Conclave begins to elect new pope
May 7, 2025 | Catholic cardinals gather for the conclave, ending the first day without selecting a new pope. Plus, police in Nova Scotia scale back the search for two missing children. And, new details about the prime minister's private conversation with Donald Trump.
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CTV News
38 minutes ago
- CTV News
PM Carney says he has no plans to tackle 24 Sussex question during his mandate
The Canadian prime ministers' residence, 24 Sussex, is seen on the banks of the Ottawa River in Ottawa on Monday, Oct. 26, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick OTTAWA — Almost a decade after 24 Sussex Drive was abandoned as the official residence of the Canadian prime minister, taxpayers are still shelling out tens of thousands of dollars a year to maintain the vacant property, and the new prime minister has signalled he's in no rush to deal with the crumbling building. Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters in May that it's up to the National Capital Commission to decide what to do with 24 Sussex. 'It's not a challenge for today, this month, this year and it's probably a challenge for this mandate,' Carney said in French, adding that multiple ideas on how to renew 24 Sussex have been put forward by former prime ministers. The home is a 35-room mansion that was built in 1896, and served as the prime minister's official residence starting in 1951. It has been a federal heritage site since 1986. But former prime minister Stephen Harper was the last leader to live at 24 Sussex. When Justin Trudeau took over as prime minister in November 2015, he and his family instead moved into Rideau Cottage, a home on the grounds of Rideau Hall. Carney and his family now also live at Rideau Cottage. While the grounds of 24 Sussex were used during Trudeau's tenure for some social events, it was closed by the National Capital Commission in 2022 for 'health and safety reasons.' Those included an infestation of rats that was so severe they found rodent carcasses and excrement in the home's walls, attic and basement. The commission has since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on maintaining the building. A document detailing expenses for 24 Sussex, obtained via information access law, shows that upkeep of the building cost taxpayers more than $680,000 between January 2018 and June 2023. Those costs included elevator maintenance, janitorial services, boiler maintenance, the removal of a bees' nest, pest control, roof repair and pool cleaning. In 2022, the NCC spent just over $76,000 to repair a stone wall and steel fence after a tourist bus crashed into the gates of 24 Sussex. NCC spokesperson Valérie Dufour said the organization is unable to provide any up-to-date information on operations and maintenance costs for the building. She confirmed the NCC continues to pay to maintain the building. A separate document from 2023, obtained via an access to information request, shows the Trudeau government looked at three main options for the official residence. The first option would be to establish Rideau Cottage as the prime minister's permanent residence by investing in additional residential infrastructure, such as laundry and staff offices. The second option would be to build a new 'modern facility' at 24 Sussex with 'limited heritage elements,' which would accommodate both residential and official functions. The third option would be to build an entirely new residence on NCC-owned land elsewhere in Ottawa. Dufour said the commission presented options on the future of the official residence to the government and is awaiting a decision. In a letter addressed to then-procurement minister Jean-Yves Duclos, Trudeau asked for a proposal on new options for the official residence to be drafted by January 2026. Trudeau said the proposal should include a plan to transfer all responsibility for the official residence, except for general maintenance, from the National Capital Commission to Public Services and Procurement Canada. Andrew MacDougall, who was director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper, said that while Carney is right to focus on more important files, Canada still needs to maintain 'symbols' of its nationhood — including 24 Sussex. 'Imagine a U.S. president leaving the White House in a dilapidated state. They would never,' he said. 'And so why do we tolerate it?' MacDougall argued that Carney is already 'opening the taps and spending like there's no tomorrow' and he might as well take on a problem that too many prime ministers have ignored. Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the real problem is that the National Capital Commission is 'too good at wasting our money but bad at managing properties.' 'With debt interest charges blowing a $1 billion hole in the budget every week, Prime Minister Mark Carney must make it a priority to hold the NCC accountable to stop wasting so much money,' he said. 'Canadians also shouldn't be paying for an official residence for any opposition leader or Speaker, and the prime minister doesn't need multiple residences.' Katherine Spencer-Ross, president of Heritage Ottawa, said Carney's reluctance to tackle 24 Sussex is 'hardly surprising' given the amount of work on his plate. 'I'm not holding my breath,' she said. 'I think he's got another fish to fry.' Spencer-Ross said that while prime ministers have been afraid to do anything about 24 Sussex because of the political optics, the prime minister of the day is still the 'steward' of the building. 'It is not their home. It is not their party's home. It belongs to the people of Canada,' she said. Spencer-Ross said Heritage Ottawa wrote to Trudeau in 2018 to suggest setting up an external advisory committee to look at options for the residence. She said nothing happened with that idea until Trudeau included it in his letter to Duclos. She said her organization believes the building should be maintained, renewed and kept in public hands, even if it's no longer the official residence. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 13, 2025. Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press
CTV News
39 minutes ago
- CTV News
U.S. military parade has global counterparts in democracies, monarchies and totalitarian regimes
