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Globe and Mail
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
Ottawa has duty to ensure welfare of Canadians in ICE custody, advocates say
The growing number of Canadian citizens detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is disturbing and raises questions about whether Ottawa is doing enough to ensure the well-being of Canadians in custody, experts say, after revelations that Canadian children as young as two years old have been held for weeks in immigration detention this year. The Globe and Mail on Thursday published extensive analysis of American enforcement data revealing that 149 Canadian citizens have been held at some point in ICE custody since January, when President Donald Trump took office and ordered an expansive immigration crackdown. Two Canadian toddlers were held for weeks at a remote Texas facility that is at the centre of a court case alleging inadequate access to safe drinking water, medical care and legal assistance. One of the children was held for 51 days – more than double the legal detention period for migrant children in the United States. Citing privacy, Global Affairs Canada has not commented on what, exactly, it is doing to ensure Canadian detainees are being held in safe conditions and have access to due process. However, Charlotte MacLeod, a spokesperson for the department, said that 'Canadian officials maintain regular engagement with U.S. counterparts related to Canadians in immigration-related detention.' Ms. MacLeod told The Globe this week that Ottawa cannot 'ask for special treatment for citizens, try to spare them from the due process of local law or overrule the decisions of local authorities.' Documented or not, immigrants in the U.S. fear they'll be swept up in Trump's mass deportation crackdown Julia Sande, a lawyer with Amnesty International Canada's English-speaking section, said The Globe's findings are 'horrifying and deeply disturbing.' She said the Canadian government's comments are cause for significant concern. 'What does due process look like for a toddler?' she said. 'Canada can say it can't interfere in other countries, but what steps is Canada taking to ensure that its citizens, including its toddler citizens' rights are being upheld?' she said. The anonymized ICE data analyzed by The Globe are current to the end of July and disclose details about thousands of detention cases dating back to 2023, including detainees' nationality, year of birth, time in custody and the reason for the detention. The information was obtained through a federal district-court lawsuit against ICE brought by the Deportation Data Project, which is run by a group of academics and lawyers in the U.S. The Globe's analysis showed that, as of the end of July, 56 Canadians arrested this year were still in ICE detention. Over all, the number of Canadians arrested by ICE so far in 2025 is on pace to double that of last year. Sharry Aiken, a professor at Queen's University Faculty of Law, said the use of immigration detention in the U.S. has long been concerning, but the Trump administration has introduced a 'dramatic intensification' of the practice. That includes detaining long-time residents of the United States. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had told The Globe in a statement that: 'Allegations of subprime conditions at these facilities are FALSE.' American visitors to Canada outnumber Canadians heading south, data suggest In June, Johnny Noviello, a 49-year-old Canadian man who had lived in the United States as a permanent resident for decades, died while in ICE custody. He was detained at his probation office two years after being convicted of several drug-related offences. 'There's a heightened responsibility for the Canadian government to stand up and take notice, because the government has an obligation to protect its citizens,' Prof. Aiken said. In countries that are party to the United Nations Vienna Convention on Consular Relations − including Canada and the United States − arresting authorities must advise detainees of their right to access consular representation from their home country. According to the Canadian government's consular affairs service standards, Canadian consular officials are typically notified of an arrest or detention of a Canadian abroad. Consular officials will 'take steps to initiate contact' with the individual within one working day of learning of the detention, the standards document says. Officials will increase the frequency of their contact if the Canadian detainee is deemed to be particularly vulnerable, including in situations where Ottawa has concerns about human-rights violations, according to the service standard. Ottawa human-rights lawyer Paul Champ said that although there may be standards on paper, consular assistance for Canadian detainees abroad is, in his experience representing Canadians detained abroad, inconsistent, opaque and influenced by the politics between the two countries in question. 