Juno News - Police arrest truck driver over deaths of mother and child

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 1.00

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

00:13:27.220 subscribing to The Daily Brief on iTunes and Spotify. Also, while you're at it, make sure to hit us with a

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Juno News - August 27, 2025

Police arrest truck driver over deaths of mother and child

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