With Trump headed to White House, Canada has its eyes on Chinese investment in Mexico

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – A company hoping to build a massive wind-to-hydrogen project in western Newfoundland is eyeing other options as Canada’s plans to supply Europe with green energy have not yet come to pass.

World Energy GH2, led by seafood mogul John Risley, says it is developing a concept for what it calls a “renewable energy campus” in the region, which would use energy produced from its operations.

As first reported by news outlet allNewfoundlandandLabrador.com, the campus would harness power from the planned wind turbines to power a data centre aimed at artificial intelligence companies.

Company spokesperson Laura Barron says it is taking longer than expected to develop a commercial-scale green hydrogen market, but data centres are an option in the meantime.

The first phase of the company’s plans to build a hydrogen and ammonia plant in Stephenville, N.L., alongside several onshore wind farms cleared the Newfoundland and Labrador government’s environmental scrutiny process earlier this year.

German officials flew to Stephenville in 2022 to sign a commitment with Canada to create a hydrogen alliance that would see Canadian-produced green hydrogen shipped to German buyers by 2025.

Amit Kumar, an engineering professor at the University of Alberta, says it’s still too expensive to produce green hydrogen in Canada and then convert it to ammonia for shipment to Europe, where it would be converted back into hydrogen.

He says it will likely be at least another decade before the technology improves enough — and the proper infrastructure is built — to make green hydrogen produced in Canada cheap enough for German buyers.

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

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

QUEBEC – A Quebec legislature member says he doesn’t think his colleagues at the national assembly are racist, as his party prepares to face criticism from all sides for controversial comments he made earlier this month.

Following an emergency caucus meeting Tuesday morning, Haroun Bouazzi published a statement on social media saying he will continue to represent the left-leaning Québec solidaire.

“In this sense, I join them in saying that I do not consider that the national assembly and its members are racist and that this is not the party’s position,” he wrote on the social media platform X. Bouazzi also apologized to two cabinet ministers he singled out in an interview last week.

The mea culpa came as the other three parties, including the governing Coalition Avenir Québec, prepared to form a united front on Tuesday afternoon by tabling motions at the legislature denouncing remarks Bouazzi made during a speech to the Fondation Club Avenir, a community group that works with immigrants.

“God knows I see this in the national assembly every day, the construction of this other, this other who is North African, who is Muslim, who is Black, who is Indigenous, and whose culture, by definition, would be dangerous or inferior,” Bouazzi told the audience earlier this month.

He was called to order by the party’s two co-spokespeople, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Ruba Ghazal, who claimed that his statements were “clumsy, exaggerated and polarizing.” But Bouazzi didn’t back down, and during a radio interview on Radio-Canada Friday, he accused ministers Christian Dubé and Lionel Carmant of blaming immigrants for putting strain on health care and social services.

In his statement on Tuesday, Bouazzi apologized to Dubé and Carmant and said his comments were “certainly clumsy.”

The Coalition Avenir Québec has drafted a motion demanding that Mr. Bouazzi withdraw his remarks and apologize to all members of the legislature “who were targeted by his accusations of racism.” The opposition Liberals and Parti Québécois have also drafted motions calling on the legislature to affirm that its members are not racist.

Ahead of the meeting Tuesday morning, Québec solidaire MNA Christine Labrie was asked if Mr. Bouazzi should stay in caucus. “Haroun will make his own decisions,” she said. “What I can tell you is that his comments make me extremely uncomfortable. I do not share them.”

“We do not subscribe to the notion that the members of the national assembly are racist at Québec solidaire,” she added.

No caucus members would answer questions from reporters following the emergency meeting.

Party members gathered at a convention on Sunday appeared to be divided on the issue. Eleven Québec solidaire constituency associations publicly supported Bouazzi and called on the party to adopt a resolution denouncing what they described as a smear campaign against him.

The party eventually adopted an emergency resolution stating that Québec solidaire does not believe the national assembly and its members are racist, but also condemning the hate directed at Bouazzi following his comments. After the vote, Nadeau-Dubois said he considered the matter to be closed.

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

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version misspelled the first name of Haroun Bouazzi.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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