Good morning,
Finance Minister Bill Morneau is set to provide a major update this morning on the future of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. The company has set a May 31 deadline to make a decision on the project. The federal government has said it will do what it must – including potential financial help – to ensure the project is built. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the ongoing fight over the project is about more than just a single pipeline. A poll commissioned by The Globe last month found Canadians supported the expansion of the pipeline, but did not want federal funds going to it.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa, Mayaz Alam in 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.
CANADIAN HEADLINES
British Columbia Premier John Horgan is expected to address the worsening flood situation, a day after local officials said they were preparing a formal request for military help. About 2,000 people were under evacuation orders as of yesterday, with thousands more threatened throughout the Interior and into the eastern edges of the Vancouver region.
B.C.’s NDP government has introduced legislation to combat so-called SLAPP suits – strategic lawsuits against public participation. The province says the legislation, modelled after a similar law in Ontario, will protect free speech while balancing the rights of people or organizations with legitimate reasons to sue.
The Coalition Avenir Québec, the party currently leading the polls in Quebec, says it would like to give people immigrating there a “Quebec values” test. CAQ says it hopes the federal government will help expel or relocate people who fail the test, though Ottawa does not seem likely to co-operate.
Shareholders voted overwhelmingly to support Hydro One board plans to pay themselves more money.
We’ve launched our Ontario election guide. It includes information on the leaders, the issues and everything else you need to know before Canada’s biggest province goes to the polls on June 7. We’ll continue to update it as the campaign rolls on.
Bob Rae, the former Ontario premier and former interim leader of the federal Liberals, will be given a lifetime achievement award by the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians tonight.
The Supreme Court has been keeping its notes secret for years.
And the federal government has made $1-billion in profit over four years since raising the price of passports.
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on carbon pricing: “If you raise the price of emitting carbon, carbon emissions will go down. You can debate the size of the effect, or whether it’s the best policy, but not whether it will work. That’s why an Ipsos poll released Tuesday tells us so much about the politics of climate change policies – and drove a bunch of economists nuts.”
Glen Hodgson (The Globe and Mail) on the rising costs of climate change: “Debate about reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions frequently references the costs of different policy choices going forward. There is comparatively little debate about the current and expected economic costs of climate change. Policy debate and decisions need to recognize that there is a cost to doing little or nothing to curb emissions.”
Marcus Gee (The Globe and Mail) on Hydro One: “One party offers a pointless witch hunt against Hydro One leaders, another offers an equally pointless blame-the-rich program of nationalization and cheap power for the masses, and the third caused the whole train wreck in the first place. The choice in this vote is not getting any easier.” (for subscribers)
Tim Harper (Toronto Star) on the federal and Ontario NDP: “A strong provincial showing by [Andrea] Horwath could give [Jagmeet] Singh the federal bump that has eluded him since his first-ballot leadership win last autumn. The emphasis is on could, but there are precedents worth studying, both provincially and federally.”
Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on electoral reform in B.C.: “If the NDP government wants to hold a referendum on electoral reform it needs to halt the current process that’s under way and institute changes to make it more democratic – even if it means having to put off the vote until next year.”
Lawrence Martin (The Globe and Mail) on NAFTA, on the ropes: “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday a deal to modernize the North American free-trade agreement is ‘very close.’ Don’t try telling that to officials involved in the negotiations. Unless there is a wholesale change of attitude by the Americans over the next few days, they say the negotiations are headed for failure.”
Victoria Carmichael (Montreal Gazette) on an epidemic of loneliness: “Loneliness is on the rise, affecting millions of Canadians both young and old. And as this recently published study shows, being lonely has serious consequences for health and wellbeing. British Prime Minister Theresa May recently appointed a minister for loneliness in an effort to tackle the growing issue of social isolation in her country. Perhaps it is time that Canada does the same.”
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INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
North Korea is casting doubt on the proposed June 12 summit between Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump and has suspended proposed high-level talks with South Korea that were supposed to take place today. The country’s state-run news agency denounced joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises and called off the talks with the South. The move comes just as tensions in the peninsula were easing, following the historic meeting between Mr. Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in last month.
Violence flared anew in Gaza as Palestinians mourned the dead on Nakba, the day that marks when residents fled and were driven from their homes before a 1948 war that ended with the creation of the state of Israel. At least 58 Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli forces on Monday and more than 2,000 people were injured. Israel’s military says that at least 24 of those who died were “terrorists with documented terror background.” One of the injured is a Canadian-Palestinian doctor who was shot in the legs by an Israeli sniper. “I am very seasoned about not being shot at. I know where to stand. I know where to be. I know how not to get shot,” Dr. Tarek Loubani, an emergency physician and associate professor at the University of Western Ontario’s medical school, told The Globe and Mail. If you need to get caught up on the situation, we’ve created a running guide.
Air Canada is the latest airline to bow to Chinese pressure to designate Taiwan, which has a democratically-elected government and is a separate country, as a part of China. The Taiwanese government is urging Air Canada “that this be corrected immediately.” Beijing in recent months had threatened dozens of other foreign carriers with retribution if they did not remove references to Taiwan as an independent country on their websites or booking services.
Canada is upbeat about a North American free-trade agreement deal, but Mexico says that an agreement is unlikely this week. Mexicans go to the polls on July 1 and all three countries involved in the trade pact have expressed a willingness to sign a renegotiated deal before the election.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, driving a large construction truck, opened a bridge linking Russia with Crimea, the region that Russia annexed in 2014.
Gina Haspel, the nominee to lead the CIA, picked up support from senior Democrats after saying “ the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken.” She has faced stiff opposition over her views on now-banned torture techniques and her role in supervising a secret CIA detention site in Thailand.
And the Washington D.C. transportation system will stay open for an extra hour Thursday night to accommodate fans watching the Eastern Conference Finals between the Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning. The reason? The government of Qatar is paying the $100,000 required to keep the trains running. Yes, you read that right.
Doug Saunders (The Globe and Mail) on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “With Monday’s and Tuesday’s events, he has cemented his decision to embrace the U.S. Christian right, Saudi Arabia and the ultra-religious and far-right fringe within his own country – the only groups who appear willing to endorse him today – at the expense of most Jews, virtually all Arabs outside the Saudi royal family, most regional and international partners and his country’s best interests. ”
H.A. Hellyer (The Globe and Mail) on what Jerusalem means to Arabs: “It is one of the most meaningful cities that Arabs live in – and it is under occupation by a foreign power. As long as that is so, Arabs around the region will continue to note that the colonial period is not quite over – and that the freedom that so many of them sought and still seek is loudly denied.”
Janice Stein (The Globe and Mail) on the Middle East: “This has been the week from hell in the Middle East. The trend seems to be one of escalating violence. But is it?”
Bessma Momani (The Globe and Mail) on regime change in Iran: “While many Iranians may indeed want to see the end of the republic after all, the almost 40-year-old regime continues to promote a theocratic ideology that is alien to most cosmopolitan and secular-leaning Iranians. That said, American-led regime change in neighbouring Iraq is not a distant memory and and the state repression that comes with quashing revolutions are still playing out in countries such as Syria, Bahrain and Egypt.”
Kenneth McRoberts (The Globe and Mail) on Catalonia’s referendum: “In doing all it can to block a vote on Catalan independence, yet failing to develop a viable alternative to the status quo, the Spanish government runs the risk of making more likely the very outcome it is seeking at all costs to prevent. To the extent it succeeded in undermining Sunday’s referendum, it may have won the battle but lost the war. Whatever the outcome, the cause of democracy has not been well served.”
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