Juno News - August 27, 2025


Police arrest truck driver over deaths of mother and child


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

155.81549

Word Count

2,118

Sentence Count

124

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 An Ontario truck driver who allegedly blew a stop sign and killed a mother and her eight-year-old
00:00:09.520 daughter in Manitoba was arrested at a Toronto airport after evading authorities for months.
00:00:15.140 Prime Minister Mark Carney is changing the Liberal government's tune on selling liquid
00:00:18.560 natural gas to Europe after his predecessor claimed there was no business case for it.
00:00:23.300 Canadians are investing more capital in American stocks than they have in decades.
00:00:27.920 Despite the ongoing trade tensions with the U.S.
00:00:31.260 Hello Canada, it's Wednesday, August 27th and this is the True North Daily Brief.
00:00:36.180 I'm Isaac Lamoureux.
00:00:37.480 And I'm Alex Zoltan.
00:00:38.740 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know.
00:00:41.540 Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.
00:00:49.500 A Manitoba crash ended in tragedy after an Ontario truck driver, Navjeet Singh,
00:00:55.620 allegedly blew a stop sign, killed a mother and her eight-year-old daughter.
00:01:00.000 The RCMP have since arrested the motorist at Toronto Pearson International Airport after spending
00:01:04.980 months evading authorities.
00:01:07.200 According to police, Singh was taken into custody Thursday at Toronto's Pearson International Airport
00:01:12.780 by Peel Regional Police and officers with Canada Border Services Agency after he spent nine months on the run.
00:01:19.740 It's not yet clear where Singh has been hiding for the last nine months, but police said on Friday that he was
00:01:25.800 arrested while arriving back in Canada via an Ethiopian airline.
00:01:30.580 Singh was first charged last November with two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death,
00:01:36.820 as well as obstructing a peace officer after police said he failed to stop at a rural intersection,
00:01:42.700 crashing into an SUV and killing two of the vehicle's occupants.
00:01:46.140 A 35-year-old mother and her daughter were killed in the crash while Singh was sent to hospital and later released.
00:01:52.440 After his release on November 20th, RCMP charged Singh with two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death.
00:01:59.760 A Canada-wide warrant was issued for Singh's arrest, but rather than turn himself in,
00:02:04.080 it appeared the truck driver fled the country.
00:02:06.760 Upon his most recent arrest on Friday, authorities added that Singh is to be escorted back to Manitoba
00:02:12.300 in the coming days and will be remanded into custody while he awaits a bail hearing.
00:02:16.700 So, Alex, you hear about roads, especially in the GTA, getting more dangerous in the last few years,
00:02:22.120 but why is this happening?
00:02:23.960 Well, Isaac, this is an issue that goes back many, many years.
00:02:27.260 And, in fact, Kathy Tomlinson, who is an excellent journalist writing for the Globe and Mail,
00:02:31.900 wrote back in 2019 about an intersection between trucking and widespread endemic of immigration fraud.
00:02:38.740 Specifically, she noted that a lot of trucking companies are insourcing their labor from countries like India,
00:02:46.300 and a lot of the folks in India who are coming over to fill these trucking occupations and these jobs
00:02:51.320 are actually, they're not experienced truckers.
00:02:54.700 Some of them, she reports, in 2019 didn't even know that they were going to be truckers
00:02:59.860 until they landed in Canada.
00:03:02.120 And then they're sent to, we can say, unscrupulous trucking schools that offer training.
00:03:10.360 But the word is to be taken lightly because the training is not necessarily as professional as you might expect.
00:03:15.700 And so you have inexperienced, poorly trained truckers with very little knowledge of road safety
00:03:21.500 now occupying the roads.
00:03:23.160 The statistics that we have, and they're fairly limited, flesh that out clearly.
00:03:27.520 So in 2020, we actually saw a historic low in terms of roadside fatalities in Canada at 1,745.
00:03:37.900 In 2021, there was a slight uptick.
00:03:40.620 In 2022, it continued rising to just short of 2,000 fatalities per year.
00:03:45.180 And then in 2023, it hit a 10-year high.
00:03:48.460 And it appears to be trending upward since then.
00:03:50.500 So this does appear to be an endemic issue that has really ramped up since the pandemic
00:03:55.220 and since a lot of these immigration schemes started to arise at the same time.
00:03:59.420 So more anecdotally, a very high-profile incident occurred recently in Florida
00:04:04.500 in which an Indian truck driver who had received his license from California,
00:04:09.120 which operates similarly sketchy services and licensing to truckers as we do here in Canada,
