Hello,
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Ian Bailey. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
Federal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says Canada has its shortcomings, but that’s no reason to cancel Canada Day celebrations.
In a Wednesday speech to caucus, Mr. O’Toole weighed into the continuing debate about Canada Day, sparked by events that include the announcement that the remains of 215 children were discovered in unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
“As someone who has served Canada and will soon ask for the trust to lead this country, I can’t stay silent when people want to cancel Canada Day,” Mr. O’Toole told caucus members in the last week of the current session of Parliament.
Parliamentary Reporter Kristy Kirkup and I report here.
Columnist Marcus Gee writes on the subject here, noting, in part: “Because Canada has horrors in its history does not mean its history is horrible. Because many people still experience injustice does not mean there is no justice. In a polarized, black-and-white world, it’s becoming harder and harder to make these distinctions. It shouldn’t be.”
TODAY’S HEADLINES
LIBERALS REBUKED ON USE OF FACIAL-RECOGNITION TECH - The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is calling on the governing Liberals to stop using facial recognition technology to verify the identity of people voting in candidate nominations. In a letter obtained by The Globe and Mail on Wednesday, the association calls on the Liberal Party of Canada, or LPC, to “cease and desist using it.”
QUESTIONS ABOUT LIBERAL USE OF TAXPAYER FUNDS - The Liberal Research Bureau, a taxpayer-funded office that supports Trudeau government MPs, used parliamentary money to hire a company that plays a key role in the Liberal Party’s re-election efforts. Commons expense records show the bureau paid more than $75,000 to Data Sciences Inc. in the period between Aug. 1, 2019, and Oct. 1, 2020.
TRUDEAU CHALLENGES CHINA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau challenged China to publicly and transparently probe its mistreatment of Muslim minorities as Beijing and its allies call for an independent investigation into Canada’s treatment of Indigenous people. “In Canada, we had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Where is China’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission?” the Prime Minister said Tuesday during a press conference when asked about the Chinese Communist Party’s push for a probe into the remains of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves at residential schools in Canada.
TALKS CONTINUE ON LINE 5 - Canada and the United States are now holding biweekly meetings on the threatened shutdown of the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline - a crucial petroleum conduit for Ontario and Quebec - and a 1977 bilateral treaty that was designed to ensure uninterrupted transmission between the two countries, a lawyer for the Canadian government has informed a U.S. federal court.
NEW SENATORS NAMED - Three new senators have been named to the upper chamber on the advice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, including a high-profile labour leader and a political trailblazer who is also a former Liberal candidate.
PRIME MINISTER'S DAY
Private meetings. The Prime Minister virtually attends the national caucus meeting and Question Period. Interviews air on Toujours le matin, on ICI Radio-Canada Première, Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec, and Tout un matin, on ICI Radio-Canada Première.
LEADERS
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole delivers a speech to the party caucus.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh attends the NDP national caucus meeting, holds a media availability and attends Question Period.
OPINION
Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on the wrong guy being called to the bar in the House of Commons: “That was quite a scene on the floor of the House of Commons the other day: The president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Iain Stewart, “summoned to the bar” of the House (yes, it’s an actual brass bar) to be admonished by the Speaker for his refusal to hand over documents the Commons had demanded. You could forget, amid all the comic stage business of MPs shaking their jowls at one another, that some deadly serious issues are at stake. The documents in question have to do with the mysterious removal, and later firing, of two federal scientists from a top-security infectious disease laboratory in Winnipeg, possibly connected to the shipment of lethal viruses to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Yes, that Wuhan.”
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on the fate of the conversion therapy bill: “On Monday evening, a handful of Conservative MPs who had been preventing a vote on the Liberal government’s bill to ban conversion therapy for minors finally stood down, which allowed the House of Commons to pass the legislation on Tuesday afternoon. But the dissidents might have achieved their goal nonetheless.”
Wesley Wark (Contributor to The Globe and Mail) on Parliamentarians having undermined their own security and intelligence committee: “There is a real need to ensure that security practices at Canada’s biological labs, both government-owned and in the private sector, have rigorous security protocols and are not engaged in technology transfer that is harmful to the national interest. We have, at the moment, no transparency on this important issue. It is too important a matter for political gamesmanship.”
Matt Gurney (TVO) on Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s need for a “winning issue” as the end of the pandemic looms: “The pandemic is ending, we hope. There’s an election less than a year ahead. The Doug Ford government has obviously taken damage in recent months, and the Tories are trying to get their feet under them again. That will mean looking for issues that they think will be political winners for them. If they don’t cost very much money, as we exit this pandemic with a whole hell of a lot of economic carnage to wade through, so much the better.”
Tasha Kheiriddin (The Montreal Gazette) on the perils of “Zoom democracy” : “You can’t have a level playing field in Question Period with one person in the room, and the other just a talking head. The media can’t chase a politician down a hallway in cyberspace. And most Canadians are too busy trying to stay sane through this crisis to pay rapt attention to politicians’ rantings on Twitter.”
Send along your political questions and we will look at getting answers to run in this newsletter. It's not possible to answer each one personally. Questions and answers will be edited for length and clarity.
Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop