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These are the top stories:
Employers are taking cash from foreign workers seeking permanent resident status in Canada
Sources say they’re cash transactions, illegal and virtually impossible to trace. Foreign nationals have told The Globe and Mail that they’re paying consultants as much as $40,000 for a job in a restaurant – and that up to $20,000 is being forwarded to fast-food franchisees in exchange for the position.
The Globe’s Kathy Tomlinson interviewed three dozen people, including lawyers, most of whom said they had direct knowledge of the lucrative deals. Many foreign nationals, including students, are given jobs on paper that are more senior than the ones they actually hold in order to earn enough points toward permanent residency. And they say they’ve had to work up to 60 hours a week while receiving as little as $10 an hour for the overtime.
“I cannot quit. I am stuck … I am paying my rent and after that all the money just goes to the taxes and the consultants,” said one Subway employee, who said his boss made it clear he had a deal with the consultant.
Subway restaurant franchises were mentioned more often than any other business by numerous sources as being heavily involved in the deals with immigration consultants. For its part, Subway Canada said it is “troubled by the allegations” but pointed out that franchisees do their own hiring.
Even B.C. Minister of Labour Harry Bains said he has heard that arrangements between consultants and employers are “rampant.” He is promising new provincial rules to audits of suspect employees, and “there is potential for jail time.”
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Canada is firmly on the basketball map with the Raptors’ Game 1 win over Golden State
Pascal Siakam goes to the hoop against the Warriors' Draymond Green. (Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports)Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
Pascal Siakam scored a career-playoff-high 32 points, superstar Kawhi Leonard contributed 23 and veteran centre Marc Gasol added 20 to give the Toronto Raptors a big 118-109 home-court victory to start the NBA Finals. Tens of thousands of fans again packed Jurassic Park outside Scotiabank Arena, while scores of other cities created their own pop-up outdoor squares to catch the first Canadian finals appearance.
Cathal Kelly writes: “Though the team’s been around for a quarter century, the Raptors only just arrived on Thursday." With the victory, he says, "they broke a script so traditional it had become nearly scripture – the Warriors don’t go down early.”
Mike Pence is urging Justin Trudeau to bar Huawei from 5G networks
The U.S. Vice-President’s appeal during a visit to Ottawa marks the highest-level official request by the Trump administration since it began lobbying allies to impose restrictions on the Chinese telecom company over security concerns. “We have been very clear with Canada, and with all of our allies, that we consider Huawei incompatible with the security interests of the United States of America or our allies … across the world,” Pence said.
Trudeau wouldn’t commit to a ban on Huawei equipment, saying he’s waiting for the results of a cybersecurity review. The U.S., Australia and New Zealand, all members of the Five Eyes intelligence network, have taken action on Huawei.
Pence also reiterated U.S. demands for Beijing to release two Canadians detained by China. The detentions have been viewed as retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
And on the trade front, Donald Trump announced he was imposing a 5-per-cent tariff on Mexican goods, dealing another blow to USMCA ratification on the same day that Pence said his government was working to get the treaty passed this summer. None of the three trade partners have ratified the agreement. Trump said he would gradually increase the tariffs against Mexico if it doesn’t take action to stem the stream of migrants crossing the U.S. border.
Amid a measles outbreak, New Brunswick is moving to impose Canada’s strictest vaccination policy
The province is eyeing a ban on non-medical exemptions for children, a measure that would force parents to keep their kids at home if they don’t vaccinate them because of personal or religious beliefs.
“When we’re talking about public schools, public safety comes first,” Education Minister Dominic Cardy said. “[Parents] cannot and do not have the right to send their children to school to endanger others.” Cardy’s province has seen 11 people infected with measles largely after being exposed to the virus at a high school just outside of Saint John.
Right now, New Brunswick and Ontario are the only provinces with mandatory school immunization programs, though both currently allow opt-outs for personal or medical reasons. B.C., which experienced its own measles outbreak last year, is set to introduce a similar program. But B.C.’s health officer won’t be recommending a ban on exemptions, saying she doesn’t believe children “should suffer for their parents’ decisions.”
Trump imposing increasing tariffs on Mexico in response to migrants
In a surprise announcement that could compromise a major trade deal, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is slapping a 5 per cent tariff on all Mexican imports, effective June 10, to pressure the country to do more to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants trying to cross the U.S. border.
He said the percentage will gradually increase — up to 25 per cent — “until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied.”
