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Welcome to your Weekend Posted. We know we’ve leaned heavily on the weather for introductions in the past couple months, but it’s just been so weird to have sort-of winter and then actual winter and now, suddenly, spring is upon us. Godspeed to everyone who’s going to use their weekend to pick up several months of dog poo now that the snow is melting.
THE MAKING OF A TERRORIST
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After backing out two times of his plans to commit murder, Nathaniel Veltman hyped himself up by reading the manifesto of one of his favourite white supremacists. On June 21, 2021, Veltman rammed his truck into a Muslim family in London, Ont., killing four of them. “It was way easier than I thought it was going to be,” he told a police officer after he was arrested. “I thought I was going to chicken out and not do it but (it was) surprisingly easy.” For his crimes, Veltman will remain behind bars for at least 25 years, when he’ll get his first shot at parole. His crimes, and his desire for notoriety, led the sentencing judge to refuse to use his name when sentencing him. Veltman wasn’t always a terrorist. He was finally driven into his murderous frenzy by long-debunked right-wing conspiracy theories about child grooming by Muslim men. Read more about how Veltman, one of six children, raised in a devout Christian family, came to be the man responsible for one of the most notorious Islamophobic murders in Canadian history.
MEASLES CASES RISE
Experts are worried that travel over March Break, which wraps up in Toronto at the end of the weekend, but is upcoming in other parts of the country, could spread measles around Canada. So far, at least 20 cases of measles have been reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the fear is that widespread air travel could give the virus a chance to take hold. Measles cases have been on the rise as vaccination rates wane, driven by more modern, post-COVID anti-vaccine skepticism and the lingering effects of a discredited study linking the measles vaccine with autism. Yet, people are readily protected from measles by vaccination. Only about three to four per cent of people who get the vaccine end up contracting measles, which used to kill hundreds of people, mostly children, each year. In fact, one to three out of every 1,000 kids who contracts measles dies. The virus is far more transmissible than any variant of the COVID-19 virus, perhaps the most transmissible of any virus affecting humans. Read more about why a measles resurgence was expected — and why it could get worse. Plus, National Post’s Sharon Kirkey has an explainer with everything you need to know about measles.
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DEAR DIARY
In the weekly satirical feature Dear Diary , the National Post re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes an imagined journey into the mind of a Toronto car thief: I worked a house tonight with a yard sign reading, “No human is illegal.” The Volvo in the driveway was unlocked, the keys were in the ignition, a chilled bottle of water was in the cupholder and a handwritten card on the dashboard read, ”This house doesn’t believe in calling 9-1-1. Stay true to yourself.”
ET CETERA
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- A judge in British Columbia has warned that criminals could claim to be Indigenous in order to benefit from the less punitive sentencing available to Indigenous offenders. The Gladue principles, a part of Canadian law since 1995, require judges to consider the circumstances of Indigenous offenders in sentencing. Read more about why B.C. Provincial Court Judge David Patterson said that courts need to be aware of the potential for fraudulent claims of Indigenous ancestry.
- Global Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly visited Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the West Bank, and that meeting sparked fury among Israel supporters. (Joly also visited Israel, meeting with Foreign Minister Israel Katz, and met with survivors of the Oct. 7 massacre. Earlier this month, on the same diplomatic tour, Joly met with officials in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.) Read more about why Joly’s critics are so angry about the photo of her with Abbas.
- The Ontario government attempted to restrict public-sector wage increases with Bill 124. Except, a court found it unconstitutional. The effect of that ruling is that Ontario is now on the hook for $6 billion in unpaid wages. Read more about the effects of that legislation and the court ruling.
- Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology and head of research at the University College London Social Research Institute, said she was scheduled to give a talk to mark International Women’s Day to the federal Department of Justice. But, after she showed her slides to the government, on the subject of why we need data on sex and gender identity, the invitation was withdrawn. Read more about what happened to Sullivan here.
SNAPSHOT
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