MARY'S HARBOUR, March 19 -- The new ferry in the Strait of Belle Isle doesn't have the same horsepower as the old Apollo, so even with an ice breaker, it's risky to travel in this year's ice conditions, says the Canadian Coast Guard. But the province says this year's severe ice conditions are unprecedented, and even an icebreaker got stuck in the thick ice. The Qajaq W has spent numerous days tied up in the dock, with passengers waiting on either side of the strait for clear conditions to sail. Coast guard's Henry Larsen is en route to the area and, assuming weather conditions are suitable, will be able to break ice Friday morning. But even with an ice breaker, it's no guarantee the Qajaq will sail, says Brad Durnford, who is with the coast guard. "The ice conditions are just too severe for this ferry to run. It's a new ferry, it has less power than the Apollo, so we're very cautious, everyone's being very cautious, as they should be," Durnford said. "Don't want to get that ferry out there and then get stuck for days with people on board, because that's a potential that could happen in this situation." Qajaq W more 'capable' than Apollo In January, Peter Woodward, president of the Woodward Group, said the Qajaq had half the horsepower and half the carbon footprint of the Apollo, burning half the fuel of the old ferry, but that the Qajaq had two ice-strengthened bows. Government is defending its new 7,500-horsepower vessel, saying the new vessel is "designed and built to operate in severe sea ice conditions." The 48-year-old Apollo's horsepower was rated at 9,000 — more than its new replacement — but only "operated at 6,000 horsepower in its later years," reads a statement from the Department of Transportation and Works. Minister Steve Crocker said even the coast guard's icebreaker Molly Kool, with a horsepower of 18,000, got stuck in the ice this year. "The fact that it's a newer vessel brings more thrust, so, you know, the reality we have here right now is we're battling ice conditions that we haven't seen in 30 years," Crocker said. Also, the Qajaq has more agility and ability when compared with the Apollo, Crocker's department said. "The MV Qajaq W is stronger in ice, has a more durable hull, has better maneuverability," according to the department. The new vessel has "modern technology that makes it much more efficient and capable than its predecessor," says the statement provided to CBC News. The worst ice conditions in 30 years Durnford and the government do agree on one thing — that the ice this year is incredibly thick. Conditions are "the worst they have been in 30 years," says the statement from the transportation department. Durnford acknowledges the ice breakers themselves are having a hard time. "The ice in the strait, as we've all seen this year, is quite severe. We're seeing conditions that we haven't seen in a number of years," Durnford told CBC's Labrador Morning. "At the site of the ferry crossing, it's a bottle neck, so all the ice from down south in the gulf is kind of just squeezing up through the Strait, and that's what's causing all this ice pressure that you hear about and why the ferry is not able to follow behind the ice breaker." 'We're all at the mercy of Mother Nature' Durnford said the ferry's captain is the one who has to weigh the risks each day about whether to chance a sailing. "Coast guard does have concerns with the capability of the vessel, given its lower horsepower and its ability to follow behind the icebreakers," said Durnford.
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OTTAWA, March 19 -- There's inglorious pleasure to be had in witnessing the shine being knocked off Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. When the six-foot-two, eyes of blue, baby-balancing PM came to power in 2015, promising a transparent, liberal and feminist agenda, I disliked him immediately. He was a busy family man who somehow found the time to maintain dramatic core strength; something couldn't possibly be right. His perfectness irked me. But in the first stages of our love affair with Trudeau, we gazed at him and his perfectly gender-balanced cabinet and his commitment to the rights of indigenous people and saw nothing but loveliness - right down to his socks. No thanks, I thought. Give me a dour Gordon Brown or a what-you-see-isn't-what-you-get Bertie Ahern any day. So now, having tap-danced his way to the top, Trudeau is fronting allegations of having interfered inappropriately in a corruption and fraud prosecution made by a company which employs thousands of Canadians. Earlier this month, the Canadian justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould resigned from his cabinet in protest against Trudeau, and a second female cabinet member has followed suit. Do Canadians care if their PM isn't afraid to get personal (he has spoken candidly about both his wife's eating disorders and his mother's bipolar diagnosis) when, years after taking office, he is no closer to realising his promised national child-care programme or funding a solution to his country's urban housing crisis? Do they care about his promises to raise his sons as feminists, when electoral reform pushed for by women's organisations has halted, as has a promised inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women? As the old adage goes, when something looks too good to be true, it usually is. Or as one sage put it - this is what you get when you elect a drama teacher as prime minister. Sometimes all the hard work doesn't add up"What's your talent?" The 10-year-old wants to know - as if finding one is the secret to success. "Hard work," I retort, passing her a broom and the boring old advice that no one is born with a talent, they only acquire the illusion of it through pure graft. Which is why the idea of "maths anxiety" fuelling a national crisis in children in Britain irritates me no end. Cambridge University researchers have said that one in 10 children suffers from "despair and rage" when they approach the subject. Part of the problem is