Israeli zeal for second Trump term matched by Palestinian enmity
Oliver Holmes Jerusalem correspondent THE GUARDIAN

Anyone in any doubt about Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred candidate in the US presidential election need only visit his personal Twitter account.

Right at the top, behind the headshot of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a banner photo of him with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, their eyes fixed on each other.

“You have been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” Netanyahu told his ally during a Washington visit this year. “Frankly, though we’ve had some great, outstanding friends in these halls, it’s not even close.”

That list includes Barack Obama, whose famously icy relationship with Netanyahu extends by proxy to his vice-president and Trump’s 2020 rival, Joe Biden.

Palestinians see the prospect of a second Trump term as disastrous. “If we are going to live another four years with President Trump, God help us, God help you and God help the whole world,” the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said this month.

Trump has arguably been the US president with most impact on the Israeli-Palestinian issue as he has sought to appeal to his pro-Israel base, including evangelical Christians. During the past four years, the US leader has ticked off much on Netanyahu’s hardline nationalist wishlist that was previously considered taboo.

He has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, declared the divided city of Jerusalem Israel’s capital, shut down Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington and devised a “peace plan” that affords Israel’s government the vast majority of its demands.

Video: Trump announces Israel is normalizing relations with Sudan (FOX News)


Led by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Trump administration has also persuaded the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel despite the ongoing occupation. It has also imposed further sanctions on Iran, a policy Israel has been advocating against its arch-enemy for years.

“For Netanyahu personally, obviously he has a preference,” said Yohanan Plesner, a former Israeli politician and president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “One of the assets that Mr Netanyahu sells to the Israeli public is his close intimate relationship with Mr Trump.”

Four more years of Trump could be hugely advantageous for the Israeli leader, particularly if Washington can convince more Arab states to establish open ties with Israel with few or no concessions to the Palestinians.

A further softening of Washington’s stance on illegal settlements in Palestinian territories, or even recognising annexation moves, could also be on the table. Trump’s US ambassador to Israel and former bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, is vocal in his support for Jewish settlements.

Trump’s image and that of his country may have plummeted worldwide, but many Israelis adore him. According to a survey conducted for the i24News channel, 63% would prefer him to win the election, compared with less than 19% who would prefer Biden.

Plesner, however, says that does not mean Israelis are overly concerned about a Biden presidency. “Mr Biden’s track record is well established. There is no cause for any worry among Israelis,” he said. “Both candidates are considered pro-Israel.”

Biden was often used as an emissary to Israel during this vice-presidency and has previously described Netanyahu as a friend. This year, however, he said the Israel leader had drifted “so, so far to the right”.

Salem Barahmeh, the executive director of the Ramallah-based Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, said Trump had been “extremely dangerous for the entire world, especially for Palestine and our struggle for freedom and rights”.

He added, however, that Trump had merely accelerated long-standing US policy from both Republican and Democrat administrations that allowed Israel to continue the occupation with few significant consequences.

“The Obama administration and Biden were part of that trajectory,” he said. A Biden win may even be counterproductive for the Palestinian rights movement, he added, arguing that Trump exposed US policy in the region for the facade that it was.

“Trump is a polarising figure, he mobilises a lot of resistance,” he said. “With Biden, it would be going back to that normal, but that normal was never good for Palestine and the Palestinians.”

Merkel lashes out at populists who say coronavirus is harmless


BERLIN (Reuters) - Populists who argue the coronavirus is harmless are dangerous and irresponsible, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, defending a circuit break lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.

© Reuters/FABRIZIO BENSCH German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a session of the Bundestag, in Berlin

"We are in a dramatic situation at the start of the cold season. It affects us all, without exception," Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament, adding new restrictions to reduce social contact were "necessary and proportionate".

With an election less than a year away, Merkel is keen to keep Germans on board, despite the risk of a new hit to Europe's biggest economy. She said populists who question the seriousness of the crisis were putting lives at risk.

"Lies and disinformation, conspiracy theories and hatred damage not only the democratic debate but also the fight against the virus," she told parliament in a speech during which she was heckled by far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmakers.

Criticism of the latest restrictions has come from sectors that will be hit hardest, including hospitality and gastronomy.

On a more fundamental level, many AfD lawmakers are angered by what they see as a historic curtailment of freedom.

