May 28, 2024

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Liberals launching 3rd term with a throne speech focused on lingering COVID-19 crisis

The Liberal government starts its third term in office today with a speech from the throne delivered by Gov. Gen. Mary Simon — and a plan to pass a flurry of legislation before the Christmas break.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Liberal Government House Leader Mark Holland said Simon’s speech will be focused on the health crisis and new programs to help a beleaguered country.

Holland said the speech will announce new financial support for sectors that are still “adversely impacted by the pandemic.” During the last election campaign, the Liberals promised to extend the Canada recovery hiring program — which subsidizes businesses that hire new workers — until March 2022, and to prop up a hard-hit arts and culture sector.

Today’s speech also offers the government a chance to telegraph some of its early legislative priorities.

The Liberal government is expected to soon table legislation to require that all federally regulated workers have access to at least 10 days of paid sick leave. The Liberal election platform said that the goal is to solve the “dilemma” of workers “going to work sick or not having enough money to put food on the table.”

To curb anti-vaccination protests at hospitals and other health-care facilities, the Liberal government will introduce a bill to criminalize these demonstrations.

The government is also expected also to re-introduce its bill to ban conversion therapy, which would criminalize the dangerous practice of trying to forcibly “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality. Read more on this story here.


CBC News will have live coverage of Tuesday’s throne speech. Here’s how to follow:

  • CBC’s Chief Political Correspondent Rosemary Barton will host a CBC News Live Special beginning at noon ET on CBC News Network and CBC Television. You can also stream it on CBC Gem or the CBC News app.
  • Susan Bonner and Chris Hall will host the CBC Radio One and CBC Listen special beginning at 1 p.m. ET.
  • CBCNews.ca will carry the events live and have regular news updates.

Special delivery

(Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters)

Renee Reeves delivers an apple crisp to a home in the evacuation zone in Abbottsford, B.C., yesterday in the wake of last week’s rainstorms that triggered landslides and floods, and led to highway closures.

In brief

Canada is nowhere near to meeting its goal of welcoming 81,000 refugees by the end of 2021, according to numbers obtained by CBC News. Figures provided by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) show the department was about halfway to its refugee intake target on Oct. 31. As of that date, Canada had welcomed more than 7,800 government-assisted refugees, well below the federal government’s target of 12,500. Canada had accepted just 4,500 privately sponsored refugees; the intake target for privately sponsored refugees was 22,500. IRCC also recorded more than 32,000 refugees who qualified as “protected persons” — those who request asylum after entering the country — which was substantially below its target of 45,000. In a media statement, IRCC said global migration “has been upended by the pandemic and the entire resettlement system is operating at reduced capacity.” Read more on this story here

A new paper calls into question a decades-old Canadian study that has informed breast cancer screening guidelines for women in their 40s around the world, which generally do not recommend a yearly mammogram. The commentary will be published in the Journal of Medical Screening this week. It specifically points to randomization issues with the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (CNBSS), originally conducted in the 1980s, which involved tens of thousands of women and eventually took place in 15 different urban centres across the country. The CNBSS had several problems, according to Dr. Jean Seely, co-author of the new paper and a professor of radiology at the University of Ottawa and head of breast imaging at The Ottawa Hospital. She and her co-authors are calling for mammograms for women aged 40 or older, should they want them. Read the full story here

A “parade of storms” headed for southwest British Columbia could worsen flooding and mudslide conditions within the week, according to the meteorologist responsible for warning preparedness at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Armel Castellan said the first storm system, expected to arrive Thursday, won’t bring rains as heavy as those that triggered widespread destruction last week. However, the precipitation will be significant enough to “exacerbate the vulnerabilities on the ground currently,” he said. Castellan predicts 40 to 70 millimetres falling in the flood-soaked Fraser Valley, and upwards of 100 millimetres on the North Shore mountains and Howe Sound. After that system is tapped out, another atmospheric river is expected to follow in short order, hitting Saturday afternoon. Read more on the expected rainfall for B.C.

