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Politics Briefing: Legislation on Quebec's planned tax for people who refuse to get vaccinated to be tabled in February, Legault says – The Globe and Mail

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Hello,

Quebec Premier François Legault says legislation on Quebec’s planned tax for people who refuse to get vaccinated will be tabled in February.

“There will be a debate at the National Assembly on the health contribution so all MLAs, all political parties will be able to vote for or against and proposing adjustments if necessary,” Mr. Legault told a news conference on Thursday in Montreal.

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Earlier this week, Mr. Legault said those who refuse a COVID-19 vaccination without a valid medical exemption will face a “significant” fee that he suggested would be more than $100. He said the province is working on the details.

The Quebec government’s plan has spurred debate across Canada, with questions posed to the federal government about whether they support the idea.

On Thursday, Mr. Legault said he wanted to make it clear that his plan is not punitive.

“The intention behind the contribution is not to hurt people who are in a bad situation,” said the Premier, offering as examples the homeless or people with an illness that prevents them from getting vaccinated, or people with mental-health issues.

“What we’re saying is those people who choose not to get vaccinated, well there will be a price to pay because there is an impact on society as a whole.”

Parliamentary reporter Marieke Walsh reports here on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s reaction, on Wednesday, to news of Quebec’s plan.

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 sign-up page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

CANADA UNITES WITH MEXICO ON U.S. TRADE CHALLENGE – Canada is joining forces with Mexico to oppose how the United States is interpreting the new rules that govern duty-free cars and trucks. Story here.

SASKATCHEWAN PREMIER HAS COVID-19 – Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has tested positive for COVID-19. “I’m feeling fine, but will be self-isolating and working from home for the next five days,” Mr. Moe said in a tweet. Story here.

PANDEMIC PROMPTS SHIFT IN SENATE REOPENING – The pandemic has prompted a week-long delay in the start of Senate sittings this year, until Feb. 8, but the House of Commons will resume as scheduled on Jan. 31. Story here.

COMMONS FINANCE COMMITTEE CALLING WITNESSES ON INFLATION – The House of Commons finance committee has agreed unanimously to call on Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem and banking regulator Peter Routledge, among others, to testify at hearings into the causes of high inflation, a move that will keep soaring real estate prices and the rising cost of goods at the top of the political agenda heading into the next sitting of Parliament. Story here.

PAYETTE TO KEEP APPOINTMENT – Former governor-general Julie Payette won’t lose her appointment to one of the country’s most prestigious civilian honours. Story here from CBC.

TOUCH CHOICES LOOM ON PM’S TRADITIONAL RESIDENCE – The choice around 24 Sussex Drive, designated as the official residence of the prime minister, is to spend $36.6-million to renovate the crumbling building or $40-million to tear it down and rebuild. The National Capital Commission, property manager for the federal government, has described the building as being in “critical” condition. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family live elsewhere, at Rideau Cottage on the grounds of Rideau Hall where the Governor-General lives. The Toronto Star looks here at the situation.

THIS AND THAT

The House of Commons has adjourned until Jan. 31 at 11 a.m. ET.

ETHICS COMMITTEE LOOKING FOR DATA ANSWERS – The House of Commons ethics committee has voted unanimously to invite the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada and the federal Health Minister to appear to help facilitate a study into the Public Health Agency of Canada collecting, using or possessing Canadians’ private cellphone data without their knowledge or consent. The issue is detailed in a story here and a Campbell Clark column here.

U.S. AMBASSADOR ON BEST CANADIAN BAGELS AND SOFT PRETZELS – The new U.S. ambassador to Canada said Wednesday on Twitter that he is a “very big bagel fan” and would welcome suggestions for Canadian bagels to try. “As a 50-year resident of Philadelphia, my pre-Canada favorites are fresh Everything bagels from Famous 4th Street or Schlesinger’s delis,” David Cohen – @USAmbCanada – wrote. Former federal environment minister Catherine McKenna responded, highlighting the ambassador’s challenge, and spotlighting options from a pair of Ottawa bagel retailers. Mr. Cohen, who arrived in Canada last month, has since broadened his culinary appeal: “I’m also accepting Canadian recommendations for one of my favorite great Philadelphia traditions – soft pretzels.”

THE DECIBEL – With kids heading back to classrooms after the holiday break, parents and teachers are in the spotlight of Thursday’s edition of The Globe and Mail podcast to hear about how they’re feeling. Plus Dr. Janine McCready, an infectious-diseases physician at Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto talks about what is known about Omicron and kids so far, and the tools needed to keep transmission down in both schools and in the wider community. The Decibel is here.

PRIME MINISTER’S DAY

Private meetings, Ottawa. The Prime Minister was also scheduled to speak with Olusegun Obasanjo, the High Representative of the African Union Commission for the Horn of Africa.

LEADERS

No schedules released for party leaders.

OPINION

The Globe and Mail Editorial Board on whether the unvaxxed should pay a special tax?: ”On Tuesday, Quebec Premier François Legault announced a plan – okay, more of a half-cooked notion – to tax the unvaccinated. There were no details, which is why this smells more like public relations than public health. Tax The Unvaxxed looks like a bid to channel public frustration away from government and on to another target. That said, Mr. Legault picked a good target. The nine out of 10 Canadians who are vaccinated have every reason to be furious at the one in 10 who are not. They’re imposing burdens on the rest of us. Hospitalization stats – more on those in a moment – are a reminder that individual choices, good and bad, have collective consequences.”

