NYC Mayor Eric Adams accepted harmless ‘courtesies,’ not bribes, his lawyer says

Ottawa must do more to help Canadian citizens leave Lebanon, says the son of a Canadian couple killed last week when an Israeli bomb hit their car in the country’s south.

Speaking from Bahrain in a phone interview, Kamal Tabaja said he’s having trouble sleeping knowing that more family members, including his Canadian brother, are struggling to find a safe route out of the country.

“With the Canadians remaining there, they should start evacuating, sending their own planes or boats,” Tabaja said.

The federal government has been working on plans for a possible military evacuation for months, but for now, Global Affairs Canada is urging people to leave on their own while there are still options to do so.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has said some 45,000 Canadians could be in the country, though only about half that number have registered with the embassy in Beirut.

On Friday, the department began booking blocks of seats on commercial flights headed from Beirut to other countries. Canadian passengers are responsible for finding their way back to Canada from those locations.

It will be about two weeks before Tabaja’s brother, who lives in Beirut, can catch a flight, he said.

“You just need to try and hold strong,” Tabaja said he tells his brother. “You have to keep fighting. You have to survive until this is over.”

The Lebanese health ministry estimates that Israeli strikes have killed more than a thousand people over the past couple of weeks in a major escalation of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group, which have been exchanging fire since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war last October.

With both Israel and Hezbollah vowing to continue their fight, other Western countries have started to ramp up exit plans for their citizens amid fears of an even broader regional conflict.

Some European countries began pulling diplomats and citizens out of Lebanon on Monday, with Germany using a military plane.

Tabaja said Ottawa should be doing much more — not just to evacuate citizens, but to condemn the ongoing violence and help prevent more civilians from getting hurt.

Global Affairs Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Joly has said an immediate ceasefire is needed and “there must be no war” in Lebanon.

She said on social media last week that she spoke to Tabaja and his brother after the deaths of their parents, 75-year-old father Hussein Tabaja and 70-year-old mother Daad Tabaja.

“I condemn the killing of these two innocent people who were fleeing violence in an (Israel Defense Forces) strike,” Joly wrote. “We refuse to let civilians bear the cost of this conflict.”

Kamal Tabaja said he called his parents last Monday and encouraged them to flee their southern Lebanon village in the Nabatieh District.

“I said, ‘This is not normal, I think it’s time to leave,'” Tabaja recalled. “Everybody was stuck in traffic for about six to seven hours … it was like a bottleneck. Everybody was stuck there.”

He said he and his brother began to worry when, after last speaking with them sometime in the evening, midnight came with no update from their parents. They started contacting local hospitals and putting out calls for help on social media, he said.

That’s how they learned of an incinerated vehicle in the vicinity of Israeli bombings.

It fit the description of their parents’ vehicle. The licence plate was a match. His mother’s watch was found in the wreckage.

Tabaja said the bodies of his parents were officially identified at a hospital on Saturday through DNA testing, and they were buried later that day. No one could attend the burial because most of their family members in Lebanon were displaced because of the conflict, he said. That included his brother.

“I said, ‘I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to bury more people,'” he said.

The family immigrated to Canada in the late ’80s to flee the Lebanese civil war, he said. They were initially denied permanent residency and returned to Lebanon for a time, but came back later as refugees and were able to obtain citizenship.

They lived in Ottawa, he said. Eventually, they moved back to Lebanon to help his ailing maternal grandparents, he said, but they would frequently come back to visit.

Tabaja said he’s in “complete denial” about the death of his parents, and he wants them to be remembered as “loving and giving people.” They loved the outdoors, he said, and spending time with their family.

“I have a lot of memories of my father and my mother in parks, rivers, lakes, both in Lebanon and Canada,” he said. “I cherish all these images in my mind. They were happy people.”

For Tabaja, an end to the violence can’t come soon enough. He said he’s received an outpouring of support from around the world following the death of his parents.

“People loved them,” he said. “Everywhere they went, they left a mark.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.

— With files from The Associated Press.

MONTREAL – A group of 23 bilingual municipalities asked a Quebec Superior Court judge on Monday to suspend several portions of the province’s 2022 language reform, arguing that the application of the law will cause them serious and irreparable harm.

Lawyer Julius Grey told the Montreal courtroom that the law contains measures that will have “enormous consequences” for cities that have the right to serve citizens in both English and French. Municipalities without official bilingual status are prohibited from communicating with residents in English.

Meanwhile, a government lawyer said Grey’s arguments are based on fear and have “no legal basis or factual basis.”

Grey said the law could prevent cities from writing contracts in English, would grant the government the ability to withhold federal subsidies to cities that don’t comply, and would give the language watchdog vast powers of search and seizure that exceed those of police.

