Trudeau in Glasgow and this year’s Silver Cross Mother: In The News for Nov. 1

Leaders’ summits are only held at every fifth meeting and the Glasgow negotiations are a year delayed because of COVID-19.

Canada’s emissions have risen more than three per cent since 2016, the most of any G7 nation, but Trudeau has substantially upped the ante in his climate plan over the last 12 months.

That includes promising to end the sale of gas-powered cars and create an emissions-free power grid, both by 2035, as well as capping emissions from oil and gas and then forcing them downward, by no later than 2025.

The COP 26 meeting comes on the heels of a G20 summit in Rome that Trudeau characterized as a partial victory.

“There’s no question that Canada and a number of other countries would have liked stronger language and stronger commitments on the fight against climate change than others,” Trudeau said at his closing news conference.

“But we did make significant progress on recognizing 1.5 degrees is the ambition we need to share.”

The leaders’ final communique saw them agree for the first time in writing that limiting global warming to 1.5 C would be better for everyone, but did not offer specific timelines for hitting net zero carbon emissions and eliminating coal power.

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What we are watching in Canada …

VANCOUVER — A battle for control of Rogers Communications Inc. will make its way to B.C. Supreme Court today.

The hearing stems from a petition filed by Edward Rogers last week that asks the court to declare legitimate a board he formed after being ousted as chair last month.

The son of late Rogers founder Ted Rogers claims he has the power to fire and appoint board members because he is chair of the Rogers Control Trust, which holds voting control through its ownership of 97 per cent of the company’s Class A shares.

His mother Loretta Rogers, sisters Melinda Rogers-Hixon and Martha Rogers and their associates say Edward Rogers’ board is illegitimate and the only valid board is the one that existed prior to his changes.

The dispute has left the telecom company with two boards that each claim to be in power and has publicly pitted members of the Rogers family against one another.

The court case, which will decide which board controls Rogers, will be presided over by judge Shelley Colleen Fitzpatrick.

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Also this …

OTTAWA — The mom of a soldier killed when a roadside bomb struck the armoured vehicle she was driving in Afghanistan 12 years ago has been named this year’s Silver Cross mother by the Royal Canadian Legion.

Josée Simard of Quebec’s Bas-Saint-Laurent region says her daughter, army corporal Karine Blais, was a vibrant, outgoing young woman with a mischievous streak.

Blais was 21 when the reconnaissance vehicle she was steering struck an improvised explosive device near Kandahar just two weeks into her first tour in 2009.

She was the only Quebecer killed in Canada’s 12-year campaign in Afghanistan, part of a U-S-led effort that came to a chaotic end in August when the Taliban retook the country.

Her mother says the loss of one of her four children and stepchildren shattered the family, but that her spirit lives on in their memories.

“She was a dream child,” she said.

“Now we take a new breath, we learn to live without her. But she is always present in our hearts.”

Simard will lay a wreath at the National War Memorial on Remembrance Day next week on behalf of all mothers who’ve lost children in service to Canada.

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And this …

EDMONTON — University researchers and drug developers in Edmonton are joining forces to create what they say will be Canada’s first facility that can take the latest scientific pharmaceutical insights from the lab through clinical trials to the marketplace.

The partnership, announced today, brings together a world-leading laboratory and an existing drug manufacturer to plug a hole in Canada’s drug supply system, said Andrew MacIsaac of Advanced Pharmaceutical Innovation, the not-for-profit corporation involved in the effort.

“It’s the first large-scale marrying of what API is doing and what researchers at a post-secondary institution are undertaking,” he said.

MacIsaac’s firm, which currently employs about 40 scientists at its Edmonton facility, is teaming up with the University of Alberta’s renowned Li Ka Shing Institute of Virology to form the Canadian Critical Drug Initiative.

“This was a good marriage for both,” said Lorne Tyrrell, institute co-director and the discoverer of the first oral treatment for hepatitis B.

Canada currently lacks the capacity to manufacture its own drug supply, a gap that became obvious when the federal government was trying to lock up supplies of COVID-19 vaccine. The federal government has since funded specific research and manufacturing facilities in Montreal, Winnipeg and Saskatoon.

But the Alberta effort would be unique in linking the lab bench and the drugstore shelf, as well as in the type and breadth of drugs it would help develop.

Michael Houghton, the institute’s other director and a Nobel laureate, said the initiative would focus on so-called “small-molecule” drugs — chemically synthesized drugs that make up the great majority of what’s in people’s medicine cabinets. Ibuprofen, for example, is a small-molecule drug.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is taking up challenges to a Texas law that has virtually ended abortion in the nation’s second largest state after six weeks of pregnancy.

The justices are hearing arguments today in two cases over whether abortion providers or the Justice Department can mount federal court challenges to the law, which has an unusual enforcement scheme its defenders argue shield it from federal court review.

In neither case is the constitutionality of the law directly at issue, but the motivation for both lawsuits is that the Texas ban conflicts with landmark Supreme Court rulings that prevent a state from banning abortion early in pregnancy.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

CANBERRA — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison denies lying to France’s President Emmanuel Macron while secretly negotiating a submarine deal with the United States and Britain.

The accusation has escalated a rift over Australia’s surprise cancelation of a French deal.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce suggested France was overreacting, saying, “we didn’t deface the Eiffel Tower.”

Australia dropped the contract for diesel-electric submarines to acquire nuclear-powered submarines instead.

Asked whether he thinks Morrison lied to him, Macron replied, “I don’t think, I know” he lied.

Australian government ministers criticized the French leader for the personal slight and said Morrison could not have disclosed details of the nuclear sub deal for national security reasons.

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In Sports …

ATLANTA — The place was rocking, the pearl-clad fans sensing this truly was going to be a special night, the kind they’d been hopefully marking on the calendar for more than a quarter-century.

Surely after Adam Duvall launched one into the tabled seats in right field for a grand slam in the very first inning, the Atlanta Braves would be celebrating their first World Series title since 1995.

On their home field, no less, the 5-year-old stadium-slash-shopping mall where they’d been unbeatable through seven postseason games.

Then, Halloween took a frightening turn — all tricks and no treats — and now, an entire city is on edge again.

Needing one win to finish off the Houston Astros, the Braves squandered the early 4-0 lead provided by Duvall and lost 9-5 in Game 5 on Sunday night, a listless performance that left Truist Field so quiet you could hear a pearl drop.

Atlanta still leads the best-of-seven series 3-2, can still wrap it up with one more win, but the teams are heading back to Texas for the final one or two games that will be needed to settle things.

No matter how it turns out, the A-T-L was denied the sort of hometown celebration that has been seen only one other time in the city’s tortured sports history.

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ICYMI …

CLEVELAND — Canadian musician Bryan Adams ducked out of a scheduled performance at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday night after testing positive for COVID-19.

His management team says Adams is fully vaccinated against the virus and is not experiencing any symptoms.

The rocker was to sing “It’s Only Love,” a duet he recorded with Tina Turner, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the ceremony.

Instead, Keith Urban took the stage with H.E.R. to perform the 1984 hit.

Turner had previously joined the Hall of Fame in 1991 as part of Ike and Tina Turner, but this year was inducted as a solo artist.

The 2021 class also includes Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, Carole King, The Go-Gos and Todd Rundgren.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2021

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Trudeau in Glasgow and this year’s Silver Cross Mother: In The News for Nov. 1

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