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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.
Transportation reporter Eric Atkins and parliamentary reporter Marieke Walsh report here on Tuesday’s developments.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Ian Bailey. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
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 and was 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 Board on 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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The 2024 federal budget failed to spark a much-needed rebound in the polls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s trailing Liberal party, according to new Ipsos polling released Tuesday.
Canadian reaction to the Liberal government’s latest spending plans shows an historic challenge ahead of the governing party as it tries to keep the reins of government out of the Conservative party’s hands in the next election, according to one pollster.
“If the purpose of the budget was to get a political reboot going, it didn’t seem to happen,” says Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Global Public Affairs.
The 2024 federal budget tabled last week included billions of dollars in new spending aimed at improving “generational fairness” and rapidly filling in Canada’s housing supply gap.
Ipsos polling conducted exclusively for Global News shows voters’ reactions to the 2024 federal budget mostly ranged from lacklustre to largely negative.
After stripping out those who said they “don’t know” how they feel about the federal budget (28 per cent), only 17 per cent of Canadians surveyed about the spending plan in the two days after its release said they’d give it “two thumbs up.” Some 40 per cent, meanwhile, said they’d give it “two thumbs down” and the remainder (43 per cent) gave a symbolic “shrug” to Budget 2024.
“Thumbs down” reactions rose to 63 per cent among Alberta respondents and 55 per cent among those in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Some 10 per cent of respondents said the budget would personally help them, while 37 per cent said it would hurt, after again stripping out those who said they didn’t know what the impact would be.
Asked about how they’d vote if a federal election were held today, 43 per cent of respondents said they’d pick the Conservatives, while 24 per cent said they’d vote Liberal, followed by 19 per cent who’d lean NDP.
The Conservative lead is up one point from a month earlier, Bricker notes, suggesting that Budget 2024 failed to stem the bleeding for the incumbent Liberals.
Only eight per cent of respondents to the Ipsos poll said the budget made them more likely to vote Liberal in the upcoming election, while roughly a third (34 per cent) said it made them less likely.
“The initial impressions of Canadians are that it hasn’t made much of a difference,” Bricker says.
Sentiment towards the Liberals remains slightly higher among generation Z and millennial voters — the demographics who appeared to be the focus of Budget 2024 — but Bricker says opinions remain “overwhelmingly negative” across generational lines.
Heading into the 2024 budget, the Liberals were under pressure to improve affordability in Canada amid a rising cost of living and an inaccessible housing market, Ipsos polling conducted last month showed.
The spending plan included items to remove junk fees from banking services and concert tickets, as well as some items aimed at making it easier for first-time homebuyers to break into the housing market. It also included a proposed change to how some capital gains are taxed, which the Liberals have claimed would target the wealthiest Canadians.
Paul Kershaw, founder of Generation Squeeze, told Global News after the federal budget’s release that while he was encouraged by acknowledgements about the economic unfairness facing younger demographics, there is no quick fix for the affordability crisis in the housing market.
Trudeau, his cabinet ministers and Liberal MPs have hit the road both before and after the budget’s release to promote line items in the spending plan.
Bricker says this is the typical post-budget playbook, but so far it looks like there’s nothing that “really caught on with Canadians” in the early days after the release of the spending plans. The Liberals have a chance to make something happen on the road, he says, but it’s “not looking great.”
“Maybe over the course of the next year, they’ll be able to demonstrate that they’ve actually changed something,” he says.
Bricker notes, however, that public opinion has changed little in federal politics over the past year.
The next federal election is set for October 2025 at the latest, but could be called earlier if the Liberals fail a confidence vote or bring down the government themselves.
But a vote today would see the Liberals likely lose to a “very, very large majority from the Conservative party,” Bricker says.
“What we’re seeing is, if things continue on as they’ve been continuing for the space of the last year, that they will end up in a situation where, almost an historic low in terms of the number of seats,” he says.
The Conservatives are leading in every region in the country, except for Quebec, where the Bloc Quebecois holds the pole position, according to the Ipsos polling.
The Liberals are meanwhile facing “a solid wall of public disapproval,” Bricker says. Some 32 per cent of voters said they would never consider voting Liberal in the next election, higher than the 27 per cent who said the same about the Conservatives, according to Ipsos.
Typically, Bricker says an incumbent party can hold onto a lead in some demographic, age group or region and build out a strategy for re-election from there.
More on Politics
But this Liberal party lacks any foothold in the electorate, making prospects look grim in the next federal election; it’s so bleak that he even invokes the Progressive Conservative party’s historic rout in the 1993 vote.
“The hill they have to climb is incredibly hard,” Bricker says.
“I haven’t seen a hill this high to climb in federal politics since Brian Mulroney was faced with a very similar situation back in 1991 and ’92. And we all know what happened with that.”
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between 17 and 18, April 2024, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18-plus was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18-plus been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.
