Good morning,
The three major party leaders spent the final hours before the election stumping in key battleground ridings, making their final pitches to voters in a short and divisive campaign in which no party has managed to swing momentum its way.
Heading into election day, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives were in a dead heat nationally, Nanos polling released on the eve of the vote suggested. Voter turnout and the extent of vote splitting – both on the left and right – could be key to determining who wins. In 2019, regional divisions in support allowed the Liberals to win a plurality of seats, even when they had a smaller share of the national vote than the Conservatives.
Monday is the last day Canadians can cast a ballot, but unlike many past elections, they may not find out who could form government that night. Just how long the wait for the results will be depends partly on how close the riding-level races are. Elections Canada won’t start counting the more than one million mail-in ballots received until Tuesday, and the agency has warned of other delays due in part to staffing shortages and fewer polling stations.
More election coverage:
- Election platform guide: Compare where the parties stand on top issues
- Editorial: They campaigned for 36 days. What comes next is up to you
- David Parkinson: Child care should be a key economic issue in this election
- Campbell Clark: Party leaders didn’t offer much in the way of inspiration or incentive this federal election
- How main party promises would affect different industry sectors
Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, left, and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau speak during the federal election French-language leaders' debate, Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021, in Gatineau, Que. Trudeau called the early election for Monday, Sept. 20, in hopes of winning a majority of seats in Parliament, but has faced criticism for calling a vote during a pandemic in order to cement his hold on power.Justin Tang/The Associated Press
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Concerns grow over vaccination status of workers at nursing homes amid uptick in COVID-19 outbreaks
A recent surge of COVID-19 outbreaks, fuelled by the Delta variant, in nursing homes across Canada is raising concerns that unvaccinated staffers are contributing to the spread of the virus.
The rising number of long-term care and assisted-living facilities battling breakthrough infections among vaccinated seniors underscores the urgency of ensuring every health care worker gets the jab, medical experts say.
Only three provinces – British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec – are making vaccination a condition of employment for health care workers. That means those who are not immunized against the virus by October will be suspended without pay.
Listen to The Decibel: How the COVID-19 pandemic took turn for worse in Alberta
Tax Court broke pledge to steer cases away from judge investigated for bias, legal observers say
Canada’s Tax Court did not keep cases involving Muslims from being adjudicated by a judge who was under investigation for bias related to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, legal observers say, despite its previously undisclosed promise.
The court’s Chief Justice, Eugene Rossiter, made the promise in a letter to the Canadian Judicial Council last October. He explained that the now-retired associate chief justice Lucie Lamarre would identify Muslim litigants or counsel “in accordance to the information on the file.”
At the time, the council was investigating Justice David Spiro over allegations he attempted to interfere in a University of Toronto hiring process. Before he was cleared in May, Spiro had issued a 91-page ruling in a case featuring two lawyers for the federal Justice Department whose names – Rana El-Khoury and Dina Elleithy – fit the category for which Rossiter had vowed his court would be on the lookout.
Calling the promise “bizarre,” legal observers and Islamic scholars said the court’s inability to live up to it highlights the absurdity of trying to identify Muslim names in the first place.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Pfizer/BioNTech say data show COVID-19 vaccine safe and protective in kids: Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said on Monday their COVID-19 vaccine induced a robust immune response in 5 to 11 year olds, and they plan to ask for authorization to use the vaccine in children in that age range in the United States, Europe and elsewhere as soon as possible.
France’s Emmanuel Macron to talk to Biden amid diplomatic spat over submarine deal: French President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to speak with U.S. President Joe Biden in the coming days, in their first contact since the diplomatic fallout over a submarine deal the U.S. struck with Australia. Biden requested the phone call, a French government spokesperson said, adding that, while there was “anger” at first in France over the deal, it’s time to move forward.
B.C. property insurers tighten rules in forest-fire regions: Home builders and property owners in British Columbia are noticing an increase in the number of insurers who are refusing to approve insurance policies for both residential and commercial buildings located near an active wildfire. That extends, in some cases, to fires burning 100 kilometres away. It’s a departure from historical practices, said Carmina Tupe of Canadian Home Builders’ Association of British Columbia, who noted “those are very large radiuses that sometimes can span an entire city.”
Amid soaring rental market, Berlin mulls bold proposal to evict landlords: Housing affordability is on the ballot in Berlin, where voters will be asked to make a choice unheard of in most contemporary Western democracies: whether to evict the city’s biggest landlords and transfer 240,000 rental units to public ownership. The referendum – a win for Berlin’s housing activists – will be held alongside Germany’s national and state elections on Sept. 26.
The Emmy Awards’ biggest winners, losers, quotes and Canadians: Streaming services took home the Emmys’ biggest prizes of the night, with Netflix’s The Crown winning best drama and Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso earning plaudits for top comedy series. Host Cedric the Entertainer, meanwhile, didn’t quite live up to his moniker, writes arts reporter Brad Wheeler.
MORNING MARKETS
World shares falter: World shares skidded and the U.S. dollar firmed on Monday ahead of a week packed with global central bank meetings, while debt troubles at property group China Evergrande dragged Hong Kong stocks towards to a one-year low. Just after 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 1.53 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 were off 2.09 per cent and 2.02 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed down 3.3 per cent. New York futures were lower. The Canadian dollar was trading at 77.99 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
This was no ordinary election campaign, but perhaps not ‘important’
“A year and a half into a pandemic that has killed more than 27,000 Canadians, with the country still struggling to emerge from a lockdown that had devastated industries, destroyed jobs, and otherwise frayed the national nerves, it was clear that a huge amount of undifferentiated anxiety hung in the air. But what would it attach itself to? Health care? The economy? The debt? The pandemic, still unvanquished, itself?” - Andrew Coyne
This crummy, miserable, not very good election
“When they weren’t offering to dole out our grandchildren’s money, these would-be guardians of the national interest were falling over each other to curry favour in the battleground province of Quebec. And when they weren’t doing that, they were taking potshots at each other.” - Marcus Gee
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Fall 2021 books preview: Pump up your autumn with these weighty reads
It’s the season of the Big Book: many of fall’s buzziest offerings are hefty reads. New novels by Ruth Ozeki, Alison MacLeod, Wayne Johnston, Gayl Jones, Anthony Doerr and Jonathan Franzen all clock in at more than 500 pages – and several are more than 600. Check out some of the most anticipated releases of 2021′s novel-packed fall book season.
MOMENT IN TIME: 75 years of glamour at Cannes
Actress Brigitte Bardot running barefoot along the beach during the Cannes Film Festival in France, April 28,1956.George W. Hales/Fox Photos/Getty Images
For more than 100 years, photographers and photo librarians have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography for The Globe and Mail. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, we’re looking at moviegoing.
Seventy-five years ago at the first Cannes Film Festival, one of the award winners was the romantic drama Brief Encounter. The world’s love affair with the event on the French Riviera, which opened on this day in 1946, would be anything but brief – its status today as the most glamorous festival of its kind is unquestioned.
Reporting on Cannes for The Globe and Mail in 1956, Frances Knecht wrote that photographers moved around in swarms taking pictures of all and sundry, and that “one rubs elbows with film stars at every turn.”
The star of Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman, Brigitte Bardot, shown above, was a willing subject for the photographers that year, running along the water’s edge with glee – just another day in the annual paradise that is the Cannes Film Festival. Brad Wheeler
Subscribers and registered users of globeandmail.com can dig deeper into our News Photo Archive at tgam.ca/newsphotoarchive.
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