Church fundraising questions, politician private plane use: In The News for July 18

“It was a weasel clause,” the former Manitoba regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations said in a recent interview.

“And they used it.”

In total, that fundraising campaign raised less than $4 million. It made up one piece of the compensation package Catholic entities agreed to pay under the settlement struck in 2006 with Ottawa, former students and Indigenous leaders.

Nine years later, a Saskatchewan judge ruled that the church bodies — who had sought to relieve themselves of their remaining obligations — could indeed walk away.

That history set the stage for a new promise Canadian bishops made last September that dioceses would put $30 million toward initiatives that offer healing opportunities for residential school survivors, their relatives and larger communities.

The discovery last year of what are believed to be hundreds of unmarked graves at former schools in Western Canada also shone a fresh spotlight on the failures of Catholic entities to raise the funds for survivors in the past.

Now, bishops are preparing for the impending arrival of Pope Francis, who is expected to apologize for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in operating residential schools.

Catholic leaders are seeking donations to help support his visit, including through the sale of what a spokeswoman said will be “modest quantities” of T-shirts, hats and bandanas.

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Also this …

Saskatchewan’s finance minister spent nearly $8,000 on a private plane to attend a chamber of commerce lunch days after she tabled a provincial budget containing tax hikes.

Minister Donna Harpauer’s travel expense form, posted on the Saskatchewan Party government’s website, shows she took a chartered plane with Good Spirit Air Service on March 25, travelling 400 kilometres from Regina to North Battleford.

The flight cost $7,872.60.

A spokesman for Harpauer said in an emailed statement, “After limiting travel for the last two years because of the pandemic, the minister was able to visit a number of regions across the province. For many years, finance ministers have toured the province to discuss the budget. The tours are a good way to connect with people and provide more detailed information on how the provincial budget is working for them and their community.”

The luncheon Harpauer attended was hosted by the North Battleford Chamber of Commerce at Porta Bella Restaurant.

Two days earlier, she tabled the 2022-23 budget in the legislature, announcing a tax hike on properties and smokers and a six per cent provincial sales tax on entertainment, gyms, concerts, museums and sporting events.

“This is a flight that very easily could have been replaced by a car ride,” said Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck.

“We see people making changes to their summer plans … because they can’t afford gas, and we see one minister with one flight spending enough that someone would make in four months.”

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ The penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz begins Monday with the jury hearing opening statements and then the first evidence about the 2018 massacre that left 14 students and three staff members dead at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School.

The seven-man, five-woman panel, backed up by 10 alternates, will hear from lead prosecutor Mike Satz, who is expected to highlight Cruz’s brutality as he stalked a three-story classroom building, firing his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle down hallways and into classrooms. Cruz sometimes walked back to wounded victims and killed them with a second volley of shots.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder; the only thing he’s contesting is the death penalty sentence that prosecutors are seeking. The jurors can only sentence him to death or life without the possibility of parole for the Feb. 14, 2018, shootings. The trial for the former Stoneman Douglas student, expected to last about four months, was supposed to begin in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic and legal fights delayed it.

The defence lawyers won’t say when they will deliver their opening statements: at the start of the trial or when they begin presenting their case weeks from now. The latter strategy would be rare and risky because it would give the prosecution the only say before jurors examine grisly evidence and hear heart-rending testimony from shooting survivors and the victims’ parents and spouses.

If lead defender Melisa McNeill gives her statement, she will likely emphasize that Cruz is a young adult with lifelong emotional and psychological problems who allegedly suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and abuse. The goal would be to temper the jurors’ emotions as they hear the prosecution’s case, making them more open to considering the defence’s arguments later.

The Parkland shooting is the deadliest to reach trial in U.S. history. Nine other gunmen who killed at least 17 people died during or immediately after their shootings, either by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 slaying of 23 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

BERLIN _ With the world reeling from the economic fallout of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, senior officials from 40 countries were meeting Monday in Berlin for heart-to-heart talks on how to stay focused on fighting climate change.

Organizers have billed the two-day gathering as an opportunity to rebuild trust between rich and poor nations ahead of this year’s U.N. climate summit in Egypt, after technical talks last month achieved little progress on key issues such as climate aid for developing countries.