"The daily bombardment with infection numbers is clearly designed to scare people as most don't see COVID in their daily lives," said AfD Honorary Chairman Alexander Gauland.

"In the name of citizens' health, (the government) has decided on the biggest restrictions of freedom in the history of this republic," he said.

Worried hospitals will be overwhelmed, Merkel announced on Wednesday a month-long lockdown from Nov. 2 to include the closure of restaurants, gyms and theatres.

Germany was widely praised for keeping infection and deaths below those of many of its neighbours early in the crisis but, like much of Europe, is now in the midst of a second wave. It recorded a record 16,774 rise in cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 481,013. The death toll rose by 89 to 10,272.

"The winter will be hard - four long, hard months - but it will end," said Merkel.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers, Sabine Siebold and Thomas Escritt; Editing by Michelle Adair, Maria Sheahan, William Maclean)

US Latino voters targeted by abortion misinformation campaigns
April Glaser and Brandy Zadrozny 


In the final days before the election, Spanish-language misinformation about Joe Biden's and running mate Kamala Harris' positions on abortion is specifically targeting religious Latinos on Facebook and its messaging service, WhatsApp.

© Provided by NBC News

Several of the memes about their positions on abortion that are circulating are false.

One meme includes a picture of a crying newborn next to photos of Biden and Harris with text in Spanish that translates: "These candidates support an abortion 5 minutes before birth and if it survives the abortion, they approve of killing the baby."

Since Sept. 29, that meme has spread across 87 posts in Facebook pages and public groups, garnering 5,900 interactions, or comments, reactions and shares, according to the Facebook-owned social media analysis tool CrowdTangle. That's even with a banner warning from Verificador, the fact-checking unit of the Peruvian newspaper La República, which Facebook has enlisted as a fact-checking partner, that it had found the content "misleading."
Higher stakes

While it's unclear who created the false meme that Biden and Harris support drastically late-term abortions, it isn't the first time disinformation tied to religious issues has been used to target Latino communities online, said Sam Woolley, the project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

"This is part of an ongoing campaign with far-right groups associated with the Catholic Church, focusing on pulling Latinx voters to the Republican side," Woolley said, adding that he saw similar misinformation in 2016 and 2018 likewise targeting religious Latino voters around abortion.

But this year, the stakes are even higher, with Latino voters for the first time representing the largest group of minority voters in the country — an estimated 13.3 percent of all eligible voters, according to the Pew Research Center. Spanish-speaking populations are an especially important voter base in crucial swing states, like Texas, Florida and Arizona, where Latino communities are even larger than in the rest of the country. Democrats have expressed concerns through the campaign season that disinformation has been having a major impact on Latino voters, especially in states like Florida.

Jaime Longoria, a senior investigative researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that provides research and training for journalists, said the focus on abortion misinformation in Spanish-speaking communities online has spread this year, in part thanks to the popularization of messaging platforms like WhatsApp among immigrant groups.

The posts target closed, private groups that often include family members and friends who have personal connections to others in the group. Posts or ideas that a family member might originally find on a Facebook page can easily be screenshot and reshared in a WhatsApp group filled with trusted family members and friends, he said.

"Misinformation really works when it's preying on your emotions, and it's even more effective when you have that dynamic between a family," said Longoria, who has been tracking the rise of disinformation that targets Latino communities online. "If you have someone in your family that is sharing information that they believe is true and that they believe is meant to help you, you're more inclined to believe it."
Rising disinformation

Disinformation about abortion targeting Latino communities online reached a high point this month in a town hall conversation when Biden said that, if he wins the election, he would "pass legislation" making Roe v. Wade the "law of the land."

Shortly afterward, religious Spanish-language blogs posted articles that were then shared to Facebook questioning Biden's devotion to his Roman Catholic faith and highlighting his words as a guarantee to enshrine a federal law making abortion broadly legal should he become president. The president can only sign legislation first passed by Congress, which would be sharply divided over any measure to codify Roe as federal law.

Two such posts viewed by NBC News received over 2,700 likes, shares and comments.

One post viewed on a conservative Latino Facebook page following Biden's town hall comments, which received nearly 800 shares, said in Spanish: "KILLING BABIES UNDER #JoeBiden would become CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF EARTH #United States ... "

The researchers found a surge of positive posts and memes in Spanish-speaking religious Facebook groups after President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the end of September that ensures that all babies born alive prematurely or after failed abortions will receive medical care, even though, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, late-term abortions are exceedingly rare.

