The federal government is suspending a number of vaccination requirements for travel and federal employees, citing progress in vaccination efforts and declining case counts to justify the measures.
Ministers attending a news conference Tuesday said that, as of June 20, vaccination requirements for domestic and outbound travel, federally regulated transportation sectors and federal employees will be suspended.
“Today we can announce adjustments to our health measures because Canadians have done what they needed to do protect one another, and followed public health guidelines,” said Dominic LeBlanc, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
He noted the policy shift is not aimed at reducing wait times at Canadian airports, which he said are mainly caused by staffing shortages.
However, he said that if the pandemic takes a turn for the worse, the government is prepared to bring back policies necessary to protect Canadians.
Health Minister Jean Yves-Duclos elaborated on that point. “While the suspension of vaccine mandates reflects an improved public health situation in Canada, the COVID-19 virus continues to evolve rapidly and circulate in Canada and globally,” he said.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra told the news conference there is no change to policy for travellers entering Canada. Vaccination for travellers and crew on cruise ships will remain in place, he said.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
CANADA’S 2030 OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY CLIMATE TARGETS NOT FEASIBLE: GOVERNMENT ANALYSIS – Confidential government documents show a large gap between the federal Liberals’ promised target for reducing the oil and gas industry’s greenhouse gas emissions and what an internal analysis says is achievable by 2030. Story here.
JOLY OFFICE KNEW ABOUT PLANS FOR DIPLOMAT TO ATTEND RUSSIAN EMBASSY PARTY – The office of Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly knew a senior department official would be attending a party at the Russian embassy in Ottawa last Friday andwas pressed to apologize by the Prime Minister’s Office. Story here.
QUEBEC TECH SECTOR RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT LANGUAGE-LAW REFORM – Quebec’s most sweeping language law overhaul in nearly half a century is raising alarm among the province’s homegrown technology companies, whose executives say the reinforcement of requirements for immigrants and businesses to use French threatens to do enormous and lasting economic damage. Story here.
SIKH ORGANIZATION PROTESTS ARREST OF TWO ORGANIZERS – The World Sikh Organization of Canada says Canadian law enforcement should fully investigate and prosecute those involved in providing the tip that led to the wrongful arrest of two organizers of a Sikh rally near Parliament Hill. Story here.
B.C. ACTOR PLANNED TO KILL PM – A British Columbia actor who has pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of his mother had a plan to drive to Ottawa to kill Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the days following her killing. Story here from CBC.
MORE COUNTRIES JOINING CANADA AND U.S.TO COUNTER BEIJING MINERAL AMBITIONS – The Biden administration’s point person on securing supplies of rare earth minerals says more and more countries are joining with Canada and the United States as part of Washington’s push to counter Beijing’s dominance of critical mineral supply chains. Story here.
FEDERAL BILL TO CALL FOR REPORTING RANSOMWARE, CYBERATTACKS – Businesses and other private-sector organizations would be required to report ransomware incidents and other cyberattacks to the government under a federal bill to be tabled Tuesday. Story here.
MP APOLOGIZES FOR CURSING CRITIC – Ontario MP Adam van Koeverden has apologized for cursing at a Canadian living abroad who called the former Olympian a “disgrace of a Canadian” for the way he dealt with her concerns about vaccine mandates. Story here from CBC.
CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP RACE
CAMPAIGN TRAIL – Scott Aitchison is campaigning in Ontario this week. Jean Charest is in Toronto. Leslyn Lewis in her riding, Haldimand-Norfolk, in Ontario. Pierre Poilievre is in Ottawa. There is no word on the campaign whereabouts of Roman Baber and Patrick Brown.
NEW BOOK FROM CHAREST CO CHAIR – Tasha Kheiriddin, co-chair for Jean Charest’s campaign, has a new book out soon on the challenges facing the federal Conservative party. The Right Path: How Conservatives Can Unite, Inspire and Take Canada Forward is published by Optimum Publishing International, and due out July 2. A precis on the publisher’s website says the book is a “complete and thorough examination as to what has gone wrong with the Conservatives in Canada” and presents a path forward. In a tweet Tuesday, Ms. Kheiriddin wrote that she started writing the book last October before the leadership race started – the Conservative caucus ousted Erin O’Toole on Feb. 2, and she has spoken to grassroots members, past and present leaders and supporters of other campaigns.
THIS AND THAT
TODAY IN THE COMMONS – Projected Order of Business at the House of Commons, June 14, accessible here.
PLANS FOR PICKING NEW UCP LEADER – Members of Alberta’s United Conservative Party will be electing a new leader, succeeding Jason Kenney, on Oct. 6 using a mail-in ballot, with an option to vote in-person at one of five polling locations across the province, according to Calgary-based Energy Reporter Emma Graney. Entering the race comes with a $150,000 fee and a $25,000 refundable compliance deposit. The rules are here.
FREELAND APPEARS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY – In Ottawa, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is appearing at a the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency. The event will be streamed live here starting at 6:30 p.m. Details on other Commons committee hearings are here.
JOLY HOSTING DANISH AND GREENLAND REPRESENTATIVES – Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is hosting her Danish counterpart Jeppe Kofod, Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte B. Egede, and Greenland’s Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Motzfeldt in Ottawa from Tuesday to Wednesday for talks on various issues, including a matter covered here.