The military parade to mark the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary and its convergence with U.S. President Donald Trump's 79th birthday are combining to create a peacetime outlier in U.S. history. Yet it still reflects global traditions that serve a range of political and cultural purposes. Variations on the theme have surfaced among longtime NATO allies in Europe, one-party and authoritarian states and history's darkest regimes. France: Bastille Day and Trump's idée inspirée The oldest democratic ally of the U.S. holds a military parade each July 14 to commemorate one of the seminal moments of the French Revolution. It inspired — or at least stoked — Trump's idea for a Washington version. On July 14, 1789, French insurgents stormed the Bastille, which housed prisoners of Louis XVI's government. Revolutionaries commenced a Fête de la Fédération as a day of national unity and pride the following year, even with the First French Republic still more than two years from being established. The Bastille Day parade has rolled annually since 1880. Now, it proceeds down an iconic Parisian route, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It passes the Arc de Triomphe — a memorial with tributes to the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and World War I — and eventually in front of the French president, government ministers and invited foreign guests. Trump attended in 2017, early in his first presidency, as U.S. troops marched as guests. The spectacle left him openly envious. 'It was one of the greatest parades I've ever seen,' Trump told French President Emanuel Macron. 'It was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France. We're going to have to try and top it.' The British set modern ceremonial standards In the United Kingdom, King Charles III serves as ceremonial (though not practical) head of U.K. armed forces. Unlike in France and the U.S., where elected presidents wear civilian dress even at military events, Charles dons elaborate dress uniforms — medals, sash, sword, sometimes even a bearskin hat and chin strap. He does it most famously at Trooping the Colour, a parade and troop inspection to mark the British monarch's official birthday, regardless of their actual birthdate. (The U.S. Army has said it has no specific plans to recognize Trump's birthday on Saturday.) In 2023, Charles' first full year as king, he rode on horseback to inspect 1,400 representatives of the most prestigious U.K. regiments. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, used a carriage over the last three decades of her 70-year reign. The British trace Trooping the Colour back to King Charles II, who reigned from 1660-1685. It became an annual event under King George III, described in the American colonists' Declaration of Independence as a figure of 'absolute Despotism (and) Tyranny.' Authoritarians flaunt military assets Grandiose military pomp is common under modern authoritarians, especially those who have seized power via coups. It sometimes serves as a show of force meant to ward off would-be challengers — and to seek legitimacy and respect from other countries. Cuba's Fidel Castro, who wore military garb routinely, held parades to commemorate the revolution he led on Dec. 2, 1959. In 2017, then-President Raúl Castro refashioned the event into a Fidel tribute shortly after his brother's death. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, known as 'Comandante Chávez,' presided over frequent parades until his 2013 death. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, has worn military dress at similar events. North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, who famously bonded with Trump in a 2018 summit, used a 2023 military parade to show off his daughter and potential successor, along with pieces of his isolated country's nuclear arsenal. The event in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square — named for Kim's grandfather — marked the North Korean Army's 75th birthday. Kim watched from a viewing stand as missiles other weaponry moved by and goose-stepping soldiers marched past him chanting, 'Defend with your life, Paektu Bloodline' — referring to the Kim family's biological ancestry. In China, Beijing's one-party government stages its National Day Parade every 10 years to project civic unity and military might. The most recent events, held in 2009 and 2019, involved trucks carrying nuclear missiles designed to evade U.S. defenses, as well as other weaponry. Legions of troops, along with those hard assets, streamed past President Xi Jinping and other leaders gathered in Tiananmen Square in 2019 as spectators waved Chinese flags and fighter jets flew above. Earlier this spring, Xi joined Russian President Vladimir Putin — another strongman leader Trump has occasionally praised — in Moscow's Red Square for the annual 'Victory Day' parade. The May 9 event commemorates the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II — a global conflict in which China and the Soviet Union, despite not being democracies, joined the Allied Powers in fighting the Axis Powers led by Germany and Japan. A birthday parade for Hitler Large civic-military displays were, of course, a feature in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy before and during World War II. Chilling footage of such events lives on as a reminder of the dangers of authoritarian extremism. Among those frequent occasions: a parade capping Germany's multiday observance of Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday in 1939. (Some far-right extremists in Europe still mark the anniversary of Hitler's birth.) The four-hour march through Berlin on April 20, 1939, included more than 40,000 personnel across the Army, Navy, Luftwaffe (Air Force) and Schutzstaffel (commonly known as the 'SS.') Hundreds of thousands of spectators lined the streets. The Führer's invited guests numbered 20,000. On a street-level platform, Hitler was front and centre. Alone. Bill Barrow, The Associated Press
Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Protests, parades and Pride: One week in June 2025 is drawing stark American fault lines
