In the News

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s veiled threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, reinforced by Dmitry Mevedev, a former president and now deputy chairman of the Security Council, is being played down by some officials. “We are not threatening anyone with nuclear weapons,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said today. “Criteria for their use are outlined in Russia’s military doctrine.” Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. said he wanted to believe “that despite all difficulties, Moscow and Washington are not on the verge of a collapse into the abyss of a nuclear conflict.”

Canada has sent $2.5 million to the UN in response to an appeal months ago for help in salvaging a decaying oil storage and offloading tanker in the Red Sea off Yemen, but the UN is still waiting for other countries to fulfill pledges made months ago. The tanker, which has seen little to no maintenance since 2015, contains some 223,000 cubic metres of crude. Warning that time is running to prevent a major environmental disaster, the UN estimated that a clean-up would cost at least US$20 billion.

Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos tabled draft legislation in the House of Commons September 20 which would keep the Liberal minority in power with New Democratic Party support. Assuming it becomes law, Bill C-31 would finance dental care for children of lower-income families as well as top up other benefits.

A significant number of Russians rushed to book one-way flights out of the country today after President President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of reservists for his “special military operation” in Ukraine. Seats quickly filled up on the only options, Air Serbia and Turkish Airlines, and prices skyrocketed.

A U.S. Navy veteran who worked for more than a decade as a civilian contractor in Afghanistan and who had been held hostage by the Taliban for two years was released by the Taliban September 19 in exchange for a drug trafficker associated with the Taliban who was jailed in 2008. There had been concerns that repatriation attempt would be undermined by the fundamentalists’ return to power last year and the subsequent withdrawal of the U.S. military.

Despite steadily rising food prices, Statistics Canada reported that annualized inflation was 7.0 per cent in August compared with 7.6 per cent in July and a 40-year high of 8.1 earlier in the summer. Economists had been expecting a deceleration, but to 7.3 per cent. Gasoline prices fell by an annual 9.6 per cent in August but food prices were up 10.8 per cent, the largest increase since 11.9 per cent in 1981.

With provincial-territorial health care delivery buckling under the weight of shortage of providers, the past president of the Canadian Medical Association is calling for a national physician-licensing approach. Dr. Katharine Smart, a Yukon pediatrician, says the current system is confusing and bureaucratically cumbersome, particularly for physicians trained elsewhere. She says some leave for other countries while many who remain in Canada “are never able to enter the system and actually practise medicine.”

The minority Liberal government has been reminded by New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh that continued support depends on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fulfilling commitments that would prevent a general election until 2025. First and foremost is full implementation of a national dental care plan by next year.

The value of the dollar against its U.S. counterpart is at nearly two-year low. It traded at 75.27 cents at the close of markets September 16, recovering only slightly from 75.15 earlier in the day. Meanwhile the World Bank has warned that as central banks continue to raise interest rates in a bid to damp inflation, there is increased risk of recession.

Federal Environment & Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault has announced that up to $250 million will be provided over four years to help defray homeowners’ heating bills, including $120 million in the Atlantic provinces where some 30 per cent of homes use oil-heating. The funds also will support a move toward “greener” heating options.

Analysis of donations to last winter’s “Freedom Convoy” in Ottawa indicates that many of the contributors to that event’s month-long occupation also gave money to Conservative Party leadership candidates. The largest share went to the eventual winner, Pierre Poilievre.

A “serious” political leader can be defined as someone who, regardless of party, doesn’t resort to social media to feed public cynicism by attacking institutions or exaggerating shortcomings for personal gain. In many democracies, including Canada, politics has been dominated of late by too many “unserious” politicians who evidently like to foment voters’ apparent cynicism.

Since just before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February, at least 11 oligarchs and other executives with some of Russia’s largest corporations, along with family members, have died. Ostensibly murdered or victims of suicide, illness or accidents and seen as coincidental, it has raised the spectre of something more sinister in a country where political and business-related assassination is not uncommon.

The latest weekly World Health Organization assessment of coronavirus deaths indicates that the pandemic continues to decelerate but WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is urging caution. “Now is the worst time to stop running,” he said today. “Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap all the rewards of our hard work.”

A New Brunswick woman has been told by the Parole Board of Canada that she cannot use social media to distribute a photograph of the man who murdered her sister in 1987 and who recently disappeared after breaching parole. The board told her to delete the image of Patrice Mailloux, explaining that it was “classified as ‘protected’ and is shared . . . for your personal use only as a registered victim.”

A physician doctor originally from Toronto who trained at Memorial University in St. John’s and now practises in Massachusetts volunteered to move to Newfoundland for three months at no cost to help address a doctor shortage in one community. His offer was accepted by the hospital and the province but rejected by the provincial College of Physician and Surgeons. It said that because he had been practising telemedicine for the past three years, it could not license him “at this time” because he needed to have been practising “active” medicine during that period.

A Belgian lawyer said September 13 that France cannot comply with a request from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to extradite a former priest to face charges of child abuse. The lawyer told a delegation from Nunavut in Paris this week that France is constitutionally prohibited from extraditing the man; nor could it try him on Canada’s behalf because the statute of limitations had expired.