'These reports of the conditions of confinement are quite appalling, and Canada should be seriously concerned about that and taking action,' he said. NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson said she was concerned to learn of The Globe's findings, including the 'illegal and inhumane' detention of one of the Canadian toddlers for more than seven weeks. The little girl was detained in late May at the South Texas Family Residential Center, and appears to have been detained with a Bolivian woman and another child, who was born in 2019 and also has Bolivian citizenship. Subsidiary of Canadian security company cleared to provide up to $138-million in 'emergency detention' services to ICE The Bolivian woman was picked up for an immigration violation and does not have a criminal record. They were granted a conditional release from detention in mid-July to await a decision on their expedited-removal case. The ICE data show that another Canadian child, born in 2022, was also detained in early May. The boy appears to have been detained with a Congolese woman for almost four days in an ICE hold room near the Canadian border. At the time, these sites were meant for detentions of under 12 hours. The policy has since changed to 72 hours. The Congolese woman was picked up for an immigration violation and does not have a criminal record. The pair were then transferred to the South Texas facility where they remained in custody for more than two weeks. They were subsequently released on a supervision order. A suite of legal protections known as the Flores Settlement Agreement requires migrant children to be released from government custody after no more than 20 days in detention. The White House is currently seeking to terminate the agreement. 'We call on the Liberal government to tell President Trump in no uncertain terms: These are human-rights violations and violations of due process, and this is unacceptable,' said Ms. McPherson. 'It is clear the United States under President Trump is no longer a safe place for many, including Canadians.'
Globe and Mail
7 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
The age of AI
Canadian CEOs are embracing generative AI for its speed and efficiency, and expect employees to get on board – or else Joe Castaldo Sean Silcoff Technology Reporter The Globe and Mail Published 30 minutes ago Illustration by Kuba Ferenc/The Globe and Mail to view this content.
Globe and Mail
06-08-2025
- Health
- Globe and Mail
Ontario's private-clinic plan doesn't add up, prospective applicants warn
The Ontario government, poised to allow private clinics to do publicly funded hip- and knee-replacement surgeries, is facing behind-the-scenes criticism from some of the people who hope to build the new facilities. The long-delayed move is part of the Progressive Conservative government's push to boost the involvement of the private sector in the public health care system, in an effort to move more procedures out of hospitals and reduce waiting times. But in interviews with The Globe and Mail, sources with two prospective private-sector applicants for licences to open new clinics say the terms unveiled in July are inadequate. They say the per-procedure payments that their clinics would receive will not provide a return for the financial backers that is required to build expensive new clinics from scratch. Ontario expanding publicly funded hip and knee surgeries done in private clinics The two sources warn that without changes, the government is unlikely to see enough of the promised new clinics materialize to fulfill its pledge to improve waiting times. The Globe is not identifying the sources, who say speaking publicly on the matter could jeopardize their prospects in the application process. Critics of private-sector involvement in health care dismissed the complaints as attempts to pad the profits that could be made from public health care even before any new clinics open. The government has given interested private-sector groups until Aug. 27 to submit applications, and plans to award licences next year. It says it will spend $125-million to have up to 20,000 publicly funded orthopedic surgeries done outside hospitals over two years. That's compared with the approximately 60,000 hip and knee replacements done in Ontario each year, according to prepandemic figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Ontario says the move will help it ensure that 90 per cent of patients receive hip and knee replacements within clinically recommended waiting times. Canadians waiting longer for some surgeries, even as number of operations increases: report The province has said that it already has the shortest such times in the country, pointing to CIHI data showing that 82 per cent of hip patients and 79 per cent of knee patients were treated within six months. But provincial data also show much longer waits in some regions, including in Southwestern