What the parties are promising ahead of the British Columbia provincial election

Defence lawyers for Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard attacked the credibility of his accuser Thursday as they made their final pitch to jurors in the singer’s sexual assault trial, suggesting the woman lied about the encounter to cover up her infidelity and changed details of her account over time.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued the woman remained “unshaken” on the main elements of what she alleges happened in Hoggard’s hotel room roughly eight years ago, and had no reason to lie about it.

Hoggard, the Crown argued, had “significant gaps” in his recollection of that night.

The closing arguments capped off nearly two weeks of trial that saw the former Hedley frontman and the complainant paint drastically different pictures of their encounter in June 2016.

The Crown and defence agree that a sexual encounter took place in Hoggard’s hotel room after a concert and bonfire after-party in Kirkland Lake, Ont., but prosecutors are seeking to prove it wasn’t consensual.

The complainant, who was 19 at the time, testified Hoggard raped, choked, hit and urinated on her, and called her names like “dirty little piggy.” She recalled being terrified by Hoggard during the encounter, and said she repeatedly tried to get away from him and told him to stop.

The woman, whose identity is protected under a standard publication ban, was the Crown’s only witness.

Hoggard said in his testimony that they flirted all night, then had a consensual one-night stand.

He denied that the woman struggled, that he hit or choked her, that he pinned her down, or that she ever said she was uncomfortable. He also denied calling her names, and said she agreed to urinate on him during consensual oral sex.

Defence lawyer Megan Savard suggested Thursday the complainant’s account of what happened that night was unreliable and “riddled with inconsistencies,” and that the woman had “a motive to lie from the outset.”

The complainant made a “foolish, spontaneous decision” to have a one-night stand with a celebrity but couldn’t tell those around her without losing their support and compromising her then-two-year relationship, the defence lawyer said.

The complainant “may well have suffered embarrassment or heartbreak,” Savard said. “She may have felt silly after realizing she was not, in fact, special to Mr. Hoggard the way she described, when she realized she’d cheated on her boyfriend for nothing.”

Over the years, “the pressure to take a private lie public becomes too great,” and the woman filed a report with police, the lawyer suggested.

Savard also argued the complainant testified confidently about details that were contradicted by other evidence, such as transportation to the bonfire and the clothes Hoggard wore at the after-party.

In his address to the jury, prosecutor Peter Keen argued the suggestion the complainant fabricated her allegations to preserve her relationship and her reputation “makes no sense.”

He noted Hoggard was charged after the woman gave a statement to police in 2022, at least a year after she and her boyfriend had broken up. There is no evidence any of her relatives know the incident took place, aside from the cousin who accompanied her to the concert, he said.

There is also no evidence the woman faced any pressure to come forward with the allegations, he said.

Keen acknowledged there were “multiple inconsistencies on peripheral details” of the complainant’s account, but “not on the core details of the sexual assault,” including an attempt at anal penetration and the urination.

Hoggard’s testimony also included inaccuracies or inconsistencies on details contradicted by other witnesses’ accounts, such as the path he and the complainant took to the hotel room or whether the band stopped by a bar before going to the bonfire, Keen said.

More importantly, the prosecutor said, Hoggard couldn’t remember key parts of the encounter despite testifying the night was memorable because of the bonfire and the specific sexual acts he engaged in with the complainant.

“When it comes to the core details, Mr. Hoggard had significant gaps in his memory, and there were significant parts of his version of events that don’t fit with his evidence as a whole,” he said.

Keen told jurors they do not need to believe every aspect of the complainant’s account beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find Hoggard guilty — only that one of sexual acts that took place was not consensual and that Hoggard was aware of that.

Jurors also don’t need to agree on which act was not consensual, he said.

The defence lawyer told the jury that while her client has admitted to some conduct that they may find “unusual or unpleasant,” including having casual sex with a much younger woman, as well as sexual interests they may find “odd or distasteful,” they cannot convict him on those grounds.

“In Canada, we do not convict people because we don’t like their sexual behaviour. We do not use the criminal law to police people’s sexual preferences or to protect against sexual disappointment,” she said.

