Politics Briefing newsletter: The eve of NAFTA talks in Canada

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Good morning,

Today is the first day of fall and the day that the Canadian government readies itself for the next round of NAFTA talks. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland meets with her NAFTA council today and has lunch with Brian Mulroney and some of the team who negotiated the North American free trade agreement in the first place. The Canadians hope that this weekend's talks in Ottawa will finally see the Americans – who started this whole thing –  give some details about what specific changes they want.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay in Ottawa and Mayaz Alam in Toronto. If you're reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

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CANADIAN HEADLINES

Transport Minister Marc Garneau is off to Paris this weekend to lobby to keep the World Anti-Doping Agency headquartered in Montreal. Canadians say it is more free from corruption by staying outside of Europe.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used his speech at the United Nations to describe the colonial history of Canada and the difficulties faced in many Indigenous communities. "There are Indigenous parents in Canada who say goodnight to their children, and have to cross their fingers in the hopes that their kids won't run away, or take their own lives in the night," he told the General Assembly. The Prime Minister also plugged a few domestic initiatives, including the Liberal reform of the small-business tax code.

The Privacy Commissioner is asking for more power.

The government is spending $2-million this year alone on headhunting for posts such as the new official languages commissioner, but so far none of the jobs have been filled.

Charlie Angus is promising to take the NDP back to its roots. As party members cast their first ballots Mr. Angus, the former punk rocker and current Northern Ontario MP, is pitching himself as a change from the era of Tom Mulcair. Only two of his federal caucus colleagues have endorsed him, and Carol Hughes and Christine Moore both represent ridings whose boundaries share a border with his own.

Another Alberta United Conservative Party MLA has resigned from caucus. Rick Fraser is the third person to leave caucus and is citing the divisive and polarized state of politics in the province.

And finding peace under the Peace Tower: Nearly 1,000 people meditated together on the lawn of Parliament Hill yesterday and Erin Anderssen describes the blissful scene.

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on Trudeau's speech: "Admitting historical wrongs is itself a decent display for a world with lingering conflicts, and admitting continuing ones is obviously relevant as Myanmar's Rohingya flee. The UN membership has no shortage of countries with marginalized minorities and Indigenous peoples. Mr. Trudeau linked the need to improve clean water, education and decent work for Canada's Indigenous people with the UN's sustainable development goals, normally applied to poorer countries of the developing world."

Jennifer Welsh (The Globe and Mail) on Trudeau's speech: "By using his remarks to highlight one of Canada's greatest domestic challenges – its relationship with Indigenous peoples – he suggested that a modern, sovereign state is not only one that opens its borders and shares responsibility. It is also one that talks openly and frankly about its own dirty laundry."

Elizabeth Renzetti (The Globe and Mail) on "climate Barbie": "'Barbie' is the least of it, and that term is offensive enough. Ask just about any woman in politics and she'll have a story about an e-mail, a tweet or a phone call in which she was called names that are unprintable, and which suggest that she does not possess the right chromosomes to be seated at the table with the powerful boys. The abuse aimed at female politicians is specific because its target is gender – rape threats, suggestions that they return to that mythical kitchen – and its aim is exclusion." (for subscribers)

Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on speculators, not sprinklers: "It's ironic that the proposed tax changes that are causing Mr. Trudeau so much grief are supposed to benefit the middle class, that fuzzy demographic the Prime Minister loves to defend. Yet, that same middle class in parts of this country are getting absolutely hosed by some who are helping to drive up housing prices, reaping the financial rewards from it, but not paying the same costs as everyone else. It's not fair. And the government needs to do something about it." (for subscribers)

John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on Jagmeet Singh's appeal: "A party of labour could become a party of non-unionized but vulnerable workers. A party that was, to be blunt, too old and too white could become more young and diverse. A party of downtown enclaves and hinterlands could become a party of the suburbs. In a word, Jagmeet Singh could make the NDP competitive."

Globe and Mail editorial board on Jagmeet Singh and Quebec: "The operating assumption in Quebec politics seems to be that wearing religious symbols and garb automatically equates to an evangelical fundamentalism on the part of the wearer, and no further investigation is required. This is defeated simply by looking at Mr. Singh's platform and statements – what's in his head, not what's on it – which make it clear he holds the usual slate of progressive NDP views, including support for the religious neutrality of the state."

François Cardinal (The Globe and Mail) on Canada and the Amazon HQ: "Amazon in Canada? Sure. Especially with the prevailing context in the United States. Donald Trump won't be in the White House forever, but voters who espouse his ideas won't be disappearing in 2020, and neither will the country's inward-looking attitude. The battle is therefore far from lost for Canadian cities. Vancouver probably doesn't have much of a chance, being too close to Seattle for Amazon to take advantage of a fresh pool of talent, but Toronto and Montreal have every reason to actively prepare their candidacies."

INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

Germany votes this weekend. Whoever ends up winning will have a guiding hand in shaping what a post-Brexit Europe will look like, with the leader helming the continent's most powerful country faced with a host of issues that could derail the Western liberal democratic order. The Globe's European bureau chief Eric Reguly has broken down why you should care and what you should know in a race that has had little fanfare so far.

New Zealand also votes this weekend! Citizens are set to choose between incumbent Prime Minister Bill English and his right-leaning National Party and upstart Jacinda Ardern's left-leaning Labour Party. Recent polls indicate the race is too close to call, a far cry from even a month ago, when Mr. English's party was well ahead in the polls. The reason? Ms. Ardern, a young and charismatic leader who  who recently took over the party. Some in the country are comparing her rise to the Trudeaumania that took over Canada during the 2015 federal election. We've got a guide to the race so that you can catch up on what's going on down under.

U.S. President Donald Trump lunched with African leaders this week at the United Nations. During the meetings he accidentally invented the fictitious African country of "Nambia," which the White House later clarified was meant to be Namibia. The comments didn't surprise many ordinary Africans, the Globe's Africa Correspondent Geoffrey York reports; however, what did leave a lasting negative impression was Mr. Trump's boast that many of his friends were rushing to the continent to "get rich."

Kim Jong Un says President Trump is "mentally deranged," and the North Korean leader is threatening to test another hydrogen bomb, this time over the Pacific Ocean.

And Facebook is turning over more than 3,000 political ads that were purchased by Russian accounts during the 2016 U.S. election to Congress.

John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on LGBT refugees in Canada: "Both Conservative and Liberal governments have made it a priority to rescue homosexuals from these environments, bringing them to Canada as refugees. For the Harper government, Iran was a priority; for the Trudeau government, the current focus is on Chechnya. Both also made promoting and protecting the rights of sexual minorities a major foreign-policy priority. It is wonderful that Canada is talking this talk and walking this walk. But inevitably, third-world attitudes toward sexual minorities – and women, and any religion other than their own – arrive with some immigrants. And some of the native-born are badly raised. They may deface mosques and graves, jeer and leer at women, bully gay men. They are miserable – angry and bewildered by being so badly outside their time and place. They are also dangerous – a threat to those they discriminate against."