In the News

U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris has told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the U.S. will do everything it can to ensure that detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are returned safely from China, where they have been held for more than two years. Harris evidently broached the issue during a telephone call.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced a tentative deal with a U.S. vaccine manufacturer, Novavax, to set up production in Montreal if Canadian regulators approve its COVID-19. The National Research Council is completing a new facility in Montreal but before it can start production, it must be certified, a process which can take months.

A coalition of U.S. labour and farming groups has asked the new federal administration to drop a trade action against imports from Canada. “The U.S. government has been trying to dismantle Canada's federal and sub-federal supply management systems for years, not to benefit U.S. farmers or workers, but rather corporate dairy interests,” they say. “Continuing to pursue this complaint is clearly out of step with the new administration's stated commitments to reform the U.S. trade agenda.”

The top civilian leaders in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, have been charged by police in the aftermath of the internationally-condemned Feb. 1 coup by military commanders alleging fraud in last year’s election. Aung San Suu Kyi is charged with breaching import and export laws, and possession of unlawful communication devices while Win Myint is charged with violating rules banning gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In her first call to a foreign leader since taking office, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has reassured Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about perceived U.S. protectionism in the new U.S. administration. Trudeau’s office says there was consensus on the need to avoid “the unintended consequences” of President Joe Biden’s “Buy American” policies. A White house readout of the conversation reiterated Canada’s “deep importance . . . as an economic and strategic partner.”

An 11th-hour move by his predecessor to rescind $27 billion in funding for 73 U.S. departmental and agency programs has been reversed by President Joe Biden. The Trump administration saw the funding, much of it tied to foreign aid, as “wasteful and unnecessary.”

A "vision council" of global "big thinkers" tackled the challenge of identifying pandemic-related issues in need of innovative solutions in the hope of opening businesses sooner. A group of 12 diverse companies was eventually set up to develop a pilot system for rapid testing: Air Canada, Rogers, Scotiabank, MLSE, Magna, CPP Investments, Genpact, Loblaw, MDA, Nutrien, Shoppers Drug Mart and Suncor. The first projects launched recently and about 2,000 screens had been administered as of 31 January.

Myanmar’s military says it has taken control of country for one year based on election fraud allegations. The country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi has reportedly been detained. The coup comes one year after the UN's top court ordered Buddhist-majority Myanmar to protect its Rohingya community from genocide, allegedly at the hands of the army.

Effective Feb. 1, Air Canada, WestJet and Air Transat are suspending operations to the Caribbean and Mexico and all incoming passengers must be tested for COVID-19 and pay at least $2,000 to cover quarantine costs. “Now is just not the time to be flying,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Jan. 29 in announcing the latest measures to contain the pandemic, particularly the emergence of more contagious variants of the coronavirus.

As in Internal Combustion Engine! General Motors Corp. says it will phase out ICEs in its veicles by 2035 as well as going completely carbon neutral. “We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole,” Chief Executive Officer Mary Barr said Jan. 28.

Canada Border Services Agency intercepted a truck with 228.14 kilograms of methamphetamine, worth an estimated $28.5 million, at the Alberta border. The truck was listed as hauling produce, deemed essential goods during COVID restrictions, but was referred for further inspection. The driver was arrested and the evidence turned over the Alberta RCMP. Charged with two counts pursuant to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Amarpreet Singh Sandhu, 38, of Calgary, is scheduled to appear in court on Feb 11 in Lethbridge.

A Russian court has rejected opposition politician Alexei Navalny's appeal against his arrest even as authorities detained several of his allies and issued warnings to social media companies after thousands of his supporters swarmed the streets in Russian cities last weekend. Reiterating that his detention is politically motivated, he warned by video from jail today that the system “won’t succeed in scaring tens of millions of people who have been robbed by that government.”

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has been told by Federal Court that it needs a warrant when using a particular technology to “learn about an individual's private activities and personal choices” from mobile sources as part of its intelligence-gathering mandate. Information about the technology was redacted from the just-released ruling handed down last summer.

Nine days before the new U.S. administration was sworn in and some 18 months after it was proposed, a new State Department cybersecurity bureau evidently was set up without evidence of its need. The Government Accountability Office said today that it has “recommended that State use evidence to justify its proposal.”

The symbolic Doomsday Clock remains 100 seconds shy of midnight in what The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Humanity said Jan. 27 is confirmation that the world is still is perilously close to apocalypse. They said that the threats presented by climate change nuclear weapons has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Dutch government has no plans to lift a COVID-19 curfew after several days of often violent protests an looting in several cities. More than 180 persons described as “scum” by Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra have been arrested.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadians can be reassured that vaccine supplies will continue to arrive even as the European Union threatens restrict exports by its manufacturers, requiring them to seek EU permission. “Europe is determined to contribute to this global common good but it also means business,” says Ursula von der Leyen, German president of the European Commission.

