Hello,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden have their first official bilateral meeting this afternoon.
The meeting, which will be virtual, will include Vice-President Kamala Harris, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and about a dozen other cabinet ministers.
Climate-change and investment in clean energy is expected to be the central focus of the discussion. The United States re-entered the Paris agreement on climate change last week, after leaving it under the Trump administration.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
The House of Commons voted to recognize China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims as a genocide. The vote was unanimous among those present, except for Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau abstained “on behalf of the government of Canada.” (Mr. Trudeau and other cabinet members missed the vote.) The Chinese government decried the vote and said no investigation has ever uncovered a genocide in the Xinjiang region.
The Liberal government has agreed to a Senate amendment on the assisted-dying bill that would open the door to the procedure to those with mental illness, though it rejected an amendment on advance directives.
A meeting of intelligence experts likened the Canadian government’s failure to act quickly on the COVID-19 pandemic to the intelligence failures that precipitated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
New Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin and his cabinet have been sworn in.
And Facebook and the government of Australia have come to a compromise over a new law that seeks to address how the social-media platform has upended traditional media’s ad-supported business model. A similar law is in the works in Canada.
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on Parliament’s vote to condemn China’s genocide against Uyghur Muslims: “But the House, including much of the Liberal caucus, has expressed its will. This Liberal government must take a much firmer stand against atrocities committed by the regime in Beijing.”
Rupa Subramanya (National Post) on why the motion should not have passed: “What’s more, while it is not in dispute that China has committed egregious human rights violations, which may be classified as crimes against humanity against the Uyghur, it is not at all clear that their actions meet the stringent definition of genocide set forth by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
Jody Wilson-Raybould, Kim Pate and Wanda Thomas Bernard (The Globe and Mail) on the Liberal justice bill to remove some mandatory minimum penalties: “Bill C-22 repeals a mere 19 of the at least 43 MMPs that have already been struck down by courts at all levels throughout this country, with the courts continuing to rule MMPs unconstitutional and disproportionate.”
André Picard (The Globe and Mail) on getting a move on and fixing long-term care: “Yet, we continue to study and ponder, with coroner’s inquests, ombudspersons and so on. It won’t be long before there will be a bevy of full-blown commissions of inquiry – federal and provincial – to produce more gnashing of teeth and earnest recommendations. Here’s an idea: Why don’t we spend a lot more time, effort and money actually caring for our elders, and a lot less on studying how we neglected and killed them?”
Lise Ravary (Montreal Gazette) on support for stay-at-home parents: “Stay-at-home parenting is not for everyone. Again, it must be a choice. But I suspect there are more people, men and women, who would turn to this if the conditions were right. Governments support daycare, with funding or tax relief. Maybe it is time to consider a salary for stay-at-home parents, for those who choose this traditional lifestyle.”
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