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These are the top stories:
Ontario appeals to Supreme Court in fight against federal carbon tax
Ontario filed an appeal Wednesday with the Supreme Court of Canada to re-examine a ruling that concluded the federal carbon tax is constitutional.
The Ontario case, which saw the province’s Appeal Court upheld the federal carbon pricing scheme in June, is one of several legal challenges from provinces with Conservative governments. Ontario’s appeal is expected to be combined with a similar case out of Saskatchewan. Alberta has also launched its own case, though it appears unlikely that will be seen in the courts by the new year.
The carbon tax is set to be a key issue in the upcoming federal election, as Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has pledged to scrap the policy.
Family left struggling after Health Canada approves expensive version of prescription eye drops
Since she was diagnosed with a rare metabolic disorder as a toddler, Olivia Little has relied on prescription eye drops to keep the disease from destroying her eyesight.
The nine-year-old Ontario girl’s drops used to be made at hospital pharmacies at a cost of a few thousand dollars a year. But an Italian drug company succeeded in getting an official version of the drops approved by Health Canada earlier this year.
Now pharmacies are no longer supposed to make the drops, and patients must use the official version. The cost: $103,272 per year.
As more high-priced drugs for niche diseases arrive, patients are often caught between cost-conscious governments and drug companies trying to wring as much profit as possible.
Funeral to be held for Carson Crimeni Thursday
Next Tuesday should have been the first day of Grade 9 for Carson Crimeni. Instead, the 14-year-old, who died after onlookers passively shot video while he was suffering an apparent overdose, will be buried Thursday afternoon, in Surrey, B.C.
Carson’s father, Aron Crimeni, has opened his son’s funeral to the public, to allow his community to mourn together.
The case has been the focus of intense media coverage. In photos and videos posted to social media on Aug. 7, young men can be seen and heard laughing at Carson during his apparent overdose. Some posts claim to name three of the young men involved, including one who is accused of having provided drugs to the boy.
Collapse us if you can, British government dares Brexit opponents
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government on Thursday challenged opponents of Brexit in parliament to collapse the government or change the law if they wanted to thwart Britain’s exit from the European Union. Johnson enraged opponents of a no-deal Brexit on Wednesday by ordering the suspension of parliament for almost a month.
After years of tortuous negotiations and a series of political crises since the United Kingdom voted 52% to 48% to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, Brexit remains up in the air. Options range from an acrimonious divorce on Oct. 31 and an election to an amicable exit or even another referendum.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Labour shortage hits Canadian companies seeking to replace grounded Boeing jets: A worldwide shortage of pilots and mechanics is preventing some aviation services from accommodating airlines scrambling to replace the 737 Max jets. The planes have been grounded since March after two fatal crashes involving the model.
Italy’s 5-Star, opposition Democratic Party seek coalition: The two sides said they would set aside years of hostility to avoid a snap election and that the new government should once again be led by the outgoing prime minister Giuseppe Conte.
Greta Thunberg sails into New York for summit: The Swedish climate activist arrived after a trans-Atlantic trip on a sailboat to attend a UN global warming conference. The teenager refused to fly because of the carbon cost of plane travel.
Canada deports former Chinese dissident with criminal past: Authorities sent back Yang Wei, a former democracy activist, who was declared a risk after committing a series of knife attacks in Canada.
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks climb
Signs that Italy’s latest political drama was over and hopeful noises from Beijing in the trade war pushed Europe’s share markets higher on Thursday and paused the relentless steamrollering of global bond yields. Tokyo’s Nikkei was flat, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 0.3 per cent and the Shanghai Composite was down 0.1 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s DAX were up 1.1 per cent and the Paris CAC 40 was up 1.4 per cent at 6:15 a.m. ET. New York futures were up. The Canadian dollar was at 75.27 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Will drug maker payouts make consumers of prescription drug any safer today or in the future?
André Picard: “In many ways, paying a few million or billion dollars to settle lawsuits has become an everyday cost of doing business for drug companies.”
‘Mass immigration’ is the least of Canada’s problems, Mr. Bernier
Konrad Yakabuski: “By evoking the spectre of “mass” immigration, which he has has done on repeated occasions, Mr. Bernier seeks to exploit the same resentment among a segment of the Canadian population toward newcomers that U.S. President Donald Trump has so successfully tapped south of the border. Mr. Bernier has depicted immigrants as freeloaders and a burden on taxpayers, despite reams of evidence to the contrary. It’s ugly, disingenuous and un-Canadian.”
We thought we elected leaders. We got man-children instead
Mark Kingswell: “Indeed, it is hard these days to avoid the conclusion that the international order is dominated by chippy power-holders, rat-faced agitators and querulous feebs with recurrent cases of the vapours. Old-school authoritarians, confident in their power and range, have been swept aside by a new crew of hypersensitive, defensive, passive-aggressive, apology-demanding nitwits who combine snivelling weakness with braggadocio – the oldest jerk-move in the sandlot.” Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
By David ParkinsDavid Parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
What’s behind the current cultural obsession with meals in bowls? Quite simply, bowls look good on Instagram. But they are also portable, casual and contained, meaning it’s an easy dish to clean up.
It’s common to find some dishes, such as Buddha bowls, which are usually vegetarian, and poke bowls, which has raw fish in it, on menus, but one perk of bowls is that you can usually choose your own ingredients, personalizing it to your diet. Gluten-free? Keto? All can be dealt with, writes Lucy Waverman.
MOMENT IN TIME
Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings sits in a mail delivery case of thousands of DVDs at their distribution plant in San Jose, Calif., Monday, Sept. 10, 2001.PAUL SAKUMA/The Associated Press
Aug. 29, 1997
Computer engineer Reed Hastings and self-proclaimed junk-mail king Marc Randolph didn’t have a particular idea in mind when they set out to start a company together. Their guiding principle was to start “the Amazon of something.” Eventually, they settled on shipping DVDs to customers by mail. Within two years, Netflix had switched to a subscription model that allowed customers to order unlimited rentals for one monthly fee, with none of the due dates or late fees that made renting from your local video store such a hassle. Even better, titles were curated to each customer’s taste on a personalized web page, using an algorithm called CineMatch. A decade after its launch, Netflix began streaming movies online (which had always been a goal of Hastings), though it’d be another six years before the debut of its first in-house production, House of Cards – all 13 bingeable episodes of which were dropped on the same day in February, 2013. Never again would children know the sweet anticipation of weekly television, the agony of the season finale or the sheer panic of rushing to the video store on a Saturday night before all the good movies were gone. Dawn Calleja
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