 | Friday, January 28, 2022 – by John McHutchion | | Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | Large number of donations to protest convoy came from aliases, unnamed donors | | | At least a third of the donations to the GoFundMe campaign set up to support the convoy of trucks headed to Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates came from anonymous sources or were attributed to fake names, according to an analysis by CBC News.
While thousands of Canadians and Canadian businesses have dipped into their pockets to fund the cause, thousands of other donors to the campaign are listed simply as "Anonymous." As of 6:30 p.m. ET Thursday, six of the top 10 donations, all over $10,000, were listed as anonymous, including the single largest donation of $25,022.
While the campaign is fundraising for a Canadian political protest, some donations appear to have come from outside of Canada, based on comments left by donors on GoFundMe.
Some donations were made using the names of other people. Among the most common donor names listed on the GoFundMe site are Justin Trudeau, Sophie Trudeau and Theresa Tam — the name of Canada's chief public health officer. On Thursday afternoon, a $25,023 donation was listed as coming from Sophie Grégoire. It disappeared minutes later. Officials in the Prime Minister's Office and Tam's office confirmed that neither the Trudeaus nor Tam donated to the convoy's fundraising campaign.
Other listed donors identified themselves as "Fidel Castro - Justin Trudeau's dad," "Justin Trudeau's conscience," "Dump Trudeau" or used a number of other phrases laden with obscenities.
Donations to the convoy have been growing rapidly. By 6:30 p.m Thursday, the campaign had raised $6.4 million from 82,500 donors.
Questions have been raised about the destination of the money, particularly since some of the organizers have been involved in politics.
GoFundMe — which gets a percentage of all the money donated — delayed disbursement of the funds earlier this week, saying it wanted to know more about how the money was going to be used. It announced Thursday that it would begin releasing money after the organizers of the fundraising campaign provided a distribution plan for the funds. | | | | | Canada remains unbeaten atop World Cup qualifying group with victory over Honduras | | |  | (Delmer Martinez/The Associated Press) | | | Canada's Jonathan David is congratulated by teammates after scoring their side's second goal against Honduras during a qualifying soccer match for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, last night. Canada won the match 2-0, keeping the team on track to qualify for their first World Cup final since 1986. Read more from the match here.
| | | | | | | | | In brief | | | The inquiry examining the circumstances surrounding the April 2020 killings of 22 people in rural Nova Scotia has cost about $13 million so far and public hearings have yet to start. The provincial and federal governments are sharing the cost of the Mass Casualty Commission that has a mandate to examine what happened when a gunman disguised as a Mountie attacked neighbours, acquaintances and strangers, as well as causes and context leading up to the shootings and arson. Save for a few open houses in affected communities that focused on explaining the inquiry process, the commission's work has been happening behind closed doors. Public proceedings, originally set to begin last October, have been pushed back twice and already the bill for the inquiry is far larger than other inquiries held in Nova Scotia. With the hearings now slated to start in a month — 22 months after the killings — many hope to finally get answers and to start understanding what needs to change to prevent something similar in the future. Read the full story here.
Four people found frozen in a Manitoba field near the Canada-U.S. border last week have been officially identified as a family from India. The bodies of husband and wife Jagdish Baldevbhai Patel, 39, and Vaishaliben Jagdishkumar Patel, 37, were discovered in a field just north of the border on Jan. 19, alongside their three-year-old son, Dharmik Jagdishkumar Patel. The body of their other child was also found nearby, officials said last week. She has now been identified as their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi Jagdishkumar Patel. The identities of the family were confirmed by the High Commission of India in Ottawa in a news release Thursday. Manitoba RCMP identified the father as Jagdishkumar Patel. At a news conference later yesterday afternoon, Manitoba RCMP Chief Supt. Rob Hill confirmed that while Mounties initially identified the people found as a man, woman, teenage boy and infant, the children who died were actually a girl and a toddler. Read more on this story here.
Since Canada has had a vaccine requirement for travellers for almost two months, air passengers may presume everyone over 12 on their flight is fully vaccinated, but that's not necessarily the case. Some travellers, such as Canadians flying home from abroad, are exempt from the vaccine requirement. Since Nov. 30, travellers ages 12 years plus four months and older must show proof they're fully vaccinated to board passenger flights, trains and cruise ships in Canada. However, the requirement doesn't apply to everyone. Unvaccinated foreigners in Canada can board a flight departing the country until Feb. 28. And some unvaccinated foreign nationals, such as new permanent residents and those visiting for compassionate reasons, can still enter Canada. Canadians returning home are also exempt from the vaccine requirement. That means unvaccinated travellers who left the country before the vaccine requirement kicked in, or who departed in a private plane can still re-enter via a commercial flight — as long as they comply with pre-arrival COVID-19 testing requirements. Read the full story here.
