Greece is bringing in a 6-day work week. Could Canada follow?

The British Columbia’s New Democrats released the party’s platform Thursday days after the Greens unveiled a plan for government ahead of the election on Oct. 19.

The B.C. Conservative Party has not released its platform, but has made a series of policy announcements and promises as election day approaches.

Here is a look at some of the top promises made by each major party:

NDP

— Leader David Eby made perhaps the biggest promises in the fall campaign before it even began, promising that a re-elected NDP government would open involuntary-care facilities for those with overlapping addictions, mental illness, and brain injuries.

— Eby also promised that the NDP would scrap B.C.’s long-standing carbon tax if the federal government dropped its requirement for the tax, and would instead shift the burden to “big polluters.”

— On the campaign trail, Eby has promised that the NDP will exempt $10,000 of individual income from taxes every year, which translates to an annual tax reduction of about $1,000 for most households and $500 for individuals.

— Housing remains a central issue for the NDP, which vows to expand the existing speculation tax and prioritize building homes on public land, while also promising to eliminate no-pet clauses in purpose-built rentals.

— The NDP has promises to complete the SkyTrain line to Langley as well as move toward SkyTrain or light rail to the North Shore of Metro Vancouver. Free transit for seniors during off-peak hours is also pledged.

— The party pledges to freeze car insurance premiums that the NDP says have fallen 20 per cent annually due to changes made by Eby’s government.

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Conservatives

— One of B.C. Conservatives Leader John Rustad’s first announcements in the campaign was the “Rustad Rebate,” a plan to exempt $3,000 a month of rent or mortgage interest costs from income taxes, beginning with $1,500 monthly in the 2026 budget.

— Rustad has also promised to end the Insurance Corporation of B.C.’s “monopoly” on car insurance and open the market to other providers to lower prices for consumers.

— The Conservatives have touted energy independence as a goal if they are elected, which includes a feasibility study into nuclear power as a possible future source in a bid for “affordable” and “reliable” baseload electricity.

— Rustad promised to eliminate existing provincial mandates on electric vehicles and heat pumps and would only support alternative energy sources such as solar and wind when it makes “economical” sense.

— The Conservatives have made public safety a major battleground issue and tied it to B.C.’s drug-decriminalization policy, vowing to implement “zero-tolerance” for public drug use while increasing the police presence.

— The party has also put forward a plan for “economic reconciliation,” where Indigenous communities partner with the province to support projects with “both economic and environmental benefits.”

— The Conservatives say they will end bans on plastic straws and cutlery and remove compulsory fees for plastic bags in order to “restore freedom of choice and focus on real solutions for our environment.”

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Greens

— Green Leader Sonia Furstenau says her party’s platform is aimed at people’s “well-being” and includes a promise to create frameworks to measure B.C.’s social and environmental performance instead of using GDP as the standard measurement.

— Furstenau promised the Greens will address root causes of issues with long-term solutions, such as increasing social and disability insurance and “wraparound support” for youth aging out of care to combat poverty.

— A major part of the Green platform is promising to tax the wealthy, with proposals to double property tax rates for homes valued at $3 million or more and to implement an 18 per cent tax of corporate profits over $1 billion.

— In turn, the Greens promise to invest on a number of climate action, renewable energy and infrastructural fronts, including $650 million annually for municipal infrastructure to support new housing and $250 million to expand child care.

— The Greens have also promised a number of health-centric proposals, including removing all tobacco sales from pharmacies and making all vaccines free for B.C. residents.

— The party is the only one in the B.C. election pledging to maintain the carbon tax with or without federal mandates, and Furstenau has also vowed to “introduce a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies,” and redirect revenue from industrial carbon pricing to fund community climate action.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2024.

Defence lawyers for Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard attacked the credibility of his accuser Thursday as they made their final pitch to jurors in the singer’s sexual assault trial, suggesting the woman lied about the encounter to cover up her infidelity and changed details of her account over time.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued the woman remained “unshaken” on the main elements of what she alleges happened in Hoggard’s hotel room roughly eight years ago, and had no reason to lie about it.

Hoggard, the Crown argued, had “significant gaps” in his recollection of that night.