Ontario. In response to questions about the cost structure on offer for the new clinics, Ema Popovic, a spokeswoman for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, issued a statement citing the application's stipulation that 'facility cost rates may be reviewed or refreshed at the ministry's discretion.' The complaints from the prospective applicants are very familiar to Brian Rotenberg, a head-and-neck surgeon from London, Ont., who is the medical director of an existing private clinic and a consultant for surgeons looking to set them up. He said he had been speaking to four different groups considering whether to apply for the new licences. Two have already decided not to bother, he said. He also said that it would take 12 to 18 months to build a new site once a licence was secured, meaning it could be 2027 before many new clinics open their doors. 'Even a small single operatory site is minimum a few million dollars,' Dr. Rotenberg said. 'At the price that they have put on this, it would take years and years and years of high-volume work to recoup that.' According to the application the government released in early July, the new clinics will be paid a $6,530 'facility cost' for every hip replacement, and $5,797 for each knee replacement. That does not include the standard fees the surgeons would still pocket from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which can range from $700 to $900 or more for a hip operation. Ontario has more family doctors, but fewer are working in primary care, study shows The application says the facility cost for the clinic is all that is being offered and must include all care before and after the operation, including rehabilitation − at no cost to the patient. The government did not release comparable figures for what these procedures and services would currently cost in the public system. The patients funnelled to the new clinics would be among the healthiest and lowest risk, least likely to see complications or need extensive rehabilitation. The prospective applicants who spoke to The Globe say the compensation offered by the government could work out for them if private-sector clinics could purchase artificial hips and knees at the same steeply discounted prices as public hospitals can. Such an arrangement, the sources say, could save them hundreds of dollars for each procedure. But the Ontario government has not said whether private clinics would be able to participate in the bulk purchases of joints by hospitals. All the new clinics, however, must demonstrate that they have a partnership with a public hospital. Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, an anti-private-care group backed by health-worker unions, dismissed the complaints about the cost structure from the prospective private clinics. She accused them of merely angling for more profits before they even open. 'And so the lobbying commences,' Ms. Mehra said in an interview. Data her group released in 2023 showed that many public hospitals across the province had underused operating rooms, owing to a lack of funding for staff. More procedures could be done in these existing, already-paid-for ORs, she argues. Ontario expanding private clinics while hospital ORs sit idle, health care advocates say Ontario NDP health critic France Gélinas said the province's new system will squeeze out non-profits and induce for-profit clinics to engage in upselling, or profiting by charging patients out-of-pocket for extras or services not covered by public insurance, once they have them in the door. Ms. Gélinas points to complaints that elderly people have been pushed into paying hundreds or thousands of dollars themselves for enhancements or extra services while getting publicly funded cataract surgeries, which was the focus of the first phase of the government's drive to boost the use of private-sector clinics. The government's rules, she charged, forbidding the new clinics from refusing to operate on patients who decline to pay for upgrades, or barring patients from paying to queue-jump, are toothless. 'Lots of investors, they don't care if there will be extra charges, they don't care about extra billing − they care about making a profit,' Ms. Gélinas said. 'This is what investors do.' There is at least one organization expected to apply for a licence to do hip and knee surgeries for which recouping capital costs appears to be a non-issue: the six-storey, 200,000-square-foot non-profit Schroeder Ambulatory Centre in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto. It has already been built, with $300-million from philanthropist Walter Schroeder, the founder of the global credit-rating agency Dominion Bond Rating Service, now known as Morningstar DBRS. The centre just received a licence and funding to do publicly funded diagnostic tests, and is expected to open in the fall. The facility, which played host to Ms. Jones and Premier Doug Ford for a government announcement in June, declined to comment.