we tell ourselves you're either born with an aptitude for maths or you're not. And if not, well, you'll struggle. Children think maths is hard because they're no good at it, when actually, maths is hard because maths is hard - which also makes it exciting. At home I adopt a policy of "Oh, fractions! How thrilling!" when the homework comes out. I enthuse that everything is informed by maths - from music to nature. Do they believe me? Perversely, more than three-quarters of the children in the study who had high levels of maths anxiety were normal to high achievers. This resonates with me, having suffered acute maths anxiety, especially after being streamed into the top set for maths at secondary school. The class gave me plenty of scope to discover my "talent", because the fear of being outed as the class dummy meant I worked harder at maths than any other subject. I left my maths Leaving Cert exam certain I had an A. Then I opened my brain and let all the maths run out. Today, I couldn't balance a simple equation and thank goodness I don't need to. Because maths is really hard, you know. OTTAWA, March 16 -- Canada has introduced new anti-Russian sanctions in relation to the November 2018 Kerch Strait incident, placing 114 individuals and 15 entities on the sanctions list. The statement by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland was published on Friday informs. "In coordination with the European Union and the United States, Canada is today announcing new sanctions in response to Russia’s aggressive actions in the Black Sea and Kerch Strait and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea," the statement says. Head of Rosneft Igor Sechin, head of VTB Andrey Kostin, entrepreneur Igor Rotenberg, Plenipotentiary Presidential Representative in the Southern Federal District Vladimir Ustinov and head of Russia’s National Guard (Rosgvardiya) Viktor Zolotov have been placed on the list, along with several entities of the Russian military-industrial complex, such as Tupolev, MiG and Sukhoi. Canada first introduced sanctions against Russian individuals and entities in 2014, after Crimea began to form part of Russia. Kerch Strait incidentOn November 25, 2018, three Ukrainian warships, en route from Odessa to Mariupol, illegally crossed Russia’s state border, entered Russia’s territorial waters in the Kerch Strait and started performing dangerous maneuvers. Despite the repeated warnings and demands to stop, the Ukrainian vessels continued their way, forcing Russia to use weapons. All three Ukrainian ships were detained in the Black Sea. Three Ukrainian servicemen were slightly wounded and received medical assistance. A criminal case has been launched over the violation of Russia’s state border. Moscow slammed the incident as a provocation. Twenty-four Ukrainian sailors have been detained and are currently at detention facilities in Moscow. BEIJING, March 15 -- Huawei and Ottawa are victims of a hi-tech stand-off between Washington and Beijing but the tensions won’t affect the company’s investment in Canada, according to the Chinese telecom giant’s founder. Ren Zhengfei’s assessment comes as China and Canada weather what some have called the worst crisis in relations between the two countries, triggered by the arrest in Vancouver in December of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who is also Ren’s daughter. The arrest was made at the request of the United States, which seeks to extradite Meng over possible violations of sanctions against Iran. “Meng Wanzhou has committed no crime. She didn’t violate any Canadian rules, and I think both Canada and Huawei are victims because this case hurts people in both countries, and bilateral relations also suffered setbacks,” Ren told CTV, a Canadian television network, in an interview aired on Thursday. “We will not reduce our investment in Canada because of that. “Meng Wanzhou is an individual case, and I don’t think it should influence in any way the relationship Canada has with Huawei.” Ren’s tone was more conciliatory than Beijing’s, with Chinese officials attacking Canada’s decision to proceed with Meng’s extradition as a politically motivated act. Lu Shaye, Chinese ambassador to Canada, said in December that Meng’s arrest was “back-stabbing” by a friend, and he warned of repercussions if Canada banned Huawei from its 5G network. Meng’s arrest was quickly followed by the detention of two Canadians in China on espionage charges, a move widely considered as retaliation by Beijing. OTTAWA, March 13 -- There he stood at the prime ministerial podium at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa, a battery of Canadian flags behind him, a throng of journalists in front of him. He blinked, all dewy-eyed sincerity. It was Thursday morning, early. He’d just been asked if he planned to apologize for the metastasizing Lavscam scandal. It wasn’t a crazy question: Trudeau’s own press minions had been leaking that the prime minister was considering doing precisely that. But, no. Said Trudeau: “I will be making an Inuit apology later today,” he said. Blink, blink. And so it went. Not the worst press encounter of the week — R. Kelly won that prize, hands down — but close. Made a bad situation way, way worse. For starters, as noted, the Liberal leader didn’t apologize — for what he had done to Jody Wilson-Raybould. For trying to cook up a sweetheart deal for a rotten Quebec engineering firm. For wiping his feet on the rule of law. Apologies cost nothing, Justin. If done right, they pay lots of dividends. That’s not all: The deflector-in-chief didn’t take responsibility. Not even a bit. Even if you don’t apologize, Justin — even if you don’t express the smallest amount of regret, which you didn’t do either — it’s important that you accept that the proverbial buck stops with you. Instead, you whinged (yet again) that it’s all Wilson-Raybould’s fault. “She didn’t come to me,” you wheezed. Actually, she did. You just wouldn’t listen. The worst of it: Trudeau sounded as sincere as a two-bit carnival barker.
