TODAY'S TOP STORIES
B.C. heads to the polls today
It's election day in British Columbia. Polls open at 8 a.m. PT and close at 8 p.m., with results expected to start rolling in shortly thereafter. Christy Clark is looking to carry the BC Liberals to a fifth straight victory, and a second under her leadership. NDP Leader John Horgan, meanwhile, is trying to put his party in power for the first time since 2001. And don't count out the Greens, a party that's threatening to build on their one seat in the B.C. legislature. There are 87 seats up for grabs, which makes 44 the magic number for a party to win a majority. B.C. hasn't had a minority government since 1953. We'll have live coverage throughout the evening.
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One dead in floods as Quebec, Ontario residents question government response
A 37-year-old man is dead and a two-year-old girl is still missing in eastern Quebec following flooding over the weekend. At least 1,940 Quebeckers and hundreds of Ontarians abandoned their homes because of rising water levels; more than 2,700 homes have been damaged. Water levels appear to have stabilized and in some cases are receding. But it will take days and weeks to drain what's accumulated. In the aftermath, some are questioning whether all levels of government could have responded better to the situation. Water levels had been building up before the weekend downpour that broke dikes and led to evacuations.
Ottawa fails to act in time to stop lawsuit on solitary confinement
In January, 2015, two organizations sued the federal government over the use of solitary confinement, calling the practice unconstitutional. A court date had been set for January, but in November of last year Ottawa asked for the case to be adjourned and promised to introduce legislative reforms. Those changes were expected to be put before cabinet before the spring budget, but action has yet to come. Yesterday, a B.C. Supreme Court judge said that there's no sign of legislation, putting the lawsuit back in play. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the government is still working on the issue. Legislation "may well be" part of the plan, but nothing has been decided yet.
Despite Le Pen's defeat, populism isn't going away: experts
Marine Le Pen may have lost Sunday's presidential election, but the National Front isn't going away any time soon. The party could still win as many as 50 seats in France's National Assembly when elections take place next month, one expert said. And just because Le Pen and other right-wing populist parties in the Netherlands, Finland, Germany and Britain didn't fare as well as expected in recent elections, doesn't mean the movement has collapsed. "I think that the worst idea for the EU would be to say, 'everything is going okay, we have defeated the populists,'" said Paris-based political analyst Jean-Yves Camus.
MORNING MARKETS
European stocks and bond yields rose on Tuesday, boosted by historically low stock market volatility, continuing relief from this weekend's French presidential election and solid corporate earnings. Overnight, the VIX index of implied volatility on the S&P 500 – the so-called Wall Street "fear gauge" – fell to its lowest intraday level since December, 2006. It closed at 9.77, its lowest closing level since December, 1993. Tokyo's Nikkei lost 0.3 per cent, but stocks are gaining in Europe and poised for a stronger open in New York. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 1.3 per cent, and the Shanghai composite by just shy of 0.1 per cent. In Europe, London's FTSE 100, Germany's DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were each up 0.5 per cent by about 5:45 a.m. (ET). U.S. crude rose 0.5 per cent to $46.66 a barrel, and global benchmark Brent also rose 0.5 per cent to $49.57.
WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT
Canada is bad at organizing flood relief, but it doesn't have to be
" 'Where is the army?' Just about every news report on Quebec's floods includes a struggling resident in knee-deep water asking why it took so long to call out the army, and why the soldiers aren't around. But it's not the army's fault. It's the way disaster relief is organized in Canada: badly. The real question is why we keep doing it this way. … You can't eliminate disasters, but you can plan and mitigate the impact. There are floods, earthquakes, ice storms, broken dams, power outages and so on. In Germany, volunteers do co-ordination, water purification, power-line repair, pumping, sandbagging, and search and rescue. Why hasn't Canada done something like it? It takes a relatively small amount of money, for some equipment and training and a government mandate." – Campbell Clark
There's a target on Stephen Colbert's back and it's not going away
"What is certainly a fact is that Stephen Colbert has a target on his back. Somebody complained to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission about a wisecrack he made about President Donald Trump. To the surprise of many, the complaint is being investigated. … There is now a widespread perception that, emboldened by Trump's attacks on the media, everybody from Mr. and Mrs. Outraged to the chair of the FCC is going to be heavy-handed, especially in the matter of reacting to rude anti-Trump jokes. There's a feeling that a chill is descending." – John Doyle
HEALTH PRIMER
As lifespans increase, Canadians need to learn self-sufficiency
"A bigger factor than the number of baby boomers – the more than eight million children, an average of 3.7 per woman, who were born in Canada in the two decades between 1946 and 1965 – is our longevity. We aren't shuffling off this mortal coil as quickly as some would like. … The big if, in all of this, is making our lifespans correspond with our health spans, as the medical lingo suggests. For many elders, it doesn't. Sure, we are living longer, but the last 10 years tend to be a dire mix of infirmity, complex chronic diseases and dependencies. … Keeping mentally and physically fit is essential if remaining independent is your goal, and it certainly is mine, but we must also ditch traditional ideas of women as housekeepers and men as financial planners, and living arrangements based on familial ties." – Sandra Martin
MOMENT IN TIME
FDA licenses 'the Pill'
May 9, 1960: Nurse Margaret Sanger was one of three women who worked at the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916. A fearless women's-rights advocate, Sanger lobbied church and government to give women some say over their bodies. Then she met Katharine Dexter McCormick, a pioneer of the women's suffrage movement, manufacturing heiress and MIT biology grad. The two women became friends and, in 1950, McCormick put up the funds behind what became known as "the Pill," a contraceptive game-changer largely credited to Harvard biologist Gregory Pincus. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensed the Pill on May 9, 1960, a long-sought victory for Sanger who said, "No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." The Trudeau government followed suit in 1969. – Gayle MacDonald
Morning Update is written by Arik Ligeti.
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