Parliament on the road to an unprecedented confidence crisis, but there are off-ramps

AVONDALE, N.L. – The four women sipping tea around an antique wooden table in rural Newfoundland said they weren’t looking for much in a mate: kindness, humour, a good sense of fun and, ideally, a full set of teeth.

Sick of dating apps and with few places to meet men in person, the women were at a new speed-dating event for seniors at a railway station museum in Avondale, N.L., about 40 kilometres southwest of St. John’s.

They hoped to put down their phones, look someone in the eye and make a real connection.

“I’m retired. I babysit my grandpuppy, I go visit my single girlfriends. At my age, I’m like, OK, where do you go?” asked Daphne Simmons, 65. Her sense of humour had everyone at ease within minutes, even as a reporter watched them go on six-minute dates.

“If I was 40 or 30, I’d be downtown,” Simmons said, referring to St. John’s, where there are plenty of bars and clubs in which to catch someone’s eye. “I met my late husband downtown, and he was the best man that ever walked this Earth.”

Single men her age are exhausted too, she added. Those she has met through apps and websites have the same complaints trying to meet women.

“I might have to start crashing funerals,” Simmons joked.

It is widely agreed that dating can be difficult. The women in Avondale on a recent Friday afternoon bonded over a shared portfolio of horror stories that would make love-seekers of any age wince with recognition: online matches that will message but not meet, promising suitors that ultimately reveal they’re married or attached, and in-person dates with someone who looks nothing like their profile picture.

But older adults have added complications.

Jenny Temple organized the event in Newfoundland, in part because she’s hoping to find a match for her mother, Annie White, an elegant 75-year-old whose home-baked tea buns were so tasty at least one attendee hustled a few out of the building in a napkin at the end of the afternoon.

Temple teaches movement, yoga and nutrition classes for seniors in rural communities outside St. John’s, including Avondale, and she saw a need for some way other than the Plenty of Fish dating app for older adults to connect.

“I would hear the stories of people lonely, some are depressed, maybe they moved here and they don’t know anybody, so they’re even looking for just friendship,” Temple, 49, said in an interview after the event.

She saw, too, that ageism can be a barrier. Sometimes children or grandchildren disapprove of them dating, or dismiss it as silly, Temple said. Some older adults hold themselves back, worried people might think they’re dating too soon after the death of a spouse.

“There’s this whole mindset in society — we’re so used to seeing, even in the movies, younger people dating. You don’t see older adults,” she said. “So I thought, shag this, I’m going to give this a try.”

She named her event How Ya Gettin’ On after a popular Newfoundland expression for “How are you?”

Across the country in Victoria, dating coach Cherie MacCormack said watching older adults struggle to connect inspired her to start offering matchmaking services last month. She’s been coaching and hosting events for singles of all ages since 2013, and with a roster of more than 1,400 past clients, she figured she could do more to help people find love.

Older adults aren’t looking for someone to buy a house or have children with. Instead, they approach relationships with a wealth of life experience, and they’re hoping to find someone with common interests to spend time with, the 52-year-old said in an interview.

That life experience often means older adults know exactly what they need in a partner, and what they don’t want, she said. But sometimes, past heartbreak — divorce, death — can make them more hesitant to trust someone new.

“Everyone deserves to have a life partner,” she said. “I would love to find love for people in their 80s and 90s. I don’t think it matters how old you are, there’s somebody out there for everyone.”

In Avondale, Simmons smiled as she came back from her speed-dating round with the men at the event. “It was good,” she said, still smiling, but otherwise tight-lipped.

In all, eight women and three men took part. Temple was hoping for higher numbers — 25 men and 25 women would be ideal, she said — but it was only the first event. The next one is planned for St. John’s.

There was at least one big win: several of the attendees left the event together and went to a local bar to hear a band play. Regardless of whether any of them wind up dating, they had still become friends.

“It’s just pure joy to be honest,” Temple said. “Because I know some of their stories, the loneliness. And now, when they leave here today, they might have somebody to call upon that they didn’t have before.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 17, 2024.

HALIFAX – Zach Churchill freely admits he’s a career politician.

The leader of the Nova Scotia Liberal party — first elected to the legislature when he was 26 — makes no apologies for dedicating his working life to public service, saying his experience has been invaluable during a provincial election campaign that has just over a week to go.

