Good morning,
Horrific conditions at five long-term care homes in Ontario have been exposed in a Canadian military report released yesterday.
Chronicling infractions and abuses ranging from poor infection control practices to the neglect and abuse of residents, the report has whipped up calls-to-action at all levels of government. But critics of Premier Doug Ford said members of his government should have been aware of long-standing problems at the homes well before the military stepped in.
The report describes homes that are infested with cockroaches and leave residents in soiled diapers. Staff in one of the homes take up to two hours to respond to their cries for help. And a third home is force-feeding residents, causing audible choking.
Cleaners pack cleaning supplies into their truck at Orchard Villa Retirement Residence, where several residents died of coronavirus (COVID-19), in Pickering, Ont., May 26, 2020.CARLOS OSORIO/Reuters
In Quebec
Workplace-safety inspection reports detail the disarray and poor conditions in some of the Quebec long-term care residences hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The inspections, which were conducted when employees complained that they weren’t safe from the novel coronavirus, are particularly harsh in the case of the Vigi Dollard-des-Ormeaux home, in Montreal’s West Island. They describe an understaffed, poorly equipped facility where workers kept moving between infected and uninfected areas without properly donning or removing protective gear.
Parliament
The Liberal government’s plan to extend the suspension of regular parliamentary sittings until September because of COVID-19 went ahead with the support of the NDP.
The NDP also supported a motion to shut down debate on the extension, which was opposed by the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois. The NDP voted with the government in exchange for a pledge to work with the provinces toward a new national system of 10 days of paid sick leave.
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.
China threatens ‘damage’ to relations with Canada
The Chinese government is warning Canada that there will be further “damage” to relations between the two countries – just before a British Columbia judge releases a decision on an extradition hearing for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
Canada must “release Meng and ensure her safe return to China at an early date to avoid more damage caused to China-Canada relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia expects to release its decision Wednesday after an initial hearing in the extradition case against Meng – 542 days after she was detained at the Vancouver airport at the request of U.S. prosecutors. That enraged China and was followed by a series of punitive measures against Canadian citizens and trade with Canada.
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
Police seize trucks, guns and drugs in crackdown on towing industry crime
Twenty people have been charged in a months-long police investigation into towing turf wars in the Greater Toronto Area, and police said they expect to charge at least that many more in the coming months.
Project Platinum, a joint-forces operation led by York Regional Police, was launched in February in response to escalating organized crime activity in the towing industry.
Since December, 2018, four men with ties to the GTA towing industry have been killed. Dozens of tow truck drivers have been threatened or assaulted for infringing on competitors’ turf, and some have been shot. More than 50 tow trucks have been set on fire. The Globe’s Molly Hayes reports.
Twitter fact-checks Trump tweet for the first time
Twitter confirmed this was the first time it had applied a fact-checking label to a tweet by the U.S. President, in an extension of its new “misleading information” policy introduced this month to combat misinformation about the coronavirus. Twitter prompted readers to check the facts in tweets sent by U.S. President Donald Trump, warning his claims about “mail-in ballots” were false and had been debunked by fact checkers.
Family trust agrees to sell The Toronto Star and other newspapers to NordStar Capital
The publisher of the Toronto Star, long one of Canada’s largest newspapers, has agreed to be taken private by two prominent businessmen for just over $51-million, a small fraction of what the company was worth a decade ago.
NordStar Capital, owned by Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, is offering to buy the shares of Torstar Corp., which has struggled to cope with a dramatic drop in advertising revenue with a series of asset sales, newspaper closures and staff cuts.
MORNING MARKETS
Hong Kong unrest worries curb global rally: Unrest in Hong Kong over Beijing’s proposed national security laws weighed on global shares and oil prices on Wednesday, offsetting optimism about the re-opening of the world economy. In Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 1.47 per cent just before 6 a.m. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 rose 1.62 per cent and 1.82 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng finished down 0.36 per cent. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.34 per cent. Japan’s Nikkei added 0.70 per cent. New York futures were higher. The Canadian dollar was trading at 72.78 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
The 2020 U.S. election is a disaster waiting to happen
Lawrence Martin: “With most every poll showing him losing, he appears to be setting the psychological climate for a challenge to the result’s legitimacy.”
Political parties aren’t like private employers – so they shouldn’t have access to the wage subsidy
Andrew Coyne: Political parties "seek not merely to be free from state control but to exercise it over others: their ‘business’ is coercive power.”
It’s increasingly clear our tough road ahead has no end in sight
John Ibbitson: “Since March, people have been told they should remain two metres apart in public. You just can’t have much of an economy with that rule in place.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
By Brian GableBrian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
How an app is highlighting the work of female artists
When a British curator asked Ryerson University’s Ana-Maria Herman to design an app devoted to one of the artists in the Borough Group, she picked British modernist painter Dorothy Mead. The result is +Archive: Dorothy Mead, a free iPhone app released earlier this month. It includes a biography, a critical text about Mead’s work and reproductions of 18 of her paintings, including nudes, self-portraits and still lifes. The app arrives as museums around the world have been forced to rely entirely on their digital presence to reach viewers.
MOMENT IN TIME: MAY 27, 1968
USS Scorpion (SSN-589) comes alongside USS Tallahatchie County (AVB-2) outside Claywall Harbor, Naples, Italy, 10 April 1968. Scorpion was lost with all hands in May 1968, while returning to the U.S. from this Mediterranean deployment.Lieutenant John R. Holland/U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
On this day 52 years ago, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Scorpion failed to make port, as scheduled, in Norfolk, Va. Families waited in vain for the 99-man crew to return from a three-month assignment that included shadowing Soviet warships. They went home after a few hours; by nightfall, the U.S. Navy officially declared Scorpion as missing. In the days that followed, naval investigators reviewing tapes from underwater listening stations in Newfoundland and the Canary Islands heard the sounds of a submarine’s hull imploding under intense pressure. They concluded Scorpion broke up and sank in 2,500 metres of water, 740 kilometres southwest of the Azores. Acoustic data and an analytical approach known as Bayesian search theory subsequently helped locate the wreck. The cause of the disaster remains a mystery. Scorpion’s sinking is blamed on everything from a leaky garbage disposal unit to an exploding battery and a faulty torpedo. In conspiracy circles, there’s a discredited theory that the Soviet navy sank Scorpion in retribution for the loss three months earlier of one of their own submarines in the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. Navy continues to monitor the site for radiation, as, in addition to a reactor, Scorpion carried two nuclear-armed torpedoes. – Andrew Willis
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.