Morning Update: Ottawa finalizes purchase of F-35 fighter jets

Good morning,

The first of 88 new F-35 fighter jets will be delivered to Canada in three years, beginning a process of replacing the country’s aging fleet of CF-18s that will be complete by 2032, the federal government said. The government announced its interest in the jets last year, but yesterday provided details of the $19-billion purchase.

Orchestrating the purchase of the jets has been a long and halting process. Ahead of the 2015 federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned against buying the aircraft, but the Liberals eventually came to accept that F-35s were the best option for replacing the 1980s-era CF-18s.

Robert Huebert, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary who studies Canadian security, said the purchase will give Canada the advanced technology it needs to defend itself and its allies against threats that could include military advances by Russia and China.

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Brazil cracks down after pro-Bolsonaro riot and vows to protect democracy

Brazilian authorities said yesterday that they were looking into who may have been behind the shocking uprising that sent protesters storming into the nation’s halls of power in a riot that had striking similarities to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

In an unprecedented display for Latin America’s largest nation, thousands of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro swarmed into Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace on Sunday. Many of them said they wanted the Brazilian army to restore the far-right Mr. Bolsonaro to power and oust the newly inaugurated leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

• Voices on social media summoned protesters to Brazil’s capital, offering free transportation and food
• As Brazil reels from riots, Jair Bolsonaro finds home in Florida
• Opinion: Brazil’s insurrection was foretold. The fallout won’t be

Overwhelming crush of cars prompts Parks Canada to close Moraine Lake in Banff to personal vehicles

The water of Moraine Lake in Alberta seems to have been poured straight from the heavens – or at least that’s how the website for Tourism Banff & Lake Louise describes it.

But the still beauty and calm water belie the reality of a place so inundated with people that traffic now far surpasses the capacity of the area, a situation Parks Canada officials say is increasingly disruptive to wildlife, and dangerous to both the natural environment and the people managing it.

To deal with the situation, Parks Canada has announced private vehicles will no longer be allowed at Moraine Lake starting this year. Under the new rule, the site will only be accessible to shuttle buses and registered commercial vehicles. People with disabilities will be able to drive in private vehicles with government-issued permits. Travellers can also make a 14-kilometre journey from Lake Louise to the lake by foot or bicycle.

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Also on our radar

Biden to use summit meeting with Trudeau to push for security force in Haiti: U.S. President Joe Biden will use the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City to press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to set up a Canadian-led international security force in Haiti as part of a push to stem the flow of asylum seekers arriving on the U.S.’s doorstep.

• Opinion: Canada’s relationship with Mexico must go beyond trade

Banking regulator plans more active role: Canada’s banking regulator is gearing up to take a more active role among the country’s largest financial institutions, signalling that it could continue to boost the amount of money lenders must hold as a buffer against economic risks.

Toronto hospital network’s digital systems go down: A major Toronto hospital network said its digital systems went down yesterday and it was working to investigate what was causing the outage. The University Health Network issued a “code grey” – a hospital code for system failure – but released few other details about what happened.

B.C. rolls out more supports to recruit foreign-trained nurses: British Columbia Premier David Eby yesterday announced new incentives to recruit internationally trained nurses, saying additional financial supports and a faster assessment process could bring as many as 2,000 applicants into the health care work force within 90 days.

Eastern Ukraine’s Soledar under intense Russian attack: Russian troops have stepped up an assault on the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine, leaving the town in ruins and littered with corpses, witnesses said.

Shoppers snap up cheap groceries through apps: In an era when companies are touting their environmental, social and governance bona fides, reducing food waste has become a bigger priority for grocers. Tech companies are taking a cut by helping them sell what would otherwise go in the bin.

Morning markets

World stocks ease: Global shares eased on Tuesday as investors took profit on the gains from the past two weeks after comments from two Federal Reserve officials injected a note of caution over the U.S. rate outlook, knocking equities, commodities and other risk assets. Around 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 0.21 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 slid 0.51 per cent and 0.52 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed up 0.78 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slid 0.27 per cent. New York futures were modestly lower. The Canadian dollar was little changed at 74.69 US cents.

What everyone’s talking about

Editorial: “Wide swaths of Toronto and other cities are reserved for detached homes. That was fine when Canada’s population was 40 per cent smaller a half century ago, but more urban density is needed now. Ottawa’s accelerator money has been slow to arrive but its potential impact is still important. Two years have already been lost; the Liberals need to get to work in speeding up the pace of housing construction.”

Sylvain Charlebois: “The food industry, and particularly grocers, are facing a crisis of confidence, no less. Consumers have become hyper-sensitive to any potential evidence suggesting abuse of market power, and grocers will need to navigate the coming months with extreme caution. Showing more public empathy would be a good start.”

Today’s editorial cartoon

Living better

Six noteworthy Canadian books arriving this January

Book lovers, rejoice: New titles arriving this month offer riveting stories from emerging authors and perennial favourites. Start your year – and perhaps reading goal – off with these books for every kind of reader. Here are six Canadian fiction and non-fiction books arriving in January.

Moment in time: Jan. 10, 1929

Tintin first appears in a Belgian newspaper

Belgian artist Herge (real name: Georges Remi), yearned to be a foreign correspondent when he started working at Le Vingtieme Siecle, a Belgian Catholic daily in the late 1920s. Instead, he invented a fictional one with lasting appeal the world over. Herge first worked in the paper’s basement verifying subscriptions but when his talent as an illustrator became obvious, he was asked to helm a weekly supplement for children. His idea for content was a comic strip with speech bubbles, a style he’d dabbled in with a previous strip character named Totor, according to Tintin historian Michael Farr. On this day in 1929, the pages of Le Petit Vingtieme included the introduction of a teenaged reporter named Tintin who was dispatched with his faithful terrier Snowy to Moscow to expose the evils of Bolshevism. The paper’s circulation exploded on days when the kids’ insert was published. Says Farr: “After a few months, they were printing more of the children’s supplement than of the main newspaper.” Tintin’s stand-up cowlick and foil-the-bad-guy adventures were depicted in two dozen illustrated books over the next five decades. In all, more than 270 million copies, translated into 110 languages, have been sold. “Sapristi!!!” Nicolas Van Praet

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