Politics Briefing newsletter: Mueller’s investigation just beginning

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Good morning,

As society has moved from 24-7 cable news to constantly updated digital platforms to the unrelenting firehose of social media, the hustle and bustle of daily news has gotten only, er, hustle-ier and bustle-ier.

And it's in that environment that sometimes we as a society tune out some of the big, important stories that are still there, but don't always make for attention-grabbing sound bites.

Here's one: the world is still getting hotter. A new report from the World Meteorological Organization says the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a rate much faster than usual. The amount of methane is also up, and both gases have the effect of trapping heat in the atmosphere in what's known as the greenhouse effect. Hotter temperatures may lead to more drought, higher sea levels and extreme weather, among other things. And the heat tends to create feedback loops that release more gases into the system.

As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they are hard to get rid of. And scientists say they are still not sure what will happen as the concentrations rise. "The changes will not take 10,000 years, like they used to take before; they will happen fast. We don't have the knowledge of the system in this state; that is a bit worrisome!" Dr. Oksana Tarasova told the BBC.

But doing something about it is not easy for governments, for a variety of reasons. In Canada, hundreds of thousands of people (at least) rely on the energy sector for their livelihood. And globally, there is the tragedy of the commons – it's in everyone's interest to work together on a solution to climate change, but not any one individual's responsibility.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa and James Keller in Vancouver. If you're reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

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TODAY'S HEADLINES

Robert Mueller, U.S. special counsel and former director of the FBI, has laid his first charges in his investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. Paul Manafort, at one time the manager for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and his associate Rick Gates have pleaded not guilty to charges such as money laundering and conspiracy against the United States. George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to the campaign, has pleaded guilty to making false statements to investigators and is now working with the probe. Mr. Manafort had a long history with Republican presidential candidates, including Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, but more controversially, he was involved in Ukrainian politics, too. The Globe's Mark MacKinnon explains. Republican senators say they support the work of the special counsel, but they are in no rush to give him extra legal shields should the President want to dismiss him. And the White House, of course, says none of this has anything to do with the President.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refuses to say which of his cabinet ministers are using a loophole that, as the Finance Minister had been doing, allows the politicians to retain their financial assets without divesting them or putting them in a blind trust.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has his own substantial investments.

The Liberal government has appointed a diverse set of judges to Canada's benches, but the data does not indicate if some of the new judges were selected from a pool of less-recommended candidates.

Drug companies are pushing back on the government's plans to overhaul the drug-pricing regulator, though there is some dispute about whether or not the firms are making their required investments in Canada.

The Alberta legislature has resumed for the first time since the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties' summer merger, giving the province a united Opposition less than two years before the next provincial election. NDP Premier Rachel Notley and members of the new United Conservative Party used the first day of the fall sitting to launch into campaign-style attacks as both sides look to the next provincial election in 2019. The United Conservative Party's new leader, Jason Kenney, who was elected over the weekend, does not have a seat in the legislature. He'll have a chance to change that with a by-election, expected after UCP member Dave Rodney resigns his seat.

The B.C. government is preparing to study the concept of a guaranteed basic income – launching an experiment similar to one already underway in Ontario — as it crafts a poverty reduction plan. The NDP's spring election campaign included pledges to reduce poverty in the province. That will include a pilot project, expected early next year, that will study whether a guaranteed basic income is an effective way to reduce poverty. Proponents argue ensuring people have enough money to live on will improve the lives and health of poor people. Ontario launched its own study earlier this year that involves 4,000 randomly selected people in three cities.

Local politics in B.C. will now be subject to the same tough campaign-finance laws that are being imposed on provincial parties. The province's NDP government has tabled legislation to ban corporate and union donations at the provincial level and introduce donation limits. Municipal Affairs Minister Selina Robinson has announced that those rules will also apply to next year's municipal elections. Without any limits on political fundraising at the municipal level, the cost of campaigns has reached millions of dollars. Ontario and the City of Winnipeg are among the few jurisdictions in Canada that limit political donations at the civic level.

The group of independent senators is now the largest caucus in the Senate.

And a senator has been accused by some of his former colleagues in the chemistry world of exaggerating his scientific accomplishments.

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on Harper, Trudeau and NAFTA: "The Liberals are squealing that Mr. Harper is disloyally weakening the knees of Canadians so the Americans can take advantage. But Canadians don't need an entire political class telling us to keep calm and NAFTA will carry on. Already, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has become a little more pointed about the problems. If Mr. Harper's leaked memo was advising clients to manage their risk, the risk of a non-NAFTA Canada, that's reasonable. But it doesn't provide a viable alternative strategy for negotiations."

Margaret Wente (The Globe and Mail) on Jason Kenney: "Nothing is certain in politics, of course. But it seems unlikely that Rachel Notley and the NDP can survive the Kenney juggernaut. Many Albertans are having buyer's remorse. Ms. Notley's efforts to win a social licence to build pipelines have fallen flat. If the Trans Mountain pipeline is still going nowhere by 2019, she'll be toast."

Chantal Hébert (Toronto Star) on the Conservatives' balancing act: "Over the past few months [Jason] Kenney turned his guns on Quebec for allegedly biting the equalization hand that feeds it by not supporting the now-defunct Energy East pipeline. For the same reason, British Columbia whose minority NDP government is against the imminent expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline is in his bad books. And he is itching for a fight against Justin Trudeau's Liberals — on Alberta terms. But what may be a popular scorched-earth federal-provincial approach in Alberta risks becoming a bridge-burning one for Scheer's federal Conservatives."

Neil Macdonald (CBC) on Liberal tax reforms: "The reality is this: our tax system is so distorted by politically motivated exceptions and giveaways that the concept of fairness is meaningless."

Sarah Kendzior (The Globe and Mail) on the Mueller investigation: "That the Trump administration is stocked with men whose loyalty to Mr. Trump possibly supersedes their loyalty to the Constitution makes the consequences of any indictment highly uncertain."