"A lot of the misinformation being shared in Latinx religious communities are really partisan issues," Longoria said. "When misinformation is tied to religion, it's so powerful because the people who are spreading this stuff, especially when it's tied to clergy, have such a powerful connection to their followers."

Texas landowners facing coronavirus pandemic and land seizures for border wall

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN 


Within the last six months, as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, the Trump administration filed 75 lawsuits to seize private land along the US-Mexico border for the border wall, according to data reviewed by CNN from the Texas Civil Rights Project.  

© Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images 

This picture taken on August 28, 2019 shows a portion of the wall on the US-Mexico border seen from Chihuahua State in Mexico, some 100 km from the city of Ciudad Juarez.

In the final days of the presidential election, President Donald Trump, along with senior administration officials, have cited the border wall as a cornerstone accomplishment of his first term.

"Under my leadership, we achieved the most secure border in US history," Trump said at a rally in Arizona Wednesday. "We built almost 400 miles."

But on the other side of that effort is thousands of Texas residents juggling legal challenges and the pandemic.

"People right now are having to choose between their health and their homes," said Ricky Garza, a staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, a legal advocacy group, which is currently representing landowners in eight land seizure cases.

Between May and October 22, 75 lawsuits to take private land were filed in Texas, up from 17 lawsuits around the same period last year, according to data based on court filings. A US official confirmed to CNN that the administration has been moving at a faster rate to obtain private land to meet the White House's goal.

Generally, the government is allowed to acquire privately owned land for public use, otherwise known as eminent domain. Border barriers built under previous administrations have largely gone up in areas where land was federally owned, but extending the wall, as Trump pledged to, requires taking privately owned land.

The spike in so-called eminent domain lawsuits has been a trend under this administration, as the President tries to hit 450 miles by year's end.

The Rio Grande Valley, where land is largely privately owned and therefore an epicenter of eminent domain cases, has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Texas, as a whole, ranks as the number two state in Covid-19 cases.

"The government is choosing to sue people during a pandemic in one of the most vulnerable places in the United States," Garza said. "If there was any sense of concern for the people of south Texas that went through one of the worst public health crises, none of these lawsuits would be filed after March 1, but here we are with dozens."

Many of the people the Texas Civil Rights Project represents are elderly, a population especially vulnerable to the pandemic. While some hearings can be virtual, that's not the default, Garza said, adding that it's up to the presiding judge.

Among those at risk of losing their land is the Cavazos family in south Texas. The roughly 70 acres of land have been passed down from generation to generation, and hold sentimental value, as well as provide for the family's livelihood.

"It was handed down to us by our grandmother... in the early 1950s," said Baudilia "Lilly" Cavazos Rodriguez, one of three siblings, two of whom live on the property. "She bought the land on her own. Being a Hispanic woman, they wouldn't let her sign for it, my uncle and dad signed on it before they went off to World War II."

The family rents some of the property, but the government is seeking to split the land. "We don't want to give it up, we don't want to sell. It's not about money, it's about keeping what our grandmother wanted us to keep," Cavazos Rodriguez said. The acquisition process started at least by April 2018.

A Customs and Border Protection official told CNN that the administration is taking precautions in engaging with landowners during the pandemic, like talking over the phone instead of in person, adding that exceptions have been made on a case-by-case basis. Some landowners willingly have turned over their land.

Eminent domain cases can be lengthy -- ranging from months to years -- though they generally don't keep the agency from being able to proceed with construction. Landowners are often fighting for what is known as just compensation -- what they deem a fair price for their property.

"It's been hard, as far as Covid-19," Cavazos Rodriguez told CNN. "People we know have passed away from Covid-19. We've been trying to be very careful."


Trump administration doubles down on land seizures

Trump laid the groundwork for what would be numerous eminent domain cases under his presidency from the beginning. In his first budget blueprint, Trump included a plan to add "20 attorneys to pursue Federal efforts to obtain the land and holdings necessary to secure the Southwest border."

The administration has also held steadfast in its attempts to acquire land in court. Last year, during a government shutdown, Justice Department attorneys continued to work on cases to seize land from property owners along the US-Mexico border, despite other cases being put on hold until the government reopened. The cases had been ongoing for years and not directly pegged to Trump's wall.

