Politics Briefing: Trump nominates ambassador to Canada

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Good morning,

What we told you in February has finally come to pass: U.S. President Donald Trump has formally nominated Republican fundraiser and businesswoman Kelly Knight Craft as the United States' next ambassador to Canada. She will play a pivotal role in Canada-U.S. relations as the potential negotiations around the North American free trade agreement begin later this year. Before she can get to that, however, she must be approved by the Senate.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa, with James Keller in Vancouver. 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.

CANADIAN HEADLINES

Liberal MPs on the Heritage committee will recommend today that the government introduce a 5-per-cent tax on Internet services to pay for more Canadian content, sources tell The Globe. The levy is already in place for cable and satellite TV services. The committee has been studying what to do to help the country's media industry, which has been buffeted by new technology, changing viewer habits and declining ad revenue.

An Angus Reid Institute survey of more than 5,000 Canadians finds that support for the Conservatives has already gone up now that they have a new permanent leader in Andrew Scheer. The poll found 37 per cent of respondents still favoured the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, followed by the Conservatives with 34 per cent support and the NDP with 17 per cent. Respondents said the "economy" was the most important issue, and seemed to think Mr. Scheer was the best to handle it.

The Liberals' second budget has found a rocky reception in the Senate, where senators once aligned with the Liberals came out swinging. "The more I examine this omnibus bill, the more questions I have," Liberal Senate Leader Joseph Day said. The fraught debate is raising concern of whether the budget bill will pass by the time Parliament rises for the summer next week or the week after.

Senators also released a bombshell report on fighting delays in the court system.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says a private conversation with Mr. Trudeau has assured her that the federal government remains committed to getting the Trans Mountain pipeline built.

It's been more than two weeks since B.C.'s New Democrats and Greens signed a power-sharing agreement to bring down Premier Christy Clark's Liberal government, but it appears they still haven't sorted out a major potential hurdle in the legislature. If the New Democrats seize power, they'll need to appoint a Speaker -- but if that person comes from the NDP ranks, the Speaker will be relied on constantly to break tie votes. NDP Leader John Horgan and Green Leader Andrew Weaver held a joint news conference to deny reports that the problem of the Speaker is threatening their agreement. They said the Liberals have an obligation to put forward a Speaker and suggested it would be undemocratic if they do not.

B.C.'s election agency is investigating whether flyers sent out by two federal NDP MPs during spring provincial election campaign broke the law. Elections BC says it's reviewing whether federal New Democrats Nathan Cullen and Sheila Malcolmson, both from B.C., engaged in unregistered "election advertising." Provincial law requires anyone putting out election advertising to register and adhere to rules including spending caps. Both MPs vehemently deny wrongdoing and say it was fully within their rights to send the flyers.

The London Free Press has won the prestigious Michener Award for public-service journalism, handed out by the Governor-General, for their series on mental health care in local jails. The Globe and Mail was one of the finalists.

And if you've ever wondered what it's like to be a reporter trying to get information from major institutions, we peeled back the curtain on our Unfounded series: e-mails obtained through access to information law reveal how some police spokespeople worked to limit what our journalists could know about how sexual-assault cases were handled.

Tony Keller (The Globe and Mail) on the Senate: "The irony is that the new senators are mostly intelligent, thoughtful and well-meaning. They accepted the job because they want to make Canada a better place and they have reason to believe they can. That is precisely why they are dangerous."

François Cardinal, an editorial writer for La Presse, writing in The Globe and Mail on reopening the constitution: "Celebrations are all well and good, but historical anniversaries are also an opportunity to pause, to remind ourselves where we come from, to ask ourselves where we're going, to set ourselves future goals – precisely what the policy of the Philippe Couillard government is seeking to do. If Mr. Trudeau had taken the trouble to just run his eye over the document, he would have clearly seen that it contains nothing confrontational."

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on learning to code: "One repeatedly proven way to encourage an innovative economy, however, is through skills. Right now, the gap is coding. Young people coming out of university, even those studying math, science and finance, find they need to be able to code to get the good jobs. Mr. Bains notes that shift in skills demand is happening faster than most people realize: 'Every company is now a technology company,' he said."

Raisa Deber (The Globe and Mail) on health care funding: "If we are going to invest more money, place it where we can improve peoples' health. This may indeed mean that, rather than insisting people be treated in hospitals in order to receive necessary pharmaceuticals or rehabilitation, we extend the list of insured services to cover medically necessary care, regardless of where it is delivered, or by who. We must also recognize that more is not always better. Receiving a diagnostic test that isn't needed, and the unnecessary radiation that may go with it, is not always a good thing."

Colby Cosh (National Post) on Canada's demographics: "We are, as a society, growing richer and healthier and abandoning tough physical labour, and we are praying that these incremental gains in collective welfare will blunt the worst torments of the demographic storm. This is not an unreasonable expectation, and, in fact, a new Statistics Canada study of labour force aging suggests it is partly panning out — so far."

Alex Neve of Amnesty International (OpenCanada.org) on investigating the handling of detainees in Afghanistan: "AI and the BCCLA, stymied by the courts, backed the call for a Commission of Inquiry — to thoroughly study how things had been handled, understand why concerns about torture had been so readily dismissed and propose changes to avoid this happening again.  That call was rejected by the Harper government. It has also now been dismissed by the Trudeau government, which supported an inquiry when in opposition, but apparently no longer sees it as necessary."

Chantal Hébert (Toronto Star) on the similarities between our present and past prime ministers: "Liberal insiders argue that the fundamental difference between Harper and Trudeau's approaches is that the latter's heart is in the right place."

INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump administration and Russia has now expanded to include whether the President has obstructed justice, officials tell the Washington Post. Mr. Trump tweeted in response, of course.

A gunman shot at a baseball practice of a Republican congressional team, injuring House of Representatives Majority Whip Steve Scalise. Mr. Scalise is still in critical condition. The shooter, James Hodgkinson, was shot himself and later died in hospital.

And the opening of the British Parliament has been delayed to June 21. The delays were caused by negotiations for the Democratic Unionist Party to prop up the Conservatives, who are just shy of a majority government.

Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on British Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn: "To young Brits who never lived through the seventies, Mr. Corbyn's ideas seemed fresh and rad. That especially goes for his pledge to reinstate free tuition at British universities. Yet one need only look across the English Channel for evidence of the long-term consequences of such a policy."

New York Times editorial board on the call for more people to carry guns after a Congressman was shot: "All people in that situation, unarmed and under fire, would long to be able to protect themselves and their friends. Yet consider the society Americans would have to live in — the choices they would all have to make — to enable that kind of defense. Every member of Congress, and every other American of whatever age, would have to go to baseball practice, or to school, or to work, or to the post office, or to the health clinic — or to any of the other places mass shootings now take place — with a gun on their hip. And then, when an attack came and they returned fire, they would probably kill or wound not the assailant but another innocent bystander, as studies have repeatedly shown. That is the society the gun lobby is working toward. Is it the one Americans want?"

John Podhoretz (New York Post) on the state of U.S. politics: "The United States is in a time of great danger. It is not my son's happy boyhood memories that are at stake. It is his future, and all of ours."