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Good evening.

The Lead

It’s the last real voting sample we will have until October.

Voters in Nanaimo-Ladysmith will choose a new MP to send to the House of Commons Monday, with polls in the Vancouver Island riding to close at 8:30 p.m. local time, or 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Keep tuned to iPolitics late Monday/early Tuesday morning for the results.

Chief Bob Chamberlin will attempt to keep the riding in the NDP fold, while an internal Green party poll has its candidate, Paul Manly, with a healthy lead, reports CHEK News. The party’s only seat in the House — held by Leader Elizabeth May — is also located on Vancouver Island.

The NDP’s Sheila Malcolmson won the riding with 33.2 per cent of the vote in 2015, with the Liberal candidate in second with 23.5 per cent and the Tory pick finishing very close third at 23.4 per cent. The Greens weren’t that far behind at 19.8 per cent.

Whoever wins, they likely won’t spend much time in the House of Commons. The House is only scheduled to sit for six weeks (including this one) before rising for the summer, and it’s not expected to resume until after the next federal election.

In Canada

The Trudeau Liberals are preparing to introduce legislation that will bring in changes to legislation governing the Canada Border Service Agency, though it’s unclear if it will bring in promised external oversight.

As Global News reports, the House notice paper shows that Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale intends to table “An Act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and the Canada Border Services Agency Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.”

Bills must be placed on the notice paper at least 48 hours before being tabled, meaning that it could be introduced as early as Tuesday.

The Liberals pledged $24.42 million over five years in budget 2019 to expand the mandate of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission so it can serve as an “independent review body” for the CBSA too. It’s already the external body responsible for investigating public complaints about the RCMP.

American officials have warned in two letters to the Canadian government that its planned open competition for the country’s next fighter-jet fleet is incompatible with Canada’s obligations as a member of the F-35 stealth-fighter program, The Canadian Press reports. They specifically complain about Ottawa’s plan that each proponent pledge to invest in Canada if it wins the upcoming competition, which looks to buy 88 new planes for $19 billion. U.S. officials say Canada agreed not to make that a requirement when it became one of the nine F-35 partner countries in 2006.

The letters were obtained by defence analyst Richard Shimooka and released in a report published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank on Monday.

Ontario’s big city mayors were joined by some of their rural cousins Monday to amplify calls for a reversal of planned public health cuts.

The cuts, buried in Premier Doug Ford’s April budget, will see the province download funding responsibility for vaccinations, infection prevention and control and well-baby programs (among many others) on to the municipalities.

At the same time, the province is also whittling down the number of health boards in Ontario from 35 to 10 — but other than saying Toronto will have a stand-alone health agency, it hasn’t said what the boundaries of the new health agencies will be or who will run them.

“We don’t have any information to even begin to make decisions,” Kerri Davies, the vice-chair of the Peterborough Board of Health said at a press conference featuring municipal officials from York Region, Peterborough and Eastern Ontario at Toronto City Hall. Marieke Walsh has this story.

The federal Liberals are spending this week promoting their inflation-indexed Canada Child Benefit (CCB), one of the Trudeau government’s signature policies that has been at the core of its pre-election political messaging.

This morning, Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced that the maximum CCB amount will increase to $6,639 per child under the age of 6 and $5,602 per child between the age of 6 and 17.

Compared to last year, a single parent with two children under the age of 6 and with an income of $30,000 will receive an additional $286 that keeps up with increases in the cost of living. Jolson Lim has the story.

Two of the star witnesses at Quebec National Assembly hearings, which begin Tuesday on Bill 21, will be the pair commissioned 12 years ago to resolve a debate in the province over the acceptance of religious differences.

After hearing witnesses across Quebec, Gérard Bouchard, a sociologist and brother of former premier Lucien Bouchard, and Charles Taylor, a philosopher who once ran for the NDP against Pierre Trudeau, concluded there was no real crisis. In presenting Bill 21, Quebec Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said it was based on the Bouchard-Taylor recommendations. Kevin Dougherty has this story.

The federal government overpaid more than 15,000 low-income Canadians receiving employment insurance family supplements last month due to a computer error.

