Good morning,
It’s been nearly a month since New Brunswickers went to the polls, and it’s still not clear who’s going to be premier long-term.
Brian Gallant, whose Liberals won the largest share of the popular vote but only 21 of 49 seats in the legislature, is the incumbent and said he would try to maintain a hold on government despite the lack of seats for a majority.
But there’s a significant problem looming when the legislature finally sits again next week: There’s no one willing to be Speaker.
All 21 Liberals have sworn they will not serve as presiding officer. All 22 Progressive Conservatives have also said they would not serve as Speaker (at least as long as Mr. Gallant is trying to be premier). The three Greens and three members of the People’s Alliance have made similar pledges.
A legislature’s first duty when coming back from an election is to pick a new Speaker. Nothing else can happen until then. So if the dysfunction continues, New Brunswick’s Lieutenant-Governor will soon have a choice: give the PCs a shot at governing (reducing them to the same number of voting members in the chamber as the Liberals), or get it all over with and call a new election.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa. It is exclusively available only to our digital subscribers. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
The Finance Department is set to table its annual report today, and The Globe’s Bill Curry reports it will show a major spike in revenue from personal income taxes. The government says the increase is due to the higher rates for high-income earners that were put in place when the Liberals came into power.
The federal Liberals and the Ontario Progressive Conservatives don’t appear to be getting along too well.
Earlier this year, former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown spent almost $300,000 in office expenses in just over two months.
François Legault’s new Coalition Avenir Québec government has been officially sworn in.
Voters in Nanaimo, B.C, are hoping tomorrow’s municipal election will let the city move on from a chaotic council term marked by multiple police investigations.
The Globe and Mail spoke to a prominent Saudi dissident who lives in Canada, Omar Abdulaziz, who says he was in touch with journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the weeks leading up to his disappearance and alleged death at a Saudi consulate in Turkey. “He told me he was coming to Canada. … He was on his way to visit me, but he said: ‘You know what? I am going to finish my marriage papers [in Turkey], then I’ll come,'” Mr. Abdulaziz said.
The top three Afghan officials in Kandahar province – a region of Afghanistan in which Canadian troops were stationed for years – were killed by their own guards this week.
Canadian negotiators continue to work with the United States to try to reduce the country’s tariffs on steel and aluminum.
And the Washington Examiner reported that Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to Donald Trump, quoted another White House official as calling Justin Trudeau “that little punk kid running Canada” during remarks at a Washington event.
Doug Saunders (The Globe and Mail) on political assassinations: “This ghastly, shambolic ritual – the cross-border murder of an untrustworthy fellow citizen by agents of a less-than-democratic government – has become our era’s signature act of international intrigue.”
Denise Balkissoon (The Globe and Mail) on the debate about Elizabeth Warren’s heritage: “'Native American' is a race, of sorts – an umbrella term that has more to do with the views of larger society than the people it supposedly refers to. And race has never been about genetics. They’re two separate things. One is a social construct based mainly on how we look. The other is science.”
Lisa Kerr (The Globe and Mail) on solitary confinement in prisons: “For inmates, the worst effects of the social, occupational and sensory deprivation of solitary stand to be alleviated under the new regime. What’s more, the new bill says that if an inmate declines to accept out-of-cell time, or if a health-care professional recommends that the placement come to an end, the warden is required to review the situation. The idea here is clearly to trigger a response when the health of an inmate may be deteriorating under such restrictive conditions. I hope that prison staff will hear the message this legislation is sending, even if the message could have been louder and clearer.”
Don Martin (CTV) on pardons for pot possession not being absolute: “Trust me. There’s no pardon on pot in American eyes. Once busted, always guilty, even when the record in Canada is moved out of sight.”
Stephen Maher (Maclean’s) on decriminalizing drugs harder than cannabis: “There is a powerful argument for moving toward the kind of system they have in Portugal, where treatment, not punishment, is the priority for dealing with addiction, but politics is the art of the possible, and continued progress on drug liberalization here and around the world may depend on the political fallout from this first step.”
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on social progress: “We are far from perfect. But if perfection is at the end of a scale, Canada is farther along than most. Not only was this country one of the first to legalize same-sex marriage, it is the only country to formally apologize and offer restitution to those who were dismissed from the public service and military in the past simply because of their sexuality.”
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Chris Hannay