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An overwhelming majority of Canadians are upset to learn that Hockey Canada used millions of dollars in players’ registration fees to pay out sexual-assault settlements without disclosing it, according to a new national poll.
The poll, conducted for The Globe and Mail by Nanos Research, found that 73 per cent of Canadians said they feel anger that Hockey Canada did not tell parents and players how a portion of their registration money was being used. A similar number of Canadians, 71 per cent, said they opposed such fees being used to cover sexual assault settlements.
“Both of those are really big numbers,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist for Nanos Research. “Many times on public opinion, a lot of things are nuanced. There’s no nuance. This is very cut and dried. Canadians are angry. They’re very disappointed and they don’t have confidence in Hockey Canada.”
Seventy-three per cent of Canadians said they feel anger that Hockey Canada did not tell parents and players how a portion of their registration money was being used, a poll conducted for The Globe found.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
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Alex Jones ordered to pay $4.1-million in damages
A Texas jury ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4-million – far less than the $150-million being sought – in compensatory damages to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, marking the first time the Infowars host has been held financially liable for falsely claiming the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.
The Austin jury must still decide how much the Infowars host should pay in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Conn.
Jones’s attorney asked the jury to limit damages to $8 – one dollar for each of the compensation charges they considered – and Jones himself said any award over $2-million “would sink us.”
Montreal police kill man suspected in random fatal shootings
Two days of fear and bloodshed in Montreal ended with an early-morning police shooting on Thursday, after officers stormed into a suburban motel room and killed the man suspected of randomly shooting dead three people.
Abdulla Shaikh, 26, who police believe was responsible for the shooting deaths in Montreal and Laval on Tuesday and Wednesday, was pronounced dead at the scene after a police raid at the Motel Pierre in the borough of Saint-Laurent around 7 a.m.
The victims included a hospital worker, a young skateboarder and the father of a well-known boxer. Shaikh appeared to have had no connection to his alleged victims and he chose them at random, said Sergeant Audrey-Anne Bilodeau, spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec, which has taken over the other three death investigations from the Montreal police.
Mélanie Joly invites committee to study whether Ottawa knew of Russian threat to Ukrainian embassy staff
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said she would welcome an investigation into whether Ottawa knew before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine that locally hired staff at its Kyiv embassy might be on Russian target lists but didn’t inform them.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” she told the House of Commons foreign affairs committee Thursday, after being peppered with questions about a Globe report on the controversy.
The report said that despite the fact that the department of Global Affairs received intelligence confirming that Russia intended to wage war against its neighbour, and that Ukrainians who worked for the Canadian embassy were likely on lists of people Moscow intended to hunt down, Ottawa told Canadian embassy officials to withhold this information.
In a statement released later via Twitter Thursday, Ms. Joly said she would invite the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) to study the matter. The organization’s reports are sent to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Prime Minister has the ability to redact information for national-security reasons.
Read more:
- Up to 225 Canadian soldiers heading to U.K. to train Ukrainian soldiers
- For the wife of Azov Regiment commander, a life upended as she faces uncertainty about husband’s fate
- Analysis: Chaos is the Kremlin’s ally in its standoff with the West
- Opinion: Parliamentary hearings on the turbine at centre of gas dispute might tickle Vladimir Putin’s icy heart
Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop
Also on our radar
U.S. declares monkeypox outbreak a public-health emergency: The United States’s declaration is expected to free up additional resources, including funding, to fight the disease as the U.S. government has come under pressure for its handling of the outbreak.
- The monkeypox outbreak, explained: Spread, symptoms, vaccines and more
Brittney Griner faces nine-year prison sentence: A Russian court sentenced the U.S. basketball star to nine years in prison after finding her guilty of deliberately bringing cannabis-infused vape cartridges into Russia. Her sentencing could pave the way for a prison swap that would include the 31-year-old athlete and the convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Competition watchdog’s concerns about Freedom Mobile deal ‘incomprehensible,’ Quebecor CEO says: The Competition Bureau’s argument that selling Freedom Mobile would not effectively address competitive concerns about the proposed Rogers-Shaw merger doesn’t make much sense to Pierre Karl Péladeau, who said the wireless carrier will be “much weaker” if Shaw continues to run it.
For Ukraine’s landmarks, Russian bombs and resentment of Soviet architecture are a double threat: With its assault on Ukraine, Russia is challenging the very existence of a Ukrainian culture and nation. But even before the conflict, Ukrainians were debating how to think of their own history and of buildings from the Soviet era, writes The Globe’s architecture critic Alex Bozikovic.
Morning markets
European equities slipped slightly today but were still set for a weekly gain, while traders waited for U.S. jobs data due later in the session to give clues as to the health of the world’s largest economy.
Asian shares rose overnight, with Japan’s Nikkei gaining 0.83 per cent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng adding 0.14 per cent. But at 0823 GMT the STOXX 600 was down 0.1 per cent, France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX were flat. London’s FTSE 100 was down 0.2 per cent.
Oil rose, recovering after the previous session saw prices hit their lowest levels since February. Concerns about supply shortages were enough to cancel out fears of weakening fuel demand.
What everyone’s talking about
A dangerous rage is sweeping the land
“Social media and the internet broadly have become cesspools of hate, and when you wallow in such toxic waters it is easy to become intoxicated by anger and bitterness. People feed off of one another, too, so it doesn’t take long before you have a mob organizing to disrupt one of the Prime Minister’s public appearances, or to occupy the nation’s capital as the so-called freedom convoy did earlier this year.” - Gary Mason
Emergency departments are in crisis. Supporting nurses must be our immediate priority
“We need to reverse the alarming trend toward the ‘uberfication’ of nursing, as we lose skilled colleagues to private agencies and casual lines of work. Those who stay need to have their commitment and sacrifice rewarded financially. Emergency-department nurses are highly skilled. That must be recognized and properly remunerated.” - Dr. Tahara Bhate and Dr. Kevin Wasko
Today’s editorial cartoon
David ParkinsDavid Parkins/The Globe and Mail
Living better
Four airport survival tips for August travel
If you’re travelling through Pearson or another delays-plagued transport hub, don’t bother arriving super early at the airport for your flight. Staffing shortages mean no one will be checking you in any earlier than the customary two hours (for domestic flights) or three hours (for international routes) before departure, says The Globe’s Erica Alini.
Still, she advises arriving 15-20 minutes before check-in begins – that time can make all the difference between breezing through your baggage drop and a long, slow line in front of you.
Moment in time: Aug. 5, 1928
Ethel Catherwood of Canada, winner of a gold medal in the women's high jump event at the IXth Summer Olympic Games, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1928.Library and Archives Canada via CP
In 1928, for the first time in Olympic history, women were allowed to compete in track and field events at the Amsterdam Games. Canada’s six female athletes stormed to the unofficial team title, earning the sobriquet “the Matchless Six.” One of them was 20-year-old Ethel Catherwood, a high-jump phenomenon who honed her scissor kick in her Saskatoon backyard. In Amsterdam, Catherwood cleared the bar at 1.6 metres on a cold, blustery day, taking the gold. She became an overnight sensation, feted across Canada for her Olympic feat. But her celebrity weighed heavily on the young woman, especially the demands and expectations that came with being an elite athlete – not to mention the media’s fixation on her beauty. When she failed to qualify for the Canadian team because of an injury sustained at the 1931 national championships, she turned her back on Canada and athletics and moved to the United States, where she died in relative obscurity in 1987. To this day, she is the only Canadian woman to win a gold medal in an individual track and field event at the Olympics. Bill Waiser
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