“The (Quebec language office) can demand any documents, inspect whatever they want to,” Grey said. “It’s much more than the police can do without a warrant.”

He said the law gives the language watchdog — Office québécois de la langue française — the right to seize materials which could include employees’ personal information, budget documents and even legal advice that should be protected under attorney-client privilege. It would also require municipalities to discipline employees who don’t conform, he said.

Grey asked the judge to suspend the application of several provisions until a full hearing can be held on the validity of the law, for which the government proactively invoked the notwithstanding clause to shield it from some court challenges.

In court, Grey said that some of the municipalities involved in the challenge are overwhelmingly composed of English-speakers, and suggested it would be hard under the law for them to finalize contracts or continue to have unilingual anglophone employees.

Outside the courtroom, he said those potential harms amount to “serious prejudice” against the towns and cities.

“The contracts, the vast power of search and seizure, the federal subsidies that are given out and the duty to discipline are all things which should await a final decision on what the rules are,” he said.

For its part, the Quebec government, represented by lawyer Charles Gravel, told Justice Silvana Conte that the municipalities haven’t provided any evidence that they’ve been harmed by the law. There’s no proof any seizures have happened, he said, or that subsidies have been cut, and the cities’ concern shouldn’t be enough to suspend the law without evidence it’s caused any harm.

“You can’t mix up apprehensions and facts,” he said.

Gravel said many of the towns’ concerns — including their contention that they won’t be able to have unilingual English employees — are overblown and not supported by the text of law.

He also contends that municipalities are “creatures of the provincial legislator” and therefore they have no jurisdiction over administrative measures such as contracts. Municipalities, he added, weren’t created with a role of protecting language, suggesting they had no foundation to challenge language laws.

“The municipal administration only has the powers conferred on them by provincial legislative measures,” he said.

Later on Monday, in his response to Gravel’s arguments, Grey told the court that municipalities don’t have to show that they have already been harmed by the law — only that the risk of harm is real.

The 23 municipalities include several Montreal suburbs such as Westmount and Côte-St-Luc, as well as smaller communities located mostly near the borders with the United States or the boundaries with other provinces, including New Brunswick or Ontario.

Steven Erdelyi, a city councillor for the Montreal-area city of Côte-St-Luc, said his municipality receives $3 million to $4 million a year in grants, mostly originating federally, which help pay for infrastructure.

“At a moment’s notice, the minister responsible for the French language could cut the grants for the 23 bilingual cities that accounts for $110 million over four years,” he said outside the courtroom.

Erdelyi said that while the city isn’t aware of any subsidy cuts or search and seizures having happened so far, he feels the language watchdog has been targeting his city by increasing inspections of local businesses. “It’s important for us to take a stand on this and we will continue to fight this to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.

The mayor of Bonne-Espérance, a 695-person town near the Labrador border, said in a news release that the section of the law stating contracts must be in French has led to a lot of confusion.

“It’s absurd that for our municipality, where 99 per cent of the population has English as their preferred language, we cannot produce contracts with suppliers in our community in English,” Dale Roberts-Keats said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.

OTTAWA – The smell of sage and sweetgrass floated in the air Monday over a mostly sombre ceremony to reflect on the legacy of residential schools and remember those who survived — and the thousands who didn’t.

But amid the more difficult moments at the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation ceremony on Parliament Hill Monday came a few moments of levity and celebration.

“We’ve got tomorrow, we’ll live for a brighter day,” sang Diyet & the Love Soldiers performing their song We’re Still Here, while dignitaries and children alike got up on their feet and started dancing.

Ribbon skirts twirled and orange shirts blazed through the crowd under the heat of a late September sun and a nearly clear blue sky.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, her orange T-shirt clearly visible under a black pantsuit, stood clapping in the middle of a circle of people dancing.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller was passed a hand drum by a woman in the crowd and began to play along as House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus bounced up and down to the beat. At one end of the growing circle a young girl danced holding hands with a woman in a bright orange T-shirt reading “I’m a residential school survivor.”

Crowds gathered on the lawn in front of Centre Block Monday to remember and reflect.

More than 150,000 children were forced to attend residential schools, and many survivors detailed the horrific abuse they suffered at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

An estimated 6,000 children died while attending the schools, although experts say the actual number could be much higher.

Most in attendance in Ottawa were wearing the orange shirts that have come to be a symbol of reconciliation, inspired by the story of residential school survivor Phyllis Jack Webstad, who has recounted having a brand new orange shirt taken from her on her first day at a residential school and never having it returned.

