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Ottawa plans to introduce legislation that would allow the federal government to routinely notify Washington when Canadians convicted of sexual offences against children travel to the United States.
The U.S. has been pushing the government for years to share travel information on convicted pedophiles as the U.S. has been doing with Canada and other countries since 2016. The issue has recently been discussed at the ministerial level of both governments. In August, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas raised the request for reciprocity directly with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, who promised to see what could be done. The Americans want the ability to deny entry to such travellers.
In an interview, Mr. Mendicino said his department is looking at amending the Sex Offender Information Registration Act to give the RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency “greater flexibility so we can alert Americans to potential risks of child sexual offenders.”
“I just want to make it clear that child sexual exploitation is heinous. I am taking it and the government is taking it very seriously and we do want to move quickly on this file,” he said.
Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill, Feb. 28, 2022.BLAIR GABLE/Reuters
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New study shows long-term effects of COVID-19 infections on health care system
People who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, had greater use of the health care system, including more time in hospital, in the months after infection, compared with their peers who tested negative, according to a study of more than half a million Ontarians.
The study, published in the CMAJ on Monday, found, on average, the number of days in hospital, outpatient visits and home care visits among Ontarians who had tested positive for the virus were modestly higher than those who had tested negative.
But the difference was stark when it came to the top 1 per cent of people who used the health care system the most. Among this 1 per cent, those who were infected spent about seven additional days in hospital a year compared with those of the same age, sex, socioeconomic scores, vaccination status, and other characteristics who tested negative, said lead author Candace McNaughton, an emergency physician at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Research Institute.
A registered nurse takes a moment to look outside while attending to a ventilated COVID-19 patient in the intensive care unit at the Humber River Hospital in Toronto on Jan. 25, 2022.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
On his deathbed, a pot-dealing pioneer is at peace with his life as ‘General Patton in the War on Drugs’
Puffing a joint on his deathbed, Rosie Rowbotham is feeling fine. His shirt’s off, Muffin the cat is by his side, and he’s talking about the happiest days of his life. “Rochdale,” he says, and he smiles, all skin and bones, bottom teeth missing, a wisp of smoke now enveloping his tousled, long white hair. Rochdale, a now-defunct experimental college along Bloor Street in Toronto, is where Mr. Rowbotham set up shop in the late 1960s to become not just the biggest hash dealer in the country, but one of the most successful cannabis salesmen in the world.
“If you bought hash in the seventies, I don’t care if you were in California, Boston or Chicago, you got it from me,” says the man born Robert Wilson Rowbotham in Belleville, Ont., on Oct. 31, 1950, and who, in 1985, would begin serving the longest sentence for trafficking weed of any Canadian in history.
Mr. Rowbotham fought cannabis prohibition in Toronto’s hippie hangouts of the 1960s, and in court cases that paved the road to legalization. Now facing terminal cancer, he says the industry is tainted by greed and likely to fail – but “my karma is clean.”
Radio personality Rosie Rowbotham in studio in Toronto, July 12, 1999.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
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Also on our radar
Russia hits Ukrainian capital with waves of explosive Iranian drones: The strike on Kyiv comes as fighting has intensified in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in recent days, as well as the continued Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
The future of the Jan. 6 committee hangs on the outcome of U.S. midterm elections: There are 506 major political races under way in the United States right now. 435 of them are for the House of Representatives, 34 are for the Senate, 36 are for various state governor’s chairs – and one is a desperate race against time. That one might be the most important of all.
B.C. voters choose change as new mayors elected across the province: Across British Columbia, voters tossed out more than three dozen incumbent mayors in municipal elections on the weekend, signalling an impatience on key issues of public safety and housing affordability.
Which will last longer: Liz Truss as Prime Minister or a wilting head of lettuce? Britain places its bets: Ms. Truss has been fighting for her political life since Friday when she fired Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng and backtracked on a pledge to scrap an increase in the corporate tax rate from 19 per cent to 25 per cent, her second policy U-turn this month.
