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These are the top stories:
Cindy Gladue hearing is set to shine a spotlight on questions about racism in Canada’s courts
This week, the Supreme Court of Canada begins its fall session. And all eyes will be on Thursday’s Cindy Gladue hearing, which will effectively put the country’s justice system on trial over its treatment of Indigenous people. Here’s a refresher on what happened, and what’s at stake.
The original trial: Gladue bled to death in 2011 after a sexual encounter with trucker Bradley Barton in Alberta. Barton, who said the wound he caused leading to her death was accidental, was acquitted in 2015 of first-degree murder and the lesser charge of manslaughter. Gladue was referred to as a “native,” “a native girl,” or “native woman” 26 times at the trial; she was also referred to as a “prostitute” 36 times, including by the trial judge. The verdict sparked protests across the country.
The appeal hearing: Alberta’s appeal court threw out the original verdict, saying the trial judge didn’t understand that the use of the terms “native” and “prostitute” invited the jury to “bring to the fact-finding process discriminatory beliefs or biases about the sexual availability of Indigenous women and especially those who engage in sexual activity for payment.”
The Supreme Court case: The top court will decide whether Barton will face another trial. One key question will be whether new ground rules are needed for sexual-assault trials, including how the issue of consent is applied to cases involving sex-trade workers. Multiple Indigenous groups intervening in the case are arguing that Gladue was denied justice because of her race.
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Quebec is going to be the most restrictive province in Canada for cannabis use
It already plans to forbid home growing. Now, Quebec’s next government is vowing to take things further with a ban on cannabis consumption in public places and a legal age threshold of 21 – the highest in Canada (for subscribers). All this in a province that has some of the loosest drinking laws, including a legal age of 18 to consume alcohol. But Quebec’s attitude on marijuana is surprisingly conservative: Opinion polls found just 39 per cent of Quebeckers supported legalization compared with 53 per cent in the rest of Canada, while only one in 10 used cannabis in the previous year versus one in six outside the province. (Subscribers: Not in Quebec? See what your province or territory has planned for legalization.)
Here’s André Picard’s take on minimum age rules: “Ideally, what we want is for everyone to be mature and thoughtful enough to make responsible decisions about drug use, and a whole bunch of other things. But you can’t create a test for maturity, or write laws that protect everyone from themselves. So we use crude, arbitrary cutoffs such as age. At 16, you’re old enough to drive a car, leave school and legally consent to sex. At 18 (sometimes 19), you can vote, get married, buy a gun or go off to war. Surely if we can trust 18-year-olds with upholding democracy and defending national security, we can trust them to blaze responsibly – or at least as responsibly as older adults.”
Trump apologized to Brett Kavanaugh during a swearing-in ceremony
“On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure,” Trump said. The remarks dampered any faint hope that the White House ceremony could be used as a way for the U.S. to begin healing wounds after the heated confirmation process. Trump told Kavanaugh that he was “proven innocent” despite criticisms that the investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct wasn’t sufficiently thorough. Kavanaugh will hear his first cases as a Supreme Court justice today.