The decision showed the administration going to new lengths, and looking for new levers, to pressure Mexico to take action — even if those risk upending other policy priorities, like the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade deal that is the cornerstone of Trump’s legislative agenda and beneficial to his reelection effort.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
The overdose crisis has prompted life expectancy in Canada to stall for the first time in more than four decades. In B.C., the province hardest hit by overdose deaths, life expectancy decreased for the second year in a row, dropping 0.3 years for men and 0.1 years for women. Alberta saw similar declines.
The Alberta wildfires have now forced 10,000 people from their homes as hot temperatures and strong winds expanded the size of several blazes. People in Slave Lake, a town partly destroyed in a 2011 fire, have been told to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. Even Edmonton residents are feeling the impact, with a thick haze covering the city.
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks tumble on Trump threat
European stocks tumbled and sovereign bonds surged on Friday as investors feared President Donald Trump’s shock threat of tariffs on Mexico risked tipping the United States into recession while disappointing China data added to the woes. Tokyo’s Nikkei sank 1.6 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 0.8 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 0.2 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down by between 1 and 1.8 per cent by about 6:30 a.m. ET. New York futures were down. The Canadian dollar was at 73.73 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
For Trudeau, raising U.S. abortion bans with Pence is a tactic to bring the issue back home
Campbell Clark: “What’s the opposite of a dog whistle? An air horn? Whatever it is, it is what Justin Trudeau was using to send a political signal when he complained about U.S. ‘backsliding’ on abortion rights to Vice-President Mike Pence. This was no sly message designed to perk up the ears of a particular target audience without attracting the notice of others – the so-called political dog whistle. Trudeau was using a loud, shrill blast.”
Failing upward: the past and future of Boris Johnson
Elizabeth Renzetti: “Johnson’s two-year tenure as foreign secretary was filled with so many gaffes, some trivial and others threatening Britain’s relationship with other countries, that The Economist wondered in 2017: ‘One of the great puzzles of politics is how the foreign secretary keeps his job.’ Yet this period of high-profile mediocrity had no bearing on Mr. Johnson’s popularity, in a stellar example of what my old boss used to call ‘failing upward.’” (for subscribers)
The Canadian Armed Forces ignore extremism in their ranks at their peril – and ours, too
Elizabeth Moore: “[A 2018 report] suggests what many anti-hate activists have suspected: The Canadian Armed Forces have a racist extremism problem. But the seven-page report inexplicably dismisses its own findings. ‘At this time,’ it concludes, ‘hate groups do not pose a significant threat to the CAF/Department of National Defence.’ This shows a distressing lack of understanding of their own history and the dangers of having radicalized individuals with weapons training on the ground.” Elizabeth Moore is an anti-hate educator and former racist extremist.
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
By Brian GableBrian gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Film Friday: Here’s what’s opening this weekend
The Colten Boushie documentary nipawistamasowin: We Will Stand Up is searing, essential cinema on modern Canada. (3.5 stars)
Rocketman isn’t really a biopic on Elton John but a musical at once sentimental, grim and glamourous – Broadway razzle-dazzle of the best kind. (3.5 stars)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters is stupendous stupidity, in the best possible way. (3 stars)
Subscribers can go here to read more about our critics’ picks.
MOMENT IN TIME
The Who becomes world’s loudest band
(Mike Maloney/Everett Collection)Mike Maloney/Everett Collection
May 31, 1976: The World Heath Organization (WHO) deems 120 decibels to be the aural threshold for human pain, citing thunderclaps and chainsaws as examples of that loudness. To that, the other Who (the rock band) said in effect, “We can do better.” On May 31, 1976, the British quartet gave a rainy-day show at The Valley, a soccer stadium in London’s Charlton district. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the Who’s music registered at 126 decibels. From the band’s rock opera Tommy, the band played See Me, Feel Me and meant it: The volume had to have been a body-shaking experience for fans. Worried that other musicians would compete to be “the world’s loudest band," Guinness has since ceased to list the infamous designation. Too late, though, for the Who, whose noise would take its toll. Guitarist Pete Townshend has long suffered from ear-ringing tinnitus, singer Roger Daltrey told a concert audience in 2018 that he was “very, very deaf,” and bassist John Entwistle could barely hear by the time of his death in 2002. Incidentally, original plans for the since-replaced football pitch at Charlton called for a speedway to surround the facility. That application was denied, ironically because of noise-nuisance concerns. – Brad Wheeler
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Arik Ligeti