“This has been my life’s passion and I’ve been very fortunate to do it for this long,” the 40-year-old former cabinet minister said during an interview Friday with The Canadian Press. “I don’t think there’s anybody who can better relate to people than those in service-related positions.”

Churchill said that as an only child growing up in Yarmouth, N.S., he was the centre of attention within the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon. “I come by that inclination naturally,” he said.

In high school, he was lead singer in a rock band called Oden. And when he was cut from the basketball team, he ran for student council co-president and won. While studying history and religion at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, he became known for painting his face and acting like a maniac at Huskies football games.

After university, Churchill served as national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations in Ottawa for two years before being hired for a brief stint as a senior policy analyst with the federal Department of Human Resources.

When a provincial byelection was called in Yarmouth in 2010, he returned home and was elected to the legislature for the first time. He was the first Lebanese-Canadian to win a seat in the Nova Scotia house of assembly.

He and his wife Katie — an optometrist in Yarmouth — have two young daughters, Cecelia and Eva.

After the Liberals won a majority in 2013, he held several cabinet portfolios, including health, education, natural resources and municipal affairs. One of his most notable accomplishments was introducing Nova Scotia’s universal pre-primary program for four-year-olds, and he also served briefly as health minister during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But his tenure in cabinet was also marked by an ugly incident in March 2019, when Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Houston accused Churchill of assaulting him during a heated argument outside the legislative chamber. Churchill denied attacking Houston, but he admitted losing his temper with the man who would go on to lead the Tories to victory in 2021, ending almost eight years of Liberal rule.

“What I learned from it was that I make my biggest mistakes when I’m angry,” Churchill said during the interview. “I had words with Mr. Houston … and then he falsely accused me of assaulting him. It was also a learning moment for me in terms of what he might be willing to do to win a political battle.”

Churchill was elected to lead the Liberals in July 2022.

With voting day in Nova Scotia set for Nov. 26, the latest polls suggest the Progressive Conservatives are leading by a wide margin, with the New Democrats — led by Claudia Chender — and Churchill’s Liberals in a tight race for second.

Among the pledges in the Liberal platform are: reducing the harmonized sales tax to 13 per cent from 15 per cent; removing the HST from all groceries; shrinking income taxes; providing free public transit; building 80,000 homes by 2032; building more non-profit housing; establishing a rent bank; and building more collaborative health-care facilities.

As the campaign enters its final phase, Churchill has been critical of the premier’s decision to ignore the first piece of legislation the Tory government passed in October 2021: a law that set July 15, 2025 as the date for the next election.

At the time, Houston said the law would “limit any perceived advantage by the government to control the timing of the next election.” But with the Tories riding high in the polls last month, Houston jettisoned that commitment and called a snap election, arguing that he needed a new mandate to deal with an affordability crisis and to “stand up” to Ottawa.

“There’s a lot of shock, surprise and confusion over why there’s an election happening right now,” Churchill said in the interview. “People are not really buying the reasons for it.”

During a televised leaders debate on Thursday, Churchill said Houston’s failure to keep his fixed-date promise was proof the premier is more interested power than accountability.

“This election is not about you,” Churchill told viewers as he looked directly into the camera. “It’s about him.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 17, 2024.

LIMA, Peru – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has left Peru for the G20 summit in Brazil as Ottawa seeks its place in a rift between the United States and booming economies in the developing world.

The Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum with leaders ranging from long-standing allies such as French President Emmanuel Macron to populist firebrands like Argentine President Javier Milei.

They’re meeting in Rio de Janeiro to try to find common ground on issues ranging from solving global hunger to setting rules around digital currencies.

The summit comes less than two weeks after American voters decided to send Donald Trump back to the White House next year. During the campaign, Trump promised to pull the U.S. out of global institutions and raise tariffs on foreign goods.

John Kirton, head of the G20 Research Group, says the forum is the main tool countries have to prepare for the second Trump presidency.

“What you really need is basically the most powerful leaders, of the world’s most powerful countries, talking among themselves — because only they know what it’s like to deal with a leader in the same category,” he said.

Much of Trudeau’s time at the summit will likely involve informal chats with various leaders, though he is expected to have some formal discussions, too.

