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These are the top stories:
Canopy Growth’s Bruce Linton amassed more than $200-million during his time as co-CEO
Bruce Linton was pushed out of Canopy Growth after spending more than five years at the company, but still managed to amass one of the largest personal fortunes in Canada’s cannabis industry.
Linton’s total wealth from Canopy comes to more than $200-million, mostly from ownership of a major stake in the company. Stock-ownership records show Linton owns slightly fewer than 2.5 million shares of company stock worth $131-million at Tuesday’s closing price of $52.49 and more than 600,000 stock options worth just less than $20-million.
Linton’s departure comes less than two weeks after Canopy reported a fourth-quarter loss that was nearly four times what analysts were expecting.
The cannabis industry that Canada seemed destined to lead when the federal Liberals legalized recreational cannabis last October is increasingly dominated by foreigners, Andrew Willis writes. The trailblazing Linton lost his job because his visionary approach for Canopy Growth didn’t fit with the predictable, quarter-by-quarter profits demanded by Constellation Brands, which dropped $5-billion last August to gain effective control of the company.
After Constellation’s investment, it was clear the company expected a management style for Canopy that was a little less flashy than Bruce Linton, Jeffrey Jones says.
Meanwhile, Ontario is set to get 50 more cannabis stores starting in October, including eight on First Nations reserves. The announcement yesterday comes as some of the first 25 of the province’s legal pot shops that were set to open April 1 are still not running.
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Ottawa is asking the RCMP to probe a Canadian lobby firm representing Sudan’s military
The federal government has asked the RCMP to investigate a Montreal-based lobbyist to see whether it violated Canadian sanctions by signing a US$6-million contract to seek funding and equipment for Sudan’s new military regime.
The Globe and Mail revealed last week that the lobbyist, Dickens & Madson (Canada) Inc., has been hired to burnish the image of the military council that seized power in a coup in April. The regime’s security forces later massacred more than 100 pro-democracy protesters in Khartoum in a bid to crush a protest camp near the military headquarters.
Three months after a military coup, Sudan is just the latest of dozens of countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia that have shut down the internet for political reasons, sometimes for a few days but often for weeks or months at a time.
Correspondent Geoffrey York reports from Khartoum on how these digital blackouts have made it increasingly difficult for protest movements to communicate.
Sudanese are protesting, demanding a civilian government, in Omdurman, Sudan. Photo by: Andreea Campeanu/The Globe and MailAndreea Campeanu/The Globe and Mail
Greater Vancouver housing sales have fallen to a 19-year low as the benchmark price dips below $1-million
Greater Vancouver housing sales fell in June to a 19-year low for the month while the benchmark price for a typical home dropped below $1-million for the first time in two years.
It marked the lowest number of transactions for June since 2000, when 1,985 properties sold.
The residential benchmark price slipped to $998,700, down from a record high of $1.1-million in May, 2018, and the lowest since $992,500 in May, 2017, according to the board.
With falling sales and prices, patient buyers in Vancouver are sitting on the sidelines, waiting for sellers to face reality.
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
All eyes on Kawhi Leonard: The saga of the Raptors player free-agency decision now involves stalking by air. After a plane believed to be carrying Leonard landed in Toronto from Los Angeles, a news helicopter followed the passengers’ movements through the city’s streets.
Ontario plans to make autism waiting list numbers public: Ontario’s new Minister of Community and Social Services says he is committed to making public the number of children waiting for autism therapy services. The approach, however, does not address concerns in an internal report that the government knowingly inflated the size of the waiting list.
Montreal unveils plan to respond to heat waves: With a potential heat wave looming, Montreal says it’s prepared to lengthen pool hours and send firefighters door to door to mitigate conditions that contributed to the deaths of 66 people last year.
No date set for Governor-General to move into Rideau Hall: Julie Payette has not lived in Rideau Hall since she took on the role back in October, 2017, because the mansion has been undergoing extensive renovations. She had previously said she would be moving in to Rideau Hall this summer.
Donald Trump seeks to put a stamp of military might on July 4 celebrations: When U.S. President Donald Trump takes the stage at the Lincoln Memorial to mark his country’s Independence Day Thursday, he will be surrounded by the might of the world’s most powerful military. Normally an apolitical event, this year’s Fourth of July celebration on the National Mall has been rebranded as Salute to America by the President.
Netherlands beat Sweden to face the U.S. in the Women’s World Cup final: The Dutch will play the United States on Sunday, back in the Stade de Lyon. The outcome ensures that for the first time since 2003, the tournament final will include two female coaches
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks mixed
Government bonds held near multiyear lows on Thursday on bets the U.S. Federal Reserve would cut interest rates this month and that other major central banks would embrace looser monetary policy, pushing world stocks to new 18-month highs. Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 0.3 per cent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.2 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite shed 0.3 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s DAX were up slightly by about 6:45 a.m. ET, with the Paris CAC 40 down marginally. New York futures were mixed.The Canadian dollar was at about 76.5 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Canada certainly can’t count on Trump bargaining for the release of two detained Canadians in China
Campbell Clark: “Mr. Xi was said to be personally behind the policy of punishing Canada for arresting Ms. Meng. And he has reason to listen to Mr. Trump since China and the U.S. are in talks to settle a high-stakes trade war. But Mr. Trump can’t be counted on to bargain for two Canadians. He is a famously inconstant ally, who has made looking out for number one a political virtue.”
Fair access to justice must be for all Indigenous people
Kim Beaudin: “Respectfully resisting the characterization that Gladue causes violence against Indigenous women is important. The disproportionate and devastating measure of violence experienced by far too many Indigenous women is a direct result of colonialism. There is no question that Indigenous women and girls have survived much violence, but they are now also facing the highest rates of over-incarceration in the country; yet another form of colonial violence.” Kim Beaudin is the national vice-chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.
Hong Kong is ground zero in a new Cold War – and democracies must lend support
Gloria Fung: “We must join the Canadians living in Hong Kong in holding politicians accountable on election day and throughout their terms in office. The extradition bill – the sword hanging over the heads of anyone who ever sets foot in Hong Kong – must be withdrawn. The people of Hong Kong are struggling to preserve rights guaranteed by international treaty, rights we take for granted.” Gloria Fung is president of Canada-Hong Kong Link.
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
By Brian GableBrian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
How a train trip across Canada helped me heal
When travelling solo, you’re with your own thoughts for most of the day, so having a strong mind is necessary," Sarah Pledge Dickson writes in a First Person Essay. "This is true about tree planting as well. My mind was made strong out of necessity, but that was the strength I needed when I came back to my hometown and found it in me to seek out the help I needed.”
MOMENT IN TIME
Henry David Thoreau moves to Walden Pond
A statue of Henry David Thoreau stands in front of a reproduction of his cabin at the Walden Pond Reservation in Concord, Mass. Photo by: John Tlumacki/The Boston GlobeJohn Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
July 4, 1845: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” So goes the best-known passage of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, a work that had its beginning on this date in 1845 when the writer turned his back on contemporary society in favour of a small cabin on a piece of farmland owned by his friend and transcendentalist mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. For the next two years, two months and two days, Thoreau immersed himself in nature, rejecting much of American life he found disgusting and frustrating, and striving to prove the beauty in living a simple life. His memoirs of this time, Walden, published in 1854, sold poorly, not winning its current status as an American classic until after Thoreau’s death in 1862. Despite the fact the book literally includes an explanation of his motivation, academics ever since have argued about his true reasons. Thoreau himself later described the period as an experiment, and felt it impossible to live such a nature-first style long-term. Ken Carriere
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