In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of Aug. 8 …
What we are watching in Canada …
Wildfires are raging throughout Canada, with a long-burning forest fire in central Newfoundland prompting a state of emergency, a so-called “zombie fire” flaring up in the Northwest Territories and fire crews conducting controlled burns in an effort to control a raging wildfire in B.C.’s southern Okanagan region.
Newfoundland’s state of emergency initially covered the areas of Grand Falls-Windsor, Bishop’s Falls and the Connaigre Peninsula, but was extended to the area of Botwood on Sunday afternoon, and an outdoor fire ban prohibiting the setting of fires on or within 300 metres of forestland was also expanded provincewide.
Premier Andrew Furey said the current predictive path of the blaze itself does not directly impact any communities, but changing wind patterns were making the situation difficult to handle.
The fire has been burning for close to two weeks in central Newfoundland and has prompted road closures, including the Bay d’Espoir Highway, which is the only road connecting the communities of Harbour Breton, Hermitage and Conne River to the Trans-Canada Highway, the main thoroughfare across the province.
The BC Wildfire Service says it is using a combination of tools to control a nearly 60-square-kilometre wildfire about 21 kilometres southwest of Penticton.
Information officer Mikhail Elsay had said controlled burns were scheduled for Sunday in a bid to rein in the large blaze that has been burning for more than a week.
The fire has prompted an evacuation order of more than 500 properties and put more than 1,000 others under orders to be ready to leave at short notice.
Authorities in the Northwest Territories are keeping a close eye on a fire on the west side of Marian Lake that flared back up after being dormant underground for a long time.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources says the holdover fire, also known as a “zombie fire,” has grown to about 65 square kilometres and is burning about 38 kilometres southeast of Whati.
It says heavy winds from the south are expected to cause extreme fire behaviour and significant growth, which can result in large amounts of smoke and ash in the Tlicho region, especially in Whati, but no cabins, communities or infrastructure is at risk because of this blaze.
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Also this …
Provincial politicians are heading back to the Ontario legislature today for the start of a new session.
It’s the first time they are sitting since the Progressive Conservatives won a second majority government in early June.
The first order of business is electing a Speaker, and two Tories are vying for the job – Ted Arnott, who has held the role for the past four years, and Nina Tangri, who served as associate minister of small business and red tape reduction.
On Tuesday, there will be a throne speech, which outlines a government’s new agenda, followed by the budget, which is expected to be largely unchanged from when it was introduced but not passed in the spring before the election.
But it is being reintroduced amid a health-care staffing crisis that has seen emergency rooms across the province close for hours or days at a time, as well as much higher inflation than when it was first introduced.
The throne speech is expected to address those changing circumstances, but it’s unclear if any new measures will be added to deal with them.
Nursing groups and opposition politicians have been calling on the government to repeal legislation passed in 2019 that capped wage increases for nurses and other public sector workers for three years, as a way to ease the staffing crunch.
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What we are watching in the U.S. …
SAVANNAH, Ga. _ Months after they were sentenced to life in prison for murder, the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia neighbourhood faced a second round of criminal penalties Monday for federal hate crimes committed in the deadly pursuit of the 25-year-old Black man.
U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood scheduled back-to-back hearings to individually sentence each of the defendants, starting with Travis McMichael, who blasted Arbery with a shotgun after the street chase initiated by his father and joined by a neighbour.
Arbery’s killing on Feb. 23, 2020, became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black people including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Those two cases also resulted in the Justice Department bringing federal charges.
When they return to court Monday in Georgia, McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and neighbour William “Roddie” Bryan face possible life sentences after a jury convicted them in February of federal hate crimes, concluding that they violated Arbery’s civil rights and targeted him because of his race. All three men were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels face additional penalties for using firearms to commit a violent crime.
Whatever punishments they receive in federal court could ultimately prove more symbolic than anything. A state Superior Court judge imposed life sentences for all three men in January for Arbery’s murder, with both McMichaels denied any chance of parole.
All three defendants have remained jailed in coastal Glynn County, in the custody of U.S. marshals, while awaiting sentencing after their federal convictions in January.
The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and jumped in a truck to chase Arbery after spotting him running past their home outside the port city of Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck, helping cut off Arbery’s escape. He also recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range as Arbery threw punches and grabbed at the shotgun.
The McMichaels told police they suspected Arbery had been stealing from a nearby house under construction. But authorities later concluded he was unarmed and had committed no crimes. Arbery’s family has long insisted he was merely out jogging.
Still, more than two months passed before any charges were filed in Arbery’s death. The McMichaels and Bryan were arrested only after the graphic video of the shooting leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police.
