atmosphere at the university’s campus in London, Ont. Since the start of orientation last week, the university has fielded four complaints of sexual assault. Police also continue to investigate separate allegations on social media last weekend that several young women were drugged and some sexually assaulted at a gathering at the Medway-Sydenham Hall residence.

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR

Chinese Major-General worked with fired scientist at Winnipeg infectious-disease lab: A high-ranking officer in the People’s Liberation Army collaborated on Ebola research with one of the scientists who was later fired from the high-security National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The research conducted by the Major-General Chen Wei and former Canadian government lab scientist Xiangguo Qiu shows that co-operation between the Chinese military and scientists at the lab went much higher than was previously known.

Refugees in Ethiopia targeted for killings and sexual assaults that amount to war crimes, report says: Two refugee camps in northern Ethiopia, sheltering 20,000 people who had fled a dictatorship next door, were targeted for waves of killings, sexual assaults and other horrific abuses by two clashing forces in the war that erupted in 2020, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. Over a seven-week period, the refugees were repeatedly attacked – first at the hands of Eritrean troops, then by Tigrayan militias and again by Eritrean soldiers, the report said.

World unlikely to hit climate targets despite pandemic-related pause in emissions, UN says: The pandemic-induced downturn in economic activity wasn’t enough to make a big dent on CO2 emissions and reverse rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the World Meteorological Organization said. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed that assessment, saying the world is behind on the fight to slash carbon emissions to meet the goal of reducing global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pleads not guilty to alleged civil-rights violation: Appearing from Minneapolis’s maximum-security prison, former police officer Derek Chauvin pleaded not guilty yesterday to allegedly violating the civil rights of a teenager in a separate case, in 2017, that involved a restraint similar to the one used on George Floyd. Chauvin was sentenced to 22 1⁄2 years in prison for Floyd’s death in 2020.

Manitoba to welcome its first female premier: For the first time, Manitoba’s government will soon be led by a female premier, as the two candidates in contention for the Progressive Conservative leadership in the province are women. Shelly Glover, a former Winnipeg police officer and one-time Conservative MP, and Heather Stefanson, a former Manitoba health minister, were the only two who qualified for the race by deadline, the party said.

MORNING MARKETS

World shares steady: World shares steadied on Friday above three-week lows set in the previous session though they were heading for a weekly loss on China jitters and global growth concerns, while strong U.S. retail sales data buoyed the U.S. dollar. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.20 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 added 0.21 per cent and 0.07 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed up 0.58 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.03 per cent. Wall Street futures were little changed. The Canadian dollar was trading at 79.01 US cents.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

All roads in Alberta’s latest COVID crisis lead back to Premier Jason Kenney

“... The list of what Mr. Kenney has been wrong about is much longer. It’s about a Premier who was adamant this summer that health restrictions were a thing of the past, and labelled those who questioned him as fearmongers. It’s about hitting back at his critics then so hard he didn’t take a moment to consider whether they had valid points about the dangerous unknowns of COVID-19′s Delta variant.” - Kelly Cryderman

The Bank of Canada isn’t losing sleep over inflation, and neither should you – yet

“Memory is often short-sighted. Look back in time. The peaks of previous decades that this summer’s inflation rates rival are not random coincidence. All three situations happened as the country came out of recession, with a weak economy firing back to life, leading to more jobs, more demand and more spending.” - Editorial board

Will the pain of death actually be a wake-up call for unvaccinated Americans?

“... The United States now finds itself in a perverse scenario where death could actually be seen as a social good – ghoulish and taboo as that might be to acknowledge – if it compels those who are hesitant to concede to vaccination.” - Robyn Urback

TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON

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LIVING BETTER

How do I preserve the herbs from my garden?

Winter doesn’t have to mean relying on store-bought herbs or having to grow them indoors in pots. Instead, with a bit of planning, you can preserve herbs from your garden that will carry you through the depths of winter. Preserved herbs smell better, taste better and are much less expensive than the store-bought kind, writes food columnist Lucy Waverman.

MOMENT IN TIME: Sept. 17, 1954

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is published

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At first glance, Lord of the Flies is about a bespectacled fat kid – poor, unfortunate Piggy – being bullied. But the book, written by William Golding, and published on this day in 1954 by Faber and Faber in London, is much more. The story revolves around a group of English schoolboys stranded on a deserted island. (Spoiler alert: People die.) Through the boys’ struggles, the reader discovers themes such as autocratic leadership, herd mentality, disintegration of societal norms, xenophobia and fear of the “other,” also known as “the Beast” – and how the Beast is inside all of us. (In a boy’s imagination, a bloody pig’s head mounted on a stick, which the boy considers to be the Lord of the Flies, says, “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? … Why things are what they are?”) The book was at first dismissed by someone at the publisher’s office as “rubbish and dull … pointless” but has since sold more than 10 million copies. For generations, LOTF – considered one of the top 100 English novels of the past century – was required reading in Canadian schools. Golding received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983. Philip King

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