News organization asks Supreme Court to protect privacy of interview with sexual assault complainant: A news organization forced to turn over a videotaped interview with a complainant in an alleged rape involving a hockey player is asking the Supreme Court of Canada to hear an appeal of that decision, describing it as a test of federal legislation protecting journalistic sources.
Indigenous couple file court petition after province refuses to register their baby’s name in Kwak’wala lettering: An Indigenous family on Vancouver Island has launched a court petition after the provincial government wouldn’t register their baby’s name in Kwak’wala lettering, in a move that could compel the government to act quicker on its commitments to Indigenous rights.
In Yukon, the dwindling Chinook salmon population threatens food security and livelihoods: Few folks in living memory have ever seen a Yukon Chinook so large; it’s a relic, preserved from the days when the salmon population was not only abundant, but thriving. Those days, however, are gone.
Banks warn clients about variable-mortgage trigger rate, signalling higher payments ahead: Banks are contacting many clients with variable mortgages to inform them that they’re reaching their trigger rate, signalling higher monthly costs for a growing number of homeowners and a longer payback period.
New offensive in Tigray brings heavy death toll for civilians: Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers and warplanes have launched a massive assault on a small Tigrayan city, provoking horror from international leaders as the death toll climbs.
Morning markets
European markets gain: Europe’s share, bond and currency markets moved tentatively higher on Monday, helped by relief that’s Britain new finance minister had quickly ripped into the unfunded tax cuts that triggered turmoil in U.K. assets this month. Just before 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.35 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 advanced 0.30 per cent and 0.45 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei lost 1.16 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged up 0.15 per cent. New York futures were positive. The Canadian dollar was trading at 72.35 US cents.
What everyone’s talking about
What story of colonialism do you want to believe in?
“We collectively create stories, fictions, knowing they are fictions, knowing they represent only one version of reality, and we use these stories to create our social world. We just make shit up.” – Harold R. Johnson
Cheating may be human, but changes in society are leading people to cut more corners
“Is all this cheating just part of the human condition? Is it really worse now, or are we only hearing more about cheating because of better detection efforts? And what about fixing the problem: Are there underlying drivers at work that we can address with smart reforms?” – David Callahan
Freeland issues a clarion call from Canada’s foreign-policy void
“In one, a decisive Canada identifies the developing dangers of the globe and acts boldly to deal with them. Unfortunately, that exists only in the imaginary world of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s foreign-policy speeches. In the other one, the real world, Canada vacillates aimlessly on tough choices without much of a foreign policy.” – Campbell Clark
Today’s editorial cartoon
David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
Living better
How to eat at a restaurant with a toddler who has only lived life in lockdown
Though restaurants have been the central preoccupation of his professional life, Corey Mintz has never eaten in one with his daughter. Food is a huge plank of their connection. They bake challah together and pick peas in their curbside garden. But his toddler, who we call Puddin’, was raised in a pandemic. So he never had to navigate a restaurant visit with her.
A few days before visiting friends and family in Toronto, he asked the good people of Twitter for tips. Over the course of three restaurant meals, Mintz shares the results of the road tests on every piece of advice he was given.
Moment in time: The pumpkin patch
Ripe and ready for Halloween, workers harvest pumpkins from the Mar's Farm Pumpkin Patch in central Saanich on Vancouver Island, Oct. 7, 2005.Don Denton/The Globe and Mail
For more than 100 years, photographers and photo editors working for The Globe and Mail have preserved an extraordinary collection of news photography. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, the theme is pumpkins.
Fall is a field full of bright orange orbs, like this one on Vancouver Island captured by Don Denton in 2005. Planted not long after the last spring frost, pumpkin plants grow male and female flowers on the same plant; bees must transfer the pollen from the male flowers to the female in order to grow fruit. Drive out into the country and it’s not just classic pumpkin patches on display. You may spot farms with little pie pumpkins as far as the eye can see, or rows of ghostly white and blue gourds – or perhaps even pumpkins covered in unsightly bumps (great for warty witch jack-o-lanterns). No matter which ones you prefer, the cucurbit is definitely popular with Canadian farmers. The 2021 Statistics Canada Census of Agriculture recorded 2,572 farms growing the crop, which takes about 100 days to harvest. Catherine Dawson March
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