By Canadian Press

In The News for June 20: Did last night’s byelections change anything in Ottawa?

Jun 20, 2023 | 1:17 AM

In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of Tuesday, June 20, 2023 …

What we are watching in Canada …

Four byelections have returned seats back to the Liberals and Conservatives in strongholds many observers expected to remain status quo. 

The federal Conservatives’ Branden Leslie cruised to victory in the southern Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar over People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier. Leslie captured nearly 65 per cent of the vote. Bernier, whose fledgling party had its best showing yet in the riding during the 2021 federal election, came up short in his effort to regain a seat in the House of Commons, getting only 17.2 per cent of votes.

The race for Winnipeg South Centre saw Ben Carr, son of the late Jim Carr who held the riding for the Liberals and had served in cabinet, easily recapture the seat with a little more than 54 per cent support from voters.

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Anna Gainey, a former Liberal party president and former policy adviser to cabinet ministers, nabbed 50.8 per cent of the vote to keep Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount red, following the resignation of former cabinet minister Marc Garneau. 

The tightest byelection race was in the rural Ontario Conservative stronghold of Oxford, which elected Arpan Khanna as its new member of Parliament with more than 43 per cent of votes tallied.

However, a stronger-than-usual Liberal vote emerged after controversy erupted when David MacKenzie, the riding’s former Tory MP, announced he was backing the Liberal candidate, following his disapproval of the party’s handling of Khanna, who he said parachuted into the community. 

In the 2021 federal election, the Conservatives nabbed about 47 per cent of the vote, compared to the Liberals’ roughly 20 per cent. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 20, 2023. 

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Also this …

Equifax Canada says new data suggests a significant shift in credit usage among businesses in the first quarter of 2023.

The agency says the latest numbers highlight growing financial stress in the industrial and financial trades, as well as cast doubt on the stability of the Canadian economy.

Equifax says businesses’ total outstanding balance on bank-issued instalment loans declined by 2.4 per cent from the first quarter last year.

However, credit card balances grew by 15 per cent and lines of credit increased by 11 per cent.

Equifax Canada’s head of commercial solutions Jeff Brown says in a press release that the decline in installment loans and the shift towards credit card usage could be impeding businesses’ growth potential and hindering their ability to make larger investments.

The first quarter also saw a slowdown in new business openings, which Equifax says is a concerning trend.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

Homeless people in California are already a vulnerable group, often struggling with poor health, trauma and deep poverty before they lose their housing, according to a new study on adult homelessness.

The study released Tuesday by the University of California, San Francisco attempts to capture a comprehensive picture of how people become homeless in California, and what impeded their efforts at finding permanent housing. The representative survey of nearly 3,200 homeless people found that when they lost housing, their median household income was $960 a month, and for renters on leases it was $1,400 a month, of which on average half went to rent.

Homelessness is a national crisis, and all too pervasive in California, where an estimated 171,000 people — or 30% of all homeless people in the U.S. — are homeless. Political leaders are divided over how to address the crisis, with some, including Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, favouring tent encampment sweeps and a tough-love approach toward those with mental health and addiction issues.

It is not groundbreaking news that the state’s exorbitant housing costs are a major driver behind homelessness, but researchers at the UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative hope that the study will strengthen public support for policies that focus on offering housing and emergency rental assistance — rather than policies emphasizing punishment or stigma.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said, the latest death in a surge of violence that has wracked the region.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said late Monday that 21-year-old Zakaria al-Zaoul was shot in the head in the town of Husan, west of Bethlehem. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that he was killed during clashes with the military.

The Israeli military said a suspect threw a firebomb at troops stationed along a West Bank highway near Husan. The troops responded with live fire and confirmed a hit, the army said.

Israel and the Palestinians have been gripped by months of violence, focused mainly in the West Bank, where at least 126 Palestinians have been killed this year.

Tuesday saw one of the fiercest days of fighting, including the use of Israeli helicopter gunships in the West Bank and Palestinian militants detonating a large roadside bomb under an Israeli armoured vehicle.

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On this day in 1942 …

A Japanese submarine fired 25 to 30 shells at the lighthouse at Estevan Point, B.C. Thanks to poor aim, there were no casualties and little damage from the first shelling of Canadian territory since 1812.

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In entertainment …

The mosh pit must have been intense at Bonnaroo last weekend. 

Police in Manchester, Tennessee, say they responded to multiple 9-1-1 calls on the Bonnaroo grounds that were made by accident. 

It appears the calls were a result of the new Apple iPhone feature “Crash Detection Mode.” 

It automatically calls for help when it believes a user has been in an automobile crash. 

Organizers for the music festival later sent out directions on how to disable the feature.

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Did you see this?

A rescue operation was underway deep in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on Monday in search of a technologically advanced submersible vessel carrying five people to document the wreckage of the Titanic, the iconic ocean liner that sank more than a century ago.

The vessel was reported overdue Sunday night about 700 kilometres south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lt. Cmdr. Len Hickey said a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and military aircraft were assisting the search effort, which was being led by the U.S. Coast Guard in Boston.

Rear Adm. John Mauger, a commander for the U.S. Coast Guard, said additional resources would arrive in the coming days.

“It is a remote area — and it is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area,” he said. “But we are deploying all available assets to make sure we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board.”

According to the Coast Guard, the craft submerged Sunday morning, and its support vessel, the Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 20, 2023

The Canadian Press