Good morning,
The National Gallery of Canada gets just over $50-million a year from the public purse, and it was at risk of spending some of those precious funds on making up for a mistake: putting up for sale then pulling a multimillion-dollar Marc Chagall painting from auction.
When the gallery said it was backtracking, estimates of the cost to cancel the contract with Christie’s were in the range of $1-million.
Well, it took a couple of weeks, but the gallery figured out a way to save face again: an anonymous donor would pick up the tab. The gallery wouldn’t name the benefactor or the amount they paid, but sources tell The Globe the person is Michael Audain, a successful B.C. real estate developer and well-known philanthropist. Mr. Audain has a long history as a lover of the arts, and had a previous stint as chair of the National Gallery’s board of trustees.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa, Mayaz Alam i n Toronto and James Keller in Vancouver. If you’re reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
Jim Balsillie, one of the most prominent Canadian innovators of his generation and co-founder of Research in Motion (now BlackBerry), says the federal government must regulate large tech companies. “Facebook and Google are companies built exclusively on the principle of mass surveillance,” he told MPs at a committee hearing into social-media privacy breaches. Google says it will start collecting sales tax if legally required.
Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains says he underwent inappropriate screening at a U.S. airport because he wears a turban.
A third-party investigator says Green Party Leader Elizabeth May did not do anything that constituted workplace harassment. Former staff had complained that the leader created a toxic work environment. “It was baseless and it’s the end of it,” Ms. May said.
Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne is recalling one of her top issues-management aides from Ottawa to help with the provincial campaign.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is taking her pitch for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion directly to B.C. voters, with a new ad campaign that promotes the project as benefiting the entire country (for subscribers). Ms. Notley says she is ”winning hearts and minds” in B.C., pointing to recent polls that show support for the pipeline.
Kennedy Stewart,, a prominent NDP MP and a vocal opponent of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, is launching a campaign to be mayor of Vancouver in a fall election to replace Gregor Robertson.
When British Columbians vote in a referendum later this year on proportional representation, the governing New Democrats say the ballot should not include a specific proposal for how such a system would work. Instead, the NDP and their power-sharing partners the Greens say the details should only be worked out after the vote, if successful. Critics of the government say that would unfairly leave voters in the dark.
New Brunswick’s Speaker Chris Collins says he’s planning to sue Premier Brian Gallant for libel.
And Conservative MP Gord Brown has been laid to rest.
Christie Blatchford (National Post) on Elizabeth May: “An executive summary of the report basically says that what May’s accusers suffered was nothing more than the rough justice of the ordinary office. Boss doesn’t much like you? Supervisor dumps on your work? Colleague is mean? People exclude you at coffee? Superior swears and is gruff? Suck it up, buttercup, is the message here — this is what happens in the real world and it doesn’t count as workplace harassment — and well overdue it is.”
Rosie DiManno (Toronto Star) on Elizabeth May: “Of course, May countered that she’s nice enough, please and thank-you. But so what if she isn’t? So what if she’s an ogress? I’d have had more respect for May if she just told her detractors to bugger off.”
Allison Hanes (Montreal Gazette) on a new Quebec secularism bill: “We sure do love bureaucracy in Quebec! And this whole scheme, from the procedure for filing a request, to the production of institutional identity cards for those granted exemptions, seems like a bureaucrat’s dream. However it’s a nightmare for common sense.”
Denise Balkissoon (The Globe and Mail) on Mother’s Day: “Right now, only about 24 per cent of Ontario children ages 2 to 4 are in licensed daycares. That means a whole lot of kids are being taken care of by home daycare providers such as Kelly, who are self-employed. As self-employment, contract work and other precarious employment continues to rise across the country, it’s important to make sure people who earn their livelihoods this way have a safety net.”
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