In the News

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, is recommending triple-layer non-medical masks, with a central filter layer, as the preferred protection against COVID-19. “We're not necessarily saying just throw out everything that you have,” Dr. Theresa Tam says, explaining that her latest advice reflects updated World Health Organization recommendations.

Three years after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would pull his country out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the withdrawal delayed by UN regulation is finally effective.

Convicted in October 2019 for his part in the scam orchestrated by cyber criminals in China, which targeted the City of Ottawa’s treasurer and convinced her to send $128,000 to a fictitious U.S. firm two years ago, Elvin Lewis Jr., 54, has asked a judge to release him while he awaits sentencing. Claiming he is not a flight risk, he cited COVID-19 risk in his affidavit to be released. 

The RCMP plans to update training on how to de-escalate confrontations and to counter internal racism. “I’ve been listening; I’ve been learning,” Commissioner Brend Lucki told a parliamentary committee Nov. 2. The RCMP, which provides contract policing services in many provinces and the northern territories, has been under intense scrutiny in recent months.

The British government’s latest COVID-19 lockdown is officially due to end in a month but a member of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet isn’t discounting the prospect of an extension. Michael Gove says it is his “fervent hope” the latest initiative would end as hoped but that government would be “obviously guided by the facts.”

The B.C. Supreme Court judge hearing the case against Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive facing extradition to the U.S., has agreed to consider defence counsel arguments that the U.S. has misled Canada by omitting key elements of the case. Noting that a stay of proceedings is possible if Meng’s lawyers succeed, Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes said Oct. 29 that there is an “air of reality to Ms. Meng's allegations of abuse of process in relation to the requesting state's conduct.”

Rather deploying to Antarctica to support an annual resupply mission to the U.S. research stations, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Polar Star will be in the Arctic this winter in what the USCG says is a mission to protect maritime sovereignty and security. “The Arctic is . . . a region of growing national importance,” says VAdm Linda Fagan, commander of USCG Pacific.

A knife-wielding attacker shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people in what French officials described as a terrorist act at a church in the French city of Nice this morning. Within hours of the Nice attack, police killed a man who had been shouting "Allahu Akbar" and threatening passersby with a handgun near the southern French city of Avignon. Also on the same day, an Afghan national trying to board a tram with a 30cm knife was arrested in the southeastern French city of Lyon.

The on-again off-again search for Jordan Naterer, who was headed out for a solo overnight hike along the Frosty Mountain Trail southeast of Hope, BC, has been called off again. Naterer was reported missing on October 10th, and his Newfoundland family is continuing the search with their own funds. 

The Bank of Canada plans to maintain its benchmark interest rate at 0.25 per cent at least until inflation returns to two per cent, which it says isn't likely until 2023. It also expects the Canadian economy to shrink by 5.7 per cent this year before beginning a slow rebound.

Faced with a resurgence in COVID-19 cases in many regions, French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a second national lockdown until at least the end of November. Effective Oct. 30, most persons will be permitted to leave their homes only for essential work or medical reasons.

A class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook by two Calgary residents will seek $1,000 damages each on behalf of more than 600,000 other Canadians whose personal data may have been improperly used for political purposes. The suit also asks the Federal Court to order the social-media giant to bolster its security practices.

The Federal Court of Appeal has granted a request from the federal government to temporarily suspend a lower court’s decision that would have scrapped the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States at the end of January. By accepting the government’s application, the court is maintaining the status quo at the border, meaning asylum seekers will still be sent back to the U.S.

Two Toronto federal constituencies remain in Liberal hands after Oct. 26 byelections. Toronto Centre candidate Marci Ien captured 42 per cent of the vote while, in York Centre, Ya'ara Saks won with 45.7 cent of the vote. The Liberals had captured more than 50 per cent of the vote in each riding in the 2019 general election.

B.C. Premier John Horgan evidently is on track to a legislative majority after an Oct. 24 general. He had a 41-seat minority government in the 87-seat legislature but indications are that his New Democratic Party would capture 55 seats in the latest vote once mailed ballots had been counted.

The Chinese foreign ministry is planning to impose sanctions on Boeing’s defence division?, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and “revelevant American individuals” for supplying weapons to Taiwan. However, a ministry spokesman gave no further details.

The Angus Reid Institute says a new national poll indicates that nearly 40 per cent of Canadians believe there is a “serious problem” with how police interact with non-white people. However, calls in some communities to “defund” police are not widely endorsed.

