In The News for Dec. 1: Canada gains on U.S. in permanent resident race

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 Dec. 1 …

What we are watching in Canada …

Since the global onset of COVID-19, Canada has been gradually closing the gap with the United States when it comes to attracting and keeping an important economic prize: new permanent residents.

The annual number of permanent residents admitted to the U.S. was well below pre-pandemic levels in 2021, while Canada welcomed the most newcomers ever in a single year, analysis by the Association for Canadian Studies shows.

Last year, the number of new permanent residents in the U.S. barely budged to 738,199, up slightly from 707,362 in 2020, the year the pandemic began.

But in Canada, the number soared to more than 405,000 — more than twice the number who arrived in 2020, and still nearly 20 per cent more than in 2019.

It’s a record that will likely be beaten more than once in the coming years, as a Canadian federal immigration plan released earlier this month aims to admit 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023 and 500,000 a year by 2025, with a particular focus on bringing in people with needed skills and experience.

Business leaders say the government should be even more focused on attracting skilled migrants than it already is, and do more to ensure their credentials and qualifications are recognized.

Housing is a problem too, with association CEO Jack Jedwab saying Toronto beat out the New York area last year as the most popular destination for new permanent residents.

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Also this …

HIV activists are marking World AIDS Day by urging Ottawa to help stop a global backslide in stopping infections and combating stigma.

The World Health Organization has reported a slowing in the decline of new HIV cases, ever since countries focused their limited health care systems on COVID-19.

There is a rising proportion of cases among women and people who inject drugs in Canada, and Indigenous people accounted for nearly one-fifth of new infections in 2020.

Advocates point out that Canada still criminalizes people for not telling sexual partners that they have HIV, even when prescription drugs make it impossible to transmit the virus.

They argue that the risk of prosecution prevents people from accessing testing and treatment.

AIDS has killed roughly 40 million people, including 650,000 in 2021

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

WASHINGTON — Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron are celebrating the long-standing U.S.-French relationship — but these are friends with differences. The French president is using his visit to Washington to sharply criticize aspects of the U.S. president’s signature climate law as a bad deal for Europe.

Biden is set to honour Macron with the first state dinner of his presidency on Thursday evening. First, the two leaders will sit down in the Oval Office for morning talks that officials from both sides said were expected to largely centre on the leaders’ efforts to stay united in their response to Russia’s war in Ukraine and to co-ordinate their approach to an increasingly assertive China.

But ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Macron made clear that he and other European leaders remain deeply concerned about the incentives in a sweeping new climate-related law that favour American-made climate technology, including electric vehicles.

Macron on Wednesday criticized the legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, during a luncheon with U.S. lawmakers and again during a speech at the French embassy. The French president said that while the Biden administration’s efforts to curb climate change should be applauded, the subsidies would be an enormous setback for European companies.

“The choices that have been made … are choices that will fragment the West,” Macron said at the French embassy. He added that the legislation “creates such differences between the United States of America and Europe that all those who work in many companies (in the U.S.), they will just think, ‘We don’t make investments any more on the other side of the Atlantic.”‘

Separately, at the luncheon with members of Congress from both parties, along with business leaders and diplomats, Macron said that major industrial nations need to do more to address climate change and promote biodiversity.

He criticized a deal reached at a recent climate summit in Egypt in which the United States and other wealthy nations agreed to help pay for the damage that an overheating world is inflicting on poor countries. The deal includes few details on how it will be paid for, and Macron said a more comprehensive approach is needed — “not just a new fund we decided which will not be funded and even if it is funded, it will not be rightly allocated.”

Speaking after his prepared remarks and without cameras present, Macron took aim at the Inflation Reduction Act, calling the subsidies harmful to French companies and others in Europe, according to a person in the closed-door meeting. The European Union has expressed concern that tax credits in the climate law, including those aimed at encouraging Americans to buy electric vehicles, would discriminate against European producers and break World Trade Organization rules.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

BENGALURU, India — India officially takes up its role as chair of the Group of 20 leading economies for the coming year Thursday and it’s putting climate at the top of the group’s priorities.

Programs to encourage sustainable living and money for countries to transition to clean energy and deal with the effects of a warming world are some of the key areas that India will focus on during its presidency, experts say. Some say India will also use its new position to boost its climate credentials and act as a bridge between the interests of industrialized nations and developing ones.