Opinion: Brad West been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization
Published Apr 22, 2024 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 4 minute read
VICTORIA — Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West fired off a letter to Premier David Eby last week about Allan Schoenborn, the child killer who changed his name in a bid for anonymity.
“It is completely beyond the pale that individuals like Schoenborn have the ability to legally change their name in an attempt to disassociate themselves from their horrific crimes and to evade the public,” wrote West.
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The Alberta government has legislated against dangerous, long-term and high risk offenders who seek to change their names to escape public scrutiny.
“I urge your government to pass similar legislation as a high priority to ensure the safety of British Columbians,” West wrote the premier.
The B.C. Review Board has granted Schoenborn overnight, unescorted leave for up to 28 days, and he spent some of that time in Port Coquitlam, according to West.
This despite the board being notified that “in the last two years there have been 15 reported incidents where Schoenborn demonstrated aggressive behaviour.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable that an individual who has committed such heinous crimes, and continues to demonstrate this type of behaviour, is able to roam the community unescorted.”
Understandably, those details alarmed PoCo residents.
But the letter is also an example of the outspoken mayor’s penchant for to-the-point pronouncements on provincewide concerns.
He’s been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization.
His most recent blast followed the news that the New Democrats were appointing a task force to advise on ways to curb the use of illicit drugs and the spread of weapons in provincial hospitals.
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“Where the hell is the common sense here?” West told Mike Smyth on CKNW recently. “This has just gone way too far. And to have a task force to figure out what to do — it’s obvious what we need to do.
“In a hospital, there’s no weapons and you can’t smoke crack or fentanyl or any other drugs. There you go. Just saved God knows how much money and probably at least six months of dithering.”
He had a pithy comment on the government’s excessive reliance on outside consultants like MNP to process grants for clean energy and other programs.
“If ever there was a place to find savings that could be redirected to actually delivering core public services, it is government contracts to consultants like MNP,” wrote West.
He’s also broken with the Eby government on the carbon tax.
“The NDP once opposed the carbon tax because, by its very design, it is punishing to working people,” wrote West in a social media posting.
“The whole point of the tax is to make gas MORE expensive so people don’t use it. But instead of being honest about that, advocates rely on flimsy rebate BS. It is hard to find someone who thinks they are getting more dollars back in rebates than they are paying in carbon tax on gas, home heat, etc.”
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West has a history with the NDP. He was a political staffer and campaign worker with Mike Farnworth, the longtime NDP MLA for Port Coquitlam and now minister of public safety.
When West showed up at the legislature recently, Farnworth introduced him to the house as “the best mayor in Canada” and endorsed him as his successor: “I hope at some time he follows in my footsteps and takes over when I decide to retire — which is not just yet,” added Farnworth who is running this year for what would be his eighth term.
Other political players have their eye on West as a future prospect as well.
Several parties have invited him to run in the next federal election. He turned them all down.
Lately there has also been an effort to recruit him to lead a unified Opposition party against Premier David Eby in this year’s provincial election.
I gather the advocates have some opinion polling to back them up and a scenario that would see B.C. United and the Conservatives make way (!) for a party to be named later.
Such flights of fancy are commonplace in B.C. when the NDP is poised to win against a divided Opposition.
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By going after West, the advocates pay a compliment to his record as mayor (low property taxes and a fix-every-pothole work ethic) and his populist stands on public safety, carbon taxation and other provincial issues.
The outreach to a small city mayor who has never run provincially also says something about the perceived weaknesses of the alternatives to Eby.
“It is humbling,” West said Monday when I asked his reaction to the overtures.
But he is a young father with two boys, aged three and seven. The mayor was 10 when he lost his own dad and he believes that if he sought provincial political leadership now, “I would not be the type of dad I want to be.”
When West ran for re-election — unopposed — in 2022, he promised to serve out the full four years as mayor.
He is poised to keep his word, confident that if the overtures to run provincially are serious, they will still be there when his term is up.
Recommended from Editorial
LIVE Q&A WITH B.C. PREMIER DAVID EBY: Join us April 23 at 3:30 p.m. when we will sit down with B.C. Premier David Eby for a special edition of Conversations Live. The premier will answer our questions — and yours — about a range of topics, including housing, drug decriminalization, transportation, the economy, crime and carbon taxes. Click HERE to get a link to the livestream emailed to your inbox.
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Fareed’s take: There’s been an unprecedented wave of migration to the West
On GPS with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, he shares his take on how the 2024 election will be defined by abortion and immigration.
It's possible to rely on plant proteins without sacrificing training gains, new studies say – The Globe and Mail
Meta Expands VR Operating System to Third-Party Hardware Makers – MacRumors
Mayor's youth advisory council seeks submissions for art gala – SooToday
NASA's Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth – Phys.org
Made Right Here: Woodworking art – CTV News Kitchener
CTV National News: Honda's big move in Canada – CTV News
Auston Matthews turns it up with three-point night as Maple Leafs slay Bruins in Game 2 – Toronto Sun
Meet artist J-Positive and the family behind his art store – CBC.ca
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