A refinery explosion rocked Saint John
Black smoke and flames could be seen billowing for hours over the city on Thanksgiving morning. Witnesses described a “boom” that shook neighbourhoods near the Irving Oil Refinery in New Brunswick. As many as 3,000 workers were at the facility, with five taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. No evacuation is planned but residents are being encouraged stay in their homes and away from the refinery, which is being shut down while regulators investigate. The Irving site is a major job provider and is the largest oil refinery in Canada.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Urgent action is needed to avert catastrophic climate change, a UN report is warning
Failure to limit temperature increases will result in more deaths and climate refugees, a greater rate of species extinction and reduced economic growth, according to a report authored by 90 scientists from around the world. The key measure to avert a crisis is a goal agreed to in the Paris accord: limiting the average increase in temperatures to 1.5 Celsius degrees above pre-industrial levels. But that’s looking increasingly unlikely unless governments take unprecedented steps to reduce fossil fuel emissions and deploy technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks sink
Europe battled to fend off a four-day losing streak for world stocks on Tuesday, after weary investors had seen Asia stumble to a 17-month low and bond markets hit by a fresh bout of selling. Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 1.3 per cent, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 0.1 per cent, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.2 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down by between 0.2 and 0.4 per cent by about 6:10 a.m. ET. New York futures were also down. The Canadian dollar was sitting at about 77 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
The evidence is clear. Canada needs electoral reform
“Both of us, despite very different partisan perspectives, have been long-standing supporters of a proportional voting system for Canada – one in which the number of seats a party gets in the legislature corresponds with its popular vote. Indeed, the vast majority of industrialized countries have long used this system. The fact that Canada still uses an archaic first-past-the-post system, dating from before Confederation, is increasingly anomalous in the world. Even the Britain, whose system is the basis of our own, now uses proportional representation for elections in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The imperative of moving to proportional representation is neither a right-wing nor a left-wing point of view. It’s simply democratic common sense. And recent Canadian election results underline the urgency of getting a move-on.” – Ed Broadbent (chair of the Broadbent Institute) and Hugh Segal (principal of Massey College)
Saudi journalist’s disappearance is a stain on the Crown Prince
“Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may not have been a household name, but his disappearance or presumed murder will be a permanent stain on his government’s assertions that it’s promoting social and economic reforms. The mystery surrounding his disappearance or death get murkier with each passing day, in part because of the geopolitical intrigue and triangle of potential state actors who have their fingerprints all over the fateful Oct. 2 day that Mr. Khashoggi disappeared into the Saudi consulate in the Turkish capital of Istanbul.” – Bessma Momani, professor at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs
Why a Canadian basic income is inevitable
“Silicon Valley hyperbole imagines robots replacing human labour, and that has happened for many factory jobs, but a much more likely outcome is that automation will change the way work is done. The leading edge of professional job change can be seen among journalists, translators and professors, who used to enjoy well-paying, secure careers. The same work is now much more likely to be packaged as ‘projects’ – stories, documents or classes – that can be hired out to independent contractors at a much lower cost. Some of these contractors find themselves competing with others from around the world. Similarly, pharmacists are being replaced by lower-paid pharmacy technicians or even pill-counting robots. These changes lead to a form of hidden job insecurity that existing social programs cannot address. These are people who vote and who know how to make their voices heard.” – Evelyn L Forget, author of Basic Income For Canadians: The Key to a Healthier, Happier, More Secure Life for All
LIVING BETTER
We’re not getting enough sleep – and it’s affecting our thinking
People who get seven to eight hours of sleep a night perform better on cognitive tasks such as problem-solving, according to a new large-scale study from the University of Western Ontario. And those who sleep less than four hours a night showed impairment equivalent to adding nine years to their age. More than half of the 40,000-plus participants reported sleeping less than 6.4 hours per night.
MOMENT IN TIME
Martha Stewart begins her prison sentence
Peter Morgan
Oct. 9, 2004: Known as the queen of gracious living, Martha Stewart traded her opulent lifestyle 14 years ago for a cubicle in “Camp Cupcake,” an overcrowded federal prison where she would share four toilets and two showers with 90 women. At the age of 63, Ms. Stewart was at the apex of a spectacular career that saw her build a home-based catering business into a sprawling media and consumer products empire. Her downfall was precipitated by a sketchy stock trade based on insider information, although she was never charged with insider trading. Instead, she was convicted of lying to the FBI during questioning about the stock sale. One juror suggested the verdict was a “victory for the little guy,” a common theme at a time when the United States saw a rash of prosecutions for white-collar crimes. After emerging from prison, Ms. Stewart had to refrain for several years from taking an official role in her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. She sold it in 2015 but still plays a role as creative consultant and earned US$6.5-million last year. Among her latest ventures: teaming up on a TV cooking show with rapper Snoop Dogg, who is releasing a cookbook this fall entitled, From Crook to Cook. – Shawn McCarthy
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Arik Ligeti