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What we are watching in the rest of the world …
BEIJING _ The capital of China’s Hainan province has locked down its residents for 13 hours on Monday as a COVID-19 outbreak grows on the tropical island during the summer school holidays.
The temporary lockdown of Haikou city from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. follows an ongoing and indefinite lockdown of the beach resort of Sanya since Saturday _ which is confining vacationers to their hotels for a week _ and lockdowns that started in four other cities in Hainan on Sunday.
More than 470 new cases were recorded in the province on Sunday, of which 245 did not show symptoms. Overall, China reported more than 760 new daily cases, the National Health Commission said Monday.
Some 80,000 tourists have reportedly been stranded by the lockdown in Sanya. Those wanting to depart have to test negative five times over seven days.
China has stuck steadfastly to a “zero-COVID” policy, despite the economic and social costs. It has credited that approach with keeping hospitalization and death rates lower than in other countries that have opened up amid high vaccination rates and more effective treatments.
Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese city, announced Monday that it would reduce a mandatory hotel quarantine for overseas arrivals to three days from the current one week. The new policy takes effect Friday.
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On this day in 1989 …
The lawyer for Chantal Daigle, who went to the Supreme Court of Canada to argue her right to have an abortion against her boyfriend’s wishes, told the court his client had had the procedure despite a court injunction against it. Daniel Bedard apologized to the court but warned there could be legal chaos if courts allowed men to stop women from having abortions.
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In entertainment …
NEW YORK _ The stylized action romp “Bullet Train,” starring Brad Pitt, arrived with a $30.1 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, as the last big movie of Hollywood’s summer recovery landed in theatres.
The “Bullet Train” debut for Sony Pictures was solid but unspectacular for a movie that cost $90 million to make and was propelled by Pitt’s substantial star power. Even if it holds well in coming weeks, movie theatres have no major studio releases on the horizon for the rest of August, and few sure things to look forward to in early fall.
While late summer is always a quiet period in theatres, it will be especially so this year _ and likely to sap some of the momentum stirred by “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Jurassic World: Dominion,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and others. After a comeback season that pushed the box office close to pre-pandemic levels, it’s about to get pretty quiet in cinemas.
“It’s definitely going to be quieter, like the calm after the storm,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore. “But that doesn’t mean there’s not going to be great movies out there and perhaps the good will generated by some of those films might be enough to buoy the box office until we get into the blockbuster corridor with ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ and ‘Avatar 2’ down the road. We have to expect that we’re not going to be able to keep up the pace we had this summer.”
As the last big summer movie to leave the station, “Bullet Train” hopes to keep riding for the coming weeks. That would be in line with the playbook of some other original, August-released summer movies like “Free Guy” and “Crazy Rich Asians.” Directed by David Leitch (“Atomic Blonde,” “Deadpool 2”), “Bullet Train” gathers a number of assassins (co-stars include Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry) together on a speeding train running from Tokyo to Kyoto.
The weekend’s other new wide release, “Easter Sunday,” struggled to catch on. The Universal Pictures comedy, starring comic Jo Koy as an actor attending his family’s Easter Sunday celebration, won praise for its Filipino representation but drew even worse reviews than “Bullet Train.” It opened with $5.3 million in ticket sales.
Instead, “Bullet Train” was trailed by a number of holdovers, including Warner Bros.’ “DC League of Pets.” The animated release grossed $11.2 million in its second week of release.
Jordan Peele’s “Nope,” the Universal sci-fi horror release, continued to perform well, earning $8.5 million in its third weekend. With $98 million in tickets sold, “Nope” will soon surpass $100 million at the domestic box office.
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Did you see this?
OTTAWA _ A parliamentary committee will begin exploring the RCMP’s use of spyware on Monday, diving deeper into an issue that’s sounded alarms for privacy and civil liberties groups across the country.
The House of Commons ethics and privacy committee called for a summer study after the RCMP revealed its use of tools that covertly obtain data from devices like phones and computers.
In response to a written question tabled in the House of Commons in June, the RCMP disclosed it had obtained warrants to use tools that collect text messages and emails and can remotely turn on cameras and microphones in 10 investigations.
“We are talking about the most intrusive thing that exists,” said privacy and technology lawyer David Fraser. “This would be like an order allowing the police to kind of put on an invisibility cloak and sit on your living room couch, or on your bedside table.”
As an alternative approach, Fraser said the committee could look to the methods used when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service seeks a warrant for its investigations.
“(CSIS officials) go to a bunker in Ottawa and they meet in what amounts to a secret court,” he said. “It’s designated judges of the Federal Court who, ex parte _ so without anybody on the other side _ review applications for warrants under the CSIS Act that can be incredibly intrusive.”
The committee has the opportunity to decide whether the current laws are sufficient to protect Canadians’ privacy. It could decide the RCMP needs to submit annual reports for further transparency.
