Good morning,
Walking into the new House of Commons chamber feels like you’re stepping outside. The green carpet, the dappled natural light and the wooden structures all contribute to a feeling of being in nature. That, the architects say, was the point: to evoke the natural landscape in a way that is uniquely Canadian.
Though, once the MPs move in and the yelling starts, we’ll see if that serene feeling stays.
If you don’t live and work in Ottawa, you might not know this yet, but a big change to Parliament Hill is coming. The building that is home to the House of Commons and the Senate is being shut down for at least a decade for renovations, and those legislative chambers will have to move.
In the case of the House, it’s going next door to the building known as West Block. The Globe and Mail and other media outlets have had a chance to tour West Block a couple of times while it’s been undergoing its own renovation. But photographer Blair Gable has been tracking the major construction project for even longer.
In today’s Globe, we teamed up with Mr. Gable to tell the story of how Canada’s new House of Commons is coming together.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa and James Keller in Vancouver. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
It’s a familiar refrain: North American free-trade agreement talks have broken for the week, and there is still no end in sight. Members of the U.S. Congress had hoped to finally reach a deal by the end of this month, but that is looking unlikely.
Governor-General Julie Payette is nearing a year in her role, and she and her office have still not completed their review of her public activities. That’s left many charities in limbo who rely on the Governor-General. For instance, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, which has had the G-G as its patron since 1929, is looking into whether it needs to change its bylaws to find a new patron.
The House ethics committee will indeed launch a review of the conflict-of-interest and lobbying laws after reading a Globe investigation.
The House of Commons has unanimously declared Myanmar’s brutal campaign against Rohingya people a genocide and MPs are asking the International Criminal Court to prosecute senior Myanmar officials. More than 700,000 Rohingya people have been forced out of their homes and into neighbouring Bangladesh, creating a humanitarian tragedy.
New figures show the federal government has spent more than $2.3-million fighting in court against the survivors of one of Canada’s worst residential schools.
Alberta’s Education Minister has apologized after learning that an online social studies course asked students to identify the “positive effects” of residential schools. Education Minister David Eggen says the question was “beyond the pale” and he says schools and school boards need to ensure things like this don’t happen.
Industry analysts say telecom carrier costs could rise if Canadian firms can’t work with Chinese giant Huawei.
Stephen Harper’s former policy director is going to bat for Justin Trudeau’s carbon-pricing plan.
Coalition Avenir Quebec Leader Francois Legault softened his tone on immigration in the last provincial leader’s debate.
As Calgary prepares to bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics, a proposal to hold ski-jumping events in British Columbia is facing resistance given the political fight between Alberta and B.C. over pipelines. City Councillor Joe Magliocca says moving ski jumping to Whistler, B.C., would be “a slap in the face to the energy sector."
Environmentalists in B.C. are warning that the province simply cannot meet its climate targets if a liquefied natural gas project is built along the northern coast. Hannah Askew, executive director of Sierra Club BC, says in a letter to Premier John Horgan that B.C. is already failing to meet its climate targets, and an LNG terminal will only make it more difficult.
The Saskatchewan government has approved a large-scale wind energy project with 56 turbines, billing the approval as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
And Vancouver’s outgoing council has attempted to slay a sacred cow: The large swaths of the city that are limited to single-family detached homes. Councillors voted this week to allow duplexes in almost all of those areas. Housing advocates have long urged the city to add density to those single-family neigbourhoods, largely on the west side, to ease the housing crisis.
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on NAFTA: “Why would a lousy, rotten, crappy deal be better than no deal at all? Because Canadian businesses simply must have duty-free access to the U.S. market.”
Babak Abbaszadeh (The Globe and Mail) on the financial system: “The next crisis could be serious. Although financial institutions and markets seem more resilient, central banks and governments may have less ammunition to fight the next crisis.”
Cody Punter (The Globe and Mail) on life in the North: “Even the best-intentioned boots-on-the-ground journalistic efforts tend to depict Inuit as victims. That is not to say housing shortages, suicide, unemployment and family violence are not worthy topics. These issues are ever present and in dire need of being addressed. But robbing Canada’s Inuit of light and reducing them to a series of statistics and stigmas is no solution.”
Lissa Paul (The Globe and Mail) on how writing is taught in schools: “Although I understood my niece’s position, I struggled with the ethical dilemma of ignoring writing instruction that was antithetical to university preparation. And stupid. Counting words only makes marking easy: include the words, get the grade. Ontario, as it turns out, isn’t the only province where adverbs threaten to rule.”
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Chris Hannay
James Keller