Still, the administration is quickly pressing forward with its stated goal to build 450 miles by the end of this year, the majority of which replaces old, dilapidated barriers, with an updated and more enhanced system. A small portion of the new construction has gone up in areas where no wall previously existed. CBP officials said they're on pace to reach their goal, building between 10 to 12 miles a week, adding that some contractors have been working long shifts and weekends.

Republican Rep. Will Hurd, who represents a large portion of the Texas-Mexico border, said in a statement to CNN that the private property rights of landowners should be respected in the construction process.

"Where physical barriers are going up we have to respect the private property rights of landowners on the border threatened by eminent domain. Taking land from Texans and surrendering arable land for an ineffective solution is bad policy," Hurd said. "Complete operational control of the border means having the right tools deployed in the right areas."

As of October 19, some 371 miles have been constructed on the US-Mexico border, according to Customs and Border Protection. Leadership at the Department of Homeland Security is expected to announce the completion of 400 miles on Thursday.

DHS has moved to expedite construction by waiving laws. In October 2018, for example, then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen waived more than two dozen laws to expedite border wall construction in Texas, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinki

ng Water Act and the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, among others.
That, too, has become a point of contention between the administration and environmental groups who have sued the Trump administration to halt border wall construction.

The pace of construction and piling on of lawsuits has caught many by surprise, including the landowners in the thick of it.

"It has gone fast, as far as the way things are going. We don't know what's coming next," Cavazos Rodriguez said.

#ABOLISHICE

US steps up deportation of Haitians ahead of election, raising Covid fears

US immigration authorities have radically stepped up deportation flights to Haiti in the weeks before the election, raising concerns over returned migrants’ safety on their return home and the risks of spreading coronavirus in the impoverished Caribbean state.

© Photograph: Jean Marc Herve Abelard/EPA About 25 Haitians who were deported from the United States arrive following a flight at Toussaint Louverture international airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in June.


Julian Borger in Washington THE GUARDIAN

Twelve flights to Haiti have been recorded so far in October, marking a steep increase from previous months when there were on average between one and two flights every four weeks.

Most of the Haitian migrants have been summarily expelled under a 1944 public health law, which lawyers and refugee rights advocates say is being abused by the Trump administration to sidestep its legal obligations to give migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum and other internationally guaranteed rights.

Related: US Ice officers 'used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders'

Some of the Haitians deported in recent weeks have been asylum seekers who had been taken from detention centres in what administration critics say is a rush to expel Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean ahead of the election. The Haitian flights coincide with the forced repatriation of scores of Cameroonian, Congolese and other African asylum – seekers, many of whom were flown out while they had legal cases pending.

“I believe that they are trying to deport as many people as possible prior to the elections,” said Guerline Jozef, the president of the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), an immigrant advocacy and support group. “Once they arrive back in Haiti, they are just left to fend for themselves.”

Jozef said some of the deported migrants had been fleeing the political and gang violence that has become widespread across Haiti in recent years, and would be risking their lives to return to their homes.

The deportation flights also raise the potential for the spread of coronavirus in Haiti. Under government guidelines, illegal immigrants are supposed to be detained in ways that keep them socially distanced and tested before being put on flights.

“Since the start of the pandemic, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has taken significant measures to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, including screening for symptoms and increased testing for many of those scheduled for removal,” an Ice statement said. “The health, welfare and safety of Ice detainees is one of the agency’s highest priorities.”

Jozef said social distancing had been abandoned because of a recent flood of Haitian immigrants and it was unclear whether Covid-19 tests had been actually been carried out.

Gallery: Emergency migrant shelter in Yuma, Arizona (USA TODAY)


“Many of the people upon arrival in country ended up having coronavirus and bringing it with them,” she said. “And the majority of them are families with babies, and children that are a few months old, two years old, three years old, eight years old. It’s just absolutely unbelievable.”

“There’s so much chaos and disorder in Haiti right now that there’s no infrastructure, economically or socially for reintegration of these families that are coming back in,” Nicole Phillips, HBA’s legal director and adjunct professor at University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Phillips cited the case of a recent returnee who had been driven out of her village by political violence and since deportation had been forced to go into hiding.

