In the News

As the level of coronavirus viruses in waste water continue to rise, public health experts across Canada worry about the prospect of a new surge of infections. It presents a political conundrum to governments across the country, particularly in Ontario, over concerns about voter backlash if new restrictive measures are imposed in the runup to a general election in two months

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino has confirmed that seven more RCMP officers will join three others “as quickly as possible” to help with an International Criminal Court investigation of possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine. “This will be a team of dedicated experts who understand how to collect evidence which could be marshaled into a future prosecution,” he said March 29.

The trial of Cheng Lei, an Australian who reported on business news for China’s state broadcaster and is accused by of sharing states secrets, began behind closed doors today in Beijing and not even her country’s ambassador is being permitted to attend. “We can have no confidence in the validity of a process which is conducted in secret,” Graham Fletcher said, adding that he had no information about the charges which could result in up to 10 years in prison. Cheng has been in custody since August 2020.

In an attempt to prevent the collapse of East Coast herring and mackerel stocks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Atlantic, Fisheries & Oceans Minister Joyce Murray has announced a ban on commercial fisheries. The decision, which does not apply to indigenous fishers, was immediately denounced by commercial fishing companies’ unions.

Amid growing concerns about a possible suspension of Russian natural gas deliveries, Germany began gearing up today for possible rationing due to a dispute over Moscow’s insistence that it be paid in rubles. It activated an “early warning” phase” of emergency legislation, setting up a “crisis room” in the energy ministry.

The head of the Business Council of Canada says that pitching Canada as a “solutions provider” to the U.S. will lead to a North American economy better equipped to respond to current and future global unrest. Summarizing a delegation’s visit to Washington last week in which the group recommended more imports of Canadian petroleum, BCC President Goldy Hyder said, “let's figure out solutions together and in the interests of people, not just in North America but around the world and particularly in Ukraine.”

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland confirmed today that she will table the 2022 federal budget on April 7. It’s expected to be a “back to basics” fiscal agenda after two years of extraordinary costs associated with softening the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic but there is some optimism about increased defence spending.

Strict adherence by government employees to a code for personal clothing and grooming, at the risk of being fired for non-compliance, is the Taliban’s latest push to impose their will on Afghanis. It follows a decision to segregated use of public parks by sex.

U.S. coronavirus relief programs are said to have resulted in what is being called as the largest fraud in the country’s history, siphoning off an estimated 10 per cent of the $800-billion program. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz says the Small Business Administration basically advised potential claimants to “apply and sign and tell us that you're really entitled” to relief payments. “What didn't happen was even minimal checks to make sure that the money was getting to the right people at the right time.”

Russian President Vladimir Putdin’s insistence that “unfriendly countries’ must pay for natural gas in rubles is unacceptable to the G7 countries, says Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, calling on “the companies concerned not to comply.” Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S. are the other G7 members.

U.S. designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “foreign terrorist organization” evidently is at centre stage in ongoing efforts to revive Iran’s nuclear accord, abandoned by the former U.S. administration in 2015. European Union negotiator Enrique Mora met with Iranian officials in Tehran on the weekend and talks focused on whether the U.S. would lift the IRGC’s designation.

Rogers Communications’ $26-billion takeover of Shaw Communications’ broadcast outlets in Western Canada has been approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. However, the deal agreed to by the companies a year ago is still under review by the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development as well as the Competition Bureau because of the implications for home telephone, wireless and Internet services.

The federal government will transfer $2 billion to provinces and territories in a bid to address the backlog of mostly elective surgeries created by the coronavirus pandemic. ears-long pandemic crisis. Describing the Canada Health Transfer top-up as “a huge relief’ for thousands of families, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos also signalled a willingness to permanently increase transfer payments.

Five weeks after police pushed a “Freedom Convoy” protest out of Ottawa, some of its participants returned over the weekend. Hundreds began the convoy in a community on Quebec’s south shore and picked up protester along the way to the capital, where they were escorted through the downtown core before making their way to a town in Eastern Ontario. Police reported no incidents but organizers say they’ll be back.

Canadian hacker cautioned about Russia Quebec-based hacker Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins made millions in little more than a year by invading corporate computer networks and holding records hostage until ransoms were paid. Court files show that when police raided his Gatineau home last year, Vachon-Desjardins confessed, but said there were some systems the ransomware creators warned him to avoid, specifically “Russia and its former Soviet republics.”

Several arguably “fringe” members of the European Parliament used Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to Brussels as a platform to criticizes his government’s handling of the “freedom convoy” in Ottawa. His critics included a Croatian MP who said, among other things, that invocation of the Emergencies Act had become “a symbol of civil rights violations” as well as a German MPs called him a “disgrace for any democracy.”

Key organizers of the “freedom convoy” which paralyzed downtown Ottawa for three weeks last month, are facing additional criminal charges. The occupation, which began as a protest against mandatory coronavirus vaccinations, are said to have cost the capital an estimated $36.6 million, most of it for police services.