00:04:17.400 he did a U-turn across, I believe it was a three-lane highway.
00:04:22.880 And as a result of the U-turn, three vehicles collided into the bed of his truck and unfortunately
00:04:28.780 perished.
00:04:29.800 That case is also making its way through the court system, and that driver has been charged.
00:04:34.300 So it will be interesting to see how American authorities deal with the issue as compared
00:04:38.260 to Canadian authorities.
00:04:39.400 Prime Minister Mark Carney pledges to deepen trade and defense ties with Europe during his
00:04:47.520 visit to Germany, stating Canada would stockpile critical minerals and liquid natural gas for
00:04:52.040 sale to Germany via new ports.
00:04:54.740 In Berlin, alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz, Carney outlined several ways his government
00:05:00.380 intends to strengthen ties with Germany and Europe, including selling LNG, a move his predecessor,
00:05:05.620 Justin Trudeau, famously claimed had, quote, no business case.
00:05:10.180 Prime Minister, just one question about raw materials.
00:05:14.400 Could you please explore a bit more what Canada can realistically actually offer to Germany
00:05:19.900 and Europe, given the fact that ports on the East Coast and also pipelines are still lacking?
00:05:26.080 Thanks for the question.
00:05:27.060 Look, there's a huge range of immediate opportunities with respect to critical metals and minerals,
00:05:32.220 and there are medium-term opportunities with respect to all forms of energy, including LNG and
00:05:38.980 hydrogen.
00:05:39.680 Despite the former Liberal Prime Minister's claim there was no business case for Canadian
00:05:43.500 LNG sales into Europe, a recent CBC interview with Poland's ambassador revealed that Europe
00:05:48.080 is, quote, constantly interested in Canadian energy.
00:05:52.140 Well, remember some of that LNG that is coming from United States to Europe to Poland is also
00:05:58.000 Canadian LNG, but it's being sold for a much higher price, I would say, than when it would
00:06:09.840 come from Canada.
00:06:11.160 Yes, we are constantly interested.
00:06:14.800 We would like the Canadian LNG market to open to Europe.
00:06:20.080 We would like to see the Canadian gas flowing to the East Coast on Canada and the Canadian
00:06:28.000 gas flowing in European pipelines.
00:06:32.620 Carney said his government was unleashing half a trillion dollars of investment into energy,
00:06:36.840 port and intelligence infrastructure.
00:06:39.020 He said, quote,
00:06:39.740 So, Isaac, how are Canadians reacting to this?
00:06:52.880 Is this a complete admission from the Liberals that they were wrong about liquid natural gas
00:06:56.960 under Trudeau?
00:06:58.400 And what else did Carney announce while he was in Germany?
00:07:01.440 Yeah, Alex.
00:07:02.380 So Canadians are unsurprisingly treating Carney's pivot on LNG as a reversal from the Trudeau years
00:07:08.400 when Trudeau told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2022 that there was no business case for
00:07:15.060 LNG exports to Europe.
00:07:16.760 Critics called it a missed opportunity as U.S. firms stepped in and signed multi-billion dollar
00:07:22.400 deals with European nations.
00:07:24.360 And even Alberta Premier Danielle Smith later proved Trudeau wrong by signing her own LNG deal
00:07:29.900 with Japan, reinforcing the argument that markets for Canadian gas obviously exist.
00:07:35.700 Now that Carney is pledging to stockpile LNG for Germany, it might be viewed that the
00:07:40.380 Liberals' previous position was miscalculated.
00:07:43.940 Poland's ambassador has underlined that Europe remains constantly interested in Canadian LNG,
00:07:49.460 pressing Ottawa to build direct export routes to cut out the U.S. middleman.
00:07:54.260 And Conservatives have argued that Carney's turnaround is too little too late.
00:07:57.900 After years of stalled projects left Canada sidelined, while the U.S., as I said, captured
00:08:03.220 a $750 billion European deal.
00:08:06.500 As for Carney's European trip, it went far beyond LNG.
00:08:10.140 He pledged a half-a-trillion-dollar investment program targeting energy, port, and intelligence
00:08:15.080 infrastructure, with artificial intelligence guiding where funds are directed.
00:08:19.640 Some of these investments include reinforcing Montreal's port, expanding East Coast terminals,
00:08:25.320 and building a new port in Manitoba to ship LNG and critical minerals to Europe.
00:08:30.040 Carney also highlighted Canada's role in supplying rare earths, saying demand for critical minerals
00:08:35.580 will quadruple as military scale-up spending.
00:08:39.220 And to that end, Canada and Germany signed a joint declaration to strengthen the minerals
00:08:43.260 industry and promote commercial partnerships.
00:08:45.560 And on defense, Carney has promised that Canada would finally hit NATO's 5% of GDP spending
00:08:52.140 target by 2030.