The closing arguments capped off nearly two weeks of trial that saw the former Hedley frontman and the complainant paint drastically different pictures of their encounter in June 2016.

The Crown and defence agree that a sexual encounter took place in Hoggard’s hotel room after a concert and bonfire after-party in Kirkland Lake, Ont., but prosecutors are seeking to prove it wasn’t consensual.

The complainant, who was 19 at the time, testified Hoggard raped, choked, hit and urinated on her, and called her names like “dirty little piggy.” She recalled being terrified by Hoggard during the encounter, and said she repeatedly tried to get away from him and told him to stop.

The woman, whose identity is protected under a standard publication ban, was the Crown’s only witness.

Hoggard said in his testimony that they flirted all night, then had a consensual one-night stand.

He denied that the woman struggled, that he hit or choked her, that he pinned her down, or that she ever said she was uncomfortable. He also denied calling her names, and said she agreed to urinate on him during consensual oral sex.

Defence lawyer Megan Savard suggested Thursday the complainant’s account of what happened that night was unreliable and “riddled with inconsistencies,” and that the woman had “a motive to lie from the outset.”

The complainant made a “foolish, spontaneous decision” to have a one-night stand with a celebrity but couldn’t tell those around her without losing their support and compromising her then-two-year relationship, the defence lawyer said.

The complainant “may well have suffered embarrassment or heartbreak,” Savard said. “She may have felt silly after realizing she was not, in fact, special to Mr. Hoggard the way she described, when she realized she’d cheated on her boyfriend for nothing.”

Over the years, “the pressure to take a private lie public becomes too great,” and the woman filed a report with police, the lawyer suggested.

Savard also argued the complainant testified confidently about details that were contradicted by other evidence, such as transportation to the bonfire and the clothes Hoggard wore at the after-party.

In his address to the jury, prosecutor Peter Keen argued the suggestion the complainant fabricated her allegations to preserve her relationship and her reputation “makes no sense.”

He noted Hoggard was charged after the woman gave a statement to police in 2022, at least a year after she and her boyfriend had broken up. There is no evidence any of her relatives know the incident took place, aside from the cousin who accompanied her to the concert, he said.

There is also no evidence the woman faced any pressure to come forward with the allegations, he said.

Keen acknowledged there were “multiple inconsistencies on peripheral details” of the complainant’s account, but “not on the core details of the sexual assault,” including an attempt at anal penetration and the urination.

Hoggard’s testimony also included inaccuracies or inconsistencies on details contradicted by other witnesses’ accounts, such as the path he and the complainant took to the hotel room or whether the band stopped by a bar before going to the bonfire, Keen said.

More importantly, the prosecutor said, Hoggard couldn’t remember key parts of the encounter despite testifying the night was memorable because of the bonfire and the specific sexual acts he engaged in with the complainant.

“When it comes to the core details, Mr. Hoggard had significant gaps in his memory, and there were significant parts of his version of events that don’t fit with his evidence as a whole,” he said.

Keen told jurors they do not need to believe every aspect of the complainant’s account beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find Hoggard guilty — only that one of sexual acts that took place was not consensual and that Hoggard was aware of that.

Jurors also don’t need to agree on which act was not consensual, he said.

The defence lawyer told the jury that while her client has admitted to some conduct that they may find “unusual or unpleasant,” including having casual sex with a much younger woman, as well as sexual interests they may find “odd or distasteful,” they cannot convict him on those grounds.

“In Canada, we do not convict people because we don’t like their sexual behaviour. We do not use the criminal law to police people’s sexual preferences or to protect against sexual disappointment,” she said.

The judge is expected to begin delivering his final instructions to the jury on Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2024.

OTTAWA – The government has been unable to put any of its own business before the House of Commons for a full week, and the Conservatives on Thursday said that’s the result of Liberal “corruption.”

Conservative House leader Andrew Scheer said the governing party would rather see the House bogged down in debate than produce documents related to misspent government dollars in a program his party has dubbed the “green slush fund.”

House Speaker Greg Fergus ruled last Thursday that the government “clearly did not fully comply” with an order from the House to provide documents related to a now-defunct foundation responsible for doling out hundreds of millions of federal dollars for green technology projects.