On Sunday afternoon, he’s set to take part in an event held by the anti-poverty group Global Citizen on the sidelines of the summit. As of Saturday evening, Trudeau’s office had not specified which leaders he will meet with at the G20.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will attend the summit, which might provide her first chance for an in-person meeting with Trudeau since taking office. Both countries face a 2026 review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, and both leaders were elected on pledges to fight climate change.

“There are concerns around the level of Chinese investment in Mexico that I think need to be addressed, but I am hopeful that we’re going to be able to work constructively over the coming months,” Trudeau said at a Saturday news conference in Lima, adding that Mexico has been a “solid partner” to Canada.

Trudeau will likely meet with the summit host, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly called Lula.

Kirton said Trudeau is in lockstep with Lula’s three main priorities for the summit, which are economic equality that includes Indigenous Peoples, climate change and clean energy, and reducing poverty and hunger.

Lula has added a fourth priority, artificial intelligence — something Trudeau championed when Canada hosted the G7 summit in 2018, and that Trudeau says will be a key focus in Canada’s term as G7 host next year.

“It’s hard to think of a G20 summit where the host’s and the Canadian prime minister’s priorities had been so well aligned,” Kirton said. “We’ve got a lot we can do to help Lula get what he wants.”

Another point of alignment is on Lula’s desire for global governance reform, something Ottawa has pushed for among the G7 and at the United Nations.

Countries like Brazil say they don’t have an adequate voice in institutions that were designed at the end of the Second World War, when Europe and Washington had a dominant role in shaping the rules governing military matters, trade and sovereignty.

Countries in regions like the Caribbean have the same grievances about financial institutions designed over the decades. They complain that they cannot get adequate financing to invest in infrastructure to blunt the impacts of climate change that is largely being caused by industrialized countries.

Instead, they are paying massive interest charges at a time of high inflation. In July 2023, a UN report found nearly half the world’s population lived in countries that spend more on debt interest payments than on education or health care.

Brazil prides itself on being a democracy anchored in what it calls a pragmatic approach to diplomacy, though both have been under strain.

Lula has made climate change one of his primary focuses. Brazil has seen large-scale urban floods and record forest fires in crucial areas like the Amazon, where there has been conflict over natural resources projects.

Neighbouring Venezuela’s dictatorship has meted out economic pain and state violence on its people, sending waves of refugees to Brazil.

In early 2023, Brazil was stunned as supporters of Lula’s predecessor Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s presidential palace, parliament and Supreme Court in what many likened to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.

Since then, Brazil has sought to weed out misinformation, blocking access to the platform X for five weeks when the company refused to comply with court orders.

Meanwhile, the country is a member of the BRICS club of emerging economies that have been seeking more influence in the world for countries like China and South Africa, and an end to American dominance in fields like reserve currency.

Vina Nadjibulla, research vice-president for the Asia Pacific Foundation, urged Canadians “to not mistakenly lump Brazil into the … anti-West bloc that Russia, China, Iran and others within the BRICS represent.”

She said Ottawa should instead focus on shared priorities with Brazil such as free trade, democracy and respecting global rules — including moves to make those rules work better for countries where most of the world’s population live.

“It’s important as we enter this much more volatile, unpredictable period in international relations to maintain nuanced, smart approaches and policies to emerging and middle powers like Brazil,” she said.

Nadjibulla said it’s challenging to hit the right balance, but she said to not do so would drive partners like Brazil into the arms of disruptive powers like Russia and China, and foster more anti-Western sentiment.

“We need to be much more forthcoming in making those global institutions fit for purpose,” she said.

“That’s going to be really challenging with the next Trump administration, which has a very limited commitment to multilateralism and global institutions, and has a lot more isolationist tendencies.”

Similar to the past two G20 summits, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is in Rio in the place of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who since March 2023 has been the subject of an arrest order from the International Criminal Court for his role in the deportation of Ukrainian children.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused strain at the last two summits, though leaders managed to agree to call out Russia for “aggression” in 2022 and the “use of force to seek territorial acquisition” in the 2023 communiqué.

Kiron is curious whether that war will be mentioned in this year’s joint statement, as well as the Israel-Hamas War, which started after the last summit took place in New Delhi. Lula created controversy in February when he compared Israel’s war on Gaza with the Holocaust.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 17, 2024.