Pope Francis is still coming to visit Canada this month.
The Pope restated his commitment to be in Canada from July 24-30 during an exclusive interview with Reuters in his Vatican residence.
Doctors had previously said the Pope might have to miss his trip to Canada unless he agreed to undergo 20 more days of physical therapy and rest for pain in his right knee.
The 85-year-old Pope has previously apologized for abuses perpetrated against the children in Canada’s residential schools, and there have been hopes his pending visit with stops in Quebec City, Edmonton and Iqaluit will include a stronger apology and further action from the Catholic Church on the issue.
As he talked to Reuters about hoped-for trips ahead, he mentioned Canada.
“I would like to go (to Ukraine), and I wanted to go to Moscow first. We exchanged messages about this because I thought that if the Russian president gave me a small window to serve the cause of peace …
“And now it is possible, after I come back from Canada, it is possible that I manage to go to Ukraine,” he said. “The first thing is to go to Russia to try to help in some way, but I would like to go to both capitals.”
European Bureau Chief Eric Reguly and Reporter Tavia Grant reported here on the announcement of the Pope’s visit.
And feature writer Jana G. Pruden reported here on how the Pope’s impending visit to a former residential school in Maskwacis, Alberta had sparked mixed emotions.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
NO FEDERAL FINANCING FOR LNG PROPOSALS: WILKINSON – Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says two private-sector proposals to export liquefied natural gas from Canada’s East Coast to European countries struggling to reduce their reliance on Russian fuel will need to move forward without federal financing. Story here.
AIR CANADA INCOMPETENT: NB MINISTER – New Brunswick’s education minister is lashing out at Air Canada, saying the airline is incompetent because it decided on the weekend to cancel a Monday flight that would have taken him and four officials to a meeting in Regina. Story here. There’s a Globe and Mail Explainer here on Air Canada’s flight cancellations, and a story here on weekend developments. On Twitter today, federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra wrote here that airport delays continue to be an issue at Canada’s major airports, and he had met Monday morning with the CEO of Air Canada.
TRANSPARENCY NEEDED AMIDST TUBERCULOSIS OUTBREAK: INUIT ORGANIZATION LEADER – The president of a major Inuit organization has reiterated her call for transparency after The Globe and Mail published an investigation of a major tuberculosis outbreak in Pangnirtung, a hamlet of about 1,500 people on Baffin Island. Story here.
WANTED: FEDERAL OMBUDSMAN FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME – The federal government has now left a key victim-rights watchdog role vacant for more than nine months. Story here.
ONTARIO CONVENIENCE STORES PRESS FORD FOR BEER SALES – Convenience stores are calling for Ontario Premier Doug Ford to fulfill his shelved promise to allow them to sell beer, a pledge derailed three years ago after failed talks with the multinational brewing companies behind the province’s Beer Store chain. Story here.
SERVICE DELIVERY THE ACHILLES HEEL OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: HEINTZMAN – Delivering services to Canadians has been an Achilles heel of the federal government for 30 years because of political disinterest and a senior management of “travelling salesmen,” who hop from job to job and barely know the business of the departments they lead, says the former senior bureaucrat who proposed the creation of Service Canada. Story here from Policy Options.
PARLIAMENT HILL OVERHAUL MAY BE SIDE EFFECT OF PROTESTS – The convoy protests that occupied downtown Ottawa last winter may inadvertently have pushed forward a plan to convert Parliament Hill into Parliament Square. Story here.
CANADIANS EXPECT RISING INFLATION: BANK OF CANADA REPORTS – A pair of new reports from the Bank of Canada point to rising inflation expectations by Canadian businesses and consumers. Story here.
CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP RACE
CAMPAIGN TRAIL – Scott Aitchison is in Ontario. Patrick Brown is campaigning in Charlottetown, PEI and then going to Saint John, NB. Jean Charest is campaigning virtually. Leslyn Lewis is in Iqaluit. Pierre Poilievre is in Ottawa. No details available on campaign whereabouts of Roman Baber.