The judge is expected to begin delivering his final instructions to the jury on Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2024.

OTTAWA – The government has been unable to put any of its own business before the House of Commons for a full week, and the Conservatives on Thursday said that’s the result of Liberal “corruption.”

Conservative House leader Andrew Scheer said the governing party would rather see the House bogged down in debate than produce documents related to misspent government dollars in a program his party has dubbed the “green slush fund.”

House Speaker Greg Fergus ruled last Thursday that the government “clearly did not fully comply” with an order from the House to provide documents related to a now-defunct foundation responsible for doling out hundreds of millions of federal dollars for green technology projects.

Rather than order the government to immediately produce the documents, Fergus said the issue should be referred to committee for study, and Scheer moved a motion calling for just that.

The House has been seized with a debate on the motion ever since and Scheer said it will stay that way until the government agrees to hand over the documents to police.

“They’re willing to have Parliament ground to a halt rather than hand over this information to the RCMP for a potential criminal investigation,” Scheer said in an interview Thursday.

The RCMP told MPs this summer they likely would not be able to use the documents as part of an investigation, but Scheer said they should have access to all the information before they decide.

The Liberals claimed that ordering the production of documents to be handed over to the RCMP blurs the lines between Parliament and the judiciary, and blame Conservatives for the dysfunction in the House.

Liberal House leader Karina Gould called the request for the documents an abuse of Parliament’s power that tramples on the Charter rights of Canadians.

“Let’s be very clear, this is the Conservatives trying to muck up Parliament,” Gould said Thursday.

“Conservative members of Parliament are here for their own political, personal objectives and they don’t care what they do to Canadians in the meantime, and that is something that should be extremely alarming to all of us.”

Scheer said the Charter exists “to protect the people from the government. It is not there to protect the government from accountability by the people.”

A similar dispute over government documents played out when the Conservatives were on the governing side of the aisle during a minority government dispute more than a decade ago.

In 2009, the House ordered the government to disclose unredacted documents related to Canada’s role in the torture of Afghan detainees.

A few weeks after opposition parties passed a motion demanding the documents be produced, then-prime minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament for several months, preventing the House committee from pursuing the issue.

In this case, the Liberal government abolished Sustainable Development Technology Canada after the auditor general released a scathing report about the organization’s management last spring.

Of the projects she looked at, one in every six that received funding were ineligible. The auditor’s report also found 90 cases where conflict-of-interest polices were violated.

A month later, the ethics commissioner concluded that the former chair of the foundation failed to recuse herself from decisions that benefited organizations to which she had ties.

The House has been in a state of almost constant turmoil since the MPs returned to Ottawa in mid-September.

The Conservatives have made two attempts to topple the minority government with non-confidence motions. Though both attempts failed to win the support of other opposition parties, the Conservatives promise there will be more such votes to come.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet decried a “lack of respect for democracy” in the chamber during an unrelated press conference on Thursday in Chicoutimi, Que.

Blanchet claimed Bloc MPs are among the few in Parliament asking thoughtful questions instead of “spouting slogans and banging on the desk,” like other parties in the House.

“They are proud to have repeated the same thing that they’ve repeated 60 times in the last 60 days,” he said in French.

“Refusing to answer questions, when there are real ones, is no more respectful of voters.”

Among the few votes that have gone ahead this week was a Bloc Québécois motion to push the government to support its pension bill for seniors under the age of 75, a change that would cost more than $3 billion a year.

Though the Conservatives have criticized what they call politically motivated inflationary spending, they threw their support behind the bill.

Scheer did not respond to a question about why the party supported the motion.

The Conservative critic for seniors, Anna Roberts, said in a statement that the government’s inflationary spending has “increased the cost of groceries and gas and put added strain on Canadian families and seniors on fixed incomes.”

The Conservatives have also asked Canada’s lobbying commissioner to investigate whether it violates ethics rules for the prime minister to make Mark Carney a Liberal adviser.

The Liberals announced at their recent caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., that Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, had been appointed chair of a task force on economic growth.

They said Carney will help shape the party’s policies for the next election, and will report to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal platform committee.