A federal pilot program in Alberta will assess the feasibility of using rigorous COVID-19 testing and monitoring of visitors to reduce the legal requirement for 14-day quarantining. Beginning next week, the program will apply at the Coutts land border crossing with Montana and at Calgary International Airport.

The U.S Coast Guard is deploying enhanced response cutters in the Western Pacific. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien says China’s “illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and harassment of vessels operating in the exclusive economic zones of other countries in the Indo-Pacific threatens our sovereignty, as well as the sovereignty of our Pacific neighbors and endangers regional stability.”

A number of national security court cases could be undermined if information about intelligence-sharing is compelled during testimony, according to a briefing note prepared for Public Safety Minister Bill Blair. The question essentially pits the Canadian Security Intelligence Service against the Department of Justice.

Five days of talks in Geneva have yielded a UN-brokered ceasefire agreement between Libya's warring factions. UN envoy Stephanie Williams, former Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, says that “all military units and armed groups on the front lines shall return to their camps” and that this would be “accompanied by the departure of all mercenaries and foreign fighters . . . within a maximum period of three months.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin says nearly 5,000 people have been killed in the fighting between Azeri and Armenian forces in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. He also has called on the U.S. to help with arranging a peace agreement in the region which is part of Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic with a large ethnic Armenian population.

A House of Commons subcommittee report stating that China’s treatment of Uighurs living in Xinjiang province amounts to a policy of genocide has described by Beijing as “blatant interference in China’s internal affairs.” The report says that persecution of the Muslim minority is designed to "eradicate Uighur culture and religion” but a Chinese foreign ministry official dismisses the “so-called genocide” as “a rumour and a farce fabricated by some anti-Chinese forces.”

As indicated a day earlier, the European Union removed Canada 21 Oct. from a list of countries not subject to incoming travel restrictions due to COVID-19. The EU initially listed 15 countries, including Canada, deemed to be low risk but that assessment has been upgraded. The list is not binding on individual EU members.

An attempt by the Conservatives to reopen a parliamentary inquiry into the government’s handling of the WE Charity controversy was defeated in the House of Commons 180-146 on a vote of confidence. The Bloc Québécois sided with the Official Opposition but the New Democratic and Green parties supported Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s year-old Liberal minority rather than force a mid-pandemic winter general election

European Union officials are understood to be preparing to block Canadian visitors due to growing COVID-19 concerns. Officials review the situation every two weeks and multiple reports say they have deleted Canada, Tunisia and Georgia from the EU’s approved list but added Singapore.

The National Security Agency has issued an advisory that Chinese-connected adversaries are targetting vulnerable U.S. systems. “It can be hard to prioritize patching and mitigation efforts,” says NSA Cybersecurity Director Anne Neuberger. “While these vulnerabilities are already public, they’re still being successfully leveraged by malicious cyber actors,” highlighting the need for action.

The Azeri and Armenian foreign ministers are scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington this week in an attempt to quell the territorial dispute in Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan with a large Armenian population. It is not clear, however, whether the two ministers will themselves meet as well as independently with Pompeo.

U.S. officials in China, Cuba and Russia say their own government is covering up a series of mysteries events which they say have had serious health impacts. Among other things, there are accusations that foreign technology has targeted their embassies, resulting in memory loss, headaches, vertigo and blurred vision.

Humanitarian relief workers with the UN and other organizations are increasingly at risk in many regions as state and non-state actors using violence to achieve their objectives. Their protection remains an ongoing and critical challenge.

As the second wave of COVID-19 surges, Prime Minister Justin has indicated that the Canada-U.S. border will remain closed to non-essential travel even after the current edict expires in November. On the other hand, playing to voters in the run-up to the U.S. election in little more than two weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has continued to suggest the border would reopen sooner rather than later.

As much of the world struggles with COVID-19, China evidently is proving that a robust response can be economically beneficial. Third-quarter growth of 4.9 per cent reportedly brings China back to pre-pandemic growth levels.

The Canadian government’s projected deficit has ballooned the most among major economies, thanks to the plethora of support programs rolled out in response to COVID-19. However, an outside report suggests that could be good in the short term because, among other things, the labour market is much stronger than in the U.S.

The union representing RCMP officers is back in salary negotiations with the government after they were delayed due to COVID-19. “Our membership has shown their patience with respect to this process and I'd ask them and the public to obviously realize that this is a marathon, not a sprint,” says National Police Federation president Brian Sauvé.