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Quebec election: CAQ won a historic majority, while PQ was pushed to the margins
The upstart, right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec picked up 74 seats, while the Liberals nabbed 32 and the Parti Québécois were decimated to just nine – losing official party status in the process. It’s a major reversal in a province that’s been dominated by the Liberals and PQ for 13 straight elections. CAQ leader François Legault considers his party conservative, but he campaigned all across the political spectrum: CAQ vowed to cut taxes and immigration levels, while boosting subsidies to the public daycare program and maintaining the province’s carbon-pricing program. (read about what the election results mean for Quebec’s economy.)
The future of the sovereigntist PQ party, meanwhile, is in doubt after it failed to attain the 12 seats needed for official party status. Jean-François Lisée lost his Montreal seat and resigned as party leader. The PQ finished with about 17 per cent of the vote, a far cry from the 40-plus per cent vote share it received during the independence movement in the 1990s.
Here’s Konrad Yakabuski’s take: “The CAQ’s solid victory in Monday’s election constitutes a double indictment of the province’s political establishment by voters seeking to break with past habits. It is the result of anger toward a Liberal dynasty seen as being detached from average voters. And it also reflects the failure of the PQ – the usual beneficiary of recurring disaffection with the Liberals – to sell a new generation of Quebeckers on its independence dream.” (for subscribers)
And here’s the view from Campbell Clark: “For a long time, prime ministers have faced two types of Quebec premier: federalists who usually took care their disputes with Ottawa didn’t feed their separatists opponents; and separatists whom Ottawa derided as muckrakers trying to break up the country. Now, Justin Trudeau faces something else.” (for subscribers)
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The proposed USMCA trade deal: Breaking down the changes
After more than a year of strenuous talks, a tentative trade deal has been reached under the title of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Here’s a rundown of the changes.
Dairy: U.S. farmers will now be able to sell hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of milk products in Canada duty free. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is promising to “fully and fairly” compensate Canadian farmers for lost market share. In Opinion, Sylvain Charlebois says dairy concessions were foreseeable, “but one must wonder how our supply-management scheme will fare – and specifically, how our dairy sector will cope with the new global reality.”
Autos and steel: Canadian and U.S. auto industries are expected to benefit from a requirement that 75 per cent of a car be produced in North America. Trump’s threat of a 25-per-cent tariff on auto imports, which would have crippled Canada’s industry, is gone. But steel and aluminum tariffs are still in place for the time being.
E-commerce: Canadian shoppers are going to be able to spend more on goods purchased from the United States before being hit with duties or taxes. But while it’s good news for consumers, it may negatively affect Canadian retailers.
Pharma: Companies that produce biologic drugs will now be granted exclusive access to Canada’s market for 10 years, up from the existing eight-year window north of the border. This could stall or reverse a trend of falling medication prices in Canada, since generic-drug makers will have to wait longer to make their products available.
Super Bowl ads: U.S. commercials will once again be blocked from many Canadian TV screens during the annual football event. Starting in 2017, Canadian Super Bowl broadcaster Bell was blocked from subbing in Canadian ads thanks to a CRTC ruling.
Commentary
Margaret Wente says Freeland is one of the biggest winners in the trade negotiations: “Freeland has cemented her reputation as Trudeau’s most able minister, the standout in a generally weak and mediocre pack. And she can wear her unpopularity in Washington as a badge of honour.”
Our editorial board writes that while we have reached a moment of calm, we shouldn’t forget “that the storm was the invention of one man. Canada has concluded an unnecessary and absurdly belligerent negotiation that was provoked by Donald Trump and impelled by a collection of outright lies about NAFTA that the U.S. President repeated ad nauseum.”
Gordon Ritchie, who helped negotiate the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement about 30 years ago, says “the tentative agreement reached late Sunday night is remarkably similar to the deal Canada was prepared to accept nearly one year ago.”
John Ibbitson argues that the deal is “essentially the old NAFTA, but tilted more in the Americans' favour.” Almost losing the pact, he says, “is the mother of all wake-up calls” for Canada to diversify its trade far beyond the American market.
B.C. has tabled legislation to fast-track a lawsuit against opioid makers
The move would help streamline the process of entering evidence in the class-action lawsuit announced in late August. The government says opioid manufacturers knowingly spread misinformation and played down the addictive properties of the drugs, in turn helping to give rise to the overdose crisis. Attorney-General David Eby said the act introduced in the legislature is designed to help avoid a repeat of the province’s pursuit of tobacco companies, which took 20 years to make its way through the courts. In 2007, Purdue Pharma’s U.S. operation acknowledged its marketing of OxyContin was misleading and paid out hundreds of millions to settle charges. But its Canadian division hasn’t made the same admission of wrongdoing.
