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CanadaNewsMedia news July 5 2024: Former Trudeau cabinet minister slams PM as ill-prepared leader

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Here is a roundup of stories from CanadaNewsMedia designed to bring you up to speed…

Former minister slams Trudeau’s foreign relations

Former foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau says Canada has lost its standing in the world under the tenure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom he criticizes as an ill-prepared leader who prioritizes politics and makes big pronouncements without any follow-through.

“I believe Justin Trudeau has overestimated Canada’s impact abroad,” Garneau writes in his autobiography, “A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream,” which is scheduled to be released in October by Penguin Random House.

While much of the book is a trip down memory lane for Garneau’s pre-politics career in the military and as an astronaut, the final third is devoted to his time as a member of Parliament.

Garneau was first elected in 2008 as the Liberal MP for the Montreal riding of Westmount-Ville Marie, which later became Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount after boundary changes in 2015.

He staged an unsuccessful run for the party leadership in 2013, ultimately withdrawing from the race and backing Trudeau, who would go on to win in a landslide victory.

After the Liberals came to power in 2015, Garneau served in Trudeau’s cabinet for six years, more than five of those as the minister of transport. He spent the final nine months as the minister of foreign affairs, until Trudeau dropped him from cabinet completely after the 2021 election.

Here’s what else we’re watching…

Calgarians ready for Stampede after water woes

Calgary residents are getting a happy diversion from their water woes, as its annual Stampede summer festival begins today with a downtown parade.

The parade comes a month to the day after a major water main broke in the city’s northwest, flooding streets and turning off the taps to 60 per cent of the drinking water for the city and surrounding communities.

Crews scrambled to repair the line and in the process found five more weak spots to fix.

A directive to have Calgarians cut their indoor water use by 25 per cent with fewer showers and toilet flushes was lifted earlier this week.

A ban on outdoor watering remains in place as the water system runs at reduced capacity to keep enough water in reserve to fight fires and the replacement line undergoes tests.

The Stampede – a combination midway fair, entertainment festival and rodeo competition — brings thousands of visitors to the city every July.

Break down in talks lead to LCBO workers strike

Thousands of workers are now on strike for the first time in the history of Ontario’s main liquor retailer.

A strike deadline had initially been set by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents thousands of Liquor Control Board of Ontario workers, of 12:01 a.m. Friday.

That deadline passed and it led to the strike officially taking place, which the LCBO says its disappointed the OPSEU leadership has initiated.

The LCBO says its locations will now be closed for 14 days with online ordering and free home delivery services still being available.

Should the strike last longer than 14 days, the LCBO says 32 of its locations will reopen for in-person shopping while operating three days a week on limited hours.

Shipping pollution enforcement probe requested

Investigators with an international environmental watchdog want to probe whether Canada is breaking its own laws by not stopping toxic wastewater from being dumped into its Pacific waters.

The body created by the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement says there’s evidence Canada is failing to stop the release millions of tonnes of contaminated water from fuel scrubbers, despite laws to prevent it.

The concern stems from sea water used to wash scrubbers, devices that remove acids, heavy metals and carcinogens from engine exhaust.

Those chemicals end up in the wash water, which is then dumped into the ocean.

Environment Canada figures say 88 million tonnes of wash water went overboard along the British Columbia coast in 2022.

Orphan orca calf unseen since May 10: researchers

A whale research group that was involved in efforts to rescue an orphaned orca calf from a Vancouver Island lagoon says she has not been seen since May 10, despite multiple recent sightings of her family members.

A statement from Bay Cetology on Thursday said the two-year-old female killer whale known as kwiisahi?is or Brave Little Hunter could be travelling with an unsighted pod, moving between groups of orcas or “she is gone.”

The statement said there have been several documented sightings of the calf’s maternal family and related groups of Bigg’s killer whales since she swam free of the lagoon near the village of Zeballos on April 26.

But there have been no sightings of kwiisahi?is for almost eight weeks by Bay Cetology, Fisheries and Oceans Canada or other whale spotters.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2024.

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RCMP say they have busted 'the largest, most sophisticated drug superlab in Canada' – CBC.ca

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RCMP say they have busted ‘the largest, most sophisticated drug superlab in Canada’  CBC.ca



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Britain has banned protests outside abortion clinics, but silent prayer is a gray area

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LONDON (AP) — A British ban on protesting outside abortion clinics went into effect on Thursday, though it left a question mark over whether anti-abortion demonstrators who pray silently will be breaking the law.