Developing countries are still waiting for rich nations to provide $100 billion in climate aid each year _ a target they were meant to reach by 2020.

Big polluters, however, have also long resisted the idea that they should pay for the destruction their greenhouse gas emissions are causing around the world.

The closed-doors talks in Berlin will kick off with experts delivering a presentation on the issue of “loss and damage ” to ministers, who will then break into small groups to discuss and listen to each other in the hope of building trust ahead of November’s U.N. summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The meeting in Berlin comes as scientists say the extreme heat slamming large parts of the northern hemisphere in the last few weeks could become the new normal in summer if global warming continues.

The question of energy sources endangered by Russia’s war in Ukraine is looming over the talks.

Environmental activists warn that recent efforts by countries such as Germany to tap new sources of fossil fuels could undermine countries’ already fragile climate actions. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to discuss buying liquefied natural gas from Egypt with the country’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Berlin on Monday, just a few miles from where the climate talks are being held.

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On this day in 1997 …

DNA tests cleared David Milgaard of the 1969 sexual assault and fatal stabbing of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller. Milgaard served 23 years in prison for the crime. The Saskatchewan government apologized to Milgaard and compensated him, and ordered a public inquiry.

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In entertainment …

NEW YORK _ Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were wed Saturday in a late-night Las Vegas drive-through chapel, culminating a relationship that stretched over two decades in two separate romances and headlined countless tabloid covers.

Lopez announced their marriage Sunday in her newsletter for fans with the heading “We did it.” Lopez initially made their engagement public in April on the same newsletter, “On the J Lo.”

“Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” wrote Lopez in a message signed Jennifer Lynn Affleck.

Lopez wrote that the couple flew to Las Vegas on Saturday, stood in line for their license with four other couples and were wed just after midnight at A Little White Wedding Chapel, a chapel boasting a drive-through “tunnel of love.” Lopez said a Bluetooth speaker played their brief march down the aisle. She called it the best night of their lives.

“Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at 12:30 in the morning in the tunnel of love drive through with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with,” said Lopez.

News of their nuptials first spread Sunday after the Clark County clerk’s office in Nevada showed that the pair obtained a marriage license that was processed Saturday. The marriage license filing showed that Lopez plans to take the name Jennifer Affleck.

Lopez, 52, and Affleck, 49, famously dated in the early 2000s, spawning the nickname “Bennifer,” before rekindling their romance last year. They earlier starred together in 2003’s “Gigli” and 2004’s “Jersey Girl.” Around that time, they became engaged but never wed.

Affleck married Jennifer Garner in 2005, with whom he shares three children. They divorced in 2018.

Lopez has been married three times before. She was briefly married to Ojani Noa from 1997-1998 and to Cris Judd from 2001-2003. She and singer Marc Anthony were married for a decade after wedding in 2004 and share 14-year-old twins together.

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Did you see this?

OTTAWA _ Protesters called on Canada to “be brave like Ukraine” and uphold economic sanctions against Russia on Sunday, just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered essentially the same message to the Prime Minister.

In a phone call between the leaders, Zelenskyy told Justin Trudeau that his stance on sanctions against Russia “must be principled” at a time when relations between Canada and the embattled country are somewhat strained by Canada’s controversial decision to send parts of a Russian natural gas pipeline back to Germany.

Zelenskyy recapped their conversation in a short statement shared on Twitter, saying he thanked Trudeau for the continued powerful defence support Canada has offered his country but also raised the importance of upholding the sanctions.

“After the terrorist attacks in Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv, Chasiv Yar, etc. the pressure must be increased, not decreased,” he said.

Trudeau reiterated Canada’s support for Ukraine against Russia’s military aggression, according to an official account of the discussion from the Prime Minister’s Office.

The two leaders also talked about maintaining unity among their allies and imposing “severe costs” on Russia, the PMO said.

Canada agreed earlier this month to grant an exemption to the economic sanctions issued against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The two-year waiver would allow six Siemens Energy turbines, which were in Montreal for repairs, to be returned to Germany for use in the Russian state-owned Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 18, 2022.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Church fundraising questions, politician private plane use: In The News for July 18

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