“The residential school system was intended to destroy us, and they did not succeed,” said Stephanie Scott, the executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, to roaring applause.

“Our children suffered in those institutions, and to this day, their spirits call out to all of us to be remembered and honoured.”

After Scott addressed the crowd, a red banner carrying the names of children who died in residential schools made its way toward the stage. People stood up as it passed in a show of respect.

It was one of numerous ceremonies across Canada Monday to mark a day that officially began in 2021, fulfilling one of the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report.

In Charlottetown, Premier Dennis King invited the chiefs of the Mi’kmaq First Nations and the public to the Provincial Administration Building for a short reflection followed by lowering the flags to honour the lives of Indigenous Peoples affected by the residential school system.

The province also planned to shine orange lights on the building after sunset.

In Fredericton, Amanda Myran Dakota of Wolastoqey First Nation sat with her elders, holding her drum which she would later play at the ceremony there.

She said since Truth and Reconciliation Day was created in 2021, “there have been some baby steps, but there is a lot of work that has to happen.”

Dakota pointed to the number of Indigenous children in foster care as indicative of being a “modern-day residential school.”

A loud, boisterous sea of orange marched through Montreal to mark the day after a ceremony at the foot of Mount Royal.first gathering at the foot of Mount Royal to listen to number of speakers including Indigenous musician Jeremy Dutcher and Kevin Deer, an elder from Kahnawake Mohawk Territory near Montreal who performed a ceremony to begin the event.

Na’kuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal and an organizer of the event, said she hoped to see more young people get involved in the movement.

She noted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report has been around for nearly a decade, but only 11 of the 94 calls to action have been implemented.

“So who’s going to do it if the adults now, the current government, isn’t going to implement them? We’re hoping that next generation is going to do it,” she said. “It’s really hard to get the government to move, and I’m really not patient so, I’m hoping to have people inspired today by these incredible speakers that are going to share knowledge they would not get anywhere else.”

Noëlla Mckenzie, an Innu elder and residential school survivor, told those gathered at the foot of Mount Royal that she came for the same reason others did.

“We are stronger together,” Mckenzie said.

“I’m proud today because I spent 10 years in a residential school … I told myself we must always give hope to our kids of the future, so that they know what we’ve experienced.”

In Toronto, a crowd gathered at Nathan Phillips Square outside city hall, most wearing orange shirts and traditional Indigenous clothing, as musicians beat drums, a dancer performed and speakers delivered speeches on the stage.

“I am here because this an important day for all Canadians,” said Sarita Censoni who visited the square with her friend.

“It is a time for us to heal, to help our Indigenous communities, to move forward, to understand there is no truth without reconciliation.”

Riscylla Shaw, a grandchild of a residential school survivor, said the residential school system a painful part of not only history but also present-day Canada.

“It’s a very painful part of our present,” she said. “It is a very painful part of the current way of being that so many indigenous communities don’t have fresh water, don’t have access to health resources, education resources, fresh food.”

Shaw said it was heartwarming for her see so many people marking the day.

“It also is really meaningful to see so many people here in orange shirts, to see the support,” she said.

In British Columbia, where a provincial election campaign is underway, the main party leaders turned their attention to Truth and Reconciliation Day but with a clear political lens.

B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad said if his party were elected the province would partner with First Nations to find prosperity through resource projects.

NDP Leader David Eby attended an Orange Shirt Day ceremony at the University of B.C., while Green Leader Sonia Furstenau held a news conference to warn that some of the of the party leaders want to “undo” the progress the province has made on Indigenous rights.

Furstenau was referring to Rustad’s previous pledge to repeal legislation on B.C.’s adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travelled to Inuvik, N.W.T. to take part in events there. He was represented in Ottawa by many in his cabinet including Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree.

“It’s a day for enormous reflection,” said Anandasangaree, his words straining to be heard over the heartbeat of the drum playing behind him.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre didn’t attend the event on Parliament Hill, electing to participate in a separate event with Indigenous leaders along with the party’s critic for Crown-Indigenous relations and Indigenous services MP Jamie Schmale.

In a statement, Poilievre recalled the “dark history of excessive government overreach” that brought long-lasting suffering to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities.

“Indigenous peoples must have the freedom to determine their futures, preserve their languages, develop their resources, use their talents and celebrate their cultures,” he said. “Through a new approach and through the unmatched resilience of Indigenous people, Canada can achieve reconciliation and a brighter future for all.”

-with files from Michael MacDonald in Halifax and Hina Alam in Fredericton, Sidhartha Banerjee in Montreal, Sharif Hassan in Toronto and Darryl Greer and Brenna Owen in Vancouver.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.