WASHINGTON (AP) — On the first weekend: a vision of the nation built upon inclusivity and the tenets of liberalism — a conception of country that incorporates generations of fights for equity, for compassion, for expanding what it means to be an American. On the second weekend, in the same town: a public show of strength and nationalism constructed on a foundation of military might, law and order, a tour de force of force. And on the days in between: a city 2,000 miles from the capital locked in pitched battles over the use — abuse, many contend — of federal power and military authority to root out, detain and oust people who the current administration says do not belong. Today's United States — its possibility, its strength, its divisiveness, its polarization and fragmentation — is encapsulated in a single week in June 2025, its triumphs and frictions on vivid display. As events both planned and chaotically spontaneous play out, many Americans are frantically and sometimes furiously pondering assorted iterations of two questions: What is this country right now? And what should it be? Pride, protests and parades Consider two quotes from recent days from two very different Americans. The first came last weekend, during World Pride in Washington, when a 58-year-old gay man from Philadelphia named David Begler summed up what many were messaging in the days leading up to it after months of Donald Trump's increasing attempts to target the LGBTQ community: 'I want us to send a message to the White House to focus on uplifting each other instead of dividing.' The second came days ahead of the military parade planned Saturday for the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, from the mouth of the president on whose 79th birthday it will be held: 'If there's any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,' Donald Trump said. 'I haven't even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.' Among the competing visions of America in 2025: the desire to protest and seek a redress of grievances against the government vs. the desire for control, order — and a respect for the government and for authority. The volatile combination of demonstrations and the U.S. military is a potent one, with its most recent roots in the protest movement of the 1960s against the Vietnam War. A young generation that would later be known as baby boomers regularly squared off against police and sometimes the military over U.S. involvement in what was framed as a war against communism in Southeast Asia. Historians give those protesters a fair bit of the credit for that war ultimately ending in 1975. President Jimmy Carter ultimately pardoned more than 200,000 people who had dodged the draft for that conflict. Then, as now, many in the establishment criticized protesters bitterly, saying they were undermining a nation to which they should be grateful. Questions of loyalty and betrayal were thrown around. The role of the military in quelling civilian protests was bitterly contested, particularly after Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire and killed four students during antiwar protests in May 1970 at Kent State University. There are echoes of that this week, not only in Los Angeles but now in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the deployment of 5,000 state National Guard troops ahead of the 'No Kings Day of Defiance' against the Trump administration's ongoing immigration raids. And as protesters in Los Angeles taunt the military and say guardsmen should be 'ashamed' to face off against what they call a just cause, it's easy to wonder: How can patriotism and protest coexist? Washington at the epicenter Democracy has always been messy and resistant to consensus. That's part of why the national slogan of the United States is 'e pluribus unum' — 'out of many, one.' And Washington, D.C., as the nation's capital, has long been the place where the many have come to make themselves known as part of the one — and to be noticed. It was where the 'Bonus Army' of World War I veterans marched in 1932 to demand their promised postwar payments and be heard in a demonstration that ended violently. It was where the first National Boy Scout Jamboree was held on the National Mall in 1937. It was where the 'March on Washington,' a centerpiece of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, ended with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s renowned 'I Have a Dream' speech. It was where, in 1995, the 'Million Man March' was held to address concerns of the American Black community, and where hundreds of thousands of women came to Washington largely in protest of Trump, just a day after his first inauguration. It is also the place where Americans remember, where the memorials to World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War sit. It is where the country erected stone shrines in various shapes and sizes to the presidents it most admired — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is the site of museums containing some of the most distilled expressions of culture — from the Holocaust Museum to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to the National Museum of African American History. Is it so hard to believe, then, that two events as opposite as World Pride and a military parade unfold here, within blocks of each other, within a week's time? At a politically fractious moment when some families can hardly break bread without political arguments erupting over Trump, Gaza and Israel, immigration and LGBTQ rights, isn't it possible that the weird and downright uncomfortable juxtaposition of these two starkly different events might be the most American thing of all? Walt Whitman, one of the most famous poets in American history, had this to say about the the diversity of America when he wrote 'I Hear America Singing' to underscore that its citizens all contribute to the nation's song: 'I am large. I contain multitudes.' And in one week in June, at a time when the fate of the United States is being discussed in every direction we turn, the capital of Whitman's nation has become a showcase in displaying those messy democratic multitudes to the world. For better or for worse. ___ Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation at The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990.
