Quebec politician offers mea culpa for comments on racism in provincial legislature

HALIFAX – With one week to go in the Nova Scotia election campaign, early voter turnout is down about 15 per cent compared to the 2021 election.

Elections Nova Scotia says that as of Monday, a total of 64,000 early votes had been cast, which is 11,367 fewer than the 75,367 votes cast at the same point in 2021’s summer campaign. There are 786,748 eligible voters in the province.

The drop represents a reversal from the increase in early voting since the 2017 election. At the same point in the 2017 general election, 32,935 early votes had been cast.

Liberal Party Leader Zach Churchill told reporters Tuesday the decrease in early voting may be a signal of “election fatigue” as the provincial campaign comes on the heels of municipal and U.S. elections. A postal strike, meanwhile, has prevented voters from receiving cards in the mail detailing where to vote early, he added.

Churchill repeated his criticism of Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Houston’s decision to ignore a law his government passed in the fall of 2021 that set July 15, 2025, as the date for the next provincial election. At the time, Houston said the law would “limit any perceived advantage by the government to control the timing of the next election.” 

But last month, with the Tories holding a strong lead in the polls, Houston dropped the commitment and called a snap election for Nov. 26, arguing that he needed a new mandate to deal with an affordability crisis and to “stand up” to Ottawa.

Asked about the drop in early voting, Houston said in an email sent Tuesday, “I encourage all Nova Scotians to get out and exercise their right to vote.”

Churchill says he hopes voters will pay attention to his party’s platform during the final days of the race, including his announcement Tuesday of more support for renters who have faced rapidly rising monthly costs. He repeated his pledge to provide a “rent bank” program, which would provide quick-turnaround, zero-interest loans to renters who find themselves unable to make monthly payments. 

The Liberal leader is also promising to prohibit fixed-term leases that go beyond a year. Fixed-term leases, which allow landlords to refuse renewals without giving a reason, are a loophole that make existing rent caps ineffective, Churchill said. Advocacy groups for landlords say fixed-term leases are useful because they allow a trial period before property owners offer long-term leases to tenants.

Churchill also said his party’s rent cap system would consider inflation, market conditions and regional vacancy rates, adding that the party will establish a residential tenancies enforcement unit.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender has criticized the Progressive Conservative government’s record on housing, saying the average one-bedroom apartment in the province costs $2,000 a month, while rent overall has increased by 18 per cent in the last year.

Chender, who voted at an advance poll Tuesday and didn’t hold a media event, has promised more public housing built with government funds.

Houston was in Halifax Tuesday where he announced a re-elected Progressive Conservative government would spend $810 million over the next five years to expand roads and highways in Atlantic Canada’s largest city. The work will include road expansion and upgrades as well as the addition of extra lanes on either side of Highway 102 leading into Halifax.

“These projects are a once-in-a-generation investment,” Houston told reporters.

With significant population growth in recent years, roads and highways into the Halifax peninsula have become increasingly clogged with traffic. Houston said the announced highway work is “all about moving people.”

He said the province and its Joint Regional Transportation Authority is in discussion with the Halifax Regional Municipality about traffic flow management. But, when asked whether he was focused enough on improving Halifax’s transit bus system as a way of reducing traffic, he described the situation as “chicken and egg.”

“We need to talk about how we move these vehicles around — that’s the roads,” Houston said. “We can also talk about the buses that travel on them, but unless we can move the traffic in a meaningful way then it’s not going to matter.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 19, 2024.

— With files by Keith Doucette in Halifax

RIO DE JANEIRO – Justin Trudeau left the G20 summit in Brazil Tuesday saying Canada and other “advanced economies” wanted to see a stronger statement calling out Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The invasion was a key theme for the prime minister as he met numerous world leaders ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. 

Russia is a member of the G20 but President Vladimir Putin has not attended a leaders’ summit since before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

That year, the G20 leaders’ final statement condemned Russia’s actions and demanded it withdraw from Ukraine.

A year later, the summit ended with watered-down language about the war. The final statement from Brazil on Tuesday was even shorter and did not mention Russia at all.

“I would have wanted to say things a lot stronger than in that communique,” Trudeau said at a news conference as the summit concluded.

But he said the G20 is “a collection of a whole bunch of different perspectives from around the world” and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had to find a way to get consensus.

Trudeau also expressed concern about the impact Trump will have on global support for Ukraine. Trump and his allies have criticized the financial support from the U.S. for Ukraine and there are concerns the Republicans, who will soon have full control of the White House and Congress, will drastically scale back American backing for Ukraine.

Some of Trump’s allies blasted outgoing President Joe Biden this week for authorizing Ukraine to use long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. to strike deep inside Russia.

Donald Trump Jr. and Utah Sen. Mike Lee were among those who accused Biden of trying to start “world war three.”

Trudeau and Biden discussed Ukraine in a 30-minute bilateral meeting in Brazil on Monday and Trudeau said Canada stands behind Biden’s decision.

“I have, for months now, talked about how important it is to degrade the capacity of the Russian military to strike into Ukraine with impunity because Ukraine hasn’t been able to strike on factories and military production sites in Russia,” Trudeau said in a press conference in Rio de Janeiro Tuesday.

Trudeau said the summit came “at a particularly challenging time in the world, for geopolitics but also for citizens all around the world,” due to inflation, war and climate change.

