Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
Five members of the 2018 world junior hockey team are expected to face sexual assault charges and have been told to surrender to London, Ont., police.
The players, who have not been charged yet, have been given a set period of time to present themselves at London police headquarters, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation whom The Globe and Mail is not naming because they have not been authorized to speak on the case.
The pending charges are connected to an alleged incident that occurred after a Hockey Canada fundraising gala in June, 2018, where the players were honoured for their win at the world junior championships. In the 94-page document, police said they had reasonable grounds to believe that five members of the 2018 team sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room.
A Hockey Canada logo is shown on the jersey of a player with Canada’s National Junior Team during a training camp practice in Calgary, Alta., Aug. 2, 2022.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Bank of Canada keeps key rate at 5%, says talks have shifted away from more hikes
For the fourth time in a row, the Bank of Canada is holding its policy interest rate steady. It said that monetary policy discussions have shifted from whether to raise borrowing costs further to how long the bank should wait before lowering them as the Canadian economy has shifted into a state of “excess supply.”
The widely anticipated decision keeps the bank’s policy rate at 5 per cent, a two-decade high reached last July. While the bank remained on hold on Wednesday, there was a notable pivot in its language, which played down the odds of further rate hikes and opened the door to the possible rate cuts. Here’s how economists and market bets for future rate cuts are reacting to today’s Bank of Canada decision.
Read more:
- Opinion: The old bank and the Red Sea: Bank of Canada must address threat of geopolitics
- Bank of Canada keeps key interest rate at 5% in first decision of 2024. Here’s what’s next
- Opinion: While the Bank of Canada stands pat, interest rates for savers, investors and borrowers are changing fast
Tiff Macklem, Governor of the Bank of Canada, holds a press conference at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa on Jan. 24, 2024.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
India to be included in foreign interference inquiry into elections
Quebec Justice Marie Josée Hogue, the commissioner of the foreign interference inquiry, has asked for documents relating to the government of India’s possible involvement in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, in a request which could further damage relations between the Canadian government and India.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh had pushed for the inquiry to delve into the possibility that India may have acted in a similar manner as Beijing in seeking to influence the outcome of elections in certain ridings with large diaspora communities.
In September, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the government of India of being behind the brazen shooting of Canadian citizen Harpreet Singh Njjar – an allegation strongly denied by the Indian government that led to a deterioration in bilateral relations. New Delhi had accused Nijjar of being a terrorist during his campaign for a Sikh homeland in the northern Indian state of Punjab that Sikh separatists refer to as Khalistan.
Quebec Justice Marie-Josée Hogue speaks at the Université de Sherbrooke on Sept. 6, 2022.Supplied
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Trump’s victory in New Hampshire shows the Republican Party has indisputably become his: Donald Trump rolled to victory here in New Hampshire, but the more important message to emerge from the Granite State may be that the Republican Party, indisputably and perhaps irrevocably, now is fully a Trump party.
Five key questions following Trump’s triumph over Nikki Haley in New Hampshire primary: Here are five questions hanging over the nomination battle and the answers we might glean from the result in New Hampshire.
Ex-CPPIB CEO Mark Machin teams with former pension executive to launch AI growth fund: Ex-Canada Pension Plan Investment Board chief executive Mark Machin and a former senior lieutenant are raising a US$500-million growth capital fund to back artificial intelligence startups in Canada and abroad.
Heavy fighting in Gaza’s Khan Younis leaves hundreds of patients stranded in hospital: Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants on Wednesday near the main hospital in Gaza’s second-largest city where medics said hundreds of patients and thousands of displaced people were trapped by the fighting.
World court to read ruling on South Africa’s case against Israel’s Gaza offensive on Friday: The International Court of Justice will announce on Friday whether it will impose an emergency order on Israel to require it to take action to prevent a possible genocide in Gaza.
Quebec pension manager’s head of real estate departs as Caisse consolidates operations: Ivanhoé Cambridge chief executive officer Nathalie Palladitcheff is leaving the real estate investor and developer in April after its majority owner, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, announced restructuring plans to bring its real estate subsidiaries in-house and slash costs.