Windfall profits generated by major energy companies since prices began surging after Russia invaded Ukraine are being targeted by the European Commission which would use the money to subsidize consumers’ and industries’ natural gas and electricity bills this winter. “Companies are making revenues they never accounted for, they never even dreamt of,” EC Commission President Ursula von der Leyden said today, hoping to generate €140 billion. “It is wrong to receive extraordinary record profits benefiting from war and on the back of consumers.”

A U.S. intelligence report declassified September 13 claims that Russia has spent the equivalent of more than US$300 million trying to influence politicians in more than 24 countries since 2014. “We think this is just the tip of the iceberg,” a White House official said, explaining that “Russia likely has transferred additional funds covertly in cases that have gone undetected.”

Alena Douhan, a Belarussian professor of international law who is the UN Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, is calling for the removal of unilateral sanctions on Iran, first imposed in 1979 when the Islamic revolution drove the Shah from power. In a report released September 12, she said among other things that delivery of medicines and medical equipment is “severely undermined” by the effects of sanctions on finance, trade, shipping, insurance and over-compliance on the part of foreign businesses and suppliers.

The International Labour Organization, the UN and a global non-profit group say in a new report that an estimated 50 million people were victims of “modern slavery” in 2021, an increase of some 10 million recorded five years earlier. The increases were noted in an array of poorer countries but the data indicated that issues such as forced marriage and labour also were confirmed in wealthier parts of the world.

A strike by at one Canada’s largest tugboat operators, Seaspan ULC, continues to slow vessel movements in British Columbia and is affecting the company’s shipyard operations, which include work on two Royal Canadian Navy supply ships and a Canadian Coast Guard research vessel.

An Arizona law which would have limited how the public and news media could film police – an increasingly common element in allged police brutality cases – has been blocked in U.S. District Court. Judge John Tuchi agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union and media organisations that the law, which the state’s Republican governor signed in July and was to take effect September 24, was unconstitutional.

Iran says it is receptive to proposals to resurrect its 2015 nuclear accord but it has coupled that stance with a call for the International Atomic Energy Agency “not to yield to Israel’s pressure” on the issue, going so far as to unveil a drone it says can strike Israel. The mixed message prompted one of the deal’s brokers, Germany, to express regret today that Tehran is not responding to Europe’s call in a truly positive manner. Britain and France are similarly skeptical.

The day after Queen Elizbeth II’s death at 96, Prince Charles echoed his mother’s commitment to life-long service as monarch and head of the Commonwealth. “I too now solemnly pledge myself throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation,” said the 73-year-old heir to the throne, who will reign as King Charles III.

Two female RCMP officers working undercover were key to the arrests of four Alberta men now facing charges of plotting to murder members of the national police force during last winter’s blockade of a border crossing in southern Alberta. Details of the operation have been disclosed in search warrant applications which were unsealed by a provincial court September 7.

What started as speculation in international defence and security circles — the notion that Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland could succeed Jens Stoltenberg as Director-general of NATO — seems to have taken on some traction. However, when asked about the prospect September 7, she replied only that she already has “two busy jobs.” Stoltenberg’s term, which began in 2014, was recently extended to 2023.

Results of a two-day opinion poll completed September 7 indicate that 58 per cent of Americans, including one in four Republicans, believe that former president Donald Trump's movement, Make America Great Again, is undermining democracy. Considered accurate to within four points, he poll of 1,003 adults also found that 60 per cent of Republicans don’t think MAGA represents the majority of their party.

Queen Elizbeth II, the United Kingdom’s longest-serving monarch and head of the Commonwealth, died “peacefully” today at the age of 96, surrounded by family at her Scottish estate. Her 70-year reign spanned 15 British prime ministers, the last of whom, Liz Truss, she had formally appointed two days earlier amidst doctors’ concerns about the sovreign’s declining health.

Increasing online harassment and hate messaging has left the federal government with no option but some sort of legislative or regulatory controls on Internet service providers, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said Sept. 7. “There's a consensus on the fact that we have to do something,” he said. “Whoever says ‘oh no, no, you shouldn't do anything on this’ has to justify why status quo is OK.”

As the manhunt continued today for a Saskatchewan man accused of stabbing 10 persons to death and wounding 18 others, questions are being asked about the National Parole Board’s approval of Myles Sanderson’s release because he did not “present an undue risk to society” despite a lengthy record of criminal violence. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino said September 5 that while the board “will be undertaking an investigation of the decision,” the review “does not end at that point.”

A First Nation in northern Alberta is suing the provincial government for what it says is the cumulative negative impact of the sale of Crown land and industrial and agricultural development. “Alberta has engaged in a pattern of conduct that has significantly diminished the . . . right to hunt, fish and trap as part of their way of life,” the plaintiff says in its statement of claim. “Habitats have been fragmented, lands and waters have been degraded, substances have been introduced that cause legitimate fears of contamination, and pollution and lands have been put to uses that are incompatible with . . . treaty rights.”

A political about-face in Montana, bordering on Canada’s three westernmost provinces, is a case study in how to deal with coronavirus waves which remain problematic. A new Republican governor lost no time in undoing his Democratic predecessor’s policies by ramrodding an extreme antivaccination law with little, if any, input from state health officials – with disastrous consequences.

Citing the global impacts of ongoing pandemic concerns, Russia’s war on Ukraine and uncertain commodity prices, the Bank of Canada today increased its overnight interest rate by 75 basis points, to 3.25 per cent from the 2.5 per cent that had prevailed since March. The next rate announcement is scheduled for October 26.