00:08:53.400 Of course, this is a repeated promise from the Liberals that they have constantly not
00:08:58.700 reached, and that's when it was 2%, having only recently risen to 5%.
00:09:03.760 But Carney plans to quadruple military expenditures from the 2024 budget.
00:09:07.860 He also unveiled the shortlist for Canada's new submarine project, naming Germany's Tyson Krupp
00:09:13.740 and South Korea's Hawa Ocean as contenders, and said he would personally visit the facilities
00:09:18.800 in October.
00:09:20.020 But in short, Carney seems to be very good at pledging to spend money.
00:09:25.180 Of course, I'll remind listeners that Canadians have still not been presented with a budget
00:09:29.740 from this federal government and have no idea where this money is coming from.
00:09:34.260 And I'll remind you again that a budget was presented in the Great Depression in World War
00:09:39.440 2, but here we are without one, as Canada sinks further and further into its already $1.27
00:09:45.560 trillion debt every day, as interest payments on that debt keep growing as our largest expense,
00:09:51.800 with even more money spent on interest now than education and health care.
00:09:58.340 Canadian investors are enjoying the U.S. stock market despite the ongoing trade war with
00:10:03.180 U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, injecting the most capital into American stocks
00:10:08.140 in decades. According to data compiled by National Bank of Canada Financial Markets,
00:10:13.400 Canadian investors have put $124 billion into U.S. stocks this year, putting the country on track
00:10:19.060 to establish the largest inflow of capital into the American market since the 1990s.
00:10:24.980 Trump's tariffs and 51st state rhetoric don't appear to have deterred Canadians,
00:10:29.280 likely because the U.S. market has outperformed the domestic benchmark for years.
00:10:33.240 Canadians have, quote, seemingly failed to employ a buy Canadian or sell American philosophy in their
00:10:40.220 own portfolio dealings, wrote NBC-FM's managing director Warren Lovely in a note to clients last
00:10:46.880 week. While Canadian index funds have actually outperformed those in the U.S. this year,
00:10:53.000 many people still believe that investing south of the border is a safer bet. Lovely said the trend is,
00:10:58.940 quote, rather stunning considering the decline in cross-border tourism and U.S. liquor being pulled
00:11:04.560 off the shelves. For example, the S&P TSX Composite Index, the benchmark Canadian stock market index,
00:11:11.640 has increased by over 13%, compared with only a 10% gain in the U.S. S&P 500 index, which is of course
00:11:18.400 the index of the top 500 companies listed in the United States' stock exchange. The Canadian benchmark
00:11:25.320 hit its 30th record high for the year last week, likely in response to Prime Minister Mark Carney
00:11:31.040 removing all retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods on Friday. Additionally, Canada's largest pension
00:11:38.020 plan invests nearly half of its assets in the U.S., and its share of investments has grown since Trump
00:11:43.740 threatened to annex Canada. So, Alex, is it surprising that Canadians have not been deterred from investing
00:11:49.940 money in the U.S. stock market? Well, I don't think it's particularly surprising, given that the U.S.
00:11:55.400 stock market is the world's largest stock market. The United States is the world's largest economy.
00:12:01.460 So, I think regardless of what the elbows up people have been saying, Canadians are inevitably going to
00:12:07.700 continue investing things like the retirement savings into the broad, wider, sweeping U.S. market.
00:12:14.340 I should also note that the statistics on the Canadian market outperforming the American market are
00:12:18.940 very limited in their scope. So, in one year, or at least in this year to date, scenario that's been
00:12:25.860 outlined, Canada's index funds have marginally outperformed U.S. index funds. But over the last
00:12:32.180 several decades, if you go back to the beginning of, you know, index funds related specifically just to
00:12:38.000 the TSX as opposed to the TSX S&PY composite, Canadians' index funds have underperformed significantly,
00:12:46.280 almost by an order of magnitude. So, I believe the largest Canadian index fund, XIU, at the moment,
00:12:53.760 it has an annualized return just under 10% versus the S&P 500 has a 1500% return over a comparable time
00:13:03.420 period. So, ultimately, money will go, smart money will go where it expects the maximum compounding
00:13:11.540 returns. People tend to invest their money based off of expanding their retirement portfolios and not off
00:13:16.860 of their political feelings. So, I don't find this surprising at all.
00:13:22.160 That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. You can stay on top of new episodes every weekday by
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