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Hello,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government is doing what it can to deal with the massive surge in applications for passports as Canadians seek to travel amidst the easing pandemic.
“I understand there are people dealing with delays. We are doing our utmost to try and expedite the processes because, yes, Canadians want to travel, and we want to welcome people to Canada as well,” Mr. Trudeau said Monday.
“We still have to tread carefully because of COVID but we are setting up the necessary measures to accelerate the processes for passports.”
Mr. Trudeau was appearing at a news conference with visiting Chilean President Gabriel Boric when a journalist raised the travel issue.
The Prime Minister said 500 additional staff have been hired to work in passport offices, and 40,000 passports are being processed each day.
Michelle Carbert reported here in May that the union representing Canada’s passport officers says its members are facing verbal abuse, stress and long hours as they continue to respond to an overwhelming surge in applications prompted by an uptake in travel after the lifting of many COVID-19 restrictions.
During Monday’s news conference, Mr. Trudeau also denounced China’s recent actions toward Canadian planes participating in a multilateral UN mission over the Pacific Ocean to enforce sanctions against North Korea.
Last week, the Canadian military accused Chinese planes of not following international safety norms on several occasions and putting a Canadian crew at risk
“China’s actions are irresponsible and provocative and we will continue to register strongly that they are putting people at risk while at the same time not respecting decisions by the UN,” Mr. Trudeau said. Story here.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
SPOTLIGHT IN QUEBEC TEACHER IN BILL 21 SPOTLIGHT – The Quebec teacher removed from her classroom over the province’s Bill 21 says taking off her hijab to keep her job would send wrong the message to students. “I am always about encouraging kids to find their own identity, and grow on their own terms, and that nobody should dictate who they are,” Fatemeh Anvari, a teacher in Chelsea, Que, said in an interview. “I wouldn’t have been me in my class.” Story here.
POILIEVRE CAMPAIGN CLAIMS 300,000-PLUS SIGNUPS – Pierre Poilievre’s campaign to lead the federal Conservatives has shaken up the race, saying it has signed up more than 300,000 new members, but his rivals insist that the battle to succeed former leader Erin O’Toole is far from over. Story here.
EX-ALBERTA FINANCE MINISTER BEGINS LEADERSHIP CAMPAIGN – Alberta’s former finance minister officially launched his campaign to succeed Premier Jason Kenney as leader of the United Conservative Party over the weekend by stressing the need for unity and warning against the dangers of division. Story here.
SUPREME COURT CHIEF CALLS FOR VIGILANCE – Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner says the court has to be vigilant. “As soon as an incident occurs that can attack judicial independence, we must react, we must denounce,” he said during an interview with Radio-Canada. Story here.
TAX-EVASION CHARGES AGAINST FORMER MP DROPPED – All charges against former Calgary MP Rob Anders have been dropped on what was supposed to be the first day of a two-week tax evasion trial. Story here.
HALF THE QUEBEC LIBERAL CAUCUS NOT SEEKING RE-ELECTION – Former Quebec cabinet minister Kathleen Weil will not seek re-election in the provincial election this year, and is the 13th Liberal — half of Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade’s caucus — to announce they will not run again. Story here from The Montreal Gazette.
PUBLIC SERVANT ON TRIAL FOR LEAK -The trial of a federal public servant accused of leaking cabinet secrets about a shipbuilding project is set to begin this morning. Story here.
VETERAN MANITOBA MINISTER LEAVING POLITICS – Scott Fielding, Manitoba’s Natural Resources Minister and a former provincial finance minister, is leaving politics to pursue opportunities in the private sector. Story here.
THIS AND THAT
TODAY IN THE COMMONS – Projected Order of Business at the House of Commons, June 6, accessible here.
UKRAINE AMBASSADOR AMONG DIPLOMATS PRESENTING CREDENTIALS – Ukraine’s ambassador-designate to Canada is among seven new heads of mission who were scheduled on Monday to present their credentials to the Governor-General. Kovaliv Yuliya arrived in Canada on March 29 after being appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada. She has held a number of positions in the public sector including being deputy head of the Ukraine president’s office in charge of economic policy development. Details here. Other mission heads are from Cuba, Ecuador, Portugal, Poland, Japan, and Pakistan.
COMPETITION OPEN FOR SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE ON COMBATTING ISLAMOPHOBIA – On Monday, Housing and Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen invited applicants to submit their candidacy for the new position of Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, which has been posted on the Governor in Council Appointments website. The deadline for submitting applications is July 6.
ANAND IN THE U.S. AND SINGAPORE – Defence Minister Anita Anand is travelling, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to NORAD Headquarters in Colorado Springs on Tuesday for a series of briefings and meetings with officials, and then headed for Singapore June 9-12 to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue – a defence summit for Asia involving Asia’s during which ministers from more than 50 nations discuss and debate the region’s most pressing security challenges.
JOLY IN L.A. – Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is going to Los Angeles from Monday to June 10, to join Prime Minister Trudeau at the ninth Summit of the Americas. While in California, she will hold a North American Foreign Ministers’ Trilateral Meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, to discuss mutual efforts on global security issues as well as progress towards the next North American Leaders’ Summit.
DUCLOS HAS COVID-19 – Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a tweet posted on Saturday. “As per public health guidelines, I will be isolating for 10 days,” Mr. Duclos wrote.