THIS AND THAT
The House of Commons is not sitting again until Sept. 19. The Senate is to resume sitting on Sept. 20.
CHAMPAGNE IN JAPAN – Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne is visiting Japan from Monday to Saturday, July 9, meeting with stakeholders and business leaders in the automotive, manufacturing and technology sectors.
OLIPHANT IN SWITZERLAND AND LONDON – Robert Oliphant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is travelling to Lugano, Switzerland and London, United Kingdom, from Monday to Wednesday, July 6, 2022. In Lugano, Mr. Oliphant is participating in the Ukraine Recovery Conference. In London, he is representing Canada at the International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief.
THE DECIBEL
On Monday’s edition of The Globe and Mail podcast, Jana G. Pruden, a feature writer for The Globe and Mail, discusses the damage that wild boars can do. With their populations growing and sightings – even around big metropolitan areas – increasing, governments are rushing to find ways to contain them before they wreak ecological and agricultural damage. Ms. Pruden also talks about why letting hunters loose on the boars is not the answer. The Decibel is here.
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
In the Ottawa region, the Prime Minister speaks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
LEADERS
No schedules released for party leaders.
TRIBUTE
Broadcaster Patrick Watson, host of the milestone CBC series “This Hour has 7 Days” and a former chair of the CBC has died, aged 92, according to a tweet from Steve Paikin of TVO.
OPINION
Kelly Cryderman (The Globe and Mail)on how Alberta’s economic turnaround leads to calls to spend, as UCP leadership race pauses big decisions: “As Alberta’s Finance Minister released data on the province’s trove of surplus dollars this week, Jason Nixon said the Premier’s departure and the corresponding United Conservative Party leadership race isn’t affecting government operations. As much as the UCP will insist this in the months ahead, it’s not true. No one knows who will win the leadership contest, become premier and shape the UCP government this October. The policy gulf between candidates Leela Aheer and Danielle Smith is vast. Government actions into the fall are limited by that uncertainty.”
Marcus Gee (The Globe and Mail)on not shrugging over Doug Ford’s decision to put his nephew in Ontario’s cabinet: “Premiers should not play favourites. Handing out plums to family and friends makes it look as if the game is fixed. It coarsens politics and erodes faith in government. If anyone should know that, it’s this Premier. He and his brother, Rob, made “stop the gravy train” their slogan at city hall. Their whole brand was clean, lean government, freed from the clammy grip of self-serving insiders. Now he acts as if appointing his own nephew to head a ministry in the government he leads is perfectly natural and inoffensive. It’s not. Quite the opposite. If he can’t see that, he has lost track of what the Fords claimed was their main reason for getting into politics in the first place.”
David Parkinson (The Globe and Mail)on how Quebec’s Bill 96 will widen a problematic skills gap unless the province invests in closing it: “A significant portion of Quebec’s labour force suffers from what amounts to a skills gap. The skill in question is French language proficiency. And Bill 96 threatens to widen that gap, without a serious educational investment on the part of the province to address it. Bill 96 is Quebec’s new language law – amending and updating the old Bill 101 that has defined the use of French (and English) in commerce, public services and education since the 1970s. The new bill includes stricter rules governing the hiring of non-French speakers, and the use of English in the workplace.”
Andrew Perez (TVO) on three things the Ontario Liberals must do to rebuild: “The final ingredient necessary for a re-energized and more relevant party: a relatable leader who does not hail from the GTA and can represent Liberals at Queen’s Park. Not since the Peterson and Lyn McLeod eras of the 1980s and early ‘90s have Liberals had a leader that did not come from one of Ontario’s two largest city-regions. When choosing its next leader, the party should strive to find an individual with strong roots in a region not associated with the Wynne and McGuinty governments. This leader could bring new perspectives — ones more likely to resonate with former Liberal voters outside the 905 who have gravitated to the NDP and PCs in recent elections.”
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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.
