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These are the top stories:
An audit of a major Ontario construction company found $80-million in improper supplier payments
An auditor report alleges that investigators found 577 suspicious invoices from 19 suppliers, with no evidence work was performed for Bondfield Construction. The suppliers channelled some of the money back to insiders at Bondfield, Ernst & Young alleges. None of the allegations has been proven in court.
Bondfield, which has won contracts for several public-sector projects, has been operating under bankruptcy protection since June. Ernst & Young has obtained a judge’s permission to take legal action against former Bondfield officials – including the ex-CEO – who are alleged to have received a portion of the funds.
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A judge has struck down a jury-selection law enacted after the Boushie case
The ruling could lead to retrials in jury verdicts across Canada if the Supreme Court were to eventually rule the federal ban unconstitutional.
The Ontario judge’s decision comes in the wake of the seven-week old law barring the use of peremptory challenges. That was a response to perceived bias in jury selection after a Saskatchewan jury acquitted a white farmer in the death of Colten Boushie, an Indigenous man.
In this Ontario case, however, the judge found that an Indigenous man accused of second-degree murder was denied the right to participate in the selection of a representative jury.
“In order to provide for a measure of protection against the discrimination of jurors, Parliament has abolished [the accused’s] ability to prevent discrimination against himself,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
Andrew Scheer has survived a critical leadership test
Conservative MPs opted not to give themselves the authority to remove him as leader, granting Scheer the chance to right the ship – at least until the party’s convention in April. The first caucus meeting since the election lasted more than three hours past its scheduled end time as Tories voiced concerns about the campaign’s strategy and his handling of social issues.
Scheer emerged to speak with reporters, where he announced that he would go on a cross-country listening tour. He also said former minister John Baird would oversee a review of the election campaign.
Campbell Clark says Scheer faces an uphill battle: “the rumblings of disaffection already seem like a boulder starting to roll downhill. Pushing it back up will keep getting harder. If Mr. Scheer can’t do it soon, he is in for months of painful struggle.”
Alberta faces more well cleanup liabilities as an oil producer collapses
The insolvency of Houston Oil & Gas could add as many as 1,400 more wells onto Alberta’s inventory of orphan sites. Those wells have an estimated environmental cleanup cost of $81.5-million.
The Houston bankruptcy comes just six months after natural gas producer Trident Exploration ceased operations, leaving a $329-million bill to clean up 4,700 wells.
A Globe investigation last year found the number of wells on the rise across Western Canada as lax regulations allowed companies to let idle wells sit indefinitely or transfer them to other companies in poor financial state.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Vancouver votes to expropriate Sahota buildings: Council passed a motion to proceed with the expropriation of two derelict properties for $1 each. The Regent and Balmoral hotels, home to low-income residents, were shuttered over health and safety concerns. The $1 valuation is attributed to renovation costs.
City of Ottawa looks to address transit woes: Amid outrage over problems with a new LRT system, the city is planning to add $7.5-million in spending on transit. The funds are aimed at adding additional buses to compensate for overcrowding and route cancellations that came with the LRT launch.
Why GFL’s IPO failed: Potential investors had urged the Canadian waste-management company to slash its heavy debt load, sources tell The Globe. The company would have been forced to increase the number of shares it issued to raise enough money, but its existing backers refused.
French immersion growth creating two-tier system: Children from low-income families and those with special needs are overrepresented in the English-language program, according to an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board report. That echoes findings from Toronto that showed those in the French program are more likely to have parents with higher socio-economic status.
MORNING MARKETS
U.S.-China trade deal hopes restart stocks rally: Europe’s share markets hit a more than four-year peak and bond yields shuffled higher on Thursday, as Beijing signalled a ‘phase 1’ trade deal with the United States was close to being sealed. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.4 per cent to its highest since July, 2015, led by the export-heavy DAX in Frankfurt. Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 0.1 per cent, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 0.6 per cent, while the Shanghai Composite was flat. New York futures were up. The Canadian dollar was at about 76 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
The Squamish Nation builds a better city in Vancouver
Alex Bozikovic: “What if it was easier to build a better city? With a lot of downtown housing in energy-efficient buildings; with lots of green space and almost no room at all for cars? That’s the vision that’s come forward this week from the Squamish Nation in Vancouver.”
Bank of Canada acknowledges it lacks options to lead economy out of potential recession
David Parkinson: “The last time Canada slipped into a recession, we leaned heavily on the Bank of Canada to lift us out of it. The next time, we shouldn’t count on the central bank to carry the load. Current circumstances and the lessons of history suggest that government spending will have to lead the way. Who says so? The Bank of Canada.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
(Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail)Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
A four-star review for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman
It may be 210 minutes, but Barry Hertz says the Netflix flick breezes by in a “glorious” piece of work that will put an end to any possible doubt about Scorsese’s artistry. Starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, the film “acts as a definitive closer to the perennial argument that Scorsese is somehow glamourizing the lives of criminals.”
The Irishman plays in select Canadian theatres, starting this Friday in Toronto, followed by its Netflix release on Nov. 27.
MOMENT IN TIME
Women banned from wearing pants in Paris
(Lebrecht History/Bridgeman Images)Lebrecht History / Bridgeman Images
Nov. 7, 1800: Is there a city more closely associated with women’s sartorial emancipation than Paris? In the 1830s, the writer George Sand, escaping the prison of aristocratic life, swanned from salon to salon in a man’s suit, a cigar in hand. A hundred years later, Coco Chanel freed women from the tyranny of skirts with her beautiful wide-legged trousers. In the 1960s, Yves Saint Laurent created the epitome of nighttime chic when he appropriated men’s formal wear for women, which grateful style-setters embraced and called Le Smoking. Astonishingly, pants for women were technically banned in Paris during all this time. After the fervent of the Revolution, women were forbidden from wearing trousers (which had separated the revolutionaries who wore them from aristocrats in posh knee breeches). Women could apply to the police for a special licence in order to “dress like a man,” and in 1909 the law was relaxed to allow trousers “if the woman is holding the handlebars of a bicycle or the reins of a horse.” Only in 2013 did the nonsense come to an end when the French Minister of Women’s Rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, repealed the ban and said “oui” to women in slacks. – Elizabeth Renzetti
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Arik Ligeti