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The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly in discussions on a plea agreement with lawyers for Meng Wanzhou that would allow her to return to China.
One source told The Globe and Mail that the Canadian government had been pushing for an agreement with Meng as a way to free Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, incarcerated in China.
In other China news: It is the first time Canada has come to the defence of Australia, its Commonwealth and Five Eyes ally, after circulation of a fake image on the internet of an Australian soldier killing an Afghan child.
Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, leaves her home to attend a hearing at B.C. Supreme Court, in Vancouver, on Friday, November 27, 2020.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
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Major challenges ahead of vaccines
Provincial governments have less than two weeks to prepare their first vaccine reception sites, putting pressure on provinces including Ontario and Quebec that have yet to release the full details of their plans.
Military and public-health officials expect each province to have its first sites ready to receive vaccines on Dec. 14. After the first doses arrive in 2021, the next task will be to transport and store the vaccine because it needs to be kept at sub-zero temperatures. But that is just one challenge ahead.
In other COVID-19 news
- Ontario, Quebec see COVID-19 outbreaks at workplaces climb
- Alberta’s oil-sands operations are struggling to contain COVID-19, with seven sites on the outbreak list
- Prairies have become a coronavirus hot spot
- John Ibbitson: The answer to people with anti-vaccine beliefs is to address the cause of their anger
- Toronto school closes after COVID-19 testing uncovers more than two dozen cases
A woman wearing a mask walks past the Peter Lougheed Hospital in Calgary, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, amid a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Mexico’s mass graves and the search for the ‘disappeared’
What happens when a loved one simply vanishes? In Mexico, 16 people go missing every day. The Globe’s team of reporters and editors set out to follow the families of the victims in their quest for answers. They started at a scrubby patch of forest on an old ranch beside Colinas de Santa Fe, which has become the largest mass grave in Latin America.
What they found is that the grave is an open secret, a bold proclamation meant to terrorize and intimidate. Read the full story here, and the backstory of how the story was reported by Stephanie Nolen.
A small altar with Catholic images, candles and the photo of Jonattan Rosales, was placed in his honour inside his mother's home in Veracruz, Mexico. January 17, 2020.Felix Marquez/The Globe and Mail
CRA auditors click follow on social media influencers and video-game streamers
The CRA’s assistant commissioner told MPs that agency officials are watching social media accounts to see whether paid endorsements and other signs of income line up with streamers’ tax filings.
“If you could imagine, people are paid to play video games online. So what we’re doing is understanding these different pockets of non-compliance, and then what works,” Ted Gallivan said.
More on taxes
- Toronto considers vacant-house tax starting in 2022
- Canadians support Netflix sales tax, more Facebook regulation, poll suggests
- Tax Matters: A simplified approach to claiming home office expenses for 2020
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
India formally protests to Canada over Trudeau remarks on farm protests: India summoned Canada’s ambassador on Friday and said comments made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over protests by farmers near Delhi were an interference in its domestic affairs and would seriously hurt bilateral ties.
Liberals table bill to implement United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People: Known as UNDRIP, the legislation would align federal laws with the foremost international commitment on the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Wisconsin Supreme Court declines to hear Trump’s election lawsuit: Two dissenting conservative justices questioned whether disqualifying more than 221,000 ballots as Trump wanted would be the proper remedy to the errors he alleged.
Banks face slowing trading, underwriting activity after boom in 2020: Even after taking significant loan loss provisions, all but one of the Big Six banks showed year-over-year growth in capital markets income when they reported fourth-quarter results this week.
MORNING MARKETS
Global stocks rise on OPEC deal: Global markets and U.S. futures rose Friday after U.S. economic data and a pact by oil producers to raise output helped to allay concern about Pfizer’s reduction of the number of doses of coronavirus vaccine it might ship this year. Benchmarks in London, Shanghai, Paris and Hong Kong advanced while Tokyo declined.
U.S. stock futures rose, rebounding from a 0.1 per cent decline in Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index on Thursday after Pfizer Inc. reduced the number of vaccine doses it might ship this year by half to 50 million.
Oil prices edged higher after OPEC and allied countries including Russia agreed Thursday to increase oil production by 500,000 barrels per day starting from January. They slashed output earlier to shore up prices as curbs on business depressed demand.
In early trading, the FTSE 100 in London rose 0.6 per cent to 6,531.46 and the CAC 40 in Paris added 0.5 per cent to 5,603.50. The DAX in Frankfurt was down less than 0.1 per cent at 13,251.20. On Wall Street, the futures for the S&P 500 index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.4 per cent.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Canada’s rapidly approaching fiscal crisis isn’t driven by the pandemic
Andrew Coyne: “Eventually, the bank will have to start to unwind this unprecedented expansion in its balance sheet or risk seeing inflation ignite. That should be fun.”
Scapegoating South Asian Canadians for high COVID-19 numbers is just wrong
Gary Mason: “The fact that the death rate from the virus is 25-per-cent higher in neighbourhoods with large South Asian communities should concern us all – our politicians and public-health officials in particular.”
Huge slums are at the heart of the pandemic – but not for the reasons you might expect
Doug Saunders: “Nobody knows how many people in Mukuru have contracted COVID-19. Studies of other large slums around the world show astonishingly high rates.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
The Globe 100 books of 2020 will be out Friday, Dec. 4. We’ve been publishing conversations between authors about the different genres on the list.
Globe 100 conversations: Margaret Atwood and Ian Williams talk about what, and who, poetry is really about
They gave us their poetry first. Margaret Atwood had published several books of poetry before her debut novel, The Edible Woman. Ian Williams was a Griffin Prize-nominated poet before publishing his debut novel, Reproduction, which won the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Both have new books of poetry out this fall. The Globe and Mail’s Marsha Lederman talked with them.
- The Globe Up Close podcast episode about the Globe 100 is now available.
- Bonus podcast: Listen to Stress Test. Why are young Canadians leaving the cities they love?
Margaret Atwood & Ian WilliamsSalini Perera/The Globe and Mail
MOMENT IN TIME: Dec. 4, 1970
James Cross released, FLQ kidnappers fly to Cuba
James Cross with his wife Barbara and daughter Sue after his arrival at Heathrow Airport tonight. Sue accompanied her father on the flight from Montreal.Keystone
At 1:10 a.m. on Dec. 4, 1970, a Canadian Forces plane carrying five members of the Front de Libération du Québec arrived in Havana. When word was relayed back to Montreal, the Cuban consul-general released the British trade commissioner James Cross to Canadian authorities.
The Montreal-based British diplomat had been handed over by his kidnappers the previous day, his 60th in captivity. Despite prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s tough talk during the October Crisis, Cross’s release had been negotiated with the FLQ in exchange for safe passage to Cuba as police closed in on their hideout.
The 49-year-old diplomat was in good health but had lost 10 kilograms. Hidden in a windowless room in a duplex in the north end of Montreal, he had spent eight weeks watching television and recalling every detail of his childhood walk to school. He said later he had accepted he was likely to be killed and had avoided talking to his captors after the FLQ’s murder of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte in mid-October.
All five kidnappers eventually returned to Canada, some serving short jail terms in the 1970s and early 1980s. Today, Cross is 99 and lives in Britain. Kate Taylor
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