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These are the top stories:
Jagmeet Singh defends Sikh rally attendance
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says that, as a federal politician in Canada, he has no view on the issue of Sikh independence but also said he is unapologetic about attending events in 2015 and 2016 that featured Sikh nationalists who advocated for the use of political violence. In an interview with The Globe and Mail on Thursday, he also acknowledged for the first time that Talwinder Singh Parmar was the mastermind behind the Air India bombing that killed 329 people in 1985. “I wasn’t consorting. I attended an event,” Mr. Singh said. “For me, I can understand the pain that people in the Sikh community felt, a community that suffered a violent attack by the military where thousands of civilians were killed at one of the most important places of prayer. I wanted to use the opportunity to get people, who feel marginalized, to do something that is positive.” Earlier this week, The Globe reported that Mr. Singh spoke at events in London and San Francisco where the creation of a Sikh homeland was celebrated. At one of those events, Mr. Singh accused India of “trying to wipe us out” but in the interview with The Globe he maintained that he’s always opposed acts of terrorism and violence.
Mr. Singh writes in a column that he will never ignore the pain that lingers in the Sikh community: “When I first learned what my parents and their loved ones suffered I reacted with both sadness and anger. But as I worked through those emotions and worked with others to find solutions, I chose to embrace my identity and work harder to stand up for human rights and to prevent the voices of the marginalized from being silenced. Unfortunately, some who have experienced trauma in the past have chosen to respond with acts of rage, violence and terrorism. While I can understand the pain, I have never condoned those acts of violence. I have been asked about terrorism many times, and each time I speak as clearly as I can. I condemned all acts of terrorism in every part of the world, regardless of who the perpetrators are or who the victims are.”
Margaret Wente writes: “All of this should be deeply troubling, not just to the party Mr. Singh now leads but also to the rest of us. A man who wants to be prime minister is up to his neck in the ethno-nationalist politics of another country and another time and place. He is deeply sympathetic to the more militant wing of his own ethnic community. He is heavily indebted – some say overly indebted – to the Sikh ethnic vote for his job.”
Ontario PCs overturn nominations, bar former leader Patrick Brown from running as candidate
Patrick Brown, the former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, is no longer allowed to run as a candidate in this June's provincial election. The announcement came five days after Doug Ford, a former Toronto city councillor, eked out a narrow victory in the party’s leadership race. Mr. Brown resigned as leader in late January and was kicked out of the PC caucus in February. The Progressive Conservatives also announced that new nomination races will be held in three ridings and the results in a fourth would be set aside as it is plagued by allegations of ballot-stuffing.
Trump boasts he made up trade facts in meeting with Trudeau
At a fundraising event, U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged that he made up information when he told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada, which it doesn’t, even though Mr. Trump had no idea if what he was saying was true. Mr. Trump also claimed that he later discovered that his assertion was true because an aide told him so. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the United States has a trade surplus of US$7.7-billion with Canada while Mr. Trump’s trade czar says the surplus is even larger, at US$12.5-billion. Canada is in the process of renegotiating NAFTA, the trilateral trade deal with the United States and Mexico. During his speech at the fundraiser Mr. Trump also praised Canada, saying “they negotiate tougher than Mexico.”
If you need to get caught up with all things NAFTA and Canada’s trading relationship with the United States, we have a guide that breaks it all down.
Lawrence Martin writes in a column that Mr. Trump is the ticket to a comeback for Mr. Trudeau: “Pierre Trudeau looked good, as would most any leader, by comparison to Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton helped Jean Chrétien in his fight against separatists with a brilliant speech in Quebec on federalism. The same Mr. Chrétien won a legacy imprint by staying out of George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Now it’s Justin Trudeau’s turn. An American president is his route to resurgence.”
John Ibbitson writes that Mr. Trump’s comments only serve to erode the Western alliance: “Donald Trump, the Manchurian President, tells bald-faced lies to his closest allies, and then laughs about it with his friends. To be honest, that’s not fair. Mr. Trump is not a secret agent controlled by a foreign power bent on destroying the Western alliance. He just acts like one.”