MARKET WATCH
Canada’s main stock index was essentially flat Wednesday despite strength in energy stocks after the Bank of Canada held its overnight rate steady, while U.S. markets ended on a mixed note after softening throughout the afternoon.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 8.81 points at 21,025.78.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 99.06 points at 37,806.39. The S&P 500 index was up 3.95 points at 4,868.55, while the Nasdaq composite was up 55.97 points at 15,481.92.
The Canadian dollar traded for 74.16 cents UScompared with 74.19 cents US on Tuesday.
The March crude oil contract was up 72 cents at US$75.09 per barreland the March natural gas contract was up 10 cents at US$2.26 per mmBTU.
The February gold contract was down US$9.80 at US$2,016.00 an ounceand the March copper contract was up nine cents at US$3.89 a pound.
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TALKING POINTS
David Rosenberg: What another Trump term could mean for markets
“What’s interesting is that in Mr. Trump’s last two years, when the GOP lost its grip on Congress, the stock market did even better. The S&P 500 soared 50 per cent – gridlock is obviously good. But even bond yields fell sharply, and Treasury returns were spectacular – the long bond rose almost 40 per cent. Not even his tax cuts, immigration policies, tariffs and a 3.5-per-cent unemployment rate could muster up much, if any, inflation.” – David Rosenberg
Taylor Swift’s crime? Daring to become a football fan
“The online vitriol that Ms. Swift has faced in recent weeks from football “fans” has been grotesque. Of course, we should pay no attention to the dads, Chads and Brads sitting behind their computer screens yelling about the NFL paying too much attention to the girlfriend of a player, but it’s begun to have a spillover effect.” – Gary Mason
Liberals are reaching in tying Poilievre to Trump. But it’s worth hearing how he responds
“Mr. Trump, and how to deal with a second Trump presidency, is a legitimate, indeed compulsory issue for anyone aspiring to lead this country. But Mr. Trudeau’s message is not “I’m a better choice than Poilievre to deal with Trump.” His message, delivered with varying degrees of subtlety, is: Poilievre is Trump.” – Andrew Coyne
LIVING BETTER
The five best exercises for surviving winter, according to experts
Canadian winters don’t just mean unbearably cold temperatures. It also means trudging through snow and ice, and all the chores that come with it. Shovelling snow, scraping ice off of windshields and scattering salt are all a part of the winter experience – and can lead to injury. 31 per cent of Canadians say that shovelling causes back and joint pain, according to the Association des chiropraticiens du Québec and slippery icy conditions send nearly 1,800 Canadians to the hospital every day.
Luckily, Rebecca Gao offers some easy-to-practice exercises you can do at home to improve your mobility, flexibility and strength that will help prevent these common wintertime injuries.
TODAY’S LONG READ
Four decades later, is it time for a reappraisal of pornography’s golden cinematic age?
An adult conversation about adult films is under way as a new generation is appreciating the films and history of the golden age and a newfound audience has returned to the cinema to watch the films of the era.Aidan Martin/Supplied
The year 1984 – four decades ago this year – was the “last hurrah” of the so-called golden age of porn, a period of filmmaking which lasted roughly 15 years and arguably peaked with the success of the film Deep Throat in 1972. Expert directors, cinematographers, screenwriters and actors pioneered a new, countercultural film industry operating in parallel to Hollywood, and critics reviewed films by Gerard Damiano and Radley Metzger alongside their mainstream counterparts.
Forty years later, an adult conversation about adult films is under way as a new generation is appreciating the films and history of the golden age. After launching The Rialto Report podcast and website in 2013, adult-film historian Ashley West thought that a wider reappraisal would only occur “once you moved beyond the films themselves, once you started looking at them by interviewing the people who made them, looking at their locations, the music, or examining the nature of the companies that released them.”
Evening Update is written by Emerald Bensadoun. If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday evening, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.