Witnesses appearing during the scheduled two days of hearings include Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, the current federal privacy commissioner and his deputy, and RCMP officers who oversaw the use of spyware.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 8, 2022
VANCOUVER – Environment Canada is warning that a “bomb cyclone” is expected to bring powerful winds to most of Vancouver Island and the B.C. coast, with hurricane-force gusts of 120 km/h predicted for some areas this week.
The weather agency has issued more than a dozen warnings for coastal areas, saying the peak wind speeds are expected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Areas expected to be hit hardest include northern Vancouver Island and the north and central coasts, but gusts of up to 100 km/h are also forecast for heavily populated centres including Victoria and the Sunshine Coast.
The warnings stretch from Prince Rupert in the north to the southern tip of Vancouver Island, while Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley are the subject of a special weather statement.
The statement says residents should be prepared for power outages, downed trees and travel delays brought by what it calls a “significant fall storm.”
Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor says a bomb cyclone is caused by a rapid drop in atmospheric pressure at the centre of a storm.
“Typically, with these bomb cyclones, we need a lot of cold air loss in the atmosphere to really eject itself into the low pressure centre, which really helps to deepen them, or helps them to explode,” he said in an interview Monday. “Typically, with this kind of storm, the key phenomena is going to be the wind associated.”
Environment Canada says the storm will develop about 400 kilometres off the coast of Vancouver Island on Tuesday, bringing high winds and heavy rain that afternoon.
Proctor said the storm will likely have the most impact on the west side of Vancouver Island and the central coast.
Matt MacDonald, the lead forecaster for the BC Wildfire Service, says in a social media post that models show B.C. coastal inlets could bring “hurricane force” winds and there may be waves of up to nine metres off Washington and Oregon’s coasts.
Proctor said he wouldn’t be surprised to see those kinds of conditions on B.C.’s coast.
“That would be fairly typical for this kind of track,” he said in an interview.
However, he said that would depend on the track of the low pressure centre and how close to Vancouver Island it comes in before it starts “hooking” northward.
BC Ferries said in a statement Monday that it is “closely monitoring the weather situation” and is in contact with Environment Canada.
While it initially said sailings were expected to proceed as scheduled, a later statement said that it would be providing updates on Tuesday about potential delays or cancellations.
“Our goal is to keep people moving without interruption wherever possible, and to keep our passengers informed as things change,” it said. “In the event of significant disruptions, we will work to reschedule travel or reroute passengers to the next available sailing.”
Electric utility BC Hydro said it has been monitoring the system “very closely” since last week, noting it has a “team of in-house meteorologists that track all weather events” to ensure it has crews and equipment in the right places when storms hit.
“We’re prepared for tomorrow’s storm and are ramping up crews – both BC Hydro crews and contractor crews,” it said in a statement Monday.
A La Nina winter is expected for B.C., and Proctor said the creation of bomb cyclones are amplified under those conditions, when ocean temperatures are cooler than normal.
He said the province should brace for similar storms, though not of the same magnitude.
“We’re really setting up for a fairly typical late fall, if I can put it that way, once we get past this big event of this bomb cyclone,” he said.
The bomb cyclone warnings come after a lightning storm overnight and early Monday covered parts of Metro Vancouver in hail.
B.C. has been hit by a series of powerful fall storms, including an atmospheric river that caused flash flooding in Metro Vancouver in mid-October.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada said in a news release last week that the October storm caused $110 million in insured damage claims, which prompted it to renew calls for the federal government to “fully fund” the National Flood Insurance Program.
It said insured losses related to severe weather in Canada now routinely exceed $3 billion annually and a new record has been set this year, reaching more than $7.7 billion.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
VICTORIA – Premier David Eby says “kitchen table” issues in British Columbia will be the focus for his revamped, postelection cabinet that was sworn in on Monday.
Eby’s new cabinet, comprising 23 ministers and four ministers of state, features a mix of new and familiar faces elected in last month’s narrow one-seat New Democrat election win.
“The things that concern your family around the kitchen table are going to be the issues that concern our team around the cabinet table,” he said after the cabinet introduction ceremony at government house.
“Ours will be a government that listens and ours will be a government that delivers,” said Eby, adding “that was the message that people sent us here to do this job in this recent election.”
“That is something every one of these members and everyone who was elected is going to carry with them in the work they do over the next four years,” he said.
He said the priorities for the new cabinet and the NDP government will include good paying jobs, family doctors for everybody, safe communities and affordable homes.
Eby shuffled veteran ministers Adrian Dix and Mike Farnworth and introduced to cabinet several newly elected members of the legislature.