The law, which applies to England and Wales, bars protests within 150 meters (164 yards) of clinics. Scotland and Northern Ireland, which make their own health policies, recently enacted similar bans.

The new rules make it an offense to obstruct someone using abortion services, “intentionally or recklessly” influence their decision, or cause “harassment, alarm or distress.” Offenders face a fine, with no upper limit.

The buffer zone rule was passed 18 months ago as part of the previous Conservative government’s Public Order Act, but wrangling over whether it would apply to silent prayer protests, and a change in government in July, have delayed it taking effect.

The Crown Prosecution Service says silent prayer near an abortion clinic “will not necessarily commit a criminal offense,” and police say they will assess each case individually.

Anti-abortion campaigners and religious groups argue that banning silent-prayer protests would be an affront to freedom of religion. But pro-choice campaigners say silent anti-abortion demonstrators are often intimidating to women entering clinics.

“It’s difficult to see how anyone choosing to perform their prayers right outside an abortion clinic could argue they aren’t attempting to influence people — and there are countless testimonies from women who say this makes them feel distressed,” said Louise McCudden, U.K. head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, one of Britain’s biggest abortion providers.

In March 2023, lawmakers rejected a change to the legislation proposed by some conservative legislators that would have explicitly allowed silent prayer within the buffer zones. The final rules are a potentially messy compromise that is likely to be tested in court.

Crime and Policing Minister Diana Johnson said she was “confident that the safeguards we have put in place today will have a genuine impact in helping women feel safer and empowered to access the vital services they need.”

But Bishop John Sherrington of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said the government had “taken an unnecessary and disproportionate step backwards” on religious freedom.

“Religious freedom includes the right to manifest one’s private beliefs in public through witness, prayer and charitable outreach, including outside abortion facilities,” he said.

Abortion is not as divisive an issue in the U.K. as in the U.S., where women’s access to terminations has been rolled back, and banned in some states, since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022.

Abortion was partly legalized in Britain by the 1967 Abortion Act, which allows abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy if two doctors approve. Later abortions are allowed in some circumstances, including danger to the mother’s life.

But women who have abortions after 24 weeks in England and Wales can be prosecuted under the 1861 Offenses Against the Person Act. Last year a 45-year-old woman in England was sentenced to 28 months in prison for ordering abortion pills online to induce a miscarriage when she was 32 to 34 weeks pregnant. After an outcry, her sentence was reduced.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Google Maps adds AI features to help users explore and navigate the world around them

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PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — Google Maps is heading down a new road steered by artificial intelligence.

The shift announced Thursday will bring more of the revolutionary AI technology that Google already has been baking into its dominant search engine to the digital maps service that the internet company launched nearly 20 years ago as part of its efforts to expand into new frontiers.

Google Maps recently surpassed 2 billion monthly users worldwide for the first time, a milestone that illustrates how dependent people have become on the service’s directions during their daily commutes and excursions to new places. With the introduction of Google’s AI-powered Gemini technology, the maps are now being set up to become entertainment guides in addition to navigational tools.

Starting this week in the U.S. only, users will be able to converse with Google Maps to ask for tips on things to do around specific spots in a neighborhood or city and receive lists of restaurants, bars and other nearby attractions that include reviews that have been compiled through the years. The new features will also provide more detailed information about parking options near a designated destination along with walking directions for a user to check after departing the car.

“We are entering a new era of maps,” Miriam Daniel, general manager of Google Maps, told reporters Wednesday during a preview of the features presented in Palo Alto, California. “We are transforming how you navigate and explore the world.”

Google Maps also is trying to address complaints by introducing more detailed imagery that will make it easier to see which lane of the road to be situated in well ahead of having to make a turn.

In another AI twist, Google Maps is going to allow outside developers to tap into the language models underlying its Gemini technology to enable pose questions about specific destinations, such as apartments or restaurants, and get their queries answered within seconds. Google says this new feature, which initially will go through a testing phase, has undergone a fact-checking procedure that it calls “grounding.”

Google’s Waze maps, which focus exclusively on real-time driving directions, will use AI to offer a conversational way for its roughly 180 million monthly users to announce hazards in the road and other problems that could affect traveling times.

The decision to bring AI into a service that so many rely upon to get from one point to the next reflects Google’s growing confidence in its ability to prevent its Gemini technology from providing false or misleading information, also known as “hallucinations,” to users. Google’s AI has already been caught hallucinating in some of the summaries that began rolling in May, including advice to put glue on pizza and an assertion that the fourth U.S. president, James Madison, graduated from the University of Wisconsin, located in a city named after him.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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