WATCH | B.C. braces for more wet weather, rushes to protect infrastructure: 

B.C. braces for more wet weather, rushes to protect infrastructure

Premier Doug Ford on Monday criticized an Ontario developer that cancelled dozens of years-old sales deals with buyers of under-construction condo units — unless they agreed to pay more. “Nothing burns me up more than that — some developer just trying to make extra money off the backs of hard-working people. Unacceptable,” Ford said when asked about the actions of Pace Developments, based in Richmond Hill. Last week, CBC News reported on how the company suddenly cancelled pre-construction contracts with 70 buyers of walk-up condos at its Mapleview Developments, known as Urban North Townhomes, in Barrie, about 100 kilometres north of Toronto. The buyers, who signed agreements between 2018 and 2020, were given the same two options in a letter sent by the developer — walk away with their deposits or buy back in for an additional $100,000. Some of the units are scheduled to be finished as early as April. The company defended the move by pointing to the inflated costs of raw materials and labour related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more on Ford’s comments here

In 2019, Jaskirat Singh Sidhu was sentenced to eight years in prison for killing 16 people and injuring 13 in the Humboldt bus crash. Now, he’s waiting to find out if he’ll also be deported. That Sidhu’s actions caused the crash was never in dispute. But the reason he is now doing select interviews from prison is because, as a permanent resident convicted of a serious crime, he’s subject to deportation to India once he’s served his time. Earlier this year, his lawyer submitted a 415-page binder of support for Sidhu to the Canada Border Services Agency officer responsible for this case. Recently, CBSA gave him until the end of November to present any final arguments. That means the decision could be imminent. Deportation is something Sidhu, despite all that has happened, would like to avoid. But among the families of the people he killed, the feelings are more complex. Read more on Sidhu’s bid to stay in Canada

WATCH | Truck driver who caused Humboldt Broncos bus crash fights to stay in Canada:

Truck driver who caused Humboldt Broncos bus crash fights to stay in Canada

Climate specialists say a major overhaul of infrastructure in communities across Canada is needed to make homes, buildings, roads and rail lines more resilient to extreme weather events, as climate change makes those events more likely. “Infrastructure decisions in Canada are not accounting for a changing climate,” said Ryan Ness, research director for adaptation at the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices. An engineer, Ness is lead author of a recent report that found if there are not significant investments now to make infrastructure more resilient, Canada could see $13 billion in flooding damage yearly by the end of the century. Changes are necessary at the individual and government levels, he said, ranging from simple home retrofits ensuring functioning sump-pumps to regulations requiring disclosure of climate change risks for major projects. Read more on this story here

Now for some good news to start your Tuesday: A trail in northeastern New Brunswick has made National Geographic’s list of the 25 best travel destinations in the world for 2022 — the only Canadian destination to win a spot. The rugged 150-kilometre Sentier Nepisiguit Mi’gmaq Trail — the longest backcountry hiking trail in the Maritimes — follows the Nepisiguit River system from Bathurst, N.B., to Mount Carleton Provincial Park. It spans a range of landscapes and vistas, but the trail’s most significant feature may be its millennia-old heritage. “For over 10,000 years, the Mi’kmaw people used it as a major migration route,” trekking inland to hunt moose and caribou in the winter and back to the coast to fish in the summer, said Jason Grant, trail master for the non-profit Sentier Nepisiguit Mi’gmaq Trail Association, which develops and maintains the trail. Grant makes no bones about the fact that he’s “a little biased” about the trail’s jaw-dropping beauty. But even he was taken aback to hear it had made the “world’s best” list. Read more about the trail here.

Front Burner: Tensions swell on Wet’suwet’en territory

Yesterday, demonstrators and journalists appeared in a northern B.C. court after spending the weekend in jail for their presence at a resistance camp in Wet’suwet’en territory.

The RCMP arrested dozens of people and cleared the camp last week. It had been blockading a key work site for the Coastal GasLink pipeline project. Hundreds of workers had been stranded after the blockade was erected. The police were enforcing an injunction from a civil court that said Coastal GasLink should be able to continue its work.

Today, attorney Kris Statnyk explains that the legal battle happening over the land is incredibly complex, because even the Canadian legal system holds contradictory positions on this issue. And the Tyee’s northern B.C. reporter Amanda Follett Hosgood explains what’s been happening on the front lines.

Front Burner27:17Tensions swell on Wet’suwet’en territory

Today in history: November 23

1877: Canada is awarded $5.5 million from the United States for fishing rights and free navigation on the St. Lawrence River.

1921: During the era of Prohibition, U.S. President Warren Harding signs the Willis–Campbell Act, a law prohibiting physicians from prescribing the consumption of beer. They could, however, still prescribe liquor and wine as long as they were below 24 per cent alcohol by volume.

1975: The Grey Cup Game is played on the Prairies for the first time. The Edmonton Eskimos edged the Montreal Alouettes 9-8 on a bitterly cold day at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium.

1998: Andy Scott resigns as Canada’s solicitor general following weeks of Opposition allegations that he compromised the 1997 APEC inquiry during an in-flight conversation and then lied about it.

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