Canada should have been warned in advance by the Americans of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to kill a high-ranking Iranian military general with a drone strike, say two senior government sources.
Ottawa also wants a more thorough explanation from the Trump administration of the thinking behind the attack, according to federal government sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
CBC News spoke with the sources on the condition of anonymity, as the individuals are not authorized to speak publicly.
It’s not clear exactly what the Trudeau government saw as unsatisfactory in Washington’s stated rationale for killing a senior military official in a foreign country.
One source said that it’s hard to work as part of a military coalition, like the one pursuing the remnants of ISIS in Iraq, without solid cooperation among members — and with the most powerful partner in that coalition pursuing a path its allies don’t fully grasp.
Searching for an explanation
Asked today by host Chris Hall of CBC Radio’s The House whether Canada had received any advance notice of the plan to kill Soleimani, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he could not “go into the specifics of operations or intelligence.”
Champagne said that, “following the death of Gen. Soleimani, we had — and I think that’s what Canadians would expect from us — put our force (in Iraq) under what we call force protection … So despite the missiles that were fired by Iran, all the Canadians and coalition troops and Iraqis were safe.”
Trump administration officials have claimed Soleimani was actively planning attacks against Americans. President Trump himself claimed the infamous Iranian military leader was scheming to “blow up” an American embassy, but offered no evidence to back that up.
Members of the U.S. Congress on both sides of the aisle have complained bitterly about the lack of information about the attack coming from the administration.
Canada has about 500 troops in Iraq; some have been moved to Kuwait in recent weeks in response to the ongoing volatility on the ground. About half of those Canadians are with the NATO training mission, while the others — including up to 250 special forces members — are involved in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.
The recent tensions in the region flared up on Dec. 27, when an Iranian-backed militia group killed an American contractor in Iraq.
Those tensions escalated to the brink of open warfare one week ago, when the U.S. retaliated by launching a drone strike that killed Iran’s top military general, Qassem Soleimani. He is said to be responsible for at least 600 American deaths.
Dire consequences
In response to Soleimani’s killing, Iran launched 16 ballistic missiles early Wednesday at two military bases in Iraq housing U.S. military personnel. Some Canadian military personnel were also present at one of the bases at the time of the attack.
In the immediate aftermath of Soleimani’s death, Canada recognized the significance of the Americans’ action and security officials immediately began gathering information to brief Prime Minister Trudeau, the first source said. The PM was on vacation in Costa Rica at the time.
The first source said officials at the highest levels of the Canadian government feared that the act of killing Soleimani threatened to trigger dire consequences in the region.
That source stressed, however, that the event won’t fundamentally change the Canada-U.S. relationship. Canada remains fully committed to the principles of the NATO mission in Iraq and continues to share the overall security objectives of the U.S., the source said.
Rescue workers search the scene where a Ukrainian plane crashed in Shahedshahr, southwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020. (Ebrahim Noroozi/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The stakes for Canada in the standoff in the Middle East ramped up Thursday when Trudeau announced that Canada has evidence indicating that Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iran, possibly by accident.
The passenger jet crashed outside Tehran early Wednesday morning local time, hours after the Iranian missile attack, killing all 176 people on board — 57 of whom, the government now says, were Canadians.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that the evidence indicates an Iranian missile caused the plane crash that killed at least 63 Canadians. Experts weigh in on the legal and intelligence angles of the situation and discuss what happens next in the investigation. 1:34:10
The first source said that, at this stage in the investigation, Canada is not focusing on who’s to blame for the crash. Trudeau was asked multiple times during Thursday’s press conference whether he thinks the U.S. is partially responsible for the crash, given the sequence of events.
“I think it is too soon to be drawing conclusions or assigning blame or responsibility in whatever proportions,” Trudeau told reporters gathered at Ottawa’s National Press Theatre.
“Right now, our focus is on supporting the families that are grieving right across the country and providing what answers we can in a preliminary way, but recognizing that there is going to need to be a full and credible investigation into what exactly happened before we draw any conclusions.”
‘I think it is too soon to be drawing conclusions,” Trudeau says. 0:31
Due to the time difference with Iran, top government officials in Ottawa first learned of the crash late Tuesday night as they were wrapping up a top secret briefing on the Iran crisis.
The first source said some officials had gathered together in an office, while others joined the confidential meeting by a secure telephone line. As the meeting was coming to a close, David Morrison, the foreign and defence policy adviser to the prime minister, was told a plane had just gone down in Tehran.
Canadian authorities were ordered to gather information throughout the night. The source said it was clear from the start that there would have been Canadians on that flight.
The source added that Canada did not have credible information about the probable cause of the crash until late Wednesday, after Canadian officials had spent much of the preceding 24 hours gathering information.
Top officials, including Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance and senior bureaucrats, gathered to discuss all of the available intelligence Thursday morning, the source said.
They came to the conclusion that the most probable cause of the crash was an Iranian missile strike, then briefed Trudeau and some members of his cabinet. Shortly afterward, Trudeau held his second press briefing in two days.
CBC News reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office but received no comment on the record by publication time.
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
