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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending the Canadian Security Intelligence Service after details contained in a new book revived controversy over its overseas operations and how it used informants to gain insight into the Islamic State.
In The Secret History of the Five Eyes, journalist Richard Kerbaj details a 2015 meeting where Richard Walton, who was at the time a Scotland Yard commander, told CSIS officials they were going too far in their dealings with an informant at the Syria-Turkey border. Kerbaj writes that the informant was a human smuggler who provided Ottawa with intelligence about the people he was ferrying into the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, including three British schoolgirls, who were aged 15 and 16 when they made the journey that same year.
He would not comment directly on the matter of the CSIS informant and the British schoolgirls, but he said Canada’s intelligence officers “are bound by strict rules, by principles and values that Canadians hold dear, including around the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And we expect that those rules be followed.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responds to a question following a minor cabinet shuffle at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Aug. 31, 2022.The Canadian Press
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UN report says China committed ‘serious human rights violations’ in Xinjiang
China’s mass detention of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity, the United Nations’ human-rights office said in a long-delayed report published late Wednesday.
The 48-page report constitutes a damning indictment of China’s practices in Xinjiang, where it has cracked down heavily on Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups in the name of fighting “extremism,” reports The Globe’s James Griffiths. Since at least 2017, this campaign has resulted in “serious human rights violations,” the report said, with “interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights.”
The UN human-rights office has been investigating allegations of human-rights abuses in Xinjiang for years. The report was initially expected last year, but was delayed for unspecified reasons. Beijing has lobbied heavily both behind the scenes and in public to prevent its release.
Canada’s economic growth lags expectations, but unlikely to deter another big BoC rate hike
Canada’s economic growth wasn’t as strong as expected in the second quarter and appears to have decelerated in July, signs that rising interest rates are cooling economic activity sooner than many forecasters anticipated.
Softening growth, however, is unlikely to steer the Bank of Canada away from another oversized interest rate hike when it makes its monetary policy decision next week, economists said.
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Also on our radar
Edmonton cancels art installation over fears it may be perceived as celebrating colonialism: Artist Ken Lum’s The Buffalo and the Buffalo Fur Trader was supposed to be installed on the Walterdale Bridge, but the artwork has been in storage – and the city is now planning to remove it from its public art collection.
Families of Israeli athletes killed at 1972 Olympics reach compensation deal: Germany has reached an agreement with the families of 11 Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian attackers at the 1972 Games in Munich. The families had threatened to boycott a 50-year anniversary ceremony organized by German authorities because they said the amount they had been offered was too low.
Government considering boost in security funding for MPs: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said while it’s been a point of pride for Canadians to see their politicians out and about without security details, the growing bitterness of political debate is changing the landscape. Trudeau’s remarks were made after he announced a minor cabinet shuffle that saw two ministers trade posts.
Ontario drops five-day COVID-19 isolation: Under the new guidelines, anyone experiencing cough, fever, a runny nose or an upset stomach – with or without a positive COVID-19 test – should stay home until any fever is gone and any other symptoms have been improving for 24 hours, or 48 hours in the case of gastrointestinal symptoms.
- Opinion: The pandemic isn’t over, and ending Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table won’t help matters
Serena Williams advances to third round: Williams eliminated No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the U.S. Open’s second round to ensure that she will play at least one more singles match at what she’s hinted will be the last tournament of her remarkable career.
Morning markets
World stocks slide: September got off to a bumpy start as persistent worries about rising global interest rates and recessions hounded stock and bond markets on Thursday and drove the safe-haven U.S. dollar to a 24-year high against the yen. Shortly after 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 1.53 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 slid 1.56 per cent and 1.55 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed down 1.53 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.79 per cent. New York futures were negative. The Canadian dollar was trading at 75.91 US cents.
What everyone’s talking about
The Ford government is betting Ontarians won’t care about relocating seniors without their consent
“...The government is wading over morally (and potentially legally) treacherous waters by ramming through legislation that effectively tells seniors – those who are capable of informed consent – that their opinions don’t matter. But perhaps the government has reasoned that these waters are not politically treacherous, given the public’s ephemeral concern for seniors’ welfare during the pandemic, which yielded to other matters as the months and years dragged on.” - Robyn Urback
When whataboutery takes the place of moral judgment
“...It takes a certain moral obtuseness, in the wake of an apprehended assault on a public figure, to focus not on the incident itself, or even on media treatment of it, but on media treatment of a range of wholly unconnected events, some of them years past. When that obsession leads some on the right to refuse even to condemn the assault itself, something has gone very wrong.” - Andrew Coyne
In its handling of Lisa LaFlamme’s departure, Bell Media brings a sword to social-media gunfight
“The Bell executives didn’t stand a chance. It took four days – four excruciating days of not talking to the press on the record – before Wade Oosterman, the president of Bell Media, and Karine Moses, the senior vice-president of content development and news, tried the same straight-to-the-people route as LaFlamme, extruding a tortured statement about corporate regret that was posted to the Bell Media PR Twitter account (11,700 followers). The online hordes ate them alive.” - Simon Houpt
Today’s editorial cartoon
David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
Living better
Should retirees defer OAS pension payments until age 70? That depends if you think inflation is here to stay
If you believe that higher inflation is sticking around or at least more likely to come roaring back in the future, Frederick Vettese, the former chief actuary at Morneau Shepell, strongly advises deferring both CPP and OAS pensions. But he has two caveats.
Moment in time: Sept. 1, 2004
Chechen rebels attack school in Beslan
A relative of a victim in the town of Beslan, in southern Russia, grieves at a cemetery in Beslan, Oct. 13, 2004.ALEXANDER NATRUSKIN/Reuters
The first day of school will always be a day of mourning in the southern Russian town of Beslan. On this day in 2004, a group of extremists from nearby Chechnya – enraged by the brutal tactics the Russian army used to control their home region – charged into School No. 1 in Beslan and took all 1,100 people inside, including some 777 children, hostage. The gunmen demanded a complete Russian withdrawal from Chechnya, a condition Russian President Vladimir Putin was never going to accept. For the next two days, the hostages were kept in the school’s gymnasium with nothing to eat. They were forced to drink their own urine. Following a mysterious explosion on the morning of Sept. 3, Russian special forces stormed the school. When the shooting stopped, 334 hostages were dead, including 186 children. All 31 Chechens were also killed. The Mothers of Beslan, a group founded in the wake of the tragedy, has spent the past 18 years demanding answers about how the gunmen were allowed to reach Beslan. They also want to know who ordered an all-out attack on the school with so many parents, teachers and children still inside. Those answers have never come. - Mark MacKinnon
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