Canada has had some difficulty in diplomatic relationships with key G20 members in recent years, including China and Russia. Trudeau had a brief interaction with President Xi Jinping, which followed two different meetings between the Canadian and Chinese foreign ministers in recent months. Trudeau said the two discussed the importance of those discussions.

But he skirted around whether he had any interactions with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Canada’s relationship with India has been deeply scarred over the last year as Canada has accused agents of Modi’s government of being behind a campaign of violence, including murder, targeting mostly Sikh Canadians on Canadian soil.

In October Canada expelled six Indian diplomats who were called persons of interest in those criminal cases, after India refused to waive their diplomatic immunity in order to be questioned. India expelled six Canadian diplomats in return.

On Tuesday Biden seemed to try and play a bit of peacemaker between Trudeau and Modi.

During a photo of all the leaders at the summit, Biden stood in the front row between Trudeau and Modi and briefly attempted to bring the two together to chat. Trudeau and Modi both appeared to smile at each other and say a few words before resuming their positions on the riser facing forward.

Trump won’t become the president again until January but he still loomed large over the G20 amid concerns about his promises to pull back on U.S. policies on climate change and to introduce an across-the-board import tariff on all countries including Canada. 

Canada is set to host the G7 leaders’ summit next June in Alberta, which will likely be the first large multilateral event for the U.S. following Trump’s second inauguration.

Last time Canada hosted the G7 leaders’ summit in 2018, Trump infamously stormed out after tense exchanges over the steel and aluminum tariffs he imposed on Canada. He called Trudeau “dishonest and weak.”

The prime minister said his government is “not going to panic” about next year’s summit in Alberta.

“The challenge of working with an American president that doesn’t always put multilateralism and summitry at a high priority is going to be real, but we navigated it successfully,” he said.

Trudeau said that if the looming Trump administration cracks down on green technologies, it could represent an economic opportunity for Canada.

“I’m worried about the U.S. stepping back on the fight against climate change,” he said.

“If people look at the United States as not a place where it’s interesting to innovate and fight climate change, people will automatically turn to Canada.”

John Kirton, head of the G20 Research Group, said the summit produced a relatively weak closing statement, with 174 commitments instead of the roughly 240 from each of the last two G20 summits.

“That’s a significant drop,” he said, noting that many of the pledges were recommitments, and the summit came up with no new financial pledges.

However, Trudeau announced Tuesday $68 million in allocations of previously announced funds to help with G20 priorities mostly in Latin America, ranging from cracking down on organized crime and drug smuggling, to supporting conservation and increasing women’s economic participation.

Kirton said despite Trudeau’s concerns, the language on Ukraine could have been much weaker such as by calling for a ceasefire, as some G20 members have called for.

Kirton added that Trudeau would likely appreciate the declaration’s language on migration, to respect the rights of all who leave their country while tackling the causes of illicit migration. Kirton said that’s in sharp contrast to Trump’s proposed policies.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 19, 2024.

MONTREAL – Canada Post and the postal workers union found slivers of consensus Tuesday amid talks with a special mediator, but “a lot of ground” remains between them on the key concerns as a countrywide strike entered its fifth day.

“On smaller issues, we were able to find some progress,” said Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton in a phone interview.

“The special mediator has helped facilitate those discussions. So we’re going to continue to be at it. We’re committed to getting collective agreements. We don’t want arbitration,” he said.

“There’s still a lot of ground to cover.”

With deliveries at a standstill, the Crown corporation and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are in negotiations over a pair of contracts — one for rural and suburban mail carriers that was discussed Monday, the other for urban carriers that was under the microscope on Tuesday.

The union said progress was made due in part to the presence of Ottawa’s top mediator, appointed to the task last week. Peter Simpson, director general of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, spent the beginning of the week at a hotel in Ottawa shuttling between the parties’ conference rooms in a back-and-forth of proposals and potential concessions.

“After 12 months of discussions, the employer finally began to move on the pressing issues. Resolving these issues could pave the way to agreements,” union president Jan Simpson said in an update to members Tuesday.

“The urban unit will find out if there is movement on their side.”

About 55,000 employees represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers walked off the job on Friday, shutting down operations and halting deliveries as the busy holiday season kicks off.

The union is calling for a cumulative wage hike of 24 per cent over four years, while Canada Post has offered an 11.5 per cent increase.

Other wedge issues include job security, benefits and contract work for parcel delivery on weekends.

Negotiations between Canada Post and its unionized employees began in November 2023.

On top of wage hikes to make up for inflation, the union is seeking bumps to short-term disability payouts and ten paid sick days per year. For rural and suburban mail carriers, the union also wants to include corporate vehicles for mail-carriers as well as paid meals and breaks.

Canada Post has argued that its financial situation is already dire and the union’s demands would break the bank.

In the first half of 2024, Canada Post lost nearly a half-billion dollars. The Crown corporation has reported $3 billion in losses since 2018, as Canadians sent fewer letters while competitors gobbled up even more of the parcel market.

The union counters this position by suggesting the Crown corporation reconsider its ongoing executive bonuses and expand its services to manage higher costs.

The last postal work stoppage took place starting in late October 2018, when employees carried out rotating strikes lasting 31 days.

Previous postal strikes held in 2011 and 2018 ended when the federal government passed legislation sending employees back to work.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 19, 2024.

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