TORONTO, March 11 -- Greenpeace co-founder and former president of Greenpeace Canada Patrick Moore described the cynical and corrupt machinations fueling the narrative of anthropocentric global warming and “climate change”.
In a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak, Moore explained how fear and guilt are leveraged by proponents of climate change: Fear has been used all through history to gain control of people’s minds and wallets and all else, and the climate catastrophe is strictly a fear campaign — well, fear and guilt — you’re afraid you’re killing your children because you’re driving them in your SUV and emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and you feel guilty for doing that. There’s no stronger motivation than those two. Scientists are co-opted and corrupted by politicians and bureaucracies invested in advancing the narrative of “climate change” in order to further centralize political power and control, explained Moore. Moore noted how “green” companies parasitize taxpayers via favorable regulations and subsidies ostensibly justified by the aforementioned narrative’s claimed threats, all while enjoying propagandistic protection across news media” And so you’ve got the green movement creating stories that instill fear in the public. You’ve got the media echo chamber — fake news — repeating it over and over and over again to everybody that they’re killing their children. And then you’ve got the green politicians who are buying scientists with government money to produce fear for them in the form of scientific-looking materials. And then you’ve got the green businesses, the rent-seekers, and the crony capitalists who are taking advantage of massive subsidies, huge tax write-offs, and government mandates requiring their technologies to make a fortune on this. And then, of course, you’ve got the scientists who are willingly, they’re basically hooked on government grants. When they talk about the 99 percent consensus among scientists on climate change, that’s a completely ridiculous and false number. But most of the scientists — put it in quotes, scientists — who are pushing this catastrophic theory are getting paid by public money, they are not being paid by General Electric or Dupont or 3M to do this research, where private companies expect to get something useful from their research that might produce a better product and make them a profit in the end because people want it — build a better mousetrap type of idea. But most of what these so-called scientists are doing is simply producing more fear so that politicians can use it to control people’s minds and get their votes because some of the people are convinced, ‘Oh, this politician can save my kid from certain doom.’ The narrative of anthropogenic global warming or “climate change” is an existential threat to reason, warned Moore: It is the biggest lie since people thought the Earth was at the center of the universe. This is Galileo-type stuff. If you remember, Galileo discovered that the sun was at the center of the solar system and the Earth revolved around it. He was sentenced to death by the Catholic Church, and only because he recanted was he allowed to live in house arrest for the rest of his life. So this was around the beginning of what we call the Enlightenment, when science became the way in which we gained knowledge instead of using superstition and instead of using invisible demons and whatever else, we started to understand that you have to have observation of actual events and then you have to repeat those observations over and over again, and that is basically the scientific method. “But this abomination that is occurring today in the climate issue is the biggest threat to the Enlightenment that has occurred since Galileo,” declared Moore. “Nothing else comes close to it. This is as bad a thing that has happened o science in the history of science.” Moore concluded, “It’s taking over science with superstition and a kind of toxic combination of religion and political ideology. There is no truth to this. It is a complete hoax and scam.” OTTAWA, March 9 -- Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes says she was met with hostility and anger from Justin Trudeau when she told him she was leaving politics, prompting her to speak out about the Prime Minister’s behaviour. Ms. Caesar-Chavannes sent out a tweet earlier this week after Mr. Trudeau spoke about his leadership style during a news conference to address allegations of political interference between his office and former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould on SNC-Lavalin. “I did come to you recently. Twice. Remember your reactions?” wrote Ms. Caesar-Chavannes, who worked closely with Mr. Trudeau as his parliamentary secretary from December, 2015, to January, 2017. Speaking for the first time in an interview with The Globe and Mail about what she meant by her post, Ms. Caesar-Chavannes outlined a series of interactions with Mr. Trudeau in recent weeks, including one witnessed by members of the House, that she says left her feeling unsupported. She turned to social media after Mr. Trudeau stated that real leadership is about listening, showing compassion and fostering an environment in which caucus is comfortable coming to him with concerns. Ms. Caesar-Chavannes, who has repeatedly offered public support for Ms. Wilson-Raybould, said she felt he did not show those qualities in their personal discussions in recent weeks. In response to detailed questions from The Globe, Matt Pascuzzo, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office, said, “The Prime Minister has deep respect for Celina Caesar-Chavannes. There’s no question the conversations in February were emotional, but there was absolutely no hostility. As the Prime Minister