Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accepted an invitation to visit Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation on Monday, after not visiting the community two weeks ago on the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.
The B.C. First Nation had previously said that Mr. Trudeau did not response to an invitation to attend a ceremony near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School to mark the inaugural event. Mr. Trudeau apologized last week for travelling to Tofino for a vacation on that day instead, calling it a mistake that he regrets. He said he was looking forward to visiting the community.
Monday’s visit will not be a public event, according to a press release.
People listen as drummers begin to play after a moment of silence during a Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc ceremony to honour residential school survivors and mark the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, in Kamloops, B.C., on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021.
DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Mr. Trudeau’s office also confirmed Friday that the swearing-in ceremony for his new cabinet will take place on Oct. 26, and that Parliament will resume a month later on Nov. 22.
The release from the Prime Minister’s Office said that early priorities for the government will include introducing legislation to ban conversion therapy, 10-day paid sick leave for all federally regulated workers, accelerating climate action and working with Indigenous communities on reconciliation.
There will also be a focus on vaccination against COVID-19: the government outlined five vaccination commitments in the first 100 days, which includes ensuring everyone 12 and up who travels by air or rail in Canada has had their shots.
Speculation continues about which MPs will be in the new Liberal cabinet, though Mr. Trudeau promised last month that his cabinet will once again be gender-balanced, continuing a trend established in his first two mandates. He’s also confirmed that Chrystia Freeland will remain Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.
The party lost four female cabinet ministers in the last election: three who did not win re-election and one incumbent who chose not to run again.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Ian Bailey. Today’s newsletter is co-written with Menaka Raman-Wilms. 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
Opposition parties and military observers are criticizing the federal government for not disclosing the latest sexual misconduct investigation into a senior military officer during the recent election campaign. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and acting chief of the defence staff General Wayne Eyre were notified about the investigation into Lieutenant-General Trevor Cadieu on Sept. 5, but neither the military nor government disclosed the information publicly at the time.
Canada could retaliate against American companies should the U.S. go too far with a Buy American approach, suggested Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, after meetings on Thursday with her counterparts in the G20 and International Monetary Fund. U.S. President Joe Biden said this summer that Buy American provisions would be an important part of boosting a postpandemic recovery.
Ontario launches its digital vaccine passport app on Friday, a week ahead of the initial Oct. 22 target date. The province has had a paper-based proof of vaccination system since Sept. 22, and the new scannable app moves Ontario to a system like the ones already in place in B.C. and Quebec.
The U.S. will announce on Friday that it plans to reopen its land borders on Nov. 8 to non-essential vaccinated travellers, according to a White House official.
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
The Prime Minister is in private meetings in Ottawa on Friday, according to his public itinerary.
LEADERS
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was in Toronto on Friday morning, where he delivered remarks to the Ontario Building Trades Convention.
No public itineraries were issued by the other leaders on Friday.
HOW TO BE A PRIME MINISTER
From Governing Canada, A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics by Michael Wernick (Published by On Point Press, an imprint of UBC Press)
The Politics Briefing newsletter is featuring excerpts from Governing Canada, a new book by Michael Wernick, the former clerk of the privy council. Our focus is a key chapter, Advice to a Prime Minister. (Parliamentary reporter Kristy Kirkup reported on the project here.)
Today’s concluding excerpt sums up Mr. Wernick’s advice to Prime Ministers:
“The tenure of our prime ministers has ranged from a few months to 21 years. In the “modern era” of politics, the attention and the pressures are unrelenting, and at some point personal burnout and weariness by the electorate will set in. However long you hold the office, every week will be an opportunity to make a difference. If you are mindful of what you want to accomplish and pay attention to time management, to team dynamics, and to your own personal resilience, you will get a lot done and leave important legacies. Try not to govern one day at a time, fighting fires and feeding media cycles. Managing the short-term challenges is just a shield, one that lets you aim higher and bend the curve – of history.”
Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on how the Prairies are showing Canada what a COVID-19 disaster looks like:“Thanks to the governments’ slow adoption of vaccine passports and other measures designed to halt the spread of the virus, the unvaccinated have not been convinced to do what is necessary – which has produced the bedlam we are now witnessing.”
Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on how politicians who recently travelled now have a message for Canadians: Don’t travel: “Travelling a year ago was a hard thing to justify. But fully vaccinated individuals who have followed the rules until now ought to be able to escape for a mental-health reprieve without the scorn of federal officials who might not even have unpacked yet from their campaign jaunts across the country.”
Parag Khanna (special to The Globe and Mail) on how if you’re searching for the American Dream, go to Canada: “After all, the “Canadian Dream” is much more attainable. Canada is a policy lab for experiments in reducing inequality. The country is far from perfect, but it ranks far higher than the U.S. in social mobility.”
Send along your political questions and we will look at getting answers to run in this newsletter. It’s not possible to answer each one personally. Questions and answers will be edited for length and clarity.
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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.
