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The federal government is exploring a potential alternative to get the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion on track: bringing First Nations in as investors. Several First Nations leaders who support the project in British Columbia say they would be interested in assuming an equity stake in it, depending on the terms. That could involve either First Nations coming up with the money themselves, or having the federal government back an investment.
The debate over Trans Mountain has spilled over into another area, too: honorary degrees. The energy community is not happy that the University of Alberta is giving one to environmentalist David Suzuki.
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.
CANADIAN HEADLINES
The Senate has condemned the “hostile behaviour” of China in the South China Sea.
The Liberal government is set to unveil an intellectual property strategy this week that will crackdown on so-called patent trolls.
The Canadian founders of the data firm AggregateIQ, which has been involved in foreign campaigns, say it is not doing anything wrong.
A Liberal MP accused of an alleged assault at the party convention over the weekend says it’s a case of mistaken identity.
New legislation will allow Indigenous communities in British Columbia to be consulted about child-protection cases as the province seeks to reduce the number of Indigenous children and youth in care. Indigenous children are removed from their families at a far higher rate than in non-Indigenous families.
B.C. is targetting tax evasion in the pre-sale condo market, introducing new reporting rules to track so-called shadow flipping. New legislation would require developers to collect and report buyer information on pre-sale condos that are assigned to new buyers before they are built.
Saskatchewan’s children’s advocate says youth mental-health patients are waiting up to two years to see psychiatrists.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer should be paid more, a former Parliamentary Budget Officer says.
The Quebec government has moved to make a Jacques-Louis David painting sought after by the National Gallery more difficult to move out of the province. The gallery is pressing ahead with a multimillion-dollar sale of a Marc Chagall painting, however.
And the Prime Minister’s new chef dishes on the Trudeau family’s dishes. “ We prepare our own yogurt, we make our own butter, we make our own bacon,” Che Chartrand told the Ottawa Citizen.
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on the Ottawa view of the Toronto attack: “Senseless. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau picked the right word. There wasn’t a clear lesson to learn from a tragedy in which an individual drove a van into pedestrians, killing 10. In Ottawa, where political leaders took stock a day after the tragedy in Toronto, there was no sense of a nagging query about what should have been done. The situation not only defied answers, but questions.”
Jamil Jivani (The Globe and Mail) on young men: “ We need to identify, call out and fight back against ideologies that encourage our young people to play the role of victim in our society and then act against us by taking human lives. We can’t stop every young man from being angry, but we can compete to influence him to do something positive and constructive with that anger.”
Marni Soupcoff (National Post) on young men: “ What it tells us, most importantly, is that the level of anger and social disconnection evident is so significant that it calls out for figuring out how to reach and reintegrate these people into normal society, and to help them find better ways to address their pain.”
Emma Teitel (Toronto Star) on the response: “I t’s surreal and, frankly, hideous to think that while I was anxiously hoping that they were okay, the Katie Hopkinses of the world were anxiously hoping for something else: that this tragedy would bring them an Islamist villain. It didn’t. But I’m sure they’ll keep the faith that the next one will.”
Stephanie Carvin (The Globe and Mail) on why we can’t call it terrorism: “Section 83.01 of the Criminal Code states that any act carried out for political, ideological or religious reasons is terrorism. But not all political, ideological or religious reasons are alike. When an act is carried out in the name of a listed terrorist entity – such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS) – prosecutors can easily point to a coherent set of ideas upon which a terrorism charge can be laid. However, when it comes to fringe movements and broad anti-government ideologies, prosecution becomes trickier.”
Cathal Kelly (The Globe and Mail) on hockey, after Monday: “We used to laugh about hockey players not wanting to come to Toronto for fear of being eaten alive, and forgot that it’s a privilege to wear the uniform. It makes you a hero to a lot of people. After a day like Monday, the Leafs don’t have to lead the city in mourning, or win Game 7 because that’ll boost civic spirits. Those are facile ideas. Sports can’t fix anything. But what it can do is remind people that if hockey is being played, then things are still okay. That’s the Leafs’ responsibility now − know your job and do it.”
Margaret Wente (The Globe and Mail) on our borders: “The border crisis is a huge vulnerable spot for Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal government. If they can’t show they’re in charge of our borders, they’ll pay for it in the next election. We are one of the most immigrant-accepting countries in the world. We’ve gladly taken in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. But we don’t like being played for suckers. And that’s the way this feels.”
Michael LeBourdais (The Globe and Mail) on Trans Mountain: “The social framework for other Canadians is paid in large part by revenues from resource development. Why shouldn’t we benefit from resource tax jurisdiction in our territories like other Canadians?”
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INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
Twins with ties to Canada, Chen Zhiyu and Chen Zhiheng were arrested earlier this week as part of a bid by the Communist Party of China to silence a billionaire critic living in New York. Zhiyu, who moved to Canada in 2012, and Zhiheng, who became a Canadian citizen in 2008, allegedly forged documents for that billionaire, Guo Wengui. The brothers admitted guilt, the first time in recent history that a Canadian citizen has been involved in a pretrial confession, a controversial practice in China widely condemned by human-rights groups.
U.S. President Donald Trump hosted French President Emmanual Macron for his first official state visit yesterday. Throughout the day the two leaders held discussions on Iran’s nuclear agreement, the situation in Syria and North Korea. The two men, who have had a testy relationship in the past, seemed to put the past behind them and exhibited a chummy relationship.
A Canadian who was killed in Peru is suspected in the slaying of an Indigenous medicine woman in an Amazonian village. Olivia Arevalo, an 81-year-old healer, was shot to death, prompting outrage in her community. Residents blamed Sebastian Woodroffe, a B.C. native, who was allegedly lynched in retribution.
A federal judge in the U.S. has ruled that the federal government must resume DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and accept new applications. The program protected young, undocumented adults who were brought to the U.S. as children from being deported. The decision is an enormous setback to the Trump administration, which cancelled the program.
Israel has abandoned its plan to forcibly deport African migrants who entered the country illegally through Egypt’s Sinai desert. “At this stage, the possibility of carrying out an unwilling deportation to a third country is not on the agenda,” the government wrote in a response to Israel’s Supreme Court, which has been examining the case. The asylum seekers, who are mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, say they are fleeing war and persecution.
Prosecutors at a United Nations court in the Hague are seeking a second genocide conviction for former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, for the killings of Croats and Muslims during the war in the early 1990s. In May, 2016, he was found guilty of 10 charges including genocide for the infamous 1995 Srebrenica massacre, during which around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed.
Armenia is in the midst of an unclear transition after Serzh Sargsyan resigned abruptly after two weeks of protests against his leadership, catching the opposition off guard. Protesters appear to lack a political platform to replace the Prime Minister and were focused on driving out what they saw as a corrupt elite.
And violence in Nicaragua has forced the Canadian women’s U-17 soccer team to head home as CONCACAF pulled the plug on its championship.
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