The collapse of the Haitian economy following a devastating 2010 earthquake has led to the crumbling of democratic governance, the disintegration of law and order and the rise of politically affiliated gangs.

Related: Killers lurk in the shadows as Haiti chaos takes a sinister turn

Haitians fleeing the violence have typically flown to Brazil or Chile and then made the arduous and highly dangerous trek through South and Central America which can take months. Several thousands have camped in Mexico since the procedures for applying for asylum were suspended because of the pandemic.

In October there appears to have been a surge of illegal crossings by Haitians of the Rio Grande. The US border patrol in Del Rio has reported that since the beginning of the month 450 Haitians had been apprehended in their sector.

They have been deported under Title 42, a previously obscure clause of the 1944 Public Health Services Law which has been used by the Trump administration since March this year to expel more than 200,000 migrants.

The law, which gives the government the power to take emergency action to prevent “introduction of communicable diseases” was officially authorised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Related: Trump aide Stephen Miller preparing second-term immigration blitz

It is reported to have been enforced on the insistence of the White House over the objections of CDC health experts who said there was no public health reason to use it. Stephen Miller, a close aide to Donald Trump, and the administration’s most fervent anti-immigration advocated, is said to have insisted on it.

It has been used to expel “certain persons” who are defined as traveling by land from Mexico and Canada, without valid travel documents.

The only justification on health grounds for the use of Title 42 is that those targeted would have been crowded into “congregate settings”, and therefore were prone to the spread of disease.

But legal critics of the procedure have pointed out that the migrants have been packed together by the US border patrol and Ice agents, making Title 42 a self-fulfilling means of deporting targeted immigrants and sidestepping the provisions of the 1960 Refugee Act, the Convention Against Torture and the Immigration and Nationality Act, which give the right to apply for asylum, protection against torture and against repatriation to countries where a migrant’s life could be in danger.

“What is clear is that Trump has used Covid-19 to do what courts had previously denied him: blocking asylum, even for people already on US soil,” said Tom Ricker, a programme associate at the Quixote Center, a social justice pressure group.

Activists urge 'Big Pharma' to be transparent on COVID-19 vaccine costs
By Stephanie Nebehay

© Reuters/Dado Ruvic FILE PHOTO: A woman holds a small bottle labeled with a "Vaccine COVID-19" sticker and a medical syringe in this illustration

GENEVA (Reuters) - Activists called on pharmaceutical companies on Thursday to be transparent about the costs and terms of providing COVID-19 vaccines, saying they must be available and affordable for all.

French drugmaker Sanofi and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline said on Wednesday they would supply 200 million doses of their COVID-19 candidate vaccine to the global COVAX vaccine facility backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the GAVI vaccine alliance.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) demanded the two companies provide details around price, supply and distribution of any vaccine proven safe and effective.

"Pharmaceutical corporations Sanofi and GSK must sell their vaccines at-cost and open their books to show the public exactly how much it costs to make the vaccine," said Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser at MSF's Access Campaign.

"There is no room for secrets during a pandemic and past experience tells us that we can’t take pharma at their word without data to back up their claims," she said in a statement.

Sanofi and GSK could not immediately be reached for comment.

No company has shared information on research and development, clinical trials or manufacturing costs of potential COVID-19 vaccines, MSF said, adding this was vital for the public to assess prices set.

More than half of the expected volume of doses of leading candidate vaccines has been bought up by 13% of the world, mainly high-income countries, the medical charity said.

Human Rights Watch, in a separate report, said governments funding vaccines with public money should be transparent about terms and conditions attached.

The New York-based group urged states to back a proposal by India and South Africa to wave some aspects of intellectual property (IP) rules on patents to enable large-scale manufacturing and affordability.

A temporary IP waiver was debated this month in the World Trade Organization (WTO), but was opposed by the United States, European Union, Britain, Switzerland and others.

"Since the beginning of the pandemic our priority has been to ensure that all people enjoy the fruits of science ... In these difficult times the best health technologies and discoveries cannot be reserved only for a few, they must be available to all," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a UNESCO event on "Open Science" on Tuesday.

"Sharing data and information that is often kept secret or protected by intellectual property could significantly advance the speed at which technologies are developed," Tedros added.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Potter)

Canadian Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak 'erroneously' donated to Trump's re-election campaign in violation of U.S. law
National Post Staff

© Provided by National Post Sen. Lynn Beyak


A Canadian senator, who has stirred controversy in the past, violated American law when, in May, she donated to U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Ontario Sen. Lynn Beyak made a $300 contribution to the Republican National Committee, public records from the American Federal Election Commission show .