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BlackBerry and CEO John Chen agree to five-year contract extension
BlackBerry Ltd. has agreed to a contract extension with its Executive Chairman and CEO John Chen that would have him stay at the Canadian smartphone company through November 2023. Mr. Chen has been at the company since November, 2013, and has been tasked with turning around the former giant. Since his arrival, the maker of the once-ubiquitous smartphones has withdrawn from the manufacturing business and has grown in cybersecurity and embedded software. BlackBerry has been radically transformed since its peak, with revenue down by 95 per cent and staff down by 80 per cent. His base salary, short-term incentives and benefits will remain the same under the extension. The five-year extension could be worth more than $300-million (U.S.) if the performance-based incentives are met. The company’s stock price has nearly doubled since December.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Bewhiskered butchers: Scientists discover a dark truth about red squirrels
There’s something that you need to know about red squirrels: infanticide is a normal, if hard to spot, aspect of their behaviour. That’s according to research by Dr. Jessica Haines, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alberta. The discovery adds to the body of evidence where mammalian species practice infanticide.
MORNING MARKETS
Markets cautious
Global stocks wavered and the U.S. dollar eased on Friday as turmoil in the U.S. administration kept markets watchful at the end of a week scarred by concerns that U.S. tariffs could provoke a trade war. Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 0.6 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 0.1 per cent, and the Shanghai composite 0.7 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were up by between 0.1 and 0.4 per cent by about 5:30 a.m. ET. New York futures were mixed, and little changed. The Canadian dollar was at 76.48 US cents. Oil prices were set to fall this week, despite a slight gain in both benchmarks.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
How to fail at retail: the Toys ‘R’ Us guide
“The retailer was saddled with hefty debt in a 2005 leveraged buyout in which Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and Vornado Realty Trust took the retailer private. In recent months, the company’s financial burden went from seriously challenging to unsustainable. But the toy and baby-gear behemoth was afflicted by many other retail ailments. With rivals looking to get a piece of the sales its disappearance leaves up for grabs, it’s worth pointing out the other missteps that, if avoided, could perhaps have steered Toys “R” Us to an alternate ending.” – Sarah Halzack
Doug Ford is off to a bad start as PC leader
“It’s been more than a month since he announced his candidacy, and presumably longer since he started following provincial politics. Yet Mr. Ford has displayed little in the way of in-depth knowledge of the issues. The PC leader has since promised a new, streamlined election platform that will contain just ‘five points.’ That, too, is a worrying prospect. Having priorities is great, but there are dozens of issues that party leaders must take a stand on before asking Ontarians for their vote. We hope Mr. Ford sees his way to providing a detailed, costed-out platform before the election. The stakes are high, and voters deserve more than slogans and brash assertions that prove false. Low-information populists like Mr. Ford seem to be in the ascendance these days, but so too is a skepticism about what they can actually deliver once in office.” – Globe and Mail editorial board
Why the left and right should embrace a universal basic income
“Those on the left of the political spectrum have supported a basic income because of the impact it would have in the war on poverty, an impact which the initial Ontario data show is extremely positive. People on the right of the political spectrum support a basic income because it would allow government to become smaller by streamlining redundant government programs, which are much more costly to administer. From a macroeconomic perspective, a basic income will create a significant multiplier effect as people have more money to spend on additional goods and services.” – Vincent Gasparro
HEALTH PRIMER
Why it’s positive to be a positive person
It pays to be positive. A growing field, positive psychology, is delving deeper into how individuals can learn to become more positive and happy. The benefits, some researchers say, can extend beyond the mental and to the physical, by improving the immune system. Here are some of the actions that can help lead you lead a more positive lifestyle: positive pre-framing, smiling, encouraging others to do positive things and challenging negative thinking.
MOMENT IN TIME
March 16, 1867: Joseph Lister publishes discovery of antiseptic sterilization
Before the discovery of antiseptic techniques, surgery was a gruesome and often deadly business. Patients routinely lost their limbs and their lives to well-meaning doctors who saw no reason to wash their hands, and who took pride in using the same bloodied instruments and surgical gowns over and over. All that began to change when the British surgeon Joseph Lister published a paper in The Lancet on this day in 1867. Convinced that germs were to blame for festering wounds, not bad air, as the conventional wisdom held, Lister tried killing the invisible microorganisms with carbolic acid – a compound he selected because it erased the stink of human sewage spread on fields in an English town. It worked: James G., an 11-year-old Glasgow boy whose leg had been run over by a stray cart, recovered fully after Lister set his broken bone and dressed his wound with a piece of lint soaked in carbolic acid. Dr. Lister’s antiseptic sterilization methods evolved and spread over time, drastically reducing surgery-related deaths and amputations. Today, Lister is probably best known for killing the germs that cause bad breath. The American chemist who invented Listerine named the mouthwash in his honour. – Kelly Grant
Morning Update was written by Mayaz Alam
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