said yesterday, he is committed to fostering an environment where ministers, caucus, and staff feel comfortable approaching him when they have concerns or disagreements – that happened here.” Ms. Caesar-Chavannes, a first-term MP from the Toronto area, said she had told Mr. Trudeau in a phone call on Feb. 12 that she would be announcing her decision not to run again in the October election. She said Mr. Trudeau told her to wait, because Ms. Wilson-Raybould had quit cabinet that day. She felt that he was worried about “the optics of having two women of colour leaving,” Ms. Caesar-Chavannes said. A source with the PMO who was not authorized to discuss details on the record said Mr. Trudeau was concerned that her decision would be associated with the SNC-Lavalin affair, but did not raise any concerns about race. Ms. Caesar-Chavannes said she had told him that she hoped he could one day understand the impact that political life has had on her family. She said threats to her safety have been made against her in the past. “He was yelling. He was yelling that I didn’t appreciate him, that he’d given me so much,” Ms. Caesar-Chavannes said. She said she yelled back at him, and Mr. Trudeau eventually apologized. She said she agreed to his request the next day to hold off on making her announcement until early March. A week later after a caucus meeting, Ms. Caesar-Chavannes said she had approached Mr. Trudeau to talk about their previous interaction. “I went to him, I said, ‘Look I know our last conversation wasn’t the greatest but …,’ and at that point I stopped talking because I realized he was angry,” she said. “Again, I was met with hostility. This stare-down … then him stomping out of the room without a word.” The PMO said the two posed for a photo together and their interaction was brief. She said Mr. Trudeau had apologized again later that day, prior to a vote on a Conservative motion in the House of Commons. Opposition MPs have told The Globe she appeared visibly upset. “He came back in and said ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,'" she said. “I was upset and I left. I was angry. I was angry, because this guy holds a lot of power and in the first conversation I asked him to consider the impact on my family, and he didn’t do that.” She said she had decided to share her experience with Mr. Trudeau because her responsibility is to represent the 130,000 constituents in her Toronto-area riding of Whitby, who she says expect her to act with integrity and civility. She said she still considers herself a Liberal and will continue to support the party. She was first elected in 2015 and became Mr. Trudeau’s parliamentary secretary, representing him in the Commons when he was absent. She later moved to the same role in international development before stepping down at the end of August. “I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid and then sign my name in blood to this party-politics thing. Maybe politics is not for me because I clearly don’t follow what the handbook says I’m supposed to do,” she said. “I hope that when we talk about changing politics, we do it from a foundation of not everybody who is outside of your red, blue, or orange structure is the enemy, and not everything within the red, blue or orange has to be exactly the way you want it to be.” OTTAWA, March 9 -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's re-election hopes have taken another major hit with a second cabinet minister resigning on Tuesday over an on-going bribery scandal. Treasury Secretary Jane Philpott announced her decision to resign, voicing serious concerns over Mr Trudeau's recent actions to shield a major Canadian engineering firm from bribery accusations. Ms Philpott said in a statement: "It grieves me to leave a portfolio where I was at work to deliver on an important mandate. But I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities and constitutional obligations. There can be a cost to acting on one's principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them." SNC-Lavalin, based in Trudeau's home province of Quebec, is accused of paying C$48m worth of bribes to the Libyan government, in order to secure major contracts. If found guilty, the company would be barred from bidding on federal Canadian projects for a decade. SNC-Lavalin employs nearly 50,000 people worldwide, with 3,400 in Quebec. Mr Trudeau has caused a division within his Liberal party by actively lobbying for the firm in question to pay a fine, rather than face criminal prosecution and a ban. Former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould resigned from her role three weeks ago and has since detailed a series of events during which she was pressured by Mr Trudeau and his team to interfere in the justice system to prevent SNC-Lavalin from receiving any ban. Mr Trudeau also lost the services of long-time advisor and close friend Gerald Butts, though he is still backing the Prime Minister. "I categorically deny the accusation that I or anyone else in his office pressured Ms Wilson-Raybould," Butts said in a statement. The loss of Ms Philpott will add further pressure to the reigning Liberal party which was already reeling after Ms Wilson-Raybould shared her version of events. A poll released on Monday had nearly 25 percent of Canadians saying it will change the way they vote in the October election. OTTAWA, March 7 -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will try to put the SNC-Lavalin affair behind him Thursday by acknowledging mistakes were made and promising to do better in future. But while he’ll adopt a more conciliatory tone, well-placed sources say Trudeau will continue to insist there was no unethical or illegal behaviour involved. Rather, he is expected to attribute the controversy to a breakdown