Good morning,
These are the top stories:
CannTrust’s CEO and chairman have left the company
The Canadian marijuana company says it has fired CEO Peter Aceto “with cause” and forced the resignation of chairman Eric Paul amid a deepening scandal over cannabis plants being grown in unlicensed rooms. These decisions come after an investigation conducted by a special committee of CannTrust’s board.
Earlier this week, reporting by The Globe and Mail detailed internal e-mails that showed that the pair and other CannTrust officials had been made aware of breaches of Health Canada regulations at a Southern Ontario growing facility in November, 2018, seven months before the regulator uncovered the illegal practice.
CannTrust said it had made a voluntary disclosure to Health Canada based on yesterday’s new information, and will “fully cooperate with the regulator in an open and transparent manner to resolve these matters fully and expeditiously.” Director Robert Marcovitch will assume the role of interim CEO.
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Review panel backs Teck Frontier mine despite environmental impact
A joint federal-Alberta review panel is recommending approval of Teck Resources’s proposed Frontier oil sands mine, despite finding it would have serious environmental impact and might make it difficult for Canada to meet its climate-change commitments.
In a report released late Thursday, the joint review panel said that the jobs and economic benefits from the oil sands mine outweigh the environmental impact, which include destruction of wetland and old-growth forests and threats to vulnerable species such as lynx, caribou and one of Canada’s few remaining wild bison herds, and major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
The panel’s recommendation raises a new political challenge for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the government’s much-debated energy and environment policies.
Manhunt for two B.C. fugitives focuses on Manitoba wilderness
Police are combing through the dense wilderness of northeastern Manitoba as they seek two teens wanted in the killings of three people in British Columbia, deploying drones to scour the thickly forested area. They believe that Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and Kam McLeod, 19, are still in the Gillam area, more than 700 kilometres north of Winnipeg – hiding somewhere in an insect-laden landscape of dense bush, swamps, and forests surrounding the small town.
The feeling in Gillam is “eerie,” said resident Stephanie Linklater, with a police presence simultaneously reassuring residents that there’s a force looking out for their safety and reminding them that fugitives considered armed and dangerous are on the loose. Schmegelsky and McLeod are suspects in the deaths of American Chynna Deese, 24, and her 23-year-old Australian boyfriend Lucas Fowler, who were shot to death on the side of a Northern British Columbia highway and found on July 15. Four days later, the body of Leonard Dyck was discovered on a road 500 kilometres away. On Wednesday, RCMP charged Mr. Schmegelsky and Mr. McLeod with second-degree murder in Mr. Dyck’s death.
How Alabama’s abortion law is dividing the home of the civil-rights movement
After decades of careful planning by anti-abortion advocates, Alabama is going further than any other to restrict reproductive rights. In recent years, the government has imposed a series of bureaucratic hurdles on patients designed to make it as difficult as possible to get an abortion, as well as regulations on clinics meant to drive them out of business. Now the state is now trying to ban abortion altogether.
But pro-choice advocates on the ground say it won’t happen without a fight: The ban is subject to legal challenges, and a battle is likely to drag on well into President Trump’s 2020 campaign.
Looking for more information? We have a state-by-state guide on U.S. abortion bans for Canadians.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
More children killed in last four weeks than in all of 2018: In a series of attacks this week on a final Syrian rebel stronghold, based in the northwestern Idlib region, at least 33 children have been killed.
The fireball hunt is on: In the early hours of Wednesday, a meteorite shot toward Earth and landed somewhere, NASA analysts think, near Bancroft in Southeastern Ontario. Meteorite hunters are now descending in hopes of finding fragments of the space rock.
Canada gets some moral support from U.S. Congress: As relations between Canada and China remain tense, a bipartisan pair of U.S. congressmen introduced a resolution this week that sides firmly with Canada.
Heat wave sweeps Europe: Paris was one of several cities that experienced its hottest day in history. France’s capital felt temperatures as hot as 42.6 C.
B.C. wants feedback on its plan to ban, reduce and recycle plastics: B.C. is keen to make headway on reducing plastic pollution, and is asking for the public’s input in an online survey while they weigh the potential impact and public buy-in of the different ways of doing so.
Outside review clears Export Development Canada of CBC allegations: In early April, the CBC reported allegations that Canada’s export credit agency had turned a blind eye to improper payments made to get an SNC-Lavalin contract in Angola. But after a three-month review, independent reviewers “did not find any evidence that EDC personnel had knowledge of, or were willfully blind to, bribery and corruption.”
Canada urged to condemn Egyptian cabinet minister’s remarks: After Nabila Makram told a Toronto community gathering that any critics of Egypt would be “sliced up,” Canadian-Egyptian groups are urging the federal government to condemn what they interpreted as a threat to outspoken expatriates.
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks mixed
European stocks staged a tentative recovery on Friday as solid earnings at several U.S. companies helped investors overcome the disappointment of the European Central Bank’s failure to deliver immediate policy easing. Tokyo’s Nikkei was down 0.4 per cent and Hong Kong’s Hang Send 0.6 per cent, while the Shanghai Composite was up 0.2 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were all higher by 0.3 per cent to 0.4 per cent at about 6:15 a.m. ET. New York futures were up. The Canadian dollar was at 75.85 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Thanks to pussyfooting Democrats, Trump is off the hook again
Lawrence Martin: “The congressional testimony Wednesday by former special counsel Robert Mueller was a six-hour bore-athon, an old-news rehash served up by an inexcusably evasive witness who repeatedly let President Donald Trump off the hook.”
In seeking to muzzle ex-diplomats, Ottawa sets a bad example for Beijing
Konrad Yakabuski: “The idea that a senior bureaucrat in Global Affairs would ask former Canadian ambassadors to China to contact the department in advance of making public comments about Canada-China relations should send a chill down the spines of all Canadians.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
(David Parkins/The Globe and Mail)David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Why limiting our choices can make us happier
Forget about the power of positive thinking. Forget about trying to be happy all the time. Fact is, a lot of life sucks, and the only way to find meaning in it is to pick the few things that are truly important to you and work toward them while accepting some inevitable disappointment. That, at least, is Mark Manson’s message.
The Globe’s Dave McGinn interviewed Manson, who advocates against indulging out choices, and instead says we should limit them for a happier life.
MOMENT IN TIME
July 26, 2016: The aircraft called Solar Impulse 2 flew 40,000 kilometres around the globe with no fuel and one message: Clean technology is powerful enough to save the world. Two Swiss aviators, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, devised and piloted the solar-powered plane that landed on this day in Abu Dhabi, where it began about a year and a half earlier. The first sun-fuelled circumnavigation took about 10 legs, with breaks for mechanical problems and bad weather. The pilots took turns in the single-seat aircraft, breathing bottled oxygen in the non-pressurized, unheated cockpit. Made of ultralight components and coated in more than 17,000 solar cells, the aircraft weighed about two tonnes, driven by four propeller-equipped engines pumping out a total of 70 horsepower, or as much as an old Fiat. The Solar Impulse 2 appeared more glider than plane, with wings that spanned 72 metres and a narrow fuselage that trailed a silver nose. But the Solar Impulse 2 did not fail, soaring to 8,500 metres to catch the most sunlight in the day before descending lower to make it through the night on power stored in batteries. The point of the project, Piccard wrote, was “to influence governments in adopting more ambitious energy policies thanks to a spectacular demonstration that clean technologies and renewable energy are mature.” – Eric Atkins
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