Latest GDP figures, announcement on overdose crisis : In The News for May 31

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 May 31 …

What we are watching in Canada …

Statistics Canada will release its latest reading on economic growth this morning.

The agency is set to report its gross domestic product figures for March and the first quarter as a whole.

Real GDP rose 1.1 per cent in February, the largest monthly growth rate since March 2021.

Statistics Canada has also said its preliminary estimate for March pointed to growth of 0.5 per cent for the month.

The report comes a day ahead of the Bank of Canada’s interest rate announcement on Wednesday.

Economists expect the central bank to raise its key interest rate target by half a percentage point to 1.5 per cent in its continued effort to cool inflation.

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Also this …

The federal government is set to make what it’s calling an “important announcement” with the British Columbia government on the overdose crisis.

Mental Health and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett is scheduled to join her provincial counterpart, Sheila Malcolmson, in Vancouver today to provide details on what an advisory says is a public health approach focused on reducing harms and saving lives.

The announcement is expected to be related to B.C.’s application for an exemption from Canada’s drug laws to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illicit drugs for personal use by those aged 19 and up.

The province became the first in the country last November to apply for an exemption that was aimed at eliminating criminal penalties and reducing the stigma associated with substance use.

At the time, Malcolmson said fear and shame prevent people from seeking potentially life-saving care in a province that declared a public health emergency in 2016 over a record number of opioid-related deaths.

In April, she said Health Canada’s update on the province’s request suggested it would consider a lower threshold than that requested by the province, which wanted a cumulative 4.5 grams for opioids, cocaine and methamphetamine. 

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And this too …

A Toronto judge is set to give her instructions to the jury today in the sexual assault trial of Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Gillian Roberts will lay out the legal principles jurors must consider as they decide on a verdict, after which deliberations will begin.

Hoggard, 37, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault causing bodily harm and one of sexual interference, a charge that relates to the sexual touching of someone under 16.

Prosecutors allege the Hedley frontman violently and repeatedly raped a teenage fan and a young Ottawa woman in Toronto-area hotel rooms in separate incidents in the fall of 2016.

They allege he groped the teen after a Hedley show in Toronto in April 2016, when she was still 15.

Defence lawyers allege the groping never happened and the sexual encounters were consensual. They allege the complainants lied about being raped to cover up their embarrassment after being rejected by a “rock star.”

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

UVALDE, Texas _ It should have been the first day of a joyous week for Robb Elementary School students _ the start of summer break. Instead on Monday, the first two of 19 children slain inside a classroom were being remembered at funeral visitations.

The gathering for 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza was at Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home in Uvalde, Texas, directly across from the grade school where the children, along with two teachers, were shot to death on Tuesday before the gunman himself was killed. Visitation for another 10-year-old, Maite Rodriguez, was at the town’s other funeral home.

Over the next two-and-a-half traumatic weeks, people in the southwestern Texas town will say goodbye to the children and their teachers, one heart-wrenching visitation, funeral and burial after another. As family and friends unleash their grief, investigators will push for answers about how police responded to the shooting, and lawmakers have said they’ll consider what can be done to stem the gun violence permeating the nation.

This week alone, funerals are planned for 11 children and teacher Irma Garcia.

Funeral directors, embalmers and others from across Texas arrived to help. Jimmy Lucas, president of the Texas Funeral Directors Association, brought a hearse and volunteered to work as a driver, pitch in for services, or do whatever he could, he told NBC News. Other arriving morticians were there to help with facial reconstruction services given the damage caused by the shooter’s military-style rifle.

Gov. Greg Abbott, speaking at a Memorial Day event in Longview, urged Texans to keep Uvalde in their prayers.

“What happened in Uvalde was a horrific act of evil,” Abbott said. “And as Texans, we must come together and lift up Uvalde and support them in every way that we possibly can. It is going to take time to heal the devastation that the families there have gone through and are going through, But be assured, we will not relent until Uvalde recovers.”

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Sunday a review of the law enforcement response. Police have come under heavy criticism for taking well over an hour to kill Ramos inside the adjoining classrooms where he unleashed carnage. 