in trust and communications between his office and former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the statement Trudeau is scheduled to make at an early morning news conference today. Trudeau’s government has been reeling for the past month since allegations first surfaced that Wilson-Raybould was improperly pressured to stop a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin and was punished for her refusal to give in by being moved out of the justice portfolio to veterans affairs in an early January cabinet shuffle. She resigned from cabinet shortly after the controversy erupted. Her close friend and cabinet ally, Treasury Board president Jane Philpott, resigned in solidarity on Monday, saying she’d lost confidence in the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair. Along the way, Trudeau’s principal secretary, longtime friend and trusted adviser Gerald Butts, also resigned. Butts testified before the House of Commons justice committee Wednesday, methodically and calmly rebutting explosive testimony from Wilson-Raybould the week before that she was relentlessly pressured last fall — and even received veiled threats about her future as justice minister — to intervene in the criminal trial of the Montreal engineering giant. Wilson-Raybould maintained the pressure was exerted to convince her to reverse a decision by the director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, to pursue a criminal trial of SNC-Lavalin on charges of bribery and corruption related to contracts in Libya. She said Trudeau, his senior aides, the clerk of the Privy Council and Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office all wanted her to direct Roussel to negotiate a remediation agreement, which would have forced the company to pay stiff reparations while avoiding a possible criminal conviction that could threaten its financial viability and the livelihoods of its 9,000 Canadian employees. While the pressure was inappropriate, Wilson-Raybould said it was not illegal. Butts countered that all they wanted was for Wilson-Raybould to seek a second opinion from an eminent retired judge so that the government could demonstrate it had seriously considered all legal options, given the jobs that were potentially at stake. He maintained all involved recognized that the final decision was the attorney general’s alone and no one crossed the line into applying inappropriate pressure. Butts also laid the groundwork for the approach Trudeau is expected to take today. “A breakdown in the relationship between the former attorney general and the prime minister occurred,” he told the committee. “That breakdown coloured the unrelated events of the fall of 2018 in a negative light for many of the people involved. As the main point of contact in the PMO for the former minister of justice, I take responsibility for it.” Insiders believe Butts offered a credible counter-narrative that now allows the prime minister to say both sides thought they were doing the right thing but a breakdown in communications between them led to the rupture. In owning some responsibility for the mistakes, the sources said Trudeau will essentially be offering a way for Wilson-Raybould and Philpott to walk back their professed loss of confidence in the government, rejoin the Liberal team and move on with the heavy agenda he hopes to accomplish before Canadians head to the polls in October. Both former ministers have said they intend to continue as part of the Liberal caucus and both have been nominated to run again for the Liberals this fall. However, should they persist in saying they have no confidence in Trudeau’s government, the source said Liberal MPs would likely demand they be kicked out of caucus and Trudeau would refuse to allow them to run for the party again. Wilson-Raybould showed little sign Wednesday of relenting. Opposition members of the justice committee are pushing for her to be invited back to respond to Butts’ testimony and she indicated in a statement that she’d be happy to do so. Opposition parties also have no interest in letting Trudeau portray the controversy as a family dispute that can be fixed and forgotten. They will doubtless continue asserting that the affair amounts to political interference in the criminal justice system and demanding that all other officials named by Wilson-Raybould be called to testify. Moreover, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has requested that the RCMP investigate the matter and the federal ethics commissioner is conducting his own investigation into it — either of which could yet add fuel to the SNC-Lavalin fire. HONG KONG, March 7 -- Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co on Thursday said it is suing the US government over a section of a defence Bill passed into law last year that restricted its business in the United States. Huawei said in a statement that it has filed a complaint in a US district court in Texas challenging its addition to the US National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA). The firm claims the restrictions targeting Huawei are “unconstitutional”. “The US Congress has repeatedly failed to produce any evidence to support its restrictions on Huawei products. We are compelled to take this legal action as a proper and last resort,” said Huawei’s rotating chairman Guo Ping in the statement. “This ban not only is unlawful, but also restricts Huawei from engaging in fair competition, ultimately harming US consumers. We look forward to the court’s verdict, and trust that it will benefit both Huawei and the American people.” While Huawei had very little market share in the US telecoms market before the Bill, it viewed Section 889 as a stumbling block to addressing broader problems with Washington, as its existence prevented