Good morning,
These are the top stories:
Quebec dike breaks, triggering emergency evacuation near Montreal and pushing flood waters to record levels
High water broke a dike and triggered an emergency evacuation of about 5,000 people near Montreal, flooding hundreds more homes and pushing Quebec’s portion of Eastern Canada’s flood to record levels. Here’s what we know so far:
- Montreal, Ottawa and many smaller communities across the flood zone in Eastern Canada have declared states of emergency. Members of the Canadian Armed Forces have arrived in Bracebridge, Ont.
- Officials in New Brunswick are urging patience while floodwaters are receding. Nearly 1,000 people have evacuated homes voluntarily and 400 are staying in temporary hotel accommodations.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canadians need to talk about how and where to rebuild, and he didn’t close the door on using federal dollars to help relocate communities facing the recurring threat of severe flooding.
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California synagogue shooting follows attacks on places of worship in New Zealand and Sri Lanka
Authorities are piecing together the events of Saturday, the final day of Passover, when a shooter entered the Chabad of Poway, an Orthodox synagogue in Poway, Calif., with an AR-15 weapon. The apparent hate crime bears similarities to an attack on a mosque in New Zealand last month.
The attack is the latest in a string of violent incidents targeting synagogues, mosques and churches that has left places of worship on high alert and sparked renewed fears of rising extremism fuelled by the spread of white-supremacist hate speech online. If you missed The Globe’s weekend feature on the rise of white extremists in Canada, read it here.
Doug Ford government under scrutiny for growing list of patronage appointments
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s populist strategy in last year’s election campaign saw him rail against what he said was a Liberal government devoted to spending taxpayer money on “insiders and political elites.” But now, less than a year after the Progressive Conservatives won a majority, Mr. Ford’s critics say his government has already appointed a long and growing list of party loyalists or friends to lucrative posts.
Environmental expert Ed Whittingham resigns from Alberta Energy Regulator board over Kenney’s ‘tactics’
A prominent environmental policy expert who became a target for Jason Kenney during Alberta’s recent election is resigning from the board of the provincial energy regulator and warning that getting rid of limits on oil-sands emissions will revive international opposition to the industry. Ed Whittingham told chairwoman Sheila O’Brien that he “cannot support the new government’s tactics and policy direction" and would step down effective April 28, according to a copy of the resignation letter obtained by The Globe and Mail. (For subscribers)
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Hollywood studio looks to sue thousands of Canadians in movie piracy lawsuits
A Hollywood studio wants to sue Canadians for sharing movies online in a bid to win millions of dollars in legal settlements for copyright violations. Lawyers for the studio Voltage Pictures have already sued 4,000 Canadians, and if they can convince the Federal Court to allow it at a hearing in September, they plan to sue a further 55,000 individuals in one shot through a novel legal procedure called a “reverse class action,” hoping to extract payments of up to $5,000, the statutory maximum amount, for each claimed violation. (For subscribers)
Canadian views on immigrants, refugees hold steady, despite increasing political rhetoric: poll
A poll provided exclusively to The Globe and Mail by the Environics Institute for Survey Research shows the question of whether immigration levels are too high continues to produce a large gap along political lines. Seventy-five per cent of Liberal supporters and 70 per cent of NDP respondents said they disagree with the notion that immigration levels are too high, compared to 44 per cent of Conservatives. On the other hand, 49 per cent of Tory respondents said they agree that immigration levels are too high, with Liberals at 20 per cent and NDP voters at 27 per cent. (For subscribers)
Canada’s trade advantage with Japan could be short-lived
Justin Trudeau was eager to tout how last year’s Pacific Rim trade deal has been great for Canadian farmers as he hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Ottawa this weekend. Japan has cut tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Canadian farm exports – a benefit rival U.S. exporters don’t enjoy because U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017. Unfortunately, Canada’s trade advantage could be short-lived.
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks mixed
Global shares were mixed on Monday, but were aided by data showing profits at Chinese industrial firms grew for the first time in four months and a strong reading of U.S. first quarter growth data last week. Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 0.2 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 0.7 per cent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.9 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down between 0.1 and 0.3 per cent at about 7:15 a.m. ET. New York futures were down. The Canadian dollar was at 74.23 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Floods push Conservatives to agree on need to fight global warming
John Ibbitson: “As one year of record flooding is surpassed by another, the issue becomes increasingly political. Believe it or not, this is a good thing, because it forces Conservatives to take global warming seriously, and to respond.” (For subscribers)
The synagogue shooting in California leaves us wondering how to prevent another
David Shribman: “Until Saturday, it was possible to regard the Pittsburgh shooting – the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history, tragic in its implications, significance and human devastation – as something of an isolated incident. After Poway, a lingering, horrifying but consequential conundrum has emerged: Is this a turning point for Jewish life in the United States or is it simply a measure of life in the country today?”
Sri Lanka attacks: A grisly reminder that Asia is a hotbed of Islamist terror
Brahma Chellaney: “The Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka rank among the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history, and underscore the metastasizing scourge of Islamist violence in Asia. Radical Islamic groups, some affiliated with larger extremist networks, have been quietly gaining influence in an arc of countries extending from the Maldivian to the Philippine archipelagos, and the threat they pose can no longer be ignored.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
By David ParkinsDavid Parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
When it comes to weight loss, should you focus on diet or exercise?
A mix of diet and exercise is the best approach to weight loss. To lose one pound a week, for example, a 185-pound person would need to run for 40 minutes, power walk for 70 minutes or do one hour of vigorous weightlifting every day. If you weigh less, you’d have to exercise longer to burn the same number of calories. It’s easier for most people to consume 500 fewer calories each day than it is to sweat them off at the gym seven days a week. That goes for healthy eaters, too. Relying on exercise alone to lose weight isn’t sustainable.
MOMENT IN TIME
For more than 100 years, photographers and photo librarians working for The Globe and Mail have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. In April, we’re looking at the country from above.
James Studio (Niagara Falls)
Strong winds almost 200 metres in the air in early January of 1965 were too dangerous for a photographer seeking that historic shot of the U.S. Stars and Stripes and the new Canadian flag fluttering side by side above the Niagara Gorge. So a steeplejack working on the Skylon Tower lent a hand to snap a photo that encompassed the United States, the Horseshoe Falls and Canada. But just as the tower, the newest landmark in Niagara Falls, Ont., wasn’t finished, neither was the flag. The red leaf in this picture is the 1964 version, which would not get cleaned up in its design for several more weeks. The new flag, the adoption of which had at one time caused national acrimony, was officially proclaimed by the Queen on Jan. 28, 1965. The Maple Leaf forever. Philip King
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