Trudeau is set to give a historic apology

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POLITICS BRIEFING

By Chris Hannay (@channay)

The House of Commons will see a rare event today: The Prime Minister will issue an official apology on behalf of the government of Canada for a historic wrong.

In 2008, Stephen Harper apologized to former students of residential schools for the abuse they faced over decades. In 1988, Brian Mulroney apologized to Japanese Canadians for the internment and seizure of property they faced during the Second World War.

Today, Justin Trudeau will apologize for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, when Canada turned away a boat full of largely Sikh immigrants. The boat was forced to return to India, where most were killed or imprisoned. As Renisa Mawani explains, the incident had wider implications for immigration that went beyond the experience of those 376 migrants.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW IN OTTAWA

> Though the Liberals cite Sweden as a country that suffered economic hardship after cancelling a weapons deal with Saudi Arabia in their defence that Canada can't do the same, Steven Chase reports that the Scandinavian country got little blowback and appears to still have good relations with the Saudis.

> Coming out of an international meeting in Vienna, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion says Canada will help with more humanitarian aid in Syria if the current ceasefire fails.

> The assisted-dying bill seems unlikely to meet its deadline imposed by the Supreme Court, after senators told the House of Commons what changes they would like to see in the bill. (In other legislative news, Liberals don't feel in a rush to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership.)

> In a sign of maturity for tech startups, Ottawa-based Shopify has hired its first in-house lobbyist – someone whom the Liberals know quite well. (for subscribers)

> And a popular Parliament Hill journalist and a senior senator got into a Twitter scrap over who, exactly, leaked an audit.

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

> Alberta: Wildfires continue to rage around Fort McMurray, causing further delays to getting oil production restarted.

> British Columbia: A former government staffer has been charged with breach of trust after a three-year-long RCMP investigation.

> Ontario: The Liberals have tabled their campaign-finance legislation, which would ban union and corporate donations and dramatically lower the annual donation cap. The new rules would give parties a subsidy based on their popular vote. However, the bill does not address private fundraisers and still allows for larger donations in election years. In other news, Jane Taber takes a closer look at Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown who is trying to move the party to the middle through appeals to gay, lesbian and transgender Ontarians and proposals to fight climate change. Meanwhile, Tory MPP Jack MacLaren has finished his sensitivity training.

WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT

Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail): "Canadian governments – and provincial ones, too – had used taxpayer money to advertise themselves before. But nothing equalled the efforts of the Harper government, blanketing the airwaves with shameless abandon. Now, mercifully, the Trudeau government is crying "Halt!" to this squandering of money and ubiquitous propaganda. With the memory of the Harper government's methods still fresh, Treasury Board President Scott Brison has announced an end to misuse of government advertising. Skeptics might snort that we have heard this before, but actually, no. Mr. Brison's declaration is the first time a federal government has so definitely forsworn using advertising for its own purposes." (for subscribers)

Kyle Kirkup (Globe and Mail): "While federal human-rights tribunals have consistently found that transgender discrimination is captured by protected categories such as 'sex,' adding 'gender identity' and 'gender expression' makes this interpretation crystal clear. Perhaps more importantly, the new legislation serves a crucial symbolic function – it tells members of transgender communities that they can use the law to respond to pervasive inequality."

John Ibbitson (Globe and Mail): "The Trudeau government deserves high praise for the legislation tabled on Tuesday to protect transgender Canadians from discrimination. In some U.S. states, new laws actively persecute transgender people. In Canada, the exact opposite will be true. … It also high time for Justin Trudeau to right two historic wrongs. First, he should pardon thousands of gay men who were convicted of gross indecency before homosexual acts were decriminalized in 1969. Their only crime was being who they were. … [and] the Government of Canada should also apologize to the thousands in the public service and military who were dismissed or otherwise discriminated against because they were homosexual, a practice that continued right up until the late 1980s."

Michael Bell (Globe and Mail): "During the campaign, the Liberals promised a return to vigorous and interventionist multilateralism. They were accused of either being out of touch with current realities or simply posturing. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. More than ever, the need for constructive intervention begs our involvement. The international community has embraced the tone and substance of a return to Canada's well-honed role. We were missed."

Glen Hodgson (Globe and Mail): "The lack of tax policy alignment and consistency [among provinces] also creates an opportunity. Any province could decide to conduct a fundamental review of its entire tax and revenue system without having to wait for the federal government and provincial counterparts. It could seek out best practices in tax system design – such as investing royalties, reducing provincial tax expenditures and putting a price on carbon."

Madeline Ashby (Ottawa Citizen): "In the vicious backlash against [Sophie] Grégoire Trudeau, Canadians have once again let slip their hatred for all things fancy and pretty, all things accomplished or distinctive, all things that are not plain or self-deprecating or self-abasing. Heaven forbid a woman have the gall to be talented, attractive and a mother. And a mother who admits that mothering and working at the same time is hard? That rattling you hear is that of thousands of Canadians clutching their collective pearls."

Robert Fisk (The Independent): "If you hit the jackpot as prime minister – if you really match up to the squeaky-clean, genuine and youthful image of a new deal liberal politician taking over from a rather secretive and divisive Conservative – you better have a tough wife. "

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