Good morning,
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the Prime Minister of Britain is proposing a plan for the country to leave the European Union, and those voting on the plan seem set to reject it.
In today’s instalment of the Brexit soaps, Theresa May is pleading with members of the British Parliament to approve the exit agreement she worked out with the EU. The MPs, who vote later today, do not appear as though they will support it. If it is rejected, Ms. May has three more working days to come up with a new plan – the original having taken much longer than three days to come up with – and after that...who knows. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn is pushing for another general election – following the ones in 2015 and 2017 – while others want to go back to voters for a second opinion that follows the original Brexit referendum in 2016.
The terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union are set to have real consequences for the country’s economy and the lives of its citizens.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
China’s foreign ministry says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should not criticize a Chinese court’s imposition of the death penalty against a Canadian charged with drug trafficking or, as a spokesperson put it: “The remarks by the relevant Canadian person lack the most basic awareness of the legal system.” China and Canada have each put out travel warnings to their citizens about visiting the other country, each warning of the threat of arbitrary arrests.
Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, says his company is not involved in spying for the Chinese state. “I still love my country, I support the Communist party, but I will never do anything to harm any country in the world,” he said, according to a Financial Times report. His daughter, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada last month on the request of U.S. authorities, an arrest that has sparked tensions between the Canadian and Chinese governments.
Canada’s welcoming of a high-profile Saudi refugee this weekend could cause a chill in relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
Svend Robinson – remember him? – is set to attempt another political comeback.
And bureaucrats are warning the Liberal government that the program that gives away free Canadian flags that have flown on the Peace Tower is too popular for its own good.
Lynette Ong (The Globe and Mail) on the Canadian sentenced to death in China: “Now that the worst-case scenario for Mr. Schellenberg has come to pass, it is hard to see this judicial decision as independent of politics, even though there is no hard evidence to suggest the Chinese court was under any instruction to hand him a harsher sentence. But it should be noted that in China’s Communist system, the court is not independent of the Party or the government.”
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on yesterday’s cabinet shuffle: “Still, Monday’s cabinet shuffle stuck out as a peculiar game of political Chutes and Ladders that included some odd choices. There was the sudden demotion of Jody Wilson-Raybould, dropped from Justice to Veterans Affairs, the not-easily explained promotion for [Seamus] O’Regan and, with that, some strange gaps left in important places.”
Mercedes Stephenson (Global News) on the pre-election timing: “The small shuffle indicates the Prime Minister is confident about the public face of his government and his key players heading into an election year. In other words, the Liberals think they already have their recipe for success and have opted for minor tweaks rather than a drastic overhaul.”
Paul Wells (Maclean’s) on the true effects of the shuffle: “This is no knock on the ministers involved, who are serious people. But it’s hard to budge the trajectory of state from even a post as exalted as a seat at the federal cabinet table. And harder if the government is, as is becoming increasingly obvious to all observers, chronically stage-managed by a tiny cadre of out-of-their-league staffers operating out of the Building Formerly Known as Langevin.”
Jane Hilderman and Paul Thomas (The Globe and Mail) on the timing of by-elections: “Canadian law should be amended to ensure that by-elections occur a fixed number of days after a vacancy, with safeguards to avoid votes falling on major holidays. While the exact number should be set in consultations with Elections Canada, we believe bringing Canada closer to Britain’s practice, which sees most seats filled within 60 days, is a reasonable goal.”
André Picard (The Globe and Mail) on sex education: “Parents absolutely have a right to inculcate values on their offspring. But that does not extend to imposing ignorance on others. That is especially true because we know that unawareness and naïveté do not prevent young people from having sex – it simply makes them more likely to make poor choices.”
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Chris Hannay