Dix, the longtime health minister who guided the province through the COVID-19 pandemic, was moved to energy and climate solutions, while Josie Osborne, a two-term MLA and a former mayor of Tofino, will take on health.
Eby said Dix was moved to energy and climate solutions because of his track record of success.
“I need someone who can deliver and Adrian is that minister,” Eby said at a news conference. “It’s critically important for our government.”
Dix will be tasked with ensuring B.C. develops its clean energy systems and markets, he said.
Osborne said as a resident and a former mayor of a rural community, she understood the health-care needs of people outside B.C.’s urban areas.
“Everybody deserves access to health care,” said Osborne, acknowledging that many rural B.C. communities have concerns about recurring hospital emergency department closures. “I hear you. I see you.”
Farnworth, B.C.’s veteran solicitor general and public safety minister, was moved out of those portfolios and into transportation and transit, and will also serve as NDP house leader.
Garry Begg, a former RCMP officer, got one of the biggest cheers when he was introduced by Eby as the new solicitor general and public safety minister, elevating him from the backbench to cabinet.
Eby introduced Begg by the nickname “Landslide” in a nod to his wafer-thin 21-vote victory in Surrey that secured the government its one-seat majority.
Brenda Bailey, the former jobs minister and a Vancouver businesswoman, moves into the crucial finance portfolio.
Newly elected MLAs also featured in the cabinet, with former broadcaster Randene Neill becoming minister of land, water and resource management, and Vancouver Police Department veteran Terry Yung named minister of state for community safety.
Among the senior cabinet ministers who kept their jobs were Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon and Attorney General Niki Sharma, whose first duty upon being reappointed was accepting the Great Seal of British Columbia from Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin.
Austin opened Monday’s swearing-in ceremony by paying tribute to former premier John Horgan, who died of thyroid cancer last week.
She called Horgan “a fine man” who loved B.C., and said she would miss his “dad jokes” and “corny” sense of humour.
Eby said after the ceremony that his team would make affordability a priority issue.
“(For) those families hit hard by inflation and rising costs, our focus will be on controlling your costs, supporting you with the cost of everything from housing to car insurance and delivering a middle-income tax cut to support you and your family in these challenging times,” he said.
During the campaign, Eby promised a $1,000 tax cut for the average family, starting next year and benefiting 90 per cent of British Columbians.
Eby faced the challenge of filling the cabinet from a caucus reduced to 47 members in the Oct. 19 election, which gave the NDP the narrowest of majorities in the 93-seat legislature.
Former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Mike Bernier, who ran unsuccessfully as an Independent last month in his Dawson Creek-area riding, said Eby had to find ways to bring rural representation into the cabinet even though most of his members were from Metro Vancouver or Vancouver Island.
Brittny Anderson, who won in Kootenay-Central, helped fulfil that goal, being appointed minister of state for local government and rural communities.
Energy and mining were carved into two separate portfolios, with Jagrup Brar taking on the latter, now renamed mining and critical minerals.
“We have two separate ministries dedicated to major economic growth sectors for us,” Eby said.
The legislature’s youngest MLA, Ravi Parmar, entered cabinet as forests minister.
B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad said Eby had been invisible when it comes to rural B.C., and he and his 44-member caucus were looking forward to holding the government to account on numerous issues.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau said in a statement the party was pleased Eby appointed a cabinet with a strong representation of women in leadership roles and a female majority.
“We are particularly pleased to see Niki Sharma appointed as deputy premier and Attorney General, Tamara Davidson as Minister of Environment and Parks, and Bailey as Minister of Finance,” she said. These critical roles will have a significant impact on shaping the future of British Columbia.”
Eby said the NDP government continued to negotiate will the Greens about how the party’s two elected members could work with the government.
“I hope British Columbians see in this cabinet an experienced team that’s going to be focused on the priorities they sent us to Victoria to address,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Prince Harry is in Vancouver for the launch of a campaign to raise awareness of the Invictus Games among children and youth, one day after surprising Canadian football fans by appearing at the Grey Cup in the city.
The prince visited Vancouver-area elementary and high school students at Seaforth Armoury.
The visit comes as the Invictus Games launches a lessons program for students from kindergarten to Grade 12, making educational resources on the event’s history and purpose available online.
Prince Harry founded the Invictus Games for wounded, injured and sick veterans and other service personnel about a decade ago, and the games will next be held in Vancouver and Whistler in February.
After meeting the students and engaging in a short game of sitting volleyball on the floor of the armoury, Prince Harry told the crowd the school program could help the Invictus Games “go even wider” and “into schools in Canada and hopefully around the world.”
The prince made a surprise appearance at the Grey Cup game at BC Place Stadium on Sunday, waving to the crowd and giving an interview before joining B.C. Lions owner Amar Doman on the field.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