THE DECIBEL
Monday’s edition of The Globe and Mail features Rollie Pemberton, the Edminton-born rapper known as Cadence Weapon, who won the Polaris Music Prize in 2021, and is known for his music with a political bent. Edmonton’s poet laureate in 2009 has written a non-fiction book, Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on Hip-Hop, Resistance and Surviving the Music Industry that charts his path through the music industry. He joins Globe Associate Arts editor Aruna Dutt for a conversation on creativity in the pandemic and emerging with a new album – and now a book – to live audiences. The Decibel is here.
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
In the Ottawa, the Prime Minister held private meetings as well as a bilateral meeting with Chilean President Gabriel Boric, made an announcement with the president, and was scheduled to participate with the Chilean president in a Q&A discussion with local high-school students on the environment and climate change, leadership, democracy, and gender equality.
LEADERS
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh met with a delegation from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, and spoke on the anniversary of the fatal attack on a Muslim family in London, Ontario before heading into Question Period. He was also scheduled to deliver remarks on the National Council of Canadian Muslims advocacy day march.
No schedule released for other party leaders.
TRIBUTE
IN HONOUR OF DECEASED PARLIAMENTARIANS – On Monday, families, friends and colleagues of the 35 former parliamentarians who have died between July, 2021 and April, 2022 gathered in the Senate chamber for a memorial service held by the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians. The names of the deceased are here.
VETERAN B.C. POLITICIAN DECEASED – Jack Weisgerber, a former Social Credit cabinet minister in British Columbia and member of the legislative assembly from northern B.C., has died. Story here from The Vancouver Sun.
PUBLIC OPINION
Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians were comfortable or somewhat comfortable with a deal that could see the federal NDP prop up the minority Liberal government until 2025, a new survey says. Story here.
OPINION
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on why francophone Quebeckers should worry about Bill 96: “So for a moment, let’s put aside questions about minority rights or language laws – important as those things are – to recognize there is something else going on in Bill 96. It’s something that should worry a francophone Quebecker as much as any anglo: Mr. Legault’s government believes it should be able to make laws that are protected from judicial review. And that isn’t limited to language, or culture, even if in this case it is tucked into a language law. In Bill 96, Mr. Legault and his language minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, have created a surprisingly wide inspection power. It gives the Office québécoise de la langue française the power to enter any building other than a “dwelling house” where there are activities governed by the language law, or where documents or property related to it “may be held,” to get information.”
Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on how British Columbia’s health crisis keeps getting worse: “This is a story to watch in Canada, as B.C.’s primary care system finds itself “teetering” – Mr. Horgan’s word, not mine – on the verge of calamity. If that seems too strong a word, consider some of the things that have happened recently. There has been a wave of resignations among health care workers in northern B.C., including half of the doctors in the intensive care units of the area’s biggest hospitals. These physicians tendered their resignations in a display of frustration over how overworked and understaffed hospitals in the region are. There is already a well-documented doctor shortage, not just in the north but virtually everywhere in the province. More than a million British Columbians are without a family physician, with tens of thousands of new people pouring into the province each year, exacerbating the problem.”
Sheila Das (Contributed to The Globe and Mail) on why the English language is not the menace it’s made out to be: “Bill 96, which recently passed, greatly reduces the use of English in legal and medical services and diminishes learning in English at CEGEPs for all students, except for anglophones with historical rights. The fact that this bill is discriminatory, meaning it goes against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is readily acknowledged by those who proposed it when they invoked the notwithstanding clause. But is it necessary? Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language, is already doing the job of advancing French in the province. Multiple studies show that public use of French has been slowly on the increase, as anglophone bilingualism has reached 70 per cent. Those are the facts. But frightening narratives easily overshadow the numbers.”
Graham Fraser (Contributed to The Globe and Mail) on whether Quebec Premier François Legault is the political heir of René Lévesque or Maurice Duplessis?: “Both men grew up in predominantly English-speaking communities – Lévesque in New Carlisle, and Legault in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. Both created new parties, bringing together different streams of Quebec nationalists. Both have presided over the introduction of legislation intended to protect the French language, which disrupted and unnerved the English communities of Quebec. But there are also differences, and they are striking. Lévesque grew up completely bilingual and went to work as a broadcaster for the American military during the Second World War; his English was comfortable and colloquial, and he wrote warmly of his English-speaking colleagues. By contrast, Legault had a hostile relationship with his English-speaking neighbours – he writes about the neighbourhood fights in his memoir Cap sur un Québec gagnant – and is uncomfortable in English. In his book, in which he lists virtually all the people he worked with before entering politics, there are no anglophones.”
Don Braid (The Calgary Herald) on the rise and fall of Jason Kenney’s leadership, and what comes next: “What’s next? Travis Toews is the designated ‘establishment’ candidate — he will get organizational and financial support from Kenney backers, or so the Kenney loyalists hope. It’s not necessarily the best look. I doubt this will be a cakewalk for social conservative Toews, even though many UCP members would welcome a premier from outside Calgary. Brian Jean and Danielle Smith are in the race. So is northern MLA and fierce Kenney critic Todd Loewen. Leela Aheer will join next week. I don’t have a clue as to who’s going to end up in the premier’s chair. There’s no saying the leader has to come from the UCP caucus or government. It could be an unexpected outsider. Or it could be, say, a female moderate from Calgary.”
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