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on how the health care accountability runaround has to end: “After this week’s first ministers’ call, a spokesperson for Ontario Premier Doug Ford issued a statement citing a “gap” in federal funding of billions of dollars that could be used to improve health care – as if provincial authorities can’t improve the system until the feds cough up more dough. But of course they can. They can raise funds in almost all the same ways that Ottawa can, from the same taxpayer. And they can decide what needs to be funded and what doesn’t. Only provinces, not Ottawa, can make choices about how the health care system works, to make it more efficient or provide better care.”

Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on French President Emmanuel Macron and Quebec Premier François Legault playing politics with the unvaccinated: “Emmanuel Macron and François Legault may share the same mother tongue, but they speak very different political languages. While one wields his words like an Olympic fencer thrusts his épée, the other seeks to engage with voters in distinctly quotidian prose. One likes to flash his intellectual prowess, while the other emphasizes his common sense. Yet the French President and Quebec Premier, who are both up for re-election in 2022, have embraced similar political strategies as they fend off criticism of their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each has stooped to stigmatizing the non-vaccinated as a diversionary tactic, despite the danger inherent in pitting an exasperated majority against a misunderstood minority.”

Vaughn Palmer (The Vancouver Sun) on BC Liberals getting the kind of coverage for their leadership race that no party wants: “The B.C. Liberals were fretting that their leadership contest was being ignored by the news media, but now find themselves getting the kind of publicity that no political party wants. The provincial opposition party is facing calls to put off next month’s leadership vote pending a full-blown investigation of allegations of fraudulent memberships. At the same time, the party is being accused of singling out members from the South Asian and Chinese communities for review and audit.”

Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop

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Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

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The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

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“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

– Source:
CNN

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Trump's claims on crime rates clash with police data – NBC News

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Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and “migrant crime.”

Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.

But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels.

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FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

NBC News analyzed crime data to evaluate Trump’s assertions about the topic.

U.S. and big city crime rates

Trump’s campaign often refers to crime levels, regularly pointing the finger at Biden.

“On Joe Biden’s watch, violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city,” the campaign said in a news release published this month on its site.

Trump himself has made similar remarks.

“Four years ago, I told you that if crooked Joe Biden got to the White House, our borders would be abolished, our middle class would be decimated and our communities would be plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We were right about everything.”

Government figures don’t support that characterization.

Reported violent crime dropped 6% across the board when comparing the last three months of 2022 to the same period in 2023, the FBI reported.

The reported drops were especially pronounced in the big cities that Trump often assails, many of which have Democratic mayors. Violent crime dropped by 11% in cities with populations of 1 million or more, according to FBI data, while murders dropped by 20%, rape was down 16%, and aggravated assault fell by 11%.

Reached for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to other reports indicating that certain types of crimes increased in specific cities.

At the national level, the reported rate of violent crime in 2022, the most recent full year with comprehensive FBI data, was 380.7 offenses per 100,000 people. That’s lower than the overall reported violent crime rate from 2020 — the last full year Trump was in office — when the figure was at 398.5.

The lowest reported violent crime rate of Trump’s presidency was in 2019, when the metric was at 380.8 — in line with the 2022 rate.

The FBI said it will release more comprehensive 2023 crime data in October, just before the election.

The Trump campaign, reached for comment, cited certain categories of violent crime, such as motor vehicle theft, as having increased during the Biden administration, according to FBI figures.

“Joe Biden is trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes,” campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “Democrats have turned great American cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”

New York City crime

Trump, who was born and raised in New York but now lives in Florida, often rails against what he portrays as an increasing crime rate in his former hometown.

Those references to soaring violence have only increased as he faces criminal charges in New York accusing him of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in that case, must also post a $175 million bond to prevent state Attorney General Letitia James from collecting the judgment from a New York civil fraud case.

“I did nothing wrong, and New York should never be put in a position like this again,” Trump posted on Truth Social about the civil judgment in all capital letters. “Businesses are fleeing, violent crime is flourishing, and it is very important that this be resolved in its totality as soon as possible.”

In a separate post, he claimed that “murders & violent crime hit unimaginable records” in the city.

However, major crimes in New York City are down this year by 2.3%, according to police department data comparing year-to-date figures to the same period in 2023.

Those figures for last year were also far below the highs from recent decades. In 1990, more than 527,000 major crimes were reported, compared to more than 126,000 last year, according to New York police data — a drop of more than 75%.

In 2001, more than 162,000 major crimes were reported in New York. The figure dropped by more than 20% over the next two decades.

At the same time, New York City data indicates that the number of major crimes increased in the past few years, though reported violent crimes like murder and rape were down last year from previous years.

‘Migrant crime’

Trump’s dehumanizing language about migrants has become a mainstay of his political speeches since he first sought office in 2015.

In a news release this month, his campaign said the “border Crisis has created a tragic surge in violent crime against innocent American citizens at the hands of some of the world’s most violent criminals.”

Trump has also focused his energy on high-profile cases such as the death of Laken Riley, who was killed in Georgia while jogging. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.

“Every day, innocent citizens are being killed, stabbed, shot, raped and murdered because of Biden migrant crime,” Trump said in a video posted to his campaign’s X account last week.

However, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S., according to local police department data.

Crime reports have decreased in several major cities targeted by Texas’ Operation Lone Star, a program backed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that flies or buses migrants from the state to Democratic-run cities across the U.S.

Several of those cities — New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia — have had decreases in year-to-date reported crime totals compared to the same period last year.


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