Son’s work duplicity comes at critical crossroad

Election won't stall EI review, minister says

OTTAWA - A planned review of the sprawling and antiquated employment insurance system will go ahead even if the country is plunged into a federal election campaign, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough says.

Qualtrough said consultations will start next month on how the decades-old system can be modernized after its shortcomings were exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But looming over the consultation call is an anticipated federal election that labour and business groups have worried would kibosh the long-sought review.

Speaking to The Canadian Press, Qualtrough said departmental officials will start consultations and keep them going even during an election campaign.

Mourinho’s return to Real Madrid a classic rebound

Not quite a month ago, nearly two million people lined the streets of Madrid to see the World Cup paraded by the Spanish national team. It might as well have been another lifetime.

By the time the Plaza de Cibeles was swept up and sprayed down, the country’s attention had shifted to the only thing — or person — it seemed anyone wanted to be talking about: José Mourinho.

And they haven’t stopped talking about him. He hasn’t let them.

On June 11, the same day the World Cup kicked off in Mexico City, Mourinho was appointed head coach of Real Madrid for a second time. In his initial stint at the sport’s biggest club, which had ended 13 years prior, he’d won the Copa del Rey his first season, La Liga in his second and nothing in his third.

Oscar Moments: The night emotion won, for better and worse

Also streaming: “How to Survive a Pandemic” and “When We Were Bullies” on Crave, “Revenge of the Black Best Friend” and “Topline” on CBC Gem.

Vanderhaeghe ruminates on literary greats, writing, history and more in new non-fiction collection

Veteran Saskatoon author Guy Vanderhaeghe has assembled 37 of his non-fiction pieces written over the last 40 years in a new book — mostly, to paraphrase the book’s title, because his fans have asked him to.

His work is collected into six sections: “Books and Writers 1,” “Recollections 1,” “The Writer and Writing 1: Thinking by Dreams,” “Books and Writers 2,” “Recollections 2,” and “The Writer and Writing 2: History and Literature.” There are insightful book reviews, lively articles, personal memories and a few speeches, such as the Margaret Laurence lecture he gave at the Writers’ Union’s annual general meeting in May 2014.

Vanderhaeghe made an auspicious debut on the Canadian literary scene in 1982 with a much-praised short-story collection called Man Descending. To his great surprise, it won the annual Governor General’s Award for fiction. Early in the Laurence lecture, he said he knew he had not deserved the award. “Self-doubt and embarrassment were making it impossible for me to get on with the next book,” he writes. It was Laurence herself who assured him that “nothing mattered besides getting on with the work and doing it as well as I could manage. Everything else, whether praise or criticism, was in the long run nothing but mere noise, clamour, distraction.”

Vanderhaeghe has since won the Governor General’s Award two more times — in 1996 for his novel The Englishman’s Boy and in 2015 for his collection Daddy Lenin and Other Stories.

Doctor’s departure stressful for teen

Morgan Walker is a typical teen — but only because a piece of his brain the size of a deck of cards was removed four years ago.

Walker, who had seizures multiple times a day before his surgery, fears other people might not be so lucky.

That’s because his surgeon, Dr. Demitre Serletis, is leaving the province and Health Sciences Centre. Serletis will start practising at the Cleveland Clinic in the new year.

“I was kind of shocked, but I understood why,” Walker said from his home in Brandon. “The government really hasn’t been respecting doctors.”

A timeline of key events in the SNC-Lavalin affair

OTTAWA - A chronology of key developments in the SNC-Lavalin controversy, according to public documents, reports and testimony to the House of Commons justice committee:

Feb. 19, 2015 - The RCMP lays corruption and fraud charges against Montreal-based engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin over business dealings in Libya. SNC-Lavalin says the charges are without merit.

March 27, 2018 - The Liberals table a budget bill allowing for "remediation agreements," plea-bargain-like deals for corporations to avoid criminal proceedings by making reparations for bad behaviour. SNC-Lavalin lobbied for such a provision in Canadian law.

Sept. 4 - The Public Prosecution Service rejects SNC-Lavalin's request to negotiate a remediation agreement. Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould is informed of the decision.