In the records, Beyak listed her occupation as retired and her address as a P.O. box on Davis Point Rd. in Dryden, N.Y., however, no such road or address exists in the rural New York town. Vice News, which first reported the story, also stated there is no Lynn Beyak in the American town.

The senator lives in Dryden, Ont., and Vice reports that a phonebook listing that matches the address in the donation receipt belongs to Beyak.

At the time of her donation, she was still a member of the Canadian Senate.

American federal laws prohibit campaigns from soliciting or accepting contributions from foreign nationals who do not hold U.S. citizenship.

Parsing through financial disclosures, Vice reports that there is no indication that Beyak holds dual citizenship or owns property in the states.

Beyak’s office confirmed to Vice that the senator did send in the political donation, however the money “is being returned in its entirety, simply because (the contribution) was erroneous.”

The RNC must report all returned donations but has not reported returning the senator’s contribution.

Since former prime minister Stephen Harper appointed Beyak to the Senate in 2013, she has had a series of controversies.

Facing Senate suspension, Sen. Lynn Beyak apologizes 'unreservedly' for posting racist letters online

Senate votes to suspend Lynn Beyak again despite her apology for posting offensive letters on website

In 2017, the Conservative Senate caucus expelled her after she called for the creation of a program in which Indigenous peoples could receive cash if they relinquished their protected status and land.

In February, sitting as an independent, Beyak was suspended for the remainder of the parliamentary session because she did not complete the anti-racism training she had been directed to undergo.

Beyak’s suspension ended when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prorogued Parliament in the summer.

Beyak is back on the government payroll, collecting her full $157,600-a-year salary, and has access to Senate resources, CBC reported .

In Canada, senators are appointed until their mandatory retirement age of 75 and it can be difficult to remove a senator from his or her post.

Bank of Canada says economy will likely be scarred by COVID-19 until 2023

HEY KENNEY STOP THE CUTS 

BORROW AND PRIME THE PUMP

Don Pittis CBC

© Blair Gable/Reuters Physically distanced. Carolyn Wilkins, the Bank of Canada’s senior deputy governor, and Governor Tiff Macklem offer their latest gloomy thoughts to a virtual news conference in Ottawa on Wednesday as COVID-19 resurges.

Maybe it's his job to prepare us for the worst, but Canada's chief central banker, Tiff Macklem, has warned of a long, slow recovery as successive rounds of COVID-19 lead to a "scarring" of the domestic and world economy.

After what some see as a false dawn this summer as the economy resurged, Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada, and his senior deputy, Carolyn Wilkins, offered a gloomy outlook for an economy that they say is unlikely to get back on track until 2023.

Not only that, but jobs — hit harder in this recession than the last one — are disproportionately affecting Canadians with the lowest wages. While 425,000 jobs disappeared following the 2008 credit crisis, this time around, employment has been cut by 700,000.


And Macklem said some of those jobs may never come back.

"We're going to get through this, but it's going to be a long slog," he said at a virtual meeting with financial reporters on Wednesday.

Good news? Lower for longer

The good news, if you could call it that, was that the central bankers have committed to keeping interest rates at current extraordinarily low levels until inflation climbs back to between two and three per cent, which they don't foresee as likely for three years.

Forecasting the economy is always something of a guessing game, but Macklem and Wilkins said that this time there was added uncertainty because of not knowing what the novel coronavirus is going to do next.

The central bankers made it very clear that the current outlook depends on a number of assumptions about the path of the pandemic that may turn out to be better or worse than they currently foresee.

Among those assumptions is that the virus will return in succeeding waves, each less damaging than the last. Another is that a vaccine will not become widely available until 2022, a sobering estimate from sober central bankers that may be disheartening for those who had hoped U.S. President Donald Trump's optimistic outlook of an October vaccine launch was more than just electioneering.

© Carlos Barria/Reuters In the past, U.S. President Donald Trump — shown during a tour of the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies' Innovation Center in Morrrisville, N.C., in July — has suggested a vaccine would be available before the Nov. 3 election, but Canada’s sober central bankers are more pessimistic.

