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politics briefing

A bust of Sir John A. Macdonald is seen during an announcement in Ottawa on Jan. 11, 2012.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail

Good morning,

Earlier this summer, the Prime Minister renamed a building and opened up a can of worms. The Langevin Block, the building across the street from Parliament Hill that contains the offices of the Prime Minister and the Privy Council, was renamed to, well, the Office Of The Prime Minister And Privy Council. Hector-Louis Langevin, for whom the building was named, was an architect of the horrific residential school system and Justin Trudeau said he made the change as a symbol of reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous communities.

A new poll from the Angus Reid Institute suggests Canadians are supportive of the change. But what they do not support is the far more contentious topic of stripping symbols of John A. Macdonald from public spaces. That debate began because the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario said Macdonald's name should be taken from schools because of his attitudes towards Indigenous people, something Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says will not happen. Robert-Falcon Oullette, a Liberal MP who is Indigenous, acknowledged our first prime minister wasn't perfect and put it this way: "Everyone has warts. That's what makes us human beings."

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa and Eleanor Davidson in Toronto. If you're reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Let us know what you think.

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CANADIAN HEADLINES

Liberal MP Darshan Kang
, who is under investigation for alleged harassment of an employee, offered $100,000 to the woman for her to keep quiet, the staff member's father told The Toronto Star. When asked about it yesterday, Mr. Trudeau would not comment on whether Mr. Kang might be removed from the Liberal caucus. "I  can assure people that our whip's office and the human resources of the Parliament of Canada are engaged as they must be in this process," Mr. Trudeau said.

The Prime Minister shuffled his cabinet yesterday and split the Indigenous Affairs department in twain. Jane Philpott, the former health minister, is now responsible for service delivery while Carolyn Bennett continues to oversee Crown-indigenous relations. Ms. Philpott said her job is addressing the historic injustices First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities have faced.

Other changes to the cabinet: rookies Ginette Petitpas Taylor and Seamus O'Regan are now Ministers of Health and Veterans Affairs, respectively; Kent Hehr, formerly of Veterans, is now Minister for Sport and Persons with Disabilities, while Carla Qualtrough moves from the latter portfolio to Public Services and Procurement.

The plaintiffs in a constitutional challenge of Canada's solitary confinement regime say the use of the practice violates the dignity of prisoners. A B.C. judge is hearing closing arguments this week in a case launched by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of Canada. Joseph Arvay, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, says  solitary confinement deprives a person of their psychological or physiological integrity. The federal government, which argues solitary confinement is a necessary tool in Canada's prisons, will present its final arguments later this week.

A United Nations committee is calling for a controversial hydroelectric dam in northern British Columbia to be put on hold over concerns about its impact on Indigenous rights. The $8.8-billion project was a key priority for the former BC Liberal government, but the New Democrats are now reviewing its future. A report from the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is holding up Site C as an example of an outdated approach to resource development that fails to secure the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous people.

And a new federal program aims to boost the numbers of underrepresented groups in post-secondary work-placement positions.

John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on the cabinet shuffle: "This shuffle is more a minor managerial restructuring than a panicky rearranging of deck chairs. This Liberal government remains in control of its mandate, and deservedly confident of its prospects in the lead-up to the next election. Even if things are starting to look rather dim in the West."

André Picard (The Globe and Mail) on the cabinet shuffle: "The PM is taking a competent minister and giving her more responsibility and an even more daunting task in an area where the government is floundering."

Paul Wells (Maclean's) on the cabinet shuffle: "There is no thornier mess of issues facing the Trudeau government than its relations with Indigenous populations. Faced with mixed results at best, the Prime Minister has decided to up his game. Philpott is just about his most formidable player. To say the least, success isn't guaranteed, but her new assignment is the biggest news of a surprisingly big shuffle."