In the run-up to former President Trump’s second impeachment trial, set to begin Feb 8, all but five U.S. Senate Republicans voted Jan 26 to block the trial on a charge of “incitement of insurrection” after his supporters attacked the Capitol three weeks ago. But while the proceedings have been declared constitutional, there now are questions whether the Democrats in the Senate can secure enough Republican support for a two-thirds majority vote to convict, which would prevent Trump from seeking federal public office ever again.

Pharmaceutical companies have been told by the European Union that they must deliver promised supplies of COVID-19 vaccine amid fears that production cutbacks could undermine its inoculation drive. The EU also has raised the prospect of limiting exports in an attempt to ensure it has enough to meet its internal needs.

A West Virginia woman who once served in the U.S.Air Force, working with the National Security Agency, has been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison Monday for planning to offer NSA information to Russia. She pleaded guilty last year as part of a plea agreement.

Lynn Beyak, a controversial senator from northwestern Ontario with a history of inflammatory remarks about indigenous peoples, is resigning three years short of her mandatory retirement. Appointed in 2013 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, she has opted to quit as other Senators were preparing her formal ouster.

Last year’s SolarWinds cyberattack and its impact on U.S. agencies and IT companies is being assessed within a “full assessment” of alleged Russian involvement. The new White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, a former State Department spokesperson, says the review ordered by President Joe Biden also will look into “Russian interference in the 2020 election, its use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexei Nevalny and the alleged bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government is examining how to improve its vetting protocols as it considers potential successors to Governor General Julie Payette, who resigned last week amid allegations that she had created a “toxic” working environment in Government House. Issues at two former places of employment evidently had not figured in her appointment in 2017.

Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau says the federal government will not rule out invoking the Emergencies Act, the 1988 replacement for the War Measures Act, to restrict travel to contain the spread of COVID-19. “We are looking at all potential actions,” he said Jan. 24, stressing that the sweeping legislation “is something you don't consider lightly.” Provincial governments were unanimously opposed to its use when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau consulted them last April.

In an executive order signed within hours of his inauguration, President Biden set out sweeping ethics rules for his administration, stating that they “are designed to ensure that executive branch employees act in the interest of the American people and not for personal gain.” It followed a last-minute decision by his predecessor to waive ethics limits on his administration’s officials, freeing them to become lobbyists without a waiting period.

Within hours of being sworn in as the 46th U.S. President Jan. 20, Joe Biden signed a flurry of executive orders designed to undo many key policy decisions by his Republical predecessor, including some affecting Canada. Most notable was his reversal of Donald Trump’s renewal of a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

Parliamentary budget Officer Yves Gioux says that reforms to a federal support program for provinces will rise sharply in fiscal 2021-2022. He projects them at some $4.5 billion, up $2.9 billion as Ottawa transfers cash to provinces suffering steep declines in their own revenues.

James Cross, the British diplomat whose kidnapping in 1970 by radical Quebec separatists triggered the October Crisis and caused the federal government to invoke the War Measures Act, has died at the age of 99. His son attributed his death to COVID-19.

Conservative MPs will vote today on whether to expel eastern Ontario MP Derek Sloan from the party caucus in response to Sloan accepting a donation from a notorious white nationalist. “Racism […] has no place in our country. It has no place in the Conservative Party of Canada,” O’Toole said in the statement. Sloan has already been nominated to run again as the party’s candidate in the Ontario riding of Hastings-Lennox and Addington. Will the party embrace or distance itself from far-right extremism? 

A two-week extension of British Columbia's 44-week state of emergency has been extended for another two weeks as the province tries to contain the spread of COVID-19. The 23rd renewal of the directive, it is up for regular review Feb. 2.

A new Human Organ and Tissue Donation Act which went into effect in Nova Scotia Jan. 18 includes presume consent for donations. It is the first jurisdiction in Canada or the U.S. to eschew a legal requirement for expressed consent for harvesting.

China was accused by the U.S. State Department Jan. 19 of genocide and crimes against humanity through its repression of Uighurs and other mostly Muslin ethnic minorities. The statement on the second-last day of President Donald Trump’s administration echoes one by President-elect Joe Biden last year.

Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario have delayed or paused their COVID-19 vaccination programs after Pfizer reduced vaccine shipments for several weeks as it overhauls its production process.

Taken immediately into custody on his voluntary return to Russia after months of treatment for neurotoxic poisoning by Russian agents, opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been arrested and detained for 30 days after court hearing inside a police station. He and his supporters insist that his prosecution is politically motivated by President Vladimir Putin.