By promising that interest rates will stay low until 2023 — something central bankers call "forward guidance" — Macklem said he hopes businesses and consumers can confidently borrow for the medium term without fear that interest rates, and therefore loan repayments, will suddenly shoot up.

That's good if you are buying a new stove but not for a home, or for a longer-term business investment. To influence those longer-term rates, the central bank has shifted the way it buys bonds as part of its quantitative easing plan that it initiated for the first time following the COVID-19 market disruption.

When the market crisis hit in early spring, the bank bought short-term bonds to help increase the amount of money in circulation, reassuring investors, Macklem said. But now that markets are working more normally, the Bank of Canada has reduced its monthly bond purchases from $5 billion to $4 billion and is switching to buying bonds that don't mature for up to 30 years, in theory making longer-term loans cheaper.

Economy scarred by COVID-19

But while making borrowing cheap will help, the central bank worries that it won't be enough to prevent the economy from being scarred by large employment losses as some people's jobs never come back.

"We've assumed that a fraction of these people are permanent," Wilkins said. "That's because with COVID, not only is the recovery going to take longer so that there is more chance there'll be scarring, it's also the types of jobs created."

As the economy rebounds, she said, the new jobs available will not match the skills of those who became unemployed. Among those worst hit will be women and young people.

"The effects of this pandemic have been extremely uneven," Macklem said, directing reporters to a "particularly stunning" chart in the Monetary Policy Report, reproduced below, showing low-income workers have suffered more and their jobs have uniquely failed to recover.

Just as we saw during the long climb out of the last recession, replacing those jobs will require new private investment, some of it in entirely new sectors. But with so much uncertainty — and so much permanent structural change — Macklem said many companies will be hesitant to invest until things begin to stabilize.

"Clearly we are seeing a resurgence of the virus — it's happening in Canada and it's happening elsewhere," he said.

Macklem's current economic outlook is only a best guess based on so many unknowns. It may be that the virus gets even worse, he said, and it may be that a vaccine does not arrive until later than the bank has estimated or that it is ineffective.

But while the central bank is compelled to consider the bleakest case in its economic planning, Macklem does not exclude the possibility of a far less gloomy outcome, which he said would be "wonderful."

"There's certainly scenarios where a vaccine is available early next year and it proves effective, and we can deploy it at scale so that by the end of the year, we don't need to physically distance anymore."

And from a central banker, that is a positive ray of sunshine.

Follow Don Pittis on Twitter: @don_pittis

Ginella Massa to join CBC News Network as primetime host

Jackson Weaver CBC

© Yasmine Mehdi/CBC Ginella Massa will join CBC News Network as a primetime host starting in the new year.

Journalist Ginella Massa will join CBC News Network as the host of a new primetime show, the Crown corporation announced Wednesday as part of programming changes over the next few months.

"She's just got a spark and curiosity to her that is refreshing at a time when there's so much to be interested in, and so much that is sort of unchartered in terms of the kind of journalism we do, the kind of stories we tell," said Michael Gruzuk, CBC's senior director of programming.

Massa will also join CBC's flagship news program The National as a special correspondent, as well as take part in "many of our CBC News specials," according to an internal CBC memo.

A graduate of Seneca College and York University, Massa is currently a reporter for CityNews in Toronto. In 2019, she was part of the CityNews team that won a Canadian Screen Award for best live special for coverage of an Ontario leaders' debate.

She has also worked with CTV, NewsTalk 1010 and Rogers TV, moving from behind the scenes as a news writer and producer to in front of the camera as a television journalist.

In 2015, she became the first hijab-wearing TV reporter in Canada, and then the next year, the first to anchor a major newscast in the country.

Massa said she hopes to use her new CBC role to focus on stories from different perspectives — be it race, religion or class.

"For the last decade of my career in journalism, both behind the scenes and on air, I have often been the only one who looks like me in the room," Massa said.

"I do try to bring those perspectives to the newsroom … bring the stories that people around me are talking about, which aren't always the stories that get the most attention."

Beginning in the new year, Massa's hour-long show will air weeknights at 8 p.m. ET on CBC News Network.

New programs

Her hiring comes alongside a number of other changes on the cable network.

On Nov. 1, it will launch Rosemary Barton Live, a two-hour Sunday program focused on federal politics, followed by the premiere of CBC News Live with Vassy Kapelos, a weekday "fast-paced roundup of breaking political and Canadian stories" on Nov. 2, the internal memo said.

