Trudeau government mum on Donald Trump conviction, vows to work with any U.S. leader
OTTAWA (CP) – The Canadian government is remaining quiet after a New York court convicted former U.S. president Donald Trump as a felon.
Trump, who is expected to lead the Republicans into the next U.S. election, was found guilty Thursday on all 34 counts in his criminal hush money trial.
The Prime Minister’s Office is not providing an immediate comment on the verdict, while Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly only says that Canada will work with whoever leads the U.S. after this fall’s election.
Eddie Sheppard, vice-president of the polling firm Abacus Data, said the Liberals have little to gain politically by talking about the Trump verdict, but even less to gain if Trump is headed for the White House.
Sheppard noted that surveys suggest Canadians feel the Conservatives would better manage a relationship with a Trump administration.
He added that Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre has been riding high in the polls.
In the past, Liberal partisans have frequently compared Canadian Conservatives to Trump Republicans, and accused Poilievre of what they characterize as “American-style” politics and “Trump North” tactics.
The Conservatives say the Liberals use such accusations to try to distract from the economic woes Canadians face.
Joly insists that her government will collaborate with any U.S. administration.
“The United States is not only our neighbour, but closest friend and ally,” her office wrote in a statement Friday.
“Our government has successfully worked with both Republican and Democratic administrations, and this will continue.”
Meanwhile, a Canadian immigration lawyer says Donald Trump is technically barred from crossing into Canada now that he is a convicted felon.
“Technically, upon him being convicted, he is now inadmissible to Canada,” said Mario Bellissimo, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer and policy analyst.
Given the number of convictions, Trump is likely to remain barred from crossing the Canadian border as a civilian until at least five years after he has served his sentence, Bellissimo said.
After that, he can apply for a “certificate of rehabilitation.”
Alternatively, Trump could apply for a visa if he had an especially compelling reason to come to Canada, the lawyer said, but it would be very difficult for most people to get one in the same circumstances.
However, Trump is anything but a conventional case.
The verdict makes Trump the first former American president to be found guilty of felony crimes, and comes just six months before the presidential election in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.
— With files from Dylan Robertson and The Associated Press
‘Unprecedented’: Human smuggling from B.C. to U.S. soars, using train, Uber and foot
By: Darryl Greer
VANCOUVER (CP) – In November last year, American border agents ordered that a freight train crossing into the U.S. be halted.
Homeland Security agent David Spitzer said in an affidavit that 13 Mexican nationals were discovered and many “attempted to abscond after the train was ordered to stop.”
But the scene didn’t take place on the U.S. border with Mexico — it unfolded just south of Vancouver, where American prosecutors and law enforcement officers say they’re dealing with a huge increase in human smuggling from British Columbia.
American officials say organized crime groups have employed a variety of methods to move their human cargo, such as hiding people among plastic pellets in freight trains or having them cross the border on foot, as well as racking up tens of thousands of dollars in Uber bills to transport them once across the border.
A U.S. crackdown on foot crossings is meanwhile taking place at Peace Arch Park, the unfenced park that straddles the border, in response to the increased operations of what U.S. Customs and Border Protection called “transnational criminal organizations.”
Matthew Murphy, an assistant special agent in charge with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations based in Washington state, said there had been a major spike in human smuggling through B.C.
“Last year we had record high numbers, higher numbers than we had in a decade, and this year we’re on pace to more than double that,” he said. “These are kind of unprecedented numbers in this area.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics show that “encounters” at the B.C.-Washington border — including apprehensions, expulsions and people being deemed inadmissible — are on track to quadruple since 2021. There were 42,913 encounters in the 2023 U.S. fiscal year, up from 12,345 two years earlier. In the first half of the current fiscal year, there have been 27,483 encounters.
The spike is also occurring across the entire northern border, with encounters up from 27,180 in 2021, to 189,402 last year.
Task force lambasted for holding firm on breast cancer screening advice
By: Nicole Ireland
Several cancer experts, surgeons and radiologists swiftly condemned a national task force’s draft decision not to lower the recommended routine breast cancer screening age to 40 on Thursday.
The criticisms were echoed by federal Health Minister Mark Holland, who said he was “concerned” and “disappointed” in the task force’s findings and wanted leading experts to review the guidelines. He also called for the public consultation period to be extended.
The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which provides guidance for primary health-care providers, said it is maintaining current advice that routine breast cancer screening start at age 50 and end after age 74.
Although they refrained from lowering the age for routine screening, the task force did suggest women age 40 to 49 be eligible for mammograms every two to three years if they want one after learning the harms and benefits of early screening, ideally from a conversation with their health-care provider.
The Canadian Cancer Society was also disappointed in the draft guidance.
“It places the onus on people to advocate for their own early detection and screening and gain access to a referral rather than being automatically invited to provincial and territorial (screening) programs,” the society said in a news release.
Dr. Jean Seely, head of the breast imaging section at the Ottawa Hospital, called the task force advice “bad news” that will lead to confusion for women in Canada.
“Unfortunately, we know that will lead to loss of lives. We know that by screening women, we save at least three out of every thousand women screened,” she said.
Seely was one of the experts who reviewed evidence to inform the guidance, and said the task force did not put enough emphasis on newer studies that show benefits to screening starting at age 40 and relied too heavily on randomized control trials that were conducted decades ago.
—With files from Laura Osman in Ottawa.
Liberal government’s own polling said Canadians worried about drug decriminalization
By: Stephanie Taylor
OTTAWA (CP) – Months before British Columbia sought to scale back its drug decriminalization pilot project, the federal government’s own polling suggested to officials that a majority of Canadians believed the policy would lead to an increase in overdoses.
The results of the 11-page survey by the Privy Council Office, the wing of the federal bureaucracy that supports the Prime Minister’s Office, also suggests Canadians were split over whether decriminalization would make their community any less safe.
“I guess what people are thinking is that (decriminalization) will somehow enable drug use,” said Thomas Kerr, a professor and head of the division of social medicine at the University of British Columbia and the director of research at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use.
Similar opinions were expressed over supervised drug consumption sites and even needle exchanges, Kerr says, adding that fears they would lead to increased use didn’t play out “in reality.”
He also said: “People have really overestimated the impacts of decriminalization, both positive and negative.”
Decriminalization has grown into a political lightning rod over recent weeks after the B.C. NDP government reversed course and asked that police again be empowered to arrest people or seize illicit drugs when they are being used in public spaces.
The move followed months of concern over public drug use, including inside hospitals.
The federal Conservatives have seized on the issue and pressed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to rule out granting a federal exemption to any other jurisdictions wishing to pursue decriminalization programs in an effort to curb opioid deaths.
Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre describes the policy as the legalization of hard drugs.
Federal Mental Health and Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks has defended the decision to allow B.C.’s pilot project as one tool to combat the overdose crisis, which she says is being fuelled by an increasingly toxic drug supply.
