Politics Briefing: Trudeau heads to Washington

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Good morning,

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heads back to Washington, D.C., today to promote Canada as another round of NAFTA talks begin. He will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump tomorrow and with Congress's powerful Ways and Means committee. (Stephen Harper, coincidentally, is also in Washington tomorrow.) Mr. Trudeau continues on to Mexico City later this week.

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CANADIAN HEADLINES

The Canada Revenue Agency says it will begin collecting taxes on employee discounts.

Canadian special forces have played an important role in finding and dismantling chemical weapons in Iraq, sources tell The Globe.

The government says it's narrowed down its list for possible superclusters.

Netflix says that it wants to set the record straight about its investments in Canada, saying that the $500-million is new money and not connected with the company's recent price increases.

Who is Andrew Scheer? More than five months after he was chosen as leader of the Conservative Party it's still unclear where he'd take Canada if given the chance in 2019. Roy MacGregor profiled the man who is trying to brand himself to Canadians as the prime-minister-in-waiting.

Harm-reduction advocates in New Brunswick are asking the provincial government to "just do something" in the continuing absence of an official plan. Compared to the rest of Atlantic Canada, and to the rest of the country, the province's response has been lacking, according to activists. "Are we being too cautious? Are we taking too long? We are where we are," Dr. Jennifer Russell, who is leading the task force to find solutions on the issue, told The Globe's new Atlantic correspondent Jessica Leeder. "There's a process we follow to put these types of things in place and we're following [it]."

Who is part of Canada's 1 per cent? Census data provided to The Globe show that significant differences remain based on where you live and your gender. The data also illustrate how the highest-paid Canadians got the biggest pay raises over the past decade as Canada emerged from the great recession and into a commodities-fuelled boom. Explore how the data breaks down and see how you compare.

And the next mayor of Les Eboulements, a 1,330-person municipality northeast of Quebec City, will definitely be Pierre Tremblay. Voters just have to decide which one of the two Pierre Tremblays on the ballot they'll vote for.

Derek Burney and Fen Osler Hampson (The Globe and Mail) on NAFTA talks: "Mr. Trudeau is Canada's most powerful card. Only he can make a deal with the biggest wild card, President Trump himself, whose motives other than 'make America great again' remain unclear. The Prime Minister has assiduously courted the American President from his first day in office and from all reports has a good personal rapport with Mr. Trump. With all the turbulence in Washington, he and his officials have chosen their words carefully, displaying discipline, tact and self-restraint. But the Prime Minister is going to have to use more than his charm when he meets with the U.S. President. He may need his boxing gloves, too."

Margaret Wente (The Globe and Mail) on Energy East: "How did we get here? We got here because the Trudeau government's energy policy is fundamentally incoherent. They want to be all things to all people, and that – despite their assurances to the contrary – is just not possible. The environmental lobby is absolutely opposed to any incremental hydrocarbon production. But incremental hydrocarbon production is absolutely essential to capital generation, wealth production and our standard of living. A coherent energy policy would require the government to make real tradeoffs. And they just can't do it."

Andrew Jackson (The Globe and Mail) on the census and inequality: "The restoration of the long-form census by the Liberal government was an important step in terms of giving us the means to measure and monitor social and economic progress, and laying the basis for informed discussion of public policy. The new data certainly show that rising income inequality remains a major challenge to be tackled."

Sheema Khan (The Globe and Mail) on M-103: "Questions and criticism about Islam are not Islamophobia. In fact, Muslims themselves engage in robust debates about modernity and Islamic practice. The cruel irony is that such debates are banned in countries that need it most. The Heritage Committee must be careful to define Islamophobia, lest it chill the free exchange of opinions."

Haroon Siddiqui and Alok Mukherjee (Toronto Star) on Sikhs in politics: "A century after facing raw racism on their arrival in British Columbia, Sikhs have emerged a bigger political force than any other visible minority group. Theirs has been a long and arduous journey that, at long last, constitutes a great Canadian story."

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on the Liberal backbench: "It's going to be harder for Mr. Trudeau to manage his own backbench now, two years in. Most of his MPs are rookies, but now they're starting to feel they know what they're doing; it's not all about riding the wave in on Team Trudeau any more. There will be more like [New Brunswick MP Wayne] Long and more rumblings in the caucus."

Paul Well (Maclean's) on Liberal tax changes: "In retrospect, it will be seen as fitting that finance minister Bill Morneau started working on the second draft of his planned overhaul of corporate taxation during the 2017 Thanksgiving weekend. First, because Thanksgiving is often used for cutting up turkeys. And it's becoming clear that Morneau's project, a bigger political gobbler than the Liberals ever imagined, is in for a close encounter with a carving board."

Richard Florida and Joshua Gans (The Globe and Mail) on attracting global talent: "As the U.S. global brand wanes, Canada's grows in stature. Many things point in Canada's favour, but the country and its cities can't rest on their laurels. The competition for global talent is a long, hard game. It will take sustained work to turn Canada's talent opportunity today into real and lasting advantage for the future."

INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

In the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, a political crisis is brewing. More than 40 people have died from politically-motivated attacks since the start of 2016 and the death toll is more than 80 since 2011. "I think I need a calculator, because I've been shot more than 10 times," one local councillor says. There are signs emerging that violence is spreading to other regions, in a potential sign of instability in a continental power, The Globe's Africa Correspondent Geoffrey York reports.

Weeks after an overwhelmingly supportive vote for Kurdish independence, the autonomous region is feeling pressure from Iraq's central government to back down. Despite the backlash many in Kurdistan are optimistic. "The situation before the referendum wasn't good anyway. The [Iraqi central] government didn't pay people's salaries. The economy was bad. So what will happen? We have hope. If we get independence, it would be like a gift for us," an NGO worker told The Globe.

China is preparing for its biggest political meeting: the 19th Communist Party congress. But as the country readies itself, life is grinding to a halt. Cock fights are being cancelled, holidays are being scrapped and an already-censored Internet has been made more difficult to browse. Authorities across China are competing to please local leaders and central party officials in an attempt to cement power and rise within the country's sprawling bureaucracy.

Catalonia's secessionist leader Carles Puidgemont is under pressure to drop plans to declare independence after a referendum that saw the vast majority of Catalans vote to leave Spain.

André Picard (The Globe and Mail) on mental health and violence: "After every horrific mass shooting and disturbing terrorist attack, the reflex is the same: The attacker(s) must be mentally ill. The shocking randomness of these acts is destabilizing, so simplistic conclusions may provide comfort, but you can't explain away violence by saying the perpetrators are 'nuts.' Doing so does a grave disservice to those who do suffer from mental illness – the vast majority of whom are not violent – and it prevents us from discussing the complex personal, political and social drivers that create angry, young (for the most part) men."

Terrell Jermaine Starr (Washington Post) on Russian influence: "We still don't know exactly how any of these social media efforts informed Americans' voting choices in 2016. But none of us should be surprised that Russia exploited American racism to achieve its own foreign policy objectives. As a Russian supremacist state, the former USSR understood very well how to weaponize racism. It wielded Russian homogeneity against its own minorities during its 70-plus years of existence."

Stephanie Kelton (New York Times) on budgets and deficits in the U.S.: "Lawmakers are obsessed with avoiding an increase in the deficit. The impulse is so strong that it's almost Pavlovian. It's also holding us back. Politicians of both parties should stop using the deficit as a guide to public policy. Instead, they should be advancing legislation aimed at raising living standards and delivering the public investments in education, technology and infrastructure that are critical for long-term prosperity."