Kapelos will continue to host Power and Politics, which moves to a new time slot of 6 p.m.-8 p.m. ET on weekdays.

CBC journalist Carole MacNeil will host a new weekday afternoon show on News Network, which will be "more programmed" rather than focusing on breaking news that just happened, Gruzuk said.

The changes come weeks after Barbara Williams, CBC's executive vice-president of English services, announced 130 job cuts across the country. That included 58 news, current affairs and local positions, with most of them in Toronto.

The company cited higher costs and lower revenues as the reason for the cuts, precipitated by a $21-million budget deficit. That shortfall was, in particular, "due to declines in advertising and subscription revenues linked to our traditional television business," Williams wrote in a letter to staff.

IN THE HOOD

Commonwealth Stadium opens as temporary homeless shelter for winter amid COVID-19
Dustin Cook EDMONTON JOURNAL

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Commonwealth Stadium is seen in Edmonton, on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020. The inside concession area of the stadium is being used as an overnight shelter operated by Hope Mission.

An enclosed concession area in Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium has opened as a temporary homeless shelter for residents sleeping rough this winter.

The site, which opened on Friday, has overnight capacity for 120 people with two metres between sleeping spaces to follow COVID-19 guidelines. The shelter is operated by Hope Mission and replaces its other temporary shelter at the Central Lions Recreation Centre, which closed last Thursday after operating since early April.

Hope Mission executive director Bruce Reith said the stadium can accommodate about 40 more people than the previous site, which is essential as the weather turns colder. Right now, the space is operating as an overnight shelter with residents required to leave around 8 a.m., but Reith said they are working with the city to offer 24-7 services and also provide daily meals onsite. The shelter is scheduled to be open until at least March, with operational funding coming from the provincial government.

“We’re concerned about winter obviously and that’s why I’m excited about Commonwealth,” Reith said in an interview with Postmedia Wednesday. “My concern is feeding people so that they can come in, distance the two metres, have a nice hot meal and also be inside somewhere warm to have that.”


Planned services also include social supports, housing information and day sleeping accommodations. A date hasn’t been confirmed for the transition to a 24-7 shelter, but the city said services will increase over the next few days as more staff are brought in.

Area Coun. Scott McKeen said he is hopeful the shift to a 24-7 shelter comes as soon as possible, voicing concerns about residents being kicked out early and left outside in the surrounding McCauley community, which he said is a frequent occurrence at the Hope Mission emergency shelter a few blocks west.

“It’s city space and they must operate 24-7 or we’ll run into the same problem again and that is people being evicted in the early morning into McCauley,” McKeen said. “I credit Hope Mission for the work they do, but I think they have to modernize their practices and it’s frustrating to me that we’ve struggled to get them to do that.”

In responding to McKeen’s comments, Reith said it is necessary to clear the emergency shelter early in the morning in order to transition the space for meal service.

Details about the Commonwealth Stadium shelter already being open for five nights caught McKeen off guard during a council committee meeting Wednesday morning. He said he wasn’t consulted or given any notice to inform the community.

“I can’t tell you how dismayed I am to hear that. That this comes to me as a surprise,” McKeen said in response to the update from city officials. “I am absolutely blown away that this would happen on my watch without some heads up and some meeting with me about this.”

Even though the shelter opened Friday, city spokeswoman Nicole Thomas told Postmedia in an email Monday afternoon that there were “no confirmed updates” about the use of Commonwealth Stadium as a shelter. On Wednesday, Thomas said the city was waiting to confirm operational details before making an official announcement to avoid confusion about locations and services available.

Two other temporary winter shelters are set to open their doors within the next few days. A 24-7 program at the Edmonton Convention Centre with overnight capacity of 300 people will open Friday evening and be operational until the end of March.

On the south side of the river, The Mustard Seed has received a development permit from the city to operate a temporary shelter out of an empty warehouse near 99 Street and 75 Avenue. The site, owned by Cessco Fabrication and Engineering Ltd., will open as a 24-7 shelter Monday and provide shelter space for up to 120 people until mid-May.

There are currently about 2,000 people experiencing homelessness in Edmonton and 600 people sleeping outside nightly.

duscook@postmedia.com