Co-owners give $40-billion LNG Canada project green light in B.C.
A $40-billion liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia has been given the green light by its owners in what will be the largest private-sector investment in the province’s history. The project led by Royal Dutch Shell PLC calls for an export terminal to be built in Kitimat on the West Coast.
Government agents likely affiliated with Saudi Arabia have been spying on a dissident in Canada: report
Saudi-linked agents appear to have used cellphone-spying technology to eavesdrop on a refugee living in Canada, according to a report from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Citizen Lab says the goal was to capture the iPhone communications of 27-year-old Quebecker Omar Abdulaziz, a dissident Saudi activist with a large social-media presence. This may have amounted to unlawful spying on Canadian soil, Citizen Lab alleges. The report comes amid a diplomatic spat between Canada and Saudi Arabia after Chrystia Freeland called for the kingdom to release jailed activists.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The Nobel Medicine Prize was awarded for game-changing discoveries in cancer research
American James Allison and Japanese Tasuku Honjo won the US$1.3-million prize for discoveries about how to harness and manipulate the immune system to fight cancer. Their work in the 1990s has led to improved therapies for previously difficult-to-treat cancers such as melanoma and lung cancer. “The seminal discoveries by the two Laureates constitute a landmark in our fight against cancer,” the Nobel Assembly said.
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks slide
U.S. stock futures were in the red early Tuesday as relief over a proposed trilateral trade deal in North America gave way to worries about political concerns in Europe and continued worries about relations between the United States and China. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 2.4 per cent while, in Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down by between 0.3 and 0.7 per cent by about 7:15 a.m. ET. The Canadian dollar was just shy of 78 US cents. Brent oil prices fell on profit-taking but remained near their highest since November, 2014, as markets braced for tighter supply once U.S. sanctions against Iran kick in next month.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Leafs are the oddsmakers' favourite to win Stanley Cup, but it may be the Winnipeg Jets who do it
“Everybody has fallen in love with the Toronto Maple Leafs as the team to break Canada’s 25-year Stanley Cup drought. But it might just be the Winnipeg Jets who accomplish that. The Maple Leafs may be the darlings of the oddsmakers, but the Jets are big, fast, skilled and better than the team that went to last spring’s Western Conference final. The Jets won’t surprise anyone this year. They quietly moved up the NHL ranks last season and then shocked everyone in the second round of the playoffs by knocking off the conference’s defending champion, the Nashville Predators, in a fast-and-furious series, the best of the playoffs. With that experience under their belts, the Jets are now poised to take the next step.” – David Shoalts
We must not exclude irregular migrants from health care
Should migrants living in Canada without legal authorization be entitled to health care? The answer, according to a decision recently issued by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, is clearly yes – especially if a lack of health care threatens migrants’ lives. At present, people living in Canada with irregular legal status generally receive no health benefits whatsoever and must pay out of pocket for health needs and emergencies or rely on charitable care. It’s time that changed.” – Y.Y. Brandon Chen, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law
LIVING BETTER
Despite retraction of food researcher’s papers, concepts about overeating still carry some weight
Brian Wansink, a professor and director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, recently resigned after ongoing concerns over unethical research methods. Wansink’s studies made headlines for conclusions about how subtle environment influences like the size of a food package can trigger overeating. “Does the retraction of Wansink’s papers render his concepts about mindless eating meaningless?” health columnist and dietitian Leslie Beck asks. “I don’t think so. At least, not all of them.”
MOMENT IN TIME
The Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico
(Proceso/Associated Press)Proceso / AP
Oct. 2, 1968: The summer of 1968 was a tense and exciting time in Mexico City, where a blooming student movement staged protests against an authoritarian government. A rally in a square in the Tlatelolco district on Oct. 2 began as similar events had since mid-July. Student leaders spoke from a balcony for 45 minutes, but then isolated shots were heard. Troops ringing the square immediately began a chaotic, two-hour barrage against the crowd, which was variously estimated at 4,000 to 10,000. The official count of the dead was only 30, with 1,300 arrested. Ten days later, the Summer Olympics opened in Mexico City, after International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage said he had been assured that “nothing would interfere.” The Tlatelolco massacre became officially unmentionable in Mexico. No inquiry was attempted for 40 years. Recent investigations discovered that undercover military snipers sparked the violence, by firing on uniformed troops to provoke a reaction against the students. The number of dead and arrested has never been confirmed, nor has the fate of those who were apprehended. In 2009, Oct. 2 was designated a National Day of Mourning. – Robert Everett-Green
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Arik Ligeti