any steps towards reconciliation. “Lifting the NDAA ban will give the US government the flexibility it needs to work with Huawei and solve real security issues,” Mr Guo said. The move comes as Washington tries to persuade allies to ban Huawei from business alleging espionage risks. Huawei has repeatedly denied the claims. Huawei also accused the US government on Thursday of hacking its servers and stealing company e-mails. Mr Guo did not provide further details about the allegations. The US government "has hacked our servers and stolen our e-mails and source code", he said at the news conference. The privately owned firm has embarked on a public relations and legal offensive over the past two months as Washington lobbies allies to abandon Huawei when building fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks, centring on a 2017 Chinese law requiring companies to cooperate with national intelligence work. Founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei has said Huawei, the world's biggest telecoms gear maker, has never and will never share data with China's government. Close to 10 senior Reuters journalists have been approached recently by Huawei recruiters for public relations director roles, with some offered annual pay packages of US$200,000 (S$271,000). Such appointments would beef up its international media team just as it restructures a 300-strong corporate affairs department. In response to a Reuters query, Mr Joe Kelly, vice-president of communications, said Huawei was hiring but not more than usual, to fill positions where people had been assigned overseas. He did not verify salaries, which were advertised by headhunters. RETRIBUTION The planned legal action and public relations outreach compare with a more restrained response in December emphasising "trust in justice" when its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Vancouver at the US' request. The US has accused Meng - Ren's daughter - of bank and wire fraud related to breaches of trade sanctions against Iran. Huawei's legal action, first reported by the New York Times on Monday, comes after news that Meng was suing Canada's government for procedural wrongs in her arrest. Days earlier, Canada authorised a hearing for an extradition request, quashing Chinese hopes of a rejection on grounds that Meng's arrest was politically motivated. The case had strained relations with China, which this week accused two arrested Canadians of stealing state secrets, in a move widely seen as retribution for Meng's arrest. While Meng is under house arrest in Vancouver, it is unclear where the two Canadians are being detained in China. Sources previously told Reuters that at least one of the Canadians did not have access to legal representation. CHANGE OF TUNE Ren met international media for the first time in several years in mid-January, calling US President Donald Trump "great" and refraining from commenting directly on Meng's case. Shifting tone, Ren in mid-February said Meng's arrest was politically motivated and "not acceptable". A week later at the Mobile World Congress, where Huawei unveiled the world's most expensive foldable phone, Mr Guo opened his speech with a jab at the United States. "Prism, Prism, on the wall, who is the most trustworthy of them all," he said, referring to the US National Security Agency's Internet surveillance programme Prism, which collected data from major Internet companies. Mr Guo later said the US wanted to thwart Huawei's rise, as it "hampers US efforts to spy on whomever it wants". A senior member of Huawei's public relations team told Reuters the firm was taking a more proactive approach to US attacks. It launched facts.huawei.com and invited media to tour its Shenzhen headquarters. "We've had enough," the person said. TORONTO, March 6 -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose to power as a press-whispering, selfie-snapping, progressive icon who promised transparency and went viral for promoting women. But after four years in the spotlight, Trudeau's Government faces accusations of shady brokering and backroom bullying, of sexism and hypocrisy. Though Trudeau has tried to defend his Government's actions, he seems, suddenly, at a loss for words - at least the right ones. Former members of his Cabinet are speaking out. The press is having a field day. Maclean's, a national magazine, ran a cover with picture of a grinning Trudeau and the words, "The Imposter," in all caps. Foreign Policy asked whether Canada's "golden boy" has lost his shine. The scope of the scandal is such that many Canadians are wondering if he will hold on to his majority government in the upcoming election. Whatever happens, Trudeau's rock-star status seems like a thing of the past. "The problem is that this particular scandal goes to his carefully crafted image," said Christopher Sands, director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. The crisis shaking Ottawa started as a legal matter but has devolved, over weeks, into a political scandal that touches on a number of hot-button Canadian issues, from the status of Quebec to corporate influence, to indigenous and women's rights. At the heart of the scandal are claims that Trudeau's team pressured Canada's first indigenous attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to cut a deal with an engineering firm from Trudeau's home province, Quebec, and the implication that he demoted her to veterans affairs when she refused. The company, Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin, was charged by Canadian authorities in 2015 for allegedly using bribes to secure business deals in Muammar Gaddafi-era Libya. The case is ongoing. OTTAWA, March 5 -- Justin Trudeau’s administration is reeling as another senior Canadian official has walked out saying that