Tory ethics critic Michael Barrett said in a letter to the commissioner that Carney is not registered to lobby federally, but his corporate positions put him in several potential conflicts of interest.

“How could any ministerial staff member, member of Parliament or cabinet minister not feel a sense of obligation to Mr. Carney because of his close affiliation with the prime minister and minister of finance?” Barrett asked in his letter Thursday.

Carney is also the chair of Brookfield Asset Management, which is in talks with the government to launch a $50-billion investment fund with support from Ottawa and Canadian pensions.

When asked about Carney’s potential conflict of interest in the House, Health Minister Mark Holland accused the Conservatives of trying to “smear” a Canadian who is renowned around the world.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2024.

TORONTO – Canada’s industry minister has thrown his support behind a call from one of Shopify Inc.’s leaders for the country to get more ambitious.

“I could not agree more because for 10 years, I’ve always finished my speeches by saying, ‘Let’s seize the moment. Let’s be ambitious,'” François-Philippe Champagne said Thursday.

He was speaking at the Elevate tech conference in Toronto, where the tech community has been gathering since Tuesday to discuss trends in the industry and beyond.

Among the buzziest talks was one from Shopify president Harley Finkelstein, who told the audience on opening night that he had noted a lack of ambition in Canada that he likened to a “600-pound beaver in the room.”

Adding ambition to the Canadian psyche is “unequivocally necessary,” so the country doesn’t become a nation of branch plants and instead fosters massive companies at home, the leader of the Ottawa-based e-commerce software giant said.

He added that the current lack of ambition had left Canadian companies with a reputation for being acquired, while U.S. businesses are known for being the dominant “acquirees.”

“When someone calls me and says, ‘I’m thinking of selling my company to Google,’ my usual answer is, ‘Have you ever thought about one day you buy Google?'” Finkelstein said.

His remarks set off chatter across much of Canada’s tech ecosystem, with many backing his calls for the country to get bolder

But some disagreed.

Laura Lenz, a partner at the venture capital arm of pension plan Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, called Finkelstein’s narrative “tired” and lamented that it places “the blame of sluggish productivity squarely on the shoulders of founders and management teams working as hard as they ever have.”

“Maybe it’s time to take a broader view of the problem and the lack of infrastructure supports to keep these companies here at home,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

She said the country has to address the lack of tax incentives, willingness to use and purchase Canadian software, and funding for companies, especially in their infancy or “seed stage.”

Abdullah Snobar, the executive director of the DMZ tech hub in Toronto, agreed that “Canada is failing to provide the right conditions of startups to thrive.”

“High costs of living, transportation, infrastructure and transportation — these things are making it next to impossible for entrepreneurs to succeed here,” he wrote on X.

However, on Thursday, Champagne argued the country is well-resourced and that talent is teeming in Canada.

He said Canada has the highest number of AI startups in the world, including Toronto firm Cohere, and when it comes to quantum computing, everyone in the global auto sector considers another one of the city’s companies, Xanadu, “the rock star.”

To be more ambitious, Champagne said the country has to “be more. Be more of everything.”

“I just wish we would all be bragger-in-chief,” he said. “There’s something in our DNA that we need to change somehow, to just be talking more about what we do.”

Aside from ambition, Champagne was questioned about the country’s approach to AI.

Canada is still working on an Artificial Intelligence and Data Act meant to guide how companies operating in the country will design, develop and deploy the technology.

It isn’t expected to come into effect until at least next year, so Champagne has been using a voluntary code of conduct as a stopgap.

The code asks signatories to build risk mitigation measures into AI tools, use adversarial testing to uncover vulnerabilities in such systems and keep track of any harms the technology causes.

Thirty companies, including BlackBerry, Cohere, Salesforce and CGI, have signed the code, but others including Shopify have railed against it, complaining it could hold innovators back.

Asked by moderator and tech personality Amber Mac whether more organizations could have signed the document in the one-year since it was released, Champagne joked he had a copy in his back pocket for any interested companies to sign.

“We may not have a law in the book as of yet but at least we have something,” he said.

“Honestly, the companies that have signed tell me that this has been beneficial.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)