Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Centre-left leader Olaf Scholz on Wednesday became Germany's ninth post-Second World War chancellor, opening a new era for the European Union's most populous nation and largest economy after Angela Merkel's 16-year tenure.
Scholz's government takes office with high hopes of modernizing Germany and combating climate change but faces the immediate challenge of handling the country's toughest phase yet of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawmakers voted 395-303 with six abstentions to elect Scholz -- a comfortable majority, though short of the 416 seats his three-party coalition holds in the 736-seat lower house of parliament. Merkel, who is no longer a member of parliament, looked on from the spectators' gallery as parliament voted. Lawmakers gave her a standing ovation.
Scholz, 63, who had been Germany's vice chancellor and finance minister since 2018, brings a wealth of experience and discipline to an untried coalition of his centre-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. The three parties are portraying the combination of former rivals as a progressive alliance that will bring new energy to the country after Merkel's near-record time in office.
"We are venturing a new departure, one that takes up the major challenges of this decade and well beyond that," Scholz said this week. If the parties succeed, he added, "that is a mandate to be reelected together at the next election."
Scholz, an unflappable and supremely self-confident figure who has displayed an ability to put aside setbacks quickly, cracked a smile as he was elected and formally appointed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The new chancellor then returned to parliament to be sworn in. Scholz, who has no religious affiliation, omitted the optional phrase "so help me God" from his oath of office, as did Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.
Merkel wished Scholz luck at a handover ceremony at the chancellery. "Take possession of this house and work with it for the good of our country," she said. Scholz thanked Merkel for her work, telling her "you made your mark on this country."
Merkel has said she won't seek another political role and didn't mention any future plans on Wednesday. The 67-year-old said earlier this year that she will take time to read and sleep "and then let's see where I show up."
Scholz's style has often been likened to Merkel's, although they are from different parties. Neither is given to public displays of emotion or rousing speeches. The former labor minister and Hamburg mayor has portrayed himself both as her natural successor and an agent of change.
Scholz quipped Wednesday that he will stick with Merkel's "northeast German mentality" and "not so much will change on that front."
The new government aims to step up efforts against climate change by expanding the use of renewable energy and bringing Germany's exit from coal-fired power forward from 2038, "ideally" to 2030. It also wants to do more to modernize the country of 83 million people, including improving its notoriously poor cellphone and internet networks.
It also plans more liberal social policies, including legalizing the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes and easing the path to German citizenship while pledging greater efforts to deport immigrants who don't win asylum.
The government also plans to increase Germany's minimum wage and to get hundreds of thousands of new apartments built to curb rising rental prices.
Scholz has signalled continuity in foreign policy, saying the government will stand up for a strong European Union and nurture the trans-Atlantic alliance. He makes his first trip abroad to Paris on Friday, maintaining a tradition for German chancellors, travel to Brussels the same day to meet EU and NATO leaders.
His three-party alliance brings both opportunities and risks for all the participants, perhaps most of all for the Greens. After 16 years in opposition, they will have to prove that they can achieve their overarching aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions while working with partners who may have other priorities.
Green co-leader Robert Habeck is Scholz's vice chancellor, heading a revamped economy and climate ministry. The government's No. 3 official is Christian Lindner, the finance minister and leader of the Free Democrats, who insisted that the coalition reject tax hikes.
"It won't be easy to keep three different parties together," Schroeder, who led Germany from 1998 to 2005 as the country's last center-left chancellor, told Phoenix television. "But I think Olaf Scholz has the patience, but also the determination, to manage it."
The incoming government is portraying itself as a departure in both style and substance from the "grand coalitions" of Germany's traditional big parties that Merkel led for all but four years of her tenure, with the Social Democrats as junior partners.
In those tense alliances, the partners sometimes seemed preoccupied mostly with blocking each other's plans. Merkel's final term saw frequent infighting, some of it within her own center-right Union bloc, until the pandemic hit. She departs with a legacy defined largely by her acclaimed handling of a series of crises, rather than any grand visions for Germany.
The agreement to form a coalition government between three parties that had significant differences before the election was reached relatively quickly and in unexpected harmony. That will now be tested by the reality of governing; Scholz has acknowledged that dealing with the pandemic "will demand all our strength and energy."
German federal and state leaders last week announced tough new restrictions that largely target unvaccinated people. In a longer-term move, parliament will consider a general vaccine mandate. Germany has seen daily COVID-19 infections rise to record levels this fall, though they may now be stabilizing, and hospitals are feeling the strain.
"People are hoping that you ... will show leadership and take the right measures," Steinmeier told the new Cabinet. "What matters is not listening to the loudest, but ensuring that the pandemic doesn't keep us firmly in its grip for another year and that public life can once again become a matter of course."
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.