Morning Update: Top federal prosecutor speaks out on SNC-Lavalin affair

Good morning,

These are the top stories:

Prosecutor says no deal was offered to SNC-Lavalin due to severity of charges and past behaviour

In an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail, Kathleen Roussel laid out – for the first time – her reasons for rejecting SNC-Lavalin’s request for a deferred prosecution agreement. She said because of the “severity and breadth" of its misconduct in Libya and past incidents of corruption in other countries, she chose to deny a DPA.

Ms. Roussel also praised former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould for shielding her from Liberal government interference aimed at obtaining a DPA for the company.

This is the daily Morning Update newsletter. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for Morning Update and more than 20 more Globe newsletters on our newsletter signup page.

Talks between Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and Ottawa a sign of progress to end standoff

Talks between senior government officials and Wet’suwet’en Nation hereditary chiefs got under way Thursday. Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs noted invitations to both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Horgan were “declined at this time.”

The talks were held after RCMP agreed to reduce their presence in the area and the company behind a contentious pipeline project said it would put its construction activities on hold. The talks are scheduled to resume Friday.

• Opinion (Pam Palmater): Clearing the lands has always been at the heart of Canada’s Indian Policy

Open this photo in gallery:

Top health officials to begin ‘actively’ looking for COVID-19 cases in Canadian communities

The new approach for the country to begin actively looking within their communities comes mounting evidence suggests that the new coronavirus will soon start spreading more freely in Canada.

Under an active approach, all patients with severe respiratory disease whose cause is unknown could be tested. Provinces could also set up sentinel surveillance sites where patients who visit clinics in virus hot spots would be tested for the disease.

Officials didn’t offer a timeline for when the new surveillance systems will be activated, but infectious-disease experts say they are urgently needed.

• Explainer: Is the coronavirus a pandemic? The WHO hasn’t declared it one, but here’s what you need to know if it does
• Opinion (André Picard): How prepared is Canada’s health-care system to handle a potential coronavirus pandemic?
• Opinion (Elizabeth Renzetti): In a world of coronavirus panic and xenophobia, can a marathon of hope outrun fear?

Open this photo in gallery:

Alberta budget hedges bets on oil patch for economic recovery

The province’s 2020-21 budget was far from the slash-and-burn plan feared by public-sector unions, which expected tough cuts in the face of oil-price woes and worsening economic projections.

The budget also included a lengthy attack on Ottawa over the federal fiscal-stabilization program that emphasized Alberta’s long-term contribution to Canada’s fiscal health.

• Opinion (Mason Gary): Alberta budget lays bare province’s debt quagmire
• Opinion (Kelly Cryderman): Alberta’s dependence on oil will likely make it first to feel economic pinch

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

ALSO ON OUR RADAR

Turkey, with more dead troops, says it won’t stop Syrian refugees reaching Europe: An air strike by Syrian government forces in Syria’s northwest Idlib region killed 29 Turkish soldiers. The threat to open the way for refugees to Europe would reverse a pledge Turkey made to the European Union in 2016.

Questions swirl about police response to India’s riots: As India’s worst spasm of religious violence in years entered its sixth day, with the death toll climbing to at least 38, questions are intensifying about why the New Delhi police failed to quell the bloodletting.

Canada dumped nearly 900 billion litres of raw sewage into waterways between 2013 and 2018: The number does not include wastewater that leaks out from systems that don’t use combined sewage and storm water pipes or any data on non-sewage related pollution that isn’t treated by wastewater plants, such as pharmaceuticals.

RCMP set to end security protection for Prince Harry and Meghan: The couple have been receiving RCMP protection since November while staying in Canada – a security expert told The Globe and Mail in January that protecting the couple while they are living in Canada could cost more than $10-million annually.

MORNING MARKETS

Coronavirus crash wipes $5-trillion off world stocks: Coronavirus panic sent world share markets crashing again on Friday, compounding their worst week since the 2008 global financial crisis and bringing the wipeout in value terms to US$5-trillion. At 6:20 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 2.99 per cent. Germany’s DAX fell 3.62 per cent and France’s CAC 40 dropped 2.79 per cent. Tokyo’s Nikkei ended down 3.67 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng finished 2.42 per cent lower. New York futures were down sharply. The Canadian dollar was trading at 74.35 US cents.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Jean Vanier was revered, but revelations of abuse and manipulation should not come as a surprise

Madeline Burghardt: “L’Arche stands now in a difficult and painful place. It must now acknowledge the full scope of its history and must continue to work to uncover its reach, to begin to pick up the debris left behind in the wake of the findings.” Burghardt teaches at York University in Toronto and is the author of Broken: Institutions, Families, and the Construction of Intellectual Disability.

The global significance of Trump’s India visit

Brahma Chellaney: “The rioting, restricted to the blockade-hit neighbourhood (which is in Delhi state, but not part of New Delhi), came in handy to those seeking to obscure the gains from Mr. Trump’s visit.” Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON

Open this photo in gallery:

LIVING BETTER

How to shut down the rumour mill – or turn it to your advantage

Learning to manage rumours should be in every company’s repertoire, says Tim Hannigan, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta School of Business. He, along with other researchers, is studying the impact of gossip on a company’s reputation, new product development, and customer and supplier relationships. Not all rumours are bad, but especially those with misinformation can’t be ignored. The bottom line, say the experts, is that you need to create a strategy to manage the whispers about your firm.

MOMENT IN TIME

Open this photo in gallery:

Ghost word discovered in Merriam-Webster dictionary

Feb. 28, 1939: Dord. You’d be forgiven for not being familiar with the term – it doesn’t exist, although it did live in the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary for 13 years. Tucked between Dorcopsis (a type of small kangaroo) and doré (meaning golden in colour) on page 771, dord was supposedly a synonym for density used by physicists and chemists. And yet, it was nothing but a ghost word, an accident that somehow made it into print. There were no examples of the word in use and no etymology, or origin, of the term. Other ghost words introduced accidentally to dictionaries over the years include “kime,” “foupe” and the verb “to morse,” and like them, dord was the result of an error. In 1931, a note card from one of Webster’s chemistry consultants indicated two abbreviations for density: D or d. After somehow making it into the words pile and past an array of experts, dord was in. In 1939, an editor flagged the word, calling for a correction and its removal from the next print edition, but the change wasn’t actually made until 1947, giving dord a couple more years of life in the dictionary’s pages. — Julianna Perkins

If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday morning, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.