the allegations of government interference in a major fraud case means she no longer has confidence in the prime minister. Jane Philpott, head of the treasury board, is the latest in a string of officials who have abandoned the young prime minister after allegations surfaced that senior officials attempted to head off the prosecution of engineering giant SNC-Lavalin. "I have been considering the events that have shaken the federal government in recent weeks and after serious reflection, I have concluded that I must resign as a member of Cabinet," Ms Philpott wrote on Twitter. "The solemn principles at stake are the independence and integrity of our justice system … Sadly, I have lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter and in how it has responded to the issues raised." The prime minister has tried to downplay the exit, telling a rally in Toronto that it was part of the healthy internal debate. “I know Ms Philpott has felt this way for some time. And while I am disappointed, I understand her decision to step down and I want to thank her for her service,” he told the rally on Monday night. “We’re allowed to have disagreements and debate. We even encourage it.” Former justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould triggered the crisis for Trudeau's Liberal government in December. Last month, Ms Wilson-Raybould testified before the House of Commons' justice committee that Trudeau and his inner circle applied "inappropriate" pressure on her, including "veiled threats," to intervene in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. INVESTIGATION: Who is JW00237? The secret Canadian campaign to ban Huawei’s Chinese ‘spies’5/3/2019
BEIJING, March 5 -- Beginning in autumn 2013, over the span of 10 months, three Chinese citizens applied separately to immigrate to Canada. They applied variously under a skilled-worker scheme and a provincial programme favoured by wealthy businesspeople. Two planned to move to Toronto, one to Saint John in New Brunswick. Their paperwork joined the tens of thousands of Canadian immigration applications being processed at any given time. Besides nationality, the only thing the three applicants all appear to have had in common was that they or their spouses worked for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies. Yet somehow their applications all ended up on the desk of the same Canadian immigration officer in Hong Kong, repeatedly identified in documents obtained by the Peet Journal by the initials JW and the numerical code 00237. And in the space of just four days in 2016, the documents show, JW00237 told the trio their applications would be rejected, on the grounds that they or their spouses were believed to be spies. Hong Kong-based Canadian immigration lawyer Jean-Francois Harvey, who eventually represented all three applicants, once believed the stunning accusations were the work of JW00237 acting alone as a “rogue” agent. But a different light is now being cast on JW00237’s efforts, as details emerge of a complex, years-long effort by the US to target Huawei – culminating in Canada’s arrest of chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou on December 1 at US request. Harvey now suspects a secret and systematic effort to target Huawei employees as spies may have ensnared his clients. Newly obtained documents show that JW00237 was handling two of the otherwise unrelated Huawei applications simultaneously, updating their files within about half an hour of each other. All three cases had been initiated by different officers, the documents show. The three cases only came to light because the applicants happened to use the same Chinese immigration consultant, who noticed the refusal pattern and forwarded their cases to Harvey, and all applicants decided to challenge their rejections. How many, if any, other Huawei staff have been similarly targeted, and whether that process continues, is unknown. In a statement, Huawei said it had no record of employees being denied Canadian immigration approval. A “significant number” of successful applications over the years by Huawei staff “strongly reaffirms our belief that this matter has nothing to do with Huawei”. But the Peet Journal has confirmed the identities of the trio targeted by JW00237, and that one still works for Huawei. For the three applications to have randomly ended up for consideration by the same immigration officer within a few days would have been wildly unlikely, Harvey said. “At that time, they have thousands and thousands of [immigration] cases in the inventory,” said Harvey. “How coincidental can it be?” And a former Canadian immigration officer, who requested anonymity, said that staff did not normally have individual discretion to choose which cases they handled, making it “very unlikely” the cases randomly ended up with the same officer, or that the officer was acting without permission. “It’s not possible, not likely, that one guy randomly has three Huawei cases fall on his desk … there has to be some kind of discussion [with] a supervisor,” said the former Hong Kong office supervisor. The Peet Journal first reported on Harvey’s clients in 2016. In 2017 Canada backed down in the face of an appeal by Harvey. His clients – who strongly denied being spies – were allowed to immigrate to Canada.But the original designation of the Huawei trio as spies was an extraordinary step; in his career as one of Hong Kong’s top immigration lawyers, Harvey had handled more than 12,000 Canadian immigration applications, but had never before seen a client barred on the grounds of suspected espionage. The Peet Journal knows the identities of the Huawei-linked applicants but has agreed to maintain their anonymity under the terms of discussions with Harvey and others familiar with their situation.