Rather than order the government to immediately produce the documents, Fergus said the issue should be referred to committee for study, and Scheer moved a motion calling for just that.

The House has been seized with a debate on the motion ever since and Scheer said it will stay that way until the government agrees to hand over the documents to police.

“They’re willing to have Parliament ground to a halt rather than hand over this information to the RCMP for a potential criminal investigation,” Scheer said in an interview Thursday.

The RCMP told MPs this summer they likely would not be able to use the documents as part of an investigation, but Scheer said they should have access to all the information before they decide.

The Liberals claimed that ordering the production of documents to be handed over to the RCMP blurs the lines between Parliament and the judiciary, and blame Conservatives for the dysfunction in the House.

Liberal House leader Karina Gould called the request for the documents an abuse of Parliament’s power that tramples on the Charter rights of Canadians.

“Let’s be very clear, this is the Conservatives trying to muck up Parliament,” Gould said Thursday.

“Conservative members of Parliament are here for their own political, personal objectives and they don’t care what they do to Canadians in the meantime, and that is something that should be extremely alarming to all of us.”

Scheer said the Charter exists “to protect the people from the government. It is not there to protect the government from accountability by the people.”

A similar dispute over government documents played out when the Conservatives were on the governing side of the aisle during a minority government dispute more than a decade ago.

In 2009, the House ordered the government to disclose unredacted documents related to Canada’s role in the torture of Afghan detainees.

A few weeks after opposition parties passed a motion demanding the documents be produced, then-prime minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament for several months, preventing the House committee from pursuing the issue.

In this case, the Liberal government abolished Sustainable Development Technology Canada after the auditor general released a scathing report about the organization’s management last spring.

Of the projects she looked at, one in every six that received funding were ineligible. The auditor’s report also found 90 cases where conflict-of-interest polices were violated.

A month later, the ethics commissioner concluded that the former chair of the foundation failed to recuse herself from decisions that benefited organizations to which she had ties.

The House has been in a state of almost constant turmoil since the MPs returned to Ottawa in mid-September.

The Conservatives have made two attempts to topple the minority government with non-confidence motions. Though both attempts failed to win the support of other opposition parties, the Conservatives promise there will be more such votes to come.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet decried a “lack of respect for democracy” in the chamber during an unrelated press conference on Thursday in Chicoutimi, Que.

Blanchet claimed Bloc MPs are among the few in Parliament asking thoughtful questions instead of “spouting slogans and banging on the desk,” like other parties in the House.

“They are proud to have repeated the same thing that they’ve repeated 60 times in the last 60 days,” he said in French.

“Refusing to answer questions, when there are real ones, is no more respectful of voters.”

Among the few votes that have gone ahead this week was a Bloc Québécois motion to push the government to support its pension bill for seniors under the age of 75, a change that would cost more than $3 billion a year.

Though the Conservatives have criticized what they call politically motivated inflationary spending, they threw their support behind the bill.

Scheer did not respond to a question about why the party supported the motion.

The Conservative critic for seniors, Anna Roberts, said in a statement that the government’s inflationary spending has “increased the cost of groceries and gas and put added strain on Canadian families and seniors on fixed incomes.”

The Conservatives have also asked Canada’s lobbying commissioner to investigate whether it violates ethics rules for the prime minister to make Mark Carney a Liberal adviser.

The Liberals announced at their recent caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., that Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, had been appointed chair of a task force on economic growth.

They said Carney will help shape the party’s policies for the next election, and will report to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal platform committee.

Tory ethics critic Michael Barrett said in a letter to the commissioner that Carney is not registered to lobby federally, but his corporate positions put him in several potential conflicts of interest.

“How could any ministerial staff member, member of Parliament or cabinet minister not feel a sense of obligation to Mr. Carney because of his close affiliation with the prime minister and minister of finance?” Barrett asked in his letter Thursday.

Carney is also the chair of Brookfield Asset Management, which is in talks with the government to launch a $50-billion investment fund with support from Ottawa and Canadian pensions.

When asked about Carney’s potential conflict of interest in the House, Health Minister Mark Holland accused the Conservatives of trying to “smear” a Canadian who is renowned around the world.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2024.