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The federal Liberals have introduced new firearms-control legislation that would freeze the import, sale and transfer of handguns, but would not go as far as banning them outright.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the new legislation, Bill C-21, at a news conference yesterday. The measures would allow existing owners to keep their handguns.
Asked why the government did not propose a ban, Trudeau said the bill will provide “significant tools” to reduce the number of handguns in communities and protect people from gun violence. “This is a concrete and real national measure that will go a long way towards keeping Canadians safe,” he said.
Gun-control advocates say the new legislation is just a first step toward curbing firearm-related violence in Canada.
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Military has ‘failed’ to keep women in uniform safe from sexual assault, former justice Louise Arbour finds
The Canadian Armed Forces has failed to stamp out sexual misconduct and should permanently move the prosecution of criminal code sexual offences to the civilian system and turn over harassment complaints to the human rights commission, a report by former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour says.
It is the third report in seven years to give the federal government similar suggestions to address the military’s toxic culture and widespread sexual misconduct.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been accused of letting the recommendations from the past two reports slide, and yesterday Defence Minister Anita Anand was unable to say if she would accept all 48 of the actions Arbour detailed.
- Campbell Clark: Will the Liberals finally find the guts to oversee the military?
A home is reflected in floodwaters in the Yarrow neighbourhood after rainstorms caused flooding and landslides in Chilliwack, B.C., November 20, 2021. REUTERS/Jesse WinterJESSE WINTER/Reuters
Building on river floodplains has proven costly and devastating to Canadians. A new Globe analysis reveals which cities are most at risk
When rivers spill over their banks, the resulting damage is not simply the result of nature’s caprice. It is also determined by how many homes, farms, roads and hospitals people built in a flood’s path.
A new analysis by The Globe and Mail has discovered that of 150 Canadian communities with populations greater than 10,000, more than 30 have at least one-tenth of their buildings within river floodplains. This analysis was facilitated by new flood maps covering the entire country released by the University of Western Ontario.
Chilliwack, B.C., stands out: More than 18,000 buildings in this metropolitan area lie within the floodplains of the Fraser and Vedder Rivers. That’s nearly half of all buildings in the city – no other community we studied comes close. High River, Alta., which saw thousands of homes damaged in a 2013 flood, emerged as another community with extensive floodplain development.
Time and again, construction on floodplains has been exposed as an expensive habit. It can condemn cities to painful cycles of devastation and rebuilding, at great financial and psychological cost to affected residents.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Rogers, Shaw agree not to close merger until deal reached with watchdog: Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. have agreed not to close their $26-billion merger until they either reach a deal with the Commissioner of Competition or win a challenge in front of the Competition Tribunal.
Disciplinary hearing begins for two Thunder Bay police officers: Nearly seven years after the body of an Indigenous man was found face down on a Northern Ontario riverbank, a Thunder Bay police officer has pleaded guilty to neglect of duty in the subsequent investigation into the death.
In Latvia, the battle over a Soviet monument sparks tensions: Some time in the next six months, workers will begin demolishing a massive 79-metre-tall Soviet war monument that has loomed above Latvia’s capital city for decades. The battle over the monument is sharpening ethnic and political tensions and driving a wedge between the country’s Latvian-speaking majority and its Russian-speaking minority.
- Ukraine troops hold out as Russia assaults Sievierodonetsk wasteland
- EU leaders agree on partial ban of Russian oil, council president says
Tim Hortons faces scrutiny over app: Plaintiffs and privacy commissioners are confronting Tim Hortons over allegations that the fast-food chain violated Canada’s privacy laws by tracking customers via its popular smartphone app. The tracking capabilities of the Tim Hortons app – which more than one in 10 Canadians use at least once a month – are the subject of legal probes, launched in 2020, that have raised questions about whether the company gathers too much information about its customers through their smartphones.
For slain Punjabi hip-hop star, Brampton was a second home: The killing of Punjabi hip-hop star Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu has sent shockwaves across his fan base in Canada, particularly in the town of Brampton, Ont., where he spent much of the past six years. While Sidhu was known and admired around the world, it was in Canada that he found recognition as a hip-hop icon. He thought of Brampton as his second home, and the city formed the landscape of much of his music.
Egypt displays collection of new artifacts: Egypt yesterday displayed a trove of ancient artifacts dating back 2,500 years that the country’s antiquities authorities said were recently unearthed at the famed necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo. The find includes 250 painted sarcophagi with well-preserved mummies inside, as well as 150 bronze statues of ancient deities and bronze vessels used in rituals of Isis, all from the Late Period, about 500 B.C.
MORNING MARKETS
World markets struggle: European shares opened weaker on Tuesday, as surging oil prices fanned fears of further acceleration in global inflation, forcing the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks to keep raising interest rates. Around 5:30 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 edged up 0.32 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 fell 0.64 per cent and 1.06 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei finished down 0.33 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.38 per cent. New York futures were negative. The Canadian dollar was trading at 78.88 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Editorial: “Reforming something as old and big as EI won’t be easy. The changes of the 1990s were provoked by a budget crisis. The pandemic – which reminded everyone of the need for a robust unemployment insurance program even as it revealed EI’s limitations – provides a new urgent impetus.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Why more retirees are choosing to go back to work
Research shows Canadians past retirement age are increasingly choosing a mix of leisure activities and paid work, compared to the more predictable hard stop of past generations. While some keep working because they need money, others decide to stay in the work force for other reasons; they like the stimulation and social life that comes with having a job.
MOMENT IN TIME: MAY 31, 1902
The signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging at Melrose House in Pretoria, at the end of the Second Boer War, May 31, 1902.Hulton Archive/AFP/Getty Images
The Boer War ends
Dutch Afrikaners in two southern African republics, resentful of British domination, rebelled in 1899. Though vastly outnumbered, the Boers won a string of victories. But the British regrouped and by 1900 had occupied the Boer lands. The Bittereinders took to the hills, waging a remarkably effective guerilla campaign. Enraged, the British destroyed the farms of both Afrikaners and Africans and imprisoned inhabitants in concentration camps, where thousands died of hunger and disease. Deprived of local support, the Boers were eventually forced to surrender, which they did on this date. The British, in return, offered local self-government and the return of highly profitable gold mines. Both sides gave nothing that they had taken from Africans back to them. The war revealed that local forces fighting to protect their land against an imperial army with overextended supply lines could score surprising victories. It revealed the effectiveness of the rifle and the Gatling gun, of guerilla tactics, and of concentration camps. It taught that the mighty British Empire might be in decline. And that whites who had been sworn enemies would willingly collude to take from Africans their rights and their lands. John Ibbitson
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