The country has made considerable moves toward its climate goals in recent years but is currently one of the world’s top emitters of planet-warming gases.

The G-20, made up of the world’s largest economies, has a rolling presidency with a different member state in charge of the group’s agenda and priorities each year. Experts believe India will use the “big stage” of the G-20 presidency to drive forward its climate and development plans.

The country “will focus heavily on responding to the current and future challenges posed by climate change,” said Samir Sarin, president of the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank. The ORF will be anchoring the T-20 — a group of think tanks from the 20 member countries whose participants meet alongside the G-20.

Sarin said that India will work to ensure that money is flowing from rich industrialized nations to emerging economies to help them combat global warming, such as a promise of $100 billion a year for clean energy and adapting to climate change for poorer nations that has not yet been fulfilled and a recent pledge to vulnerable countries that there will be a fund for the loss and damage caused by extreme weather.

He added that India will also use the presidency to push its flagship “Mission Life” program that encourages more sustainable lifestyles in the country, which is set to soon become most populous in the world.

When outgoing chair Indonesia formally handed the presidency to India in Bali last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the opportunity to promote the program, saying it could make “a big contribution” by turning sustainable living into “a mass movement.”

India has been beefing up its climate credentials, with its recent domestic targets to transition to renewable energy more ambitious than the goals it submitted to the U.N. as part of the Paris Agreement, which requires countries to show how they plan to limit warming to temperature targets set in 2015.

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On this day in 201 …

Canada acted on an American request and arrested a top Chinese tech executive in Vancouver. Meng Wanzhou is the CFO of Huawei Technologies and daughter of the company’s founder. The U.S. wanted her to face allegations of fraud as it says Huawei used unofficial subsidiary Skycom to do business with Iranian telecommunications companies between 2009 and 2014 in violation of sanctions. (Wanzhou was released in September 2021 after reaching an agreement with the US Justice Department.)

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In entertainment …

LONDON — They want money — that’s what they want, that’s what they want. Well, now the Rolling Stones can say they’re also ON money, the face of a new collectible coin issued by Britain’s Royal Mint to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary.

The new five-pound coin features a silhouette image of the iconic band performing — frontman Mick Jagger, guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, and the late drummer Charlie Watts — as well as the band’s name in what is described as their classic 1973 font. The mint said it was one of the last coins of the year to be released bearing the image of Queen Elizabeth, who died in September at age 96.

The Rolling Stones were back on the road this year with their 2022 European “Sixty” tour, ending in Berlin in August.

“We are delighted to be honoured by way of an official U.K. coin,” the band said in a statement included in the Royal Mint’s announcement. “Even more significant that the release coincides with our 60th anniversary.”

The new coin is the fifth in the mint’s “Music Legends”‘ series, which celebrates legendary British artists. Others so honoured have been Queen, Elton John, David Bowie, and The Who.

While the best things in life are free, as the Stones sang in their cover of the Motown hit “Money (That’s What I Want),” the coins will cost something. Similar coins on the mint’s website from the Music Legends series range from 15 pounds to 465 pounds.

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Did you see this?

WINNIPEG — A 101-year-old message has been discovered by workers removing the base of a former statue in front of the Manitoba legislature.

Workers have been removing, piece by piece, the large base that held a statue of Queen Victoria. The statue was toppled last year by protesters. Its head was removed and thrown in the nearby Assiniboine River. The base is being removed to make way for a replacement.

When crews recently removed one section of the base, they found a broken bottle and a note that had been placed inside. The note was an apology of sorts, dated July 30, 1921, — an era when alcohol was outlawed.

‘It says, on account of the Prohibition, we are unable to adhere to the custom of depositing a bottle of brandy under the stone, for which we are extremely sorry, I believe is what it says,” Reg Helwer, minister responsible for government services, said Wednesday as he tried to make out the wording on the worn dispatch.

The note is signed by a stonecutter, other workers and a bureaucrat — the province’s deputy minister of public works at the time.

The government is now working out how to best preserve the document and what should be done with it.

Helwer said it’s not the first time an item from Manitoba’s early days as a province has been discovered unexpectedly.

“Apparently there are things of that nature around the legislature. As we move stones, we do discover things like this,” he said.

“To me, it’s a very neat story, especially with the age of the building, just recently celebrating a hundred years not long ago.”

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 1, 2022.