A B.C. woman has been awarded $800,000 in damages after filing a lawsuit against her husband for assaulting her in 2018. The financial award for the 43-year-old woman came in a decision by a judge in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in November 2021 after her husband, 48, pleaded guilty to assault in a separate criminal trial in 2020 and was granted an absolute discharge. The two decisions highlight differences in how incidents of intimate partner violence are handled in the criminal court system, where the case is brought forward by the Crown prosecution, as opposed to civil court, where the plaintiff, in this case the victim of abuse, can have more control over the evidence brought forward. Read more on the legal case here.
Yukon will soon have a First Nations school board, which supporters say will give Indigenous residents a greater say over education matters with the territorial government. For the last two weeks, voters and parents in eight school areas have cast ballots in a referendum that asked if their schools should be part of the new school board. On Thursday night, the results were released, with voters in seven of the eight areas responding in favour of the proposal. The new board will be overseen by the Yukon First Nations Education Directorate, an independent body established in 2020 to push for more Indigenous control over education. The First Nations school board was a key part of its focus. Read more on this story here.
With NATO pondering how to appropriately respond to Russia's mobilization along the Ukrainian border, a small element of possible deterrence arrived this week in Rukla, Lithuania. Flatbed railcars, loaded with armoured infantry vehicles from Germany, were met by soldiers from the nearby NATO base, who promptly unloaded the noisy, tracked machines and drove them off in a convoy along the narrow, rural roads. The vehicles and the troops that man them are replacing others returning to Germany, as one rotation ends and another begins — all part of a NATO strategy in the region known as Enhanced Forward Presence, which dates back to 2017. In Lithuania, Germany is providing the core of the battle group for the alliance, explained commanding officer, German Lt.-Col. Hagen Ruppelt. "We are here because the Lithuanian government and the Baltic states are perceiving a threat around them," he told CBC News during a visit to see a small part of the German operation. Read more on this story from CBC correspondent Chris Brown.
Now for some good news to start your Friday: Doug Taylor decided to make his own curling stones last year when the COVID-19 pandemic meant he couldn't do much else. This year — with facilities closed — he decided to make his own rink on the Gatineau River in Chelsea, Que.The 5,500-square-foot rink sits on river ice that's about 30 centimetres thick, Taylor estimated. "It's a fair amount of work because every time it snows or every time the river changes, and it changes frequently, the ice changes and there's work to put it back into shape," he said. So far, people seem to think that work is worth it. Archie Smith has curled for years, but said this is a completely different experience. "It's cold, it's windy. The scenery is magnificent, and that just feels great to be out here," he said. Read more and watch the video here. | | | FIRST PERSON | We drove through a blizzard for some goat meat — and it was worth it | When I’m homesick, I turn to spicy Nigerian pepper stew made with goat meat with skin. The trouble is, you can’t find it in Edmonton, writes Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike. Read his story here. | | | | | | | Your weekly look at what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance. Senior business correspondent Peter Armstrong untangles what it means for you, in your inbox Monday mornings. Click here to sign up for the newsletter. | | |  | The trucker convoy heads to Ottawa | Across Canada this week, groups of truckers opposed to a vaccination mandate for cross-border truck drivers have been making their way to Ottawa to protest. But as the convoy has gained momentum, others — some with violent messages — have latched onto the movement.
Today, we'll first hear from Harold Jonker, a trucker leading one of the convoys to Ottawa. Then, we'll speak to CBC senior parliamentary reporter Travis Dhanraj about the broader context around this story, and how it's playing out politically.
Listen to today's episode | | | Today in history: January 28 | | | 1914: Suffragette leader Nellie McClung stages a mock parliament at Winnipeg’s Walker Theatre in which men had to ask women for the right to vote.
1918: Col. John McCrae, the Canadian doctor and poet who wrote In Flanders Fields while serving in Belgium during the First World War, dies of pneumonia in Boulogne, France. He was 45.
1965: Queen Elizabeth signs a royal proclamation permitting Canada's new Maple Leaf flag to be flown. It was flown for the first time on Feb. 15 of that year.
1986: The space shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Fla., killing all seven crew members — flight commander Francis R. "Dick" Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | |  | CBC NEWS APP | The most convenient way to get your news
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