Officials revealed Friday that students and teachers repeatedly begged 911 operators for help as a police commander told more than a dozen officers to wait in a hallway. Officials said the commander believed the suspect was barricaded inside an adjoining classroom and that there was no longer an active attack.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

THE HAGUE, Netherlands _ Representatives of a group of nations working together to investigate war crimes in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are meeting in The Hague amid ongoing calls for those responsible for atrocities to be brought to justice.

Tuesday’s coordination meeting at the European Union’s judicial co-operation agency, Eurojust, of members of a Joint Investigation Team and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan comes as Russian forces continue to pound Ukrainian towns.

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has been widely condemned as an illegal act of aggression. Russian forces have been accused of killing civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and of repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure including hospitals and a theatre in the besieged city of Mariupol that was being used as a shelter by hundreds of civilians. An investigation by The Associated Press found evidence that the March 16 bombing killed close to 600 people inside and outside the building.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the AP and PBS series Frontline have verified 273 potential war crimes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has denounced killings of civilians as “genocide” and “war crimes,” while U.S. President Joe Biden has called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a war criminal” who should be brought to trial.

The joint investigation team, made up of Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland, that is meeting Tuesday in The Hague was established in late March, a few weeks after the ICC opened an investigation in Ukraine, after dozens of the court’s member states threw their weight behind an inquiry. Khan has visited Ukraine, including Bucha, and has a team of investigators in the country gathering evidence.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, will be among those at the meeting. Her office has already opened more than 8,000 criminal investigations related to the war and identified over 500 suspects, including Russian ministers, military commanders and propagandists. Last week, in the first case of its kind linked to the war, a Ukrainian court sentenced a captured Russian soldier to the maximum penalty of life in prison for killing a civilian.

Russia staunchly denies its troops are responsible for atrocities. The Defense Ministry said earlier this month that “not a single civilian has faced any violent action by the Russian military.”

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On this day in 1968 …

Canada’s first heart transplant was performed at the Montreal Heart Institute. A team headed by Dr. Pierre Grondin operated on 58-year-old Albert Murphy. The retired butcher died 46 hours later.

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In entertainment …

Canvases by leading figures in the U.S. and Canada’s abstract art movements are expected to fetch seven figures apiece at a Toronto-based auction.

A major work by American abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell is set to command the Heffel Fine Art Auction House’s spring sale Wednesday.

Auctioneers expect Motherwell’s 1972 canvas “August Sea #5” will hammer down for between $2 million and $2.5 million.

Quebec abstractionist Jean-Paul Riopelle has six works on offer ahead of the centennial celebration of his birth next year.

Riopelle’s 1953 palette-knife with drip canvas, “Sans titre,” is estimated to garner between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Heffel projects the 79 works in its spring catalogue will net between $10 million and $15 million. All estimates include auction house fees on top of the hammer price.

Heffel’s digital showroom will be streamed from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver as buyers place bids online, by phone or in absentia.

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Did you see this?

MONTREAL _ Researchers are having a hard time explaining why Quebec had the country’s highest official COVID-19 death toll despite a relatively low number of excess deaths between March 2020 and October 2021.

A new study released Monday by the Canadian Medical Association Journal tried to answer that question but came up short.

“I would say at this point it’s something we need to understand,” Kimberlyn McGrail, professor at University of British Columbia’s school of population and public health, said in an interview.

The study, “Excess mortality, COVID-19 and health-care systems in Canada,” says Quebec had 4,033 excess deaths between March 2020 and October 2021 but reported 11,470 COVID-19 fatalities _ almost three times more. It’s the biggest gap recorded in Canada during the pandemic. Excess deaths refer to the degree to which observed deaths exceed expected deaths based on modelling from previous years.

McGrail said she observed too many factors to offer a definitive answer.

“Quebec was an interesting case,” she said. “What we see is that in Quebec, you have these periods where there are high excess mortalities, but you also have periods where the excess mortality rates are below zero, meaning that there were less mortalities in those weeks than were predicted.”

Between February 2021 and July 2021, for example, Quebec’s mortality rate was lower than in pre-pandemic years, yet officials in the province were reporting up to 10 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people every day.

Earlier in May, Quebec’s statistical institute released a report indicating there had been 6,400 excess deaths between the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and March 12, 2022. The province had officially reported more than 15,000 COVID-19 deaths during that period.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 31, 2022.

The Canadian Press