QUEBEC ELECTION HAS CAQ MAJORITY

   François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) will form the next majority government in Quebec, marking a first victory for the party and a stunning defeat for the Liberals.
   Standing on stage, a beaming Legault told the ecstatic crowd that Quebecers chose hope by electing a new government and ousting the Liberals. 
  “Today we made history,” Legault said. “Today many Quebecers set aside a debate that divided us for 50 years.”

CANADA HAS BEEN PLAYED

Trudeau talked about a free trade network now in place “from Singapore to Kiev”, helping to push merchandise trade to the highest levels in history. But, not to put too fine a point on it, Canada has been played.

Donald Trump used what he called “the power of tariffs” to bully his trading partners into capitulation. He made clear his intent to pull investment back into the U.S. and, despite his eccentricities, has managed to do exactly that.

We are now in a new era of managed trade, where the U.S. has the ability to cap Canada’s growth.

CONSEQUENCES OF CANCELLING CARDING

   And many police sources maintain the ongoing lack of community engagement — amplified by the disbanding of the proactive TAVIS program — has emboldened criminals and is a major reason gun violence is heating up across the GTA.
  Homicides at 81 this year are headed toward a new record in Toronto, 42 of them gun murders — almost double the rate seen in 2013.
Shootings are up more than 130% from just a few years ago and with three months remaining in 2018 the city is expected to smash its all-time record high of 89 homicides set back in 1991.

ALL STYLE, NO SUBSTANCE - TRUDEAU'S PERFECT FIT

  Before he hurried back to Ottawa to defend his government — fairly ineffectively — against a battering in the House of Commons, Canada’s prime minister was at the United Nations in New York doing something he’s good at: schmoozing, shaking hands and being generally cheerful.
  His goal was to win support for a vote that won’t happen until 2021, three years down the road. The vote is for a two-year stint in one of the temporary seats on the UN Security Council. Asked at his closing press conference for “something tangible” Canada would do with the seat, he responded that “one of the things we’ve seen is there’s an appetite for Canada’s approach and Canada’s solutions in growing the middle class, and promoting diversity as a strength.”

    Watching audience pining for a show of leadership, Canada’s prime minister was preoccupied with a temporary seat to be decided at a time he might no longer be prime minister, on a council whose five permanent members hold a veto that makes the other 10 members little more than interested observers. If there is a more acute example of the Trudeau government’s preoccupation with symbolism over action, and style over substance, it’s hard to imagine.

TAKE THE PAYCHECK? DO THE JOB.

  Governor General Julie Payette says the criticism she is facing at the end of her first year in office is a natural course of events and in a memo to her staff she says they shouldn’t let the critics get them down.
  “As you know, a number of recent news stories and commentaries have portrayed an unfavourable image of our work at the beginning of this mandate,” Payette wrote in an email to all Rideau Hall employees on Sept. 27.
“I sincerely regret if this has affected you and it shouldn’t in any way negatively impact the pride you take in your work and in being part of this office. Though not without challenges, the past year has been extraordinary. I am very proud of all we have achieved together to date and it is a privilege to work with such a dedicated and talented group of people.”
But some insiders are questioning what exactly Payette thinks she has achieved as she gets set to mark one year on the job on October 2, and their concerns are spilling into the public realm and media.

SUPERVISION & RESTRICTIONS AT HEALING LODGE

  The head of a women's healing lodge in Edmonton is defending both the safety and effectiveness of Canada's nine Indigenous healing lodges, in the wake of outrage over the relocation of convicted murderer Terri-Lynne McClintic to a healing lodge in Saskatchewan.
   "It's not a get-out-of-jail-free pass to come here," said Claire Carefoot, executive director of the Buffalo Sage Wellness House, a 28-bed urban facility that houses minimum-security inmates who have committed crimes ranging from murder to armed robbery.
  "We have the same kind of supervision and restrictions they have in a prison. Only we're doing it in a healing way."
   McClintic is serving a life sentence for the gruesome murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford in 2009. She was transferred from an Ontario medium-security prison to the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge, which is designed to rehabilitate offenders and has no fences.

NEW TRADE DEAL SIGNED

  Canada and the U.S. ended weeks of intense bargaining Sunday with a last-minute trade deal that gives American farmers major new access to the dairy market here, but preserves a dispute-resolution system the United States wanted killed.
It is to be renamed USMCA – United States Mexico Canada Agreement – after President Donald Trump said the name NAFTA had “bad connotations.”
The officials highlighted in particular that the U.S. had won a “substantial” increase in access to the Canadian dairy market, and that Canada had agreed to end the “class-seven” milk program that undercut American sales of a special dried-milk product.
  But Canada appeared to score a significant victory, as well, with the U.S. agreeing to keep intact the chapter-19 mechanism for resolving disputes over anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties, which American negotiators felt undermined the autonomy of their courts.