YELLEN COMING TO TORONTO – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will be visiting Toronto on June 20 for meetings and events with Deputy Prime Minister Christia Freeland. Details here.
ANAND IN BRUSSELS – Defence Minister Anita Anand is travelling to Brussels to participate in Ukraine Defense Contact Group and NATO Defence Ministers’ Meetings on Wednesday and Thursday. Chief of the Defence Staff, General Wayne Eyre, will participate in the defence contact group meeting hosted by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. The point of the meeting is for Allies to discuss Ukraine’s current and future defence needs and co-ordinate military aid for Ukraine.
SAJJAN IN LYTTON – International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan, also the minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada, is in Lytton, B.C. detailing plans for funding to help rebuild the village, which was destroyed by a wildfire last June.
THE DECIBEL
On Tuesday’s edition of The Globe and Mail podcast, science reporter Ivan Semeniuk talks about the struggle over Ontario’s proposed Highway 413 which would cut through the habitat of several species at risk, and, say critics, harm local waterways as well. Mr. Semeniuk discusses what the struggle says about Canada’s efforts to protect its biodiversity. The Decibel is here.
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
In Ottawa, the Prime Minister attends private meetings, will virtually chair the cabinet meeting and virtually attend Question Period.
LEADERS
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet was scheduled to hold a media scrum ahead of Question Period on Tuesday about the 2030 emissions reduction plan.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and NDP MP Heather McPherson met with David Cohen, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada and Mr. Singh was scheduled to hold a media scrum ahead of Question Period and then participate in Question Period.
No schedules provided for other leaders
PUBLIC OPINION
PREMIERS RANKED – Nova Scotia’s Tim Houston is the most approved-of premier while the popularity of other premiers have tracked down, with notable drops for John Horgan of British Columbia and Quebec’s François Legault, according to newly released research from the Angus Reid Institute. Details here.
OPINION
The Globe and Mail Editorial Boardon whether the Trudeau government’s plan for quick, deep cuts to oil emissions is too ambitious: “The Liberals have the right climate ambitions, but the federal documents are a sobering reminder of some basic realities. Hitting the government’s current 2030 target will be challenging, and perhaps even economically damaging, barring technological breakthroughs. But what is equally true is that Canada must lower emissions, and must force industry to steadily cut emissions-per-barrel. Canada must be a world-beater on this score; the industry’s long-term viability depends on it. However, emission targets cannot be so low that the only way to meet them is to shut down oil production. It short, while Ottawa can and should aim to get most of the way to its 2030 emissions target, aiming to get all the way there may not be prudent.”
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail)on how Pierre Poilievre poses a real threat to the Liberals if he ignores calls to pivot toward the centre: “Mr. Poilievre should ignore critics who maintain he must abandon his angry populist message or face defeat in the next federal election, assuming he wins the leadership. Following that advice would cost him his most important political asset: his authenticity. That same authenticity helped Doug Ford win re-election on June 2. The Ontario Premier won with the type of pragmatic, centrist platform to which many think Mr. Poilievre should pivot. But there’s more to it than that.”
André Picard (The Globe and Mail)on how airport waits are an inconvenience while health care waits are a travesty: “If you think the wait to board a plane is excruciating, or that an airport with long wait times is hell on Earth, perhaps you should consider how long Canadians routinely wait for essential medical care, or what it’s like for someone to spend 24, 48 or 72 hours on a gurney in a hospital hallway. Getting cancer treatments, hip transplants and mental-health care in a timely fashion seems infinitely more important than getting to a business meeting or holiday destination. Yet, you wouldn’t know it from the political and media reaction.”
Mark Zacharias and Merran Smith (Contributed to The Globe and Mail) on how the fossil-fuel party is raging again, but Canada still needs a plan for the hangover to come: “Canada’s oil and gas patch is partying like it’s 2008, though most Canadian drivers are not enjoying the festive mood. Commercial rents in downtown Calgary are on the rise, and long-thought dead fossil-fuel export projects have zombified. It’s no secret that the oil and gas industry is cyclical: as prices drop, the music stops, the lights come on. But historically, prices go back up, and the cycle repeats. This time will be different, however. There is not likely to be another rebound in the oil and gas sector after this one. Governments at all levels need to acknowledge this fact and plan for how Canada will be competitive in a fundamentally changed economy.”
Vaughn Palmer (The Vancouver Sun)on the risk and reward of a new name for the B.C. Liberals:“The drive to change the name started in the 1990s with supporters of the provincial Social Credit party and the federal Conservative and Reform parties. One of the leading advocates has been Bill Bennett, a cabinet minister and MLA from 2001 to 2017 from Kootenay East. “In my election campaigns,” he once said, running under the Liberal banner “is like running a race with a bag of cement tied to your waist.” Bag of cement notwithstanding, Bennett won four times in a row as a B.C. Liberal. In his last campaign in 2013, he reaped 63 per cent of the vote. The counter argument was well put recently by Jas Johal, the one-term B.C. Liberal MLA who returned to the broadcast industry after losing his Richmond seat in 2017. “The B.C. Liberal name actually plays very well in the urban areas (and) with minority communities,” the CKNW host told Katie DeRosa of the Vancouver Sun this week.”
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MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.
Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.
Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.
Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.
Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.
Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