A federal auction of oil exploration permits off Newfoundland and Labrador has been delayed for at least 90 days at the request of Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. The second such delay this month, announced March 23, it was in response to a request by Environment & Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault.

Russian President said his country will honour natural gas prices and volumes in current export contracts but that “unfriendly” countries must pay in rubles. Much of Europe depends on Russia gas but the market has been thrown into the spotlight by Russia’s month-old invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s announcement March 23 is designed to shore up his country’s seriously sagging currency on international exchanges.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who died this week at the age of 84, always saw Russian President Vladimir Putin as a grave threat to peace and predicted that his forces would face a strategic disaster and bloody resistance if they were deployed into Ukraine. “Invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance,” she wrote on the eve of the invasion four weeks ago even as various western leaders professed uncertainty.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth week, highlights the fragility of the global food supply at a time when sustained investment is needed. Between them, Ukraine and Russia account for nearly a third of global wheat and barley exports as well as some 20 per cent of corn exports and the fate of some six million hectares planted to wheat in Ukraine remains uncertain.

Requests by Ukraine and Estonia to purchase the Israeli-developed Pegasus spyware reportedly have been rejected by the Israeli defence ministry government in recent years over concerns that it would be used to hack Russian phones and sour Jerusalem’s relations with the Kremlin. The ministry prevented the sale by refusing to give export licences to the developer, NSO Group, which has been implicated in other foreign customers’ misuse of the software.

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to attend the next G20 summit, currently set for the end of October in Bali, Indonesia. There had been suggestions that Russia should be barred because of its invasion of Ukraine, but China pushed back, saying “expulsion of Russia from this kind of forum will not help (global) economic problems to be resolved.”

A “supply and confidence” agreement with the New Democratic Party is designed to ensure the Liberals’ hold on governance until 2025 in return for commitments to cooperate on key policy areas. Those include climate change, health care spending, indigenous reconciliation, economic growth and efforts to make life more affordable. However, the deal confirmed March 22 does not give the NDP a seat at the cabinet table.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, has been sentenced to nine more years in prison after being found guilty in a fraud trial on charges rejected by supporters as fabricated. Jailed when he returned home last year after surviving a poison attack, Navalny is now alleged by the prosecution to have stolen donations from political organizations banned by Putin’s government.

Rescue workers at the site of a China Eastern Airlines crash March 21 have no survivors among the 123 passengers and new crewmembers. The Boeing 737-800, in service for six years, crashed in a remote mountainous area and the carrier has grounded the remaining 108 737-800s in its 600-aircraft fleet.

The U.S. said today that violence against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar by the country’s military amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. The formal declaration by Secretary of State Antony Blinken comes four years after a UN fact-finding mission concluded the military's campaign included “genocidal acts” but the administration of the day called it “ethnic cleansing”, which has no legal definition under international criminal law.

Mediation talks continued today after Canadian Pacific Railway suspended operations in a dispute with the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference over wages, benefits and working conditions. Some 3,000 engineers, conductors and yard workers were affected as each side blamed the other for a move which is expected to disrupt many major supply lines already undermined by the coronavirus pandemic.

A draft Russian resolution at the UN, ostensibly seeking support for aiding and protecting Ukrainians, prompted Canada to edit it to add that “like other members of the international community, we are gravely concerned” about the invasion. That prompted a Russian envoy to accuse Canada on social media of “kindergarten-level Russophobic libel.” The resolution eventually was not put to a vote March 18.

The Supreme Court of Canada has rejected a government attempt to block a class-action harassment lawsuit against the RCMP. A Federal Court judge certified the suit by officers in 2020 and that was upheld on a previous appeal. The government had insisted that such issues should be handled within the RCMP.

The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rate by a quarter point March 16 to a target range of 0.25-0.5 per cent and indicated that more rate increases can be expected on its six scheduled announces this year. The move by the central bank marks the start of a “nimle” campaign to curb accelerating inflation.

Diplomats trying to salvage Iran’s moribund 2015 nuclear agreemen t with the West are reported to be near the cusp of a deal that would bring the U.S. back into the accord and Iran back into compliance with limits on its nuclear program. Officials say that after 11 months of intermittent meetings, only a small number of issues remain to be addressed.

The campaign in Canada to do away with the annual shift to Daylight Saving Time just before spring has been given new life by the U.S. Senate, which vote unanimously March 15 pre-spring shift to scrap what has become an annoyance for many. Some Canadian provinces have already prepared the legal ground for a policy shift while others have adopted a wait-and-see attitude.

One of the protesters arrested after a weeks-long border blockade in southern Alberta faces new charges arising from stemming from an incident in which a police barrier was breached by trucks and tractors. Joanne Person, 62, who already faces weapons and mischief charges, now is charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. Most of the 13 accused who appeared in court March 15 face charges of mischief to property and possession of a weapon but four are charged with conspiracy to murder RCMP officers.