Good morning,
In less than two weeks, the prohibition against marijuana comes to an end. But even when it’s legal to buy, will stores have product to sell?
The Globe’s cannabis team reports that there could likely be shortages of the bud across the country when the drug is officially legal on Oct. 17. The shortages are for a variety of reasons: smaller-than-expected crops, some hangups with licences or even problems with shipping. It depends, too, just how high demand is the Wednesday after next.
If you want more information, The Globe has an entire section devoted to cannabis coverage. And for those who need even more information than that, check out the Report on Business Cannabis Professional page, a subscription-based product that delivers breaking news about the industry to you before anyone else.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
The Chinese government says it’s not happy about the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The trade deal contains a clause that seems to discourage ties with China. “We deplore the hegemonic actions taken by [one] country, which blatantly interferes with other countries' sovereignty. We also feel sad for the harm of economic autonomy inflicted on the relevant country,” a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says there will definitely be compensation for dairy farmers affected by the deal.
The Liberals and Conservatives have come to a deal about how to handle pre-election spending, so that the governing party’s electoral reform bill can proceed in Parliament in time to be implemented for next year’s election.
Canada and other Western allies continue to denounce Russia for its cyberespionage campaigns, and the U.S. indicted seven Russian officials.
Olympic medallist Adam van Koeverden says he wants to try his hand at politics. He’s seeking the Liberal nomination in the Toronto-area riding currently represented by Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is losing his chief of staff.
The remote, impoverished Kashechewan First Nation has gone to court to try to recover millions of dollars the community says was taken by a group of co-conspirators. The money had been meant to go to repaying infrastructure damaged by flooding.
And the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to two activists who are fighting the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Amira Elghawaby (The Globe and Mail) on Quebec’s proposed religious-symbols ban: “[Incoming premier François] Legault says he will invoke the notwithstanding clause to override the Charter so that his government can ban civil servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols. Never mind that preventing people from contributing positively as teachers, judges, police officers, or in other public capacities, is completely antithetical to the whole notion of integration. Such a notion encourages everyone, whether newly arrived immigrants, or long-time residents, to fully embrace the society they live in. What better sign of ‘integration’ than seeking to serve the public good?”
Benjamin Perrin, a former legal adviser to then-prime-minister Stephen Harper, in The Globe and Mail on the political debate about what should happen to Terri-Lynne McClintic in prison: “Political interference in the administration of justice is a disturbing phenomenon we see in other countries. It leads to things such as political leaders telling the police who to arrest or ignore, prosecutors who to charge, judges who to find guilty, and wardens how to treat certain prisoners. There’s a populist calculus that doing so can gain favour with the electorate, yet it profoundly undermines justice and democracy.”
Don Martin (CTV) on how the issue plays in Parliament: “By spending an entire week fixated on an outrage that’s under official review by Corrections Canada, [the Conservatives] are going beyond demanding government accountability to political grandstanding.”
Andrew MacDougall, a former spokesperson to then-prime-minister Stephen Harper, in the Ottawa Citizen on NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh: “The beauty of the electoral reform-anti-oilsands-Indigenous-rights trifecta is that it doesn’t require oodles of cash to pull off. Not, that is, that Singh will be under any pressure whatsoever to fix the books Trudeau has so comprehensively buggered. Singh should thank Trudeau for making deficits great again.”
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Chris Hannay