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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
City clerk has ‘huge concern’ about running Toronto’s election
Toronto city clerk Ulli Watkiss says she increasingly has “huge concern” whether she can fairly administer the Oct. 22 election, Jeff Gray writes. She addressed an emergency city council meeting Thursday to discuss ways to keep fighting Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s move to use the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to slash the 47 wards to 25 in the middle of its election campaign.
The move was struck down in court on Monday, returning the city to 47 wards. The provincial government has appealed the ruling and reintroduced its changes in a new bill. Watkiss said the city was at a “tipping point” regarding its ability to run a fair election amid the confusion about what the city’s ward boundaries would be – with just weeks to go before voting day.
She also said she had retained her own lawyer, with whom she’ll consult about whether she has the power to postpone the vote.
Lawyer Marie Henein has some advice for Ford: “Bullies never last. Leaders do. Engaging in informed debate and demonstrating respect for the very democratic system that got you elected is a good starting point.”
Thousands of Canadians in path of extreme storms: Global Affairs Canada
Global Affairs Canada says thousands of Canadians are in the path of extreme weather expected to hit the United States, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Of those, 440 Canadians have registered in areas expected to be affected ed by Hurricane Florence, which began to lash the Carolina coast Thursday with heavy rain and winds. While it has been downgraded to to a Category 2 storm, forecasters are warning it will bring seawater surging onto land and torrential downpours. Check here for the latest updates on Hurricane Florence.
Canada, U.S. deadlocked as Mexico rejoins NAFTA talks
Talks between Canada and the United States remain deadlocked over American access to the Canadian dairy market and the Chapter 19 dispute-settlement mechanism in the North American free-trade agreement. Meanwhile, Mexico returns to Washington to hammer out the text of a bilateral deal that U.S. President Donald Trump says could proceed without Canada.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland returned from Washington yesterday to join the Liberal caucus retreat in Saskatchewan, but said officials from both sides continue to talk and are now in a “continuous negotiations phase.” Trade players say they are being told that not much was achieved during the single day of talks this week between her and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. (Steven Chase, Robert Fife and Bill Curry, for subscribers)
Ousted NDP MP Erin Weir says he plans to seek his party’s nomination again
Erin Weir says he will seek the NDP nomination in his Regina riding despite being ousted from the federal party’s caucus over harassment allegations, a direct challenge to party Leader Jagmeet Singh’s handling of the matter, Ian Bailey writes. Weir was removed from caucus in May after an independent investigation upheld several complaints of harassment and sexual harassment against him. He says it should be up to New Democrats in Regina–Lewvan, the riding he won by 132 votes in the 2015 election, to decide whether he remains a party member, not Singh.
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MARKET WATCH
Canada’s main stock index dipped today as shares of Dollarama plunged on disappointing quarterly results and weighed on the consumer discretionary sector. The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index fell 47.31 points to 16,001.71. Among the biggest decliners included marijuana producers with Aphria down 16.9 per cent, Aurora Cannabis falling 8.9 per cent and Canopy Growth losing 13.6 per cent.
Apple led a rebound in technology shares and boosted all three major U.S. stock indexes, while trade worries eased after China welcomed new talks with the United States. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 147.07 points to 26,145.99, the S&P 500 gained 15.26 points to 2,904.18 and the Nasdaq Composite closed at 8,013.71, 59.48 points higher.
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WHAT’S TRENDING ON SOCIAL
Today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced on Twitter that he was launching the Bezos Day One Fund, a new philanthropic initiative with an initial commitment of US$2-billion. It will be focused on two areas: funding existing non-profits that help homeless families and creating a network of Montessori-inspired preschools for low-income communities. With an estimated fortune of more than US$160-billion, Bezos is currently the world’s wealthiest man, according to Forbes.
TALKING POINTS
Extreme weather coverage is now extremely political
“As usual, with Hurricane Florence, the description is only in superlatives: the biggest, the strongest, the most deadly, the worst in years. The language matches the language of what passes for political discourse in the United States these days. The President is unhinged; he’s a bully, a coward, a narcissist, a know-nothing. The thesaurus is beggared by the need to nail down the perceived dumbness.” – John Doyle
Multiculturalism doesn’t divide. It encourages belonging
“We believe that in most places the sensibility of multiculturalism boils down to two key elements. One is simple respect for diversity of race, ethnicity, culture and religion: the sense that diversity is normal, not a problem to be solved. The other is acceptance of the idea that integration works best when it works both ways: Newcomers should do their best to adapt, and those who came before have a role to play in creating environments that support that integration. You can’t integrate into a group that refuses to accept you or treat you fairly.” – Michael Adams, president of the Environics Institute, and Ratna Omidvar, independent senator for Ontario
Ten years on, few lessons learned from the global financial crisis
“Perhaps the biggest emerging financial risk today is in the U.S. energy sector. Fracking firms in oil and gas have taken on massive debt loads and have issued a significant number of shares, but their underlying profitability remains questionable, owing to declining output performance over time. Solid energy prices are, for the moment, masking the effects of heavy debt and low productivity, but the fundamentals are not healthy for many fracking firms.” – Glen Hodgson, a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute
LIVING BETTER
Get some inspiration from trailblazers interviewed in The Globe and Mail’s new podcast I’ll Go First. What is it like to be the first startup in your industry? The first to see the problem and know that you can fix it? The first episode hears from Geordie Rose, founder of an artificial intelligence company trying to make machines that look and act like humans. A Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion, he shares his hobbies, what life was like growing up, and why he isn’t afraid of a future where robots can do what we do now.
LONG READS FOR A LONG COMMUTE
I tried to cash in on my Toronto home, and got burned
"In April, 2017, my hubris soared along with the price of the Toronto housing market at the peak of its mania. But you know how these plotlines go. Like the ancient Greek Icarus whose ambitions got the better of him, I flew too high and my wings melted. Greed is an old story.
“We put our home in midtown Toronto up for sale. The backyard was falling into a ravine and the house itself was politely regarded by our neighbours as a tear-down. But the lot was pristine. It would surely be coveted by a developer. I could win at this game. Sell high, wait for the housing hysteria to end, and buy low. Maybe with the spoils I could help my kids get into their own homes one day.” – Steven Gottlieb
Federal government agrees to pay $100-million for pension clawbacks from disabled veterans
The federal government has agreed to pay $100-million to settle a long-running lawsuit with veterans who say they were discriminated against when Ottawa deducted their disability pensions from the income-replacement benefits they received from Veterans Affairs Canada, Gloria Galloway writes. The agreement, which must still be approved by the Federal Court, would give more than 12,000 veterans with disabilities payments of $2,000 to $50,000 each. Vets with severe disabilities would receive larger amounts because more of their pension money was clawed back.
The veterans filed the lawsuit in 2014, saying the government violated the section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that prevents discrimination on the basis of a disability when it deducted their Pension Act pensions from the amounts they received through the Earnings Loss Benefit, the Canadian Forces Income Support Benefit and the War Veterans Allowance. The deductions were made between April, 2006, and May, 2012. The lawsuit was certified as a class action in 2016, and now, after two years of negotiations, an out-of-court settlement has been reached.
Evening Update is written by S.R. Slobodian. 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.