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politics briefing newsletter

Good morning,

The Globe and Mail has won the 2017 Michener Award for public-service journalism, one of the country’s highest honours for the public good that reporting can do.

The Globe won the prize for Unfounded, a remarkable and troubling project led by Robyn Doolittle that showed how police forces struggled to deal with complaints of sexual assault and failed to help many victims. The investigation has forced police forces to revamp how they deal with sexual assault cases and sparked a review of tens of thousands of files.

The project shows not only how important investigative journalism is, but also how difficult, time-consuming and expensive it can be. The investigation took 20 months and a couple of dozen journalists to complete. Here’s a full list of credits for those who worked on the project:

Reporting and writing by ROBYN DOOLITTLE; Data reporting and analysis by TERRA CIOLFE, MICHAEL PEREIRA, JEREMY AGIUS, STEPHANIE CHAMBERS, RICK CASH and TU THANH HA; Photography by GALIT RODAN; Illustrations by NICOLE XU; Design by JEREMY AGIUS and MATTHEW FRENCH; Development by JEREMY AGIUS, MICHAEL PEREIRA and CHRISTOPHER MANZA; Video by MELISSA TAIT and TIMOTHY MOORE; Editing by DENNIS CHOQUETTE, LISAN JUTRAS, VICTOR DWYER, GARY SALEWICZ and CHRISTOPHER HARRIS; Multimedia editing by LAURA BLENKINSOP; Photo editing by RACHEL WINE; Data science consulting and verification by SHENGQING WU; Proofing by STEVE BREARTON; Additional data verification by MADELEINE WHITE and ANDREW SAIKALI.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa and James Keller in Vancouver. If you’re reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

The federal Liberals have now said which Senate amendments to the marijuana legislation they can live with, and which they can’t. For instance, the government says it will not allow province to ban home growing, though senators were inclined to let them. The House of Commons will have to vote on the package of changes this week then sent it back to the Senate, which will pick up the bill again.

Michael Wernick, Canada’s top public servant, says the Auditor-General was wrong to characterize the Phoenix pay system debacle as an “incomprehensible failure.” “I think it’s entirely comprehensible,” he told a parliamentary committee. “It was avoidable, it’s repairable and it gives us all kinds of lessons about how to build a better public service.” (The cost of those lessons? More than $1-billion.)

The CEO B.C.-based tech firm AggregateIQ is facing a possible finding of contempt of Parliament after he was summoned to a House of Commons committee but failed to show up. Instead, Zackary Massingham sent a doctor’s note explaining he was ill. The committee wants to know more about the company’s connection to an international scandal over Facebook data and the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Ottawa has set aside half a billion dollars over the next five years to help Canadians, governments and businesses protect themselves from nefarious online attacks and crime. The new cybersecurity strategy focuses on detecting, deterring and prosecuting such crimes, though it also acknowledges there is currently a shortage of cybersecurity specialists.

National Defence deputy minister Jody Thomas says she will review how the government buys defence equipment with an aim to make the process go faster.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is projecting an increase in oil production over the next two decades, but that optimism depends on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion actually getting built. The federal government is buying the project and hopes to then find another buyer.

British Columbia’s children’s watchdog is wrapping the provincial government for failing to ensure caregivers in the child-welfare system are qualified and not putting young people in danger. Bernard Richard, the B.C. Representative for Children and Youth, wants to know why the government continues to pay 46 agencies to run group homes where staff have not been properly screened to care for hundreds of children and youth.

The federal government is considering ways to mitigate the economic impact of measures designed to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, but that won’t include financial compensation for fishermen whose fisheries have been closed.. Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc says instead potential options include changes to employment insurance and expanding other fisheries.

Maxime Bernier has been booted out of the Conservative shadow cabinet for republishing a book chapter he wrote decrying supply management.

A Federal Court judge has ruled a government panel that decides whether or not a work of art can leave the country was too broad in defining what art is important to Canada’s heritage. The painting that was denied an export permit was a French work painted by a French artist in France, but had resided in a private Canadian collection for 60 years.

Christopher Deacon, who the orchestra director for the National Arts Centre, will take over the organization as president and CEO. Mr. Deacon replaces Peter Herrndorf, who retired earlier this month after nearly 20 years at the helm of the NAC.

And even though NAFTA talks aren’t going well, don’t let it be said that Canada, the U.S. and Mexico can’t agree on anything: the three countries have won a joint bid to host the World Cup in 2026.

Elizabeth Renzetti (The Globe and Mail) on how men can help: “ When it comes to addressing issues of violence against women, it’s usually the same people who speak up, raise money and seek legislative change. Those people, for the most part, are women. Men’s voices – and, crucially, their wallets – have largely been absent, perhaps because the issue is uncomfortable.”

Barbara Kay (National Post) on fatherlessness: “Boys are in crisis everywhere. They are falling behind academically in 60 of the most developed nations. Boys are 50 per cent less likely than girls to meet basic proficiency standards in reading, math and science. Rates of ADHD among them are escalating. Since the Great Depression, the gap between male and female suicides has tripled in the U.S.”

Scott Reid (The Globe and Mail) on Doug Ford’s win: “But the most obvious takeaway from Doug Ford’s Ontario election victory is that events between May 9 and June 7 had not the slightest impact on voters’ intentions. If anything, the electorate showed itself to be defiantly resistant to the policies and appeals of individual party leaders.”

Susan Delacourt (iPolitics) on a snap election: “But think of all the headaches Trudeau could avoid (or postpone) confronting in the next 16 months by calling an election for this summer: He’d be sidestepping, at least for a while, the unravelling provincial unity on carbon taxes, The new government of Ontario is already promising to be a big spoiler on this one, as is Kenney if he gets elected premier next spring in Alberta.”

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on Canada-U.S. relations: “No, if Mr. Trump really was as offended as he makes out, it wasn’t caused by a Canadian failure to realize that American eyes are watching. It came from an older, more familiar problem: The U.S. President didn’t grasp or care that there’s politics in Canada, too.”

Jim O’Neill (The Globe and Mail) on the relevance of the G7: “It has now been 17 years and the G7 is still serving little other purpose than to keep its member states’ civil servants busy. Yes, it still comprises the seven Western democracies with the largest economies, but barely so. At this point, Canada’s economy is not much bigger than Australia’s and Italy’s is only slightly bigger than Spain’s.”

Globe and Mail Editorial Board on reducing plastics: “ It would help if Ottawa took a leadership role in establishing a national regime that put some of the onus for recovering recyclable materials on businesses that make, package and sell goods involving plastic.”

Help The Globe monitor political ads on Facebook: During an election campaign, you can expect to see a lot of political ads. But Facebook ads, unlike traditional media, can be targeted to specific users and only be seen by certain subsets of users, making the ads almost impossible to track. The Globe and Mail wants to report on how these ads are used, but we need to see the same ads Facebook users are seeing. Here is how you can help.

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