Chantal Hébert (Toronto Star) on the cabinet shuffle: "On Monday, Trudeau's choice of a rookie to take a portfolio as senior as the health ministry was the move that most puzzled many Parliament Hill insiders. … Part of the explanation for the prime minister's choice has to do with language skills. As health minister, [Ginette] Petitpas Taylor will be joining former Toronto police chief Bill Blair and Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould on the marijuana legalization front line. Her appointment ensures that at least one of the lead government members on the file is able to deliver its message in French."

Andrew Coyne (National Post) on the cabinet shuf-...wait, no, on Mike Duffy: "As Duffy says, this is not about Duffy. Rather, it raises 'questions which go to the heart of a democracy.' After all, if sitting legislators are to be forbidden from taking tens of thousands of dollars under the table from the prime minister's chief of staff in return for colluding in a scheme to suppress a matter of some embarrassment to the government, namely their own questionable expense claims, it will be impossible to get good people to go into public life."

INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

After months of rhetoric and empty words, tensions over North Korea's weapons arsenal sharply escalated early this morning. North Korea fired a missile that flew over Japan and landed in waters off the northern region of Hokkaido. As the missile flew overhead, the Japanese government's alert system broke into radio and TV programs, warning people of a possible strike. Bullet trains temporarily came to a stop, and warnings were issued over loudspeakers in towns across Hokkaido. "North Korea's reckless action is an unprecedented, serious and a grave threat to our nation," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters.

"Our boy can become president of the U.S.A. and we can engineer it." These boasting words are not the work of wildly overbearing parents. Instead, they come from Felix Slater -- a Russian-born associate of the Trump Organization whose claims appear to suggest that his involvement in a Russian real estate deal could have helped to get Donald Trump elected. Yesterday, Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, confirmed that the president's company pursued a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the Republican primary. Mr. Cohen worked on the real estate proposal with Mr. Slater, months after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy.

Mr. Trump says he pardoned controversial sheriff Joe Arpaio as Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas because he thought his TV ratings would be higher.

After a tense two-month standoff, India and China have agreed to disengage their troops in a disputed border area. Indian and Chinese troops have been confronting each other at the Doklam plateau -- an area near the borders of India, Bhutan and China -- in the most prolonged dispute between the two countries in decades.

And Ecuador's Vice-President has been stripped of his duties and will face investigation on corruption charges. Brazilian prosecutors allege Jorge Glas took millions of dollars in kickbacks to facilitate Ecuadorian infrastructure contracts for a Brazilian construction giant. The Globe's Stephanie Nolen has the details.

Glenn McGillivray (The Globe and Mail) on Hurricane Harvey: "If the past is any indication, we will very soon hear from politicians that Harvey was just too big, and that 'nothing could have been done to prepare for or mitigate the impact of such a loss.' So, as painful as it may be, it's useful to attempt to get out in front of such statements and lay out some of the clearer meta problem areas that may have caused this natural hazard to become a full-blown mega-catastrophe."

Tim Ramadan (The Guardian) on Raqaa, Syria: "Normal life in the city has stopped. Nobody goes out to work, and the nature of my own work has changed. I used to walk the streets and take pictures and videos, or distribute pamphlets against Isis. But today I am a prisoner of the street I live in, confined to sending news of the dead, the shelling, and the outcome of battles.The grass and weeds that grow on the side of the road constitute the nutrition of half of those besieged in the city. When the airstrikes stop, one person from each family goes out to look for food in the homes that have been bombed and whose owners have been killed. Most of the time they don't find food but bring back news of the dead."

Odd Arne Westad (New York Times) on lessons from the Cold War: "What did not change with the end of the Cold War were the conflicts between the haves and the have-nots in international affairs. In some parts of the world today, such conflicts have become more intense because of the upsurge of religious and ethnic movements, which threaten to destroy whole communities. Unrestrained by Cold War universalisms, which at least pretended that all people could enter their promised paradise, these groups are manifestly exclusionist or racist, their supporters convinced that great injustices have been done to them in the past, which somehow justify their present outrages."

U.S. President Trump repeated comments made last week about his view that NAFTA is unfair toward America and that the deal should be terminated.

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