Globe and Mail
06-08-2025
- Globe and Mail
Stressed-out parents are turning to ChatGPT for help
Parents seem to be turning to ChatGPT for advice more and more – but what do robots have to offer when it comes to such a core human relationship? What guardrails are necessary when trusting artificial intelligence with shaping the development of our children? Contributing columnist Amberly McAteer weighs in after ChatGPT's advice actually got one of her daughters to stop stealing from the other. Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at thedecibel@
Globe and Mail
28-07-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Ottawa's plan to boost deposit insurance is too timid and mired in concerns of ages past
John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian. Between 1982 and 1985, the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation paid out $3.177-billion in claims to cover depositor losses. Ten poorly managed and badly regulated trust companies were the cause. By 1993, CDIC had recovered more than two-thirds of those funds when the liquidators were finished. The final cost to CDIC was $827-million. This loss put a dent in the Department of Finance's perception of deposit insurance. It was supposed to boost competition by levelling the playing field for smaller banks and financial institutions. Instead, some smaller institutions leveraged deposit insurance to attract deposits from unwitting customers that they then used to fund high-risk ventures. This boosted instability, not just competition. But those days are long gone, and financial regulation is different today. Ottawa needs to let the past go. Investor Clinic: Understanding deposit insurance rules could help simplify your holdings The quickest way to boost competition in Canada's banking system is now on the table: Increasing the dollar value of deposits guaranteed by the CDIC in cases of failure is under consideration in Ottawa. The more coverage CDIC offers, the easier it is to move beyond the Big Six banks for deposit accounts, chequing accounts, investment deposits – such as guaranteed investment certificates – and other CDIC-covered deposit categories and products. This in turn incentivizes Canada's Big Six to offer more competitive interest rates, reduce fees and improve service standards. Yet, the federal government is squandering an easy opportunity to boost competition with a timid proposal to insure consumer deposits up to $150,000 (versus the current amount, $100,000) for each eligible deposit product at member institutions, which include chartered banks, federally regulated credit unions, and loan and trust companies. Curiously, the Department of Finance is proposing that CDIC increase coverage for business deposit accounts to $500,000. Businesses will welcome this, but it creates a politically flawed, two-tier deposit insurance system. Such an approach puts any future federal government dealing with a bank failure in the invidious position of having CDIC business payouts exceed by more than three times consumer payouts. The likely outcome would see Ottawa cough up taxpayer money to make whole consumer deposits exceeding the $150,000 ceiling, defeating the purpose of CDIC. Rob Carrick: A $250,000 deposit insurance limit for banks would suit today's world a lot better than the current $100,000 The last time Ottawa increased CDIC coverage on Canadian-dollar deposit accounts was 20 years ago. Now the federal government is playing catch-up with the annual rate of inflation (2.18 per cent) since CDIC coverage was last raised to $100,000 in 2005. In real value of money terms, CDIC coverage dropped by almost 54 per cent over the past two decades. With the expansion of savings products covered by CDIC in recent years, such as the First Home Savings Account, one might assume the effective CDIC coverage has widened. And yet, the Department of Finance's own study found that CDIC-eligible deposits fell to 36 per cent in 2024 from 58 per cent in 2005. This advantages the Big Six banks at the expense of smaller financial players. Canadians are more likely to trust uninsured personal and business deposits to larger, older institutions. Following the failure of two finance companies in 1965 and 1966 that generated heavy losses, and a run on the Montreal City and District Savings Bank (known today as Laurentian Bank) in 1967, the federal government founded CDIC to restore confidence in the financial system while 'enhancing the competitive position of … smaller banks.' Deposit insurance was the antidote to the understandable bias toward larger banks. CDIC's initial deposit insurance coverage in 1967 was $20,000, the equivalent of $181,000 in today's dollars – 20 per cent higher than what Ottawa is now proposing. Competition would be enhanced by ensuring 'the safety and soundness of those depositors who are usually not in a position to judge for themselves the financial soundness of the institution holding their deposits.' It is an approach with advocates in other parts of Canada as well as the United States. Provinces regulate their financial deposit-taking institutions and have provincial versions of CDIC. In Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, deposit insurance is unlimited. In Prince Edward Island, it is unlimited for deposits in registered and tax-free accounts. Ontario offers a mix of unlimited coverage and $250,000 in deposit insurance depending on the deposit product. In New Brunswick, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador, provincially regulated deposit-taking institutions offer $250,000 per nine common deposit product categories. In the U.S., the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation offers US$250,000 (roughly $340,000) in deposit insurance for each of 14 deposit product categories. Revised CDIC coverage aligned with provincial and U.S. norms will better encourage competition in our banking system. It could be problematic, though, if the Department of Finance has real concerns about the state of some of our smaller financial institutions. Proposing such a modest increase to $150,000 raises the question: Does it?