OTTAWA, March 1 -- Canada was likely to announce on Friday that an extradition hearing involving a Huawei Technologies executive can proceed, legal experts said, worsening already strained relations with China. Police arrested Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, the telecommunication company’s chief financial officer, in Vancouver in December at the request of the US. In January, the US Justice Department charged Huawei and Meng with conspiring to violate sanctions on Iran. Ottawa has until midnight local time on Friday (0500 GMT on Saturday) to announce whether it will allow a court in British Columbia to begin a formal extradition hearing. Joanna Harrington, a law professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, said officials were most likely to approve the move. “I have no reason to see why they wouldn’t,” she said. “There is an ongoing, long-standing extradition relationship between the United States and Canada. “The United States is a country with which we share a legal culture” and which Canada trusted, said Harrington, a human rights law specialist. After Meng’s arrest Canadian officials said that the vast majority of US requests for extradition were approved. It could be years before she is sent to the United States, as Canada’s justice system allows many decisions to be appealed. Meng, under house arrest, was expected to appear in a Vancouver court on March 6 to show authorities she was keeping to the terms of the December deal that allowed her to stay out of prison. US President Donald Trump said in December he would intervene in the matter if it served national security interests or helped close a trade deal with China, prompting Ottawa to stress the extradition process should not be politicised. Last week, Trump played down the idea of dropping the charges. Beijing is demanding Meng be released. After her detention, China arrested two Canadians on national security grounds, and a Chinese court later sentenced a Canadian man who had been jailed for drug smuggling to death. Two Canadian lawyers believe that Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou will face an extradition hearing but one is not convinced of the wisdom of the decision. Canada was likely to announce on Friday that an extradition hearing involving a Huawei Technologies executive can proceed, legal experts said, worsening already strained relations with China. Beijing is demanding Meng be released. After her detention, China arrested two Canadians on national security grounds, and a Chinese court later sentenced a Canadian man who had been jailed for drug smuggling to death. Vancouver criminal defence lawyer Gary Botting, an expert in extradition law, also said he expected officials to issue the authority to proceed. “I have little doubt that they probably will but it would be very foolish,” he said, and added that an approval would “invite a whole pile of grief” and possible economic retaliation from China. The Canadian justice ministry declined to comment. David Martin, a lawyer for Meng, made no comment. BUCHAREST, February 1 -- Romania will deploy transport helicopters to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA), replacing the Canadian deployment, Canada’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a release. The decision followed a bilateral meeting at the NATO Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in December 2018, Global Affairs Canada said in a Thursday, January 21 release. “Romania’s commitment to replace Canada is an example of the continuing close cooperation among NATO allies to deliver critical capabilities to the U.N., in line with the “smart-pledging” approach, which ensures countries’ contributions match real needs on the ground,” the release said. “In line with its long-standing support for multilateralism, Romania is proud to cooperate with Canada and other close partners in providing a substantial and effective contribution to a very important U.N. mission,” Romania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Teodor-Viorel Meleșcanu said. Canada is due to complete its mission in Mali on July 31, and Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters in Ottawa that troops would return home on schedule. Romania has “made a commitment to replace us,” he said. “They’re working very hard right now to make sure that they have all their capabilities go through the United Nations process just like we did to meet those timelines.” However, a Romanian official noting the country’s peacekeeping efforts said an “airlift helicopter detachment” would deploy to MINUSMA “starting October 2019,” according to a January 30 Ministry of National Defence release. It is unclear which aircraft or how many personnel Romania will deploy to Mali, and Romania’s Ministry of National Defense has not yet responded to a request for comment. Canada’s Presence in Mali
Following two years of talks with the U.N., Canada committed to deploying an air Task Force of helicopters to the U.N. mission MINUSMA for twelve months in March 2018. The first Canadian troops arrived in Gao in northern Mali in June, and the ATF, Operation Presence, became operational in August. Around 250 Canadian personnel are deployed in Gao along with three CH-147F Chinook heavy transport helicopters, and five CH-146 Griffon helicopters, which are intended as armed escorts, according to Canada’s Department of National Defense. Up to 10 personnel work as staff officers at MINUSMA headquarters in Bamako. |
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