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Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne is directing Canada’s telecoms to enter into a formal agreement aimed at enhancing network reliability after a widespread outage shut down Rogers Communications Inc.’s wireless and internet services across the country on Friday.

During a conference call yesterday, Champagne demanded that the chief executive officers of Canada’s major telecoms implement a framework that would require the wireless carriers to assist each other during network outages. It would also include providing customers with emergency roaming on their networks and following a communications protocol to ensure consumers are not kept in the dark.

However, three telecom industry sources said such a framework would not have prevented or resolved the massive network outage that left Rogers customers across the country without internet, wireless and home phone service, because the disruption was the result of a malfunction in Rogers’s core network.

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A Rogers wireless store in Toronto is shown amid a countrywide outage of the telecommunication company's services, Friday, July 8, 2022.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press

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Canadian envoy in Ukraine summoned by Kyiv over Russian turbine sanctions controversy

Ukraine summoned a senior Canadian diplomat to hear Kyiv’s objections to a decision by Ottawa to release Russian-owned gas turbine equipment that had been stranded in a Montreal repair facility because of sanctions against Russia.

Russia last month cited the delayed return of the turbine equipment, which Germany’s Siemens Energy had been servicing in Canada, as the reason behind its decision to reduce the flow of natural gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

The turbine equipment could not be returned because of sanctions Ottawa introduced after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Those measures forbid the export of certain goods and technologies to Russia. But on Saturday the Canadian government announced that it would issue a special export permit to allow the equipment to be returned, despite the sanctions.

Ottawa warned not to share details of weapons used by Nova Scotia gunman before public release

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki warned the offices of top federal politicians not to share operationally sensitive details she was disclosing to them about a mass murderer’s weapons in a message she sent just days before she pushed her own subordinates to release that very same information to the public.

Commissioner Lucki’s decision to urge the release of details about the guns used in the 2020 Nova Scotia massacre is at the centre of a political firestorm raising questions about whether she is sufficiently independent. New information about the commissioner’s dealings with top federal politicians are laid out in an e-mail from April 23, 2020.

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Also on our radar

Domestic violence extended back generations in family of Nova Scotia gunman: Domestic violence extended back generations in the family of the man who carried out the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia, a document released yesterday by a public inquiry reveals. The summary produced by the commission probing the shooting describes disturbing episodes in the killer’s life that range from his mistreatment as a child through his adult diagnosis as a “narcissistic personality” whose rage could erupt in a moment.

Tories seek legal guidance in response to Brown’s appeal request: Federal Conservatives are seeking independent legal guidance after Patrick Brown’s high-profile lawyer gave them a weekend deadline to schedule an appeal of the Brampton mayor’s disqualification from the party leadership race.

Bank of Canada expected to make sharp interest rate hike: The Bank of Canada is widely expected to announce its biggest interest-rate increase since 1998 this week, continuing to push borrowing costs higher in an effort to keep inflation expectations anchored and to slow the pace of consumer price growth.

Sri Lanka may be on cusp of tipping out of China’s influence: With many in Sri Lanka partly blaming the outgoing government’s closeness to Beijing for the current economic crisis, the island nation may be on the verge of tipping out of China’s sphere of influence, wiping out billions of dollars the Asian superpower has invested in building an Indian Ocean foothold.

NASA releases first image from James Webb Telescope: Astronomers working with the James Webb Space Telescope have taken a very deep dive into the cosmos, as revealed by the first colour image of a scientific target to come out of the newly commissioned instrument.

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This image provided by NASA on Monday, July 11, 2022, shows galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach/The Associated Press


Morning markets

Euro nears parity with the U.S. dollar: The euro sank to within a whisker of parity with the U.S. dollar on Tuesday and world stock markets fell as the prospect of further central bank tightening and worries about the health of global economies unnerved investors. Around 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.13 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 were down 0.54 per cent and 0.40 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed down 1.77 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.32 per cent. New York futures were in the red. The Canadian dollar was trading at 76.67 US cents.


What everyone’s talking about

André Picard: “Instead of trying to bribe young doctors to practise medicine in a way that is untenable, politicians and policy-makers would do well to listen to the new graduates and fundamentally change the way primary care is funded and practised. That would benefit not only physicians, but their patients as well.”

Jeffrey Jones: “What’s needed now is a new CEO, of course – but, more importantly, a corporate culture change, so [Suncor] can live up to its promises to keep its workers safe and its plants running reliably. This will take time, money and, likely, more changes at the top.”


Today’s editorial cartoon

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Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail


Living better

Reading food labels shouldn’t be complicated. Here’s how to understand Canada’s new nutrition labels

On June 30, Health Canada announced new nutrition labelling regulations that will require prepackaged foods high in saturated fat, sugars and/or sodium to display a front-of-package symbol highlighting this information. The front-of-package “high-in” symbol will complement the back-of-package Nutrition Facts table. In the meantime, these tips can help you make sense of the Nutrition Facts table – and apply that information to your personal diet.


Moment in time: July 12, 2004

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Alberta Premier Ralph Klein announces in Calgary, Monday, July 12, 2004, that Alberta has paid its $3.7-billion debt.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

Alberta pays off its debt

The sacrifice from years of austerity had paid off. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, propelled into office a decade earlier by out-of-control deficits, brandished a sign proclaiming that the province’s debt was “Paid in Full.” Budget cuts, not oil royalties, had conquered those deficits, but the experience was painful. Never again, Klein vowed, would Alberta fritter away its energy riches. It was a turning point in the province’s finances, although not how Albertans might have hoped. With debt-free status achieved and oil revenues exploding, the Progressive Conservative government lost its fiscal moorings. The year after the mission-accomplished moment on debt, it announced $400 cheques for every resident – quickly dubbed Ralph bucks. That was the start of a spending spree, justified by a so-called infrastructure deficit, that inflated program expenses in the province, reversing the gains of the 1990s. When oil prices crashed during the 2008 financial crisis, Alberta’s deficit soared, and the debt piled up. By 2019, Alberta was back to where it had been three decades before: enduring painful cuts, and praying for just one more oil boom. Three years later, oil prices have surged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The province’s prayers have been answered – leaving it to resist the temptation to fritter away another bonanza. Patrick Brethour


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