Good morning,
The federal government will no longer fund research with Chinese military and state security institutions and is urging the provinces and universities to adopt similar national-security measures.
Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced yesterday that Ottawa has instructed the Canada Foundation for Innovation and federal research granting councils to screen funding requests from Canadian universities that are collaborating on sensitive research with China and other hostile states. Those granting agencies include the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, as well as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Late last month, Champagne vowed to bring in new national-security rules to better protect cutting-edge science and technology from ending up in the hands of China and other hostile countries in response to an investigation by The Globe and Mail, which uncovered extensive collaboration between Canadian universities and Chinese military scientists.
Innovation Minister François-Phillipe Champagne vowed to bring in new national-security rules to better protect cutting-edge science and technology from ending up in the hands of China and other hostile countries.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
This is the daily Morning Update newsletter. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for Morning Update and more than 20 other Globe newsletters on our newsletter signup page.
Amid debate over health-care deal, foreign-trained doctors seize a chance to rethink restrictive contracts
Dr. Robert Myette spent years establishing himself as a pediatric nephrologist at an Ottawa hospital, where he’s working to become a laboratory-based clinical investigator who probes the mysteries of kidney disease and the body’s blood vessels.
As soon as his training is over, however, he must stop this specialized work and leave the city for five years. He’ll be forced to find a new job in general pediatrics, in a community somewhere outside of Ottawa, where he lives with his partner and the couple cares for her mother.
The reason is a contract Dr. Myette signed in 2016 called a return of service (ROS) agreement – mandatory arrangements used by most Canadian provinces to ensure smaller cities and rural areas have access to doctors. If he fails to meet this commitment, he faces a potential $350,000 penalty, by his estimation.
Dr. Myette, who is from Ontario, is contractually obligated to work in a location approved by the province as a condition of the residency program he began upon returning to Canada following his medical training in Poland. Provinces do not require these contracts of most graduates of Canadian medical schools, but international graduates typically have no choice if they want a residency in the country.
MPs want committee to probe turmoil surrounding Canada Soccer
Three members of the House committee whose inquiry into Hockey Canada led to the resignations of the organization’s chief executive and board of directors are now interested in hearing testimony from Canada Soccer, the national governing body responsible for the sport in Canada, as a dispute over pay equity with the women’s national soccer team boils over.
The three MPs – a Liberal, a Conservative and a New Democrat – all sit on the House committee on Canadian heritage. They told The Globe and Mail yesterday that Canada Soccer’s culture and financial practices should be scrutinized, and that they want the committee to look into the organization.
Members of the women’s national soccer team briefly went on strike last week, saying they had not received the same level of institutional support as the men’s national team. But they say they were were forced back to work by threat of legal action from Canada Soccer.
Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop
Also on our radar
Ottawa paying to move migrants from Quebec to Ontario: The federal government transported almost all of the migrants entering the country through Roxham Road to other provinces over the weekend, said Quebec Minister of Immigration Christine Fréchette on Tuesday, calling the wave of relocations a “new approach” from Ottawa.
Flying objects could be ‘tied to some benign purpose,’ U.S. says: The unidentified flying objects shot down this past weekend over the U.S. and Canada were likely innocuous research balloons, the White House is now saying, in a bid to cool rampant speculation over the origins of the mysterious aircraft.
Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon to resign: Nicola Sturgeon has announced her intention to resign as first minister of Scotland following months of controversy over a law that makes it simpler for people to change their gender on official documents.
Persistent inflation has investors betting on rate hikes: Financial markets have upped their bets on additional rate hikes from the Bank of Canada and U.S. Federal Reserve following blowout employment reports in both countries and higher-than-expected inflation data from the United States.
Ottawa must adopt climate change construction standards, insurance industry says: Ottawa is being irresponsible for not hastening the adoption of construction standards that would make new homes more resilient to the harsher climate, the insurance industry says, after a year when severe weather events caused billions of dollars in damage claims.
Zelensky urges speedy help from allies: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged allies to be speedy in sending more military help as NATO defence ministers met and Russia bombarded the eastern front line in what appeared to be the early salvoes of a new offensive.
Canadian woman’s body found in earthquake rubble: The body of a Canadian woman who was visiting Turkey has been found in the rubble of a building that collapsed on Feb. 6. during the earthquake that has devastated that country. Saad Zora says his twin sister, Samar, who like her brothers is from Halifax, was found yesterday by searchers as an excavator dug through pieces of a five-storey building in the city of Antakya.
Morning markets
Inflation worries keep investors on edge: It was another day on inflation patrol for investors on Wednesday as stickier-than-expected U.S. data weighed on sentiment and pushed the U.S. dollar up, while a slowdown in Britain’s price pressures sent the pound tumbling. Around 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 0.03 per cent. Germany’s DAX added 0.34 per cent while France’s CAC 40 gained 1.11 per cent. Japan’s Nikkei closed down 0.37 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.43 per cent. New York futures were negative. The Canadian dollar was lower at 74.63 US cents.
What everyone’s talking about
Editorial: “B.C.’s carbon tax has survived four elections and one change in government. What has not survived was the original promise to be ‘revenue neutral’ – that is, government not taking more carbon cash in than it sends back out.”
Kean Birch: “Netflix is changing its subscription setup, testing it out in Canada and three other countries before, presumably, rolling it out across the United States, their more lucrative market. Described as a “crackdown” on password sharing, this change will stop us accessing Netflix from devices not associated with our home network. There are broader questions that this change raises. Most specifically, whether the business models and monetization strategies of digital firms like Netflix are viable in the long-run.”
Today’s editorial cartoon
Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail
Living better
Feeling pressured to tip by new prompts at tills? Give only what you want, experts say
Picture a scenario in which you drop into a convenience store to pick up some chips or a drink, and before you can tap your credit card to pay, there’s a question: “Would you like to tip $1, $2 or $5?” Chances are that you’ve been caught off guard by an unexpected tip prompt in the past couple of years. Daniel Bender, a University of Toronto professor specializing in food studies and labour history, said tip prompts at the counter are essentially replacing a tip jar, since fewer people use cash these days. He said consumers should therefore treat those prompts as they would a tip jar, and only pay extra if they really want to.
Moment in time: Feb. 15, 1961
Family picture of the U.S. figure skating team before boarding the Sabena Flight 548, on February 15, 1961 in New-York that crashed near Brussels, Belgium.AFP/Getty Images
Plane crash kills U.S. figure skating team
Maribel Owen and Dudley Richards were U.S. pairs skating champions. Maribel’s 16-year-old sister, Laurence, had just made the cover of Sports Illustrated, which declared her “America’s most exciting girl skater.” Bradley Lord was the top American male figure skater. All of them, as well as the Owens’ mother, Olympic bronze medalist Maribel Vinson Owen, were on Sabena Flight 548. The Boeing 707-329 lifted off from New York on Valentine’s Day and broke hearts the following morning when it crashed near Brussels airport, killing all 61 passengers, 11 crew members and one person on the ground. The U.S. figure skating team was travelling to the world championships in Prague with a delegation of 34, including coaches, judges and 18 high-level athletes – a loss that set back American skating for years. Future teams would avoid travelling together internationally on one flight again. No cause for the clear-sky crash has been determined, although a commission suspected a failure of the stabilizer mechanism. Local organizers initially planned to go ahead with the championships, but International Skating Union member nations voted to cancel them out of respect for the U.S. team. A fund set up in memory of those who died still supports U.S. skaters today. Joy Yokoyama
Read today's horoscopes. Enjoy today's puzzles.
If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday morning, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.