Employment and Social Development Canada told iPolitics this morning, after three weeks of inquiries, that 15,805 individuals who received the family supplement portion of employment insurance benefit payments in April were provided extra money by mistake. Lim has this story too.

Government and industry must remain vigilant as officials continue to try and keep a deadly hog virus that has killed millions of pigs globally out of this country, Canada’s chief veterinarian says.

“The main thing is to not let our guard down,” Dr. Jaspinder Komal told iPolitics in an interview.

African swine fever is a deadly virus that has ravaged China’s pork industry and infected herds in a number of countries around the world amid the current outbreak. Kelsey Johnson reports.

The Sprout: Canada’s African Swine Fever prevention plan

The Drilldown: More than a million species at risk of extinction, says report

Lobby Wrap: Balsille’s Centre for Digital Rights calls for national data strategy

Process Nerd: How much backbench business will get done before the recess?

In Other Headlines

Internationally

First, the good news: Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex announced Monday the birth of a baby boy, weighing seven pounds and three ounces. The birth was announced over Instagram.

A beaming Harry said outside Windsor Castle that he and Meghan Markle were “absolutely thrilled.”

“This little thing is absolutely to-die-for,” he said. “So I’m just over the moon.”

The infant, who is yet to be named, is seventh in line to the throne. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted his well-wishes shortly after the royal announcement.

Canada joins the world in celebrating a new addition to the @RoyalFamily! Congratulations, Prince Harry & Meghan! Enjoy every minute of this happy time together as a new family of three. — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) 6 May 2019

The BBC, among plenty of outlets, has the ’round-the-clock coverage.

Now, the bad news: A devastating impact of human behaviour on the planet’s nature was laid bare in a grim United Nations report released today.

One million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction and nature everywhere is declining at a rate “unprecedented,” largely driven by humans’ demand for food and energy.

The full 1,500-page or more UN report, expected to be released later this year, is three years in the making and assessed 15,000 reference materials. It is the most thorough analysis of humans’ impact on nature to date. A 40-page summary was offered to the public Monday.

The report looks at everything from the collapse of bee colonies to forests that hold back floodwaters. Three-quarters of the land-based environment and almost two-thirds of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions.

The study, however, notes that these trends can be halted with “transformative change” in almost every aspect of how humans interact with nature, from changing diets to cutting global emissions.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr is facing a contempt vote in Congress over his failure to hand over an unredacted version of the Mueller report, setting the scene for a showdown between Democratic lawmakers and the Trump White House.

As Reuters reports, the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee issued a report citing Barr for contempt of Congress after failing to meet a second deadline to produce the full report.

The committee will consider on Wednesday whether it should move ahead with the bid to hold the Trump appointee in contempt. If that’s the case, it would trigger a full House vote.

Meanwhile, Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, reported today to a federal New York prison, where he will begin serving a three-year sentence.

“I hope that when I rejoin my family and friends that the country will be in a place without xenophobia, injustice and lies at the helm of our country,” Cohen told a throng of reporters outside his Manhattan apartment, as reported by CNN.

Cohen pleaded guilty last August to tax evasion, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violated tied to hush money payments he made on behalf of Trump, who he has since criticized.

Lastly, a delicate ceasefire appears to have been struck between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza following a short but deadly string of cross-border fight in recent days.

As the New York Times reports, at least 22 Palestinians, including two children, were killed in Gaza over the weekend. Four Israeli civilians also died in the fighting.

Arab news reported that the ceasefire came into effect early this morning and that an understanding was brokered by Egypt and the UN, which include measures to ease the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip.

The fighting was the most intense since the 2014 war, which saw more than 2,200 deaths. The recent ceasefire came with the start of the holy month of Ramadan.

In Featured Opinion

Errol Mendes: “Grave doubt” Ford’s gas pump stickers are constitutional

The Kicker

Better hold off on anything with poppy seeds before your next drug test.

A Vancouver lawyer says that he bought a poppy seed cake at Tim Hortons and then 17 minutes later tested positive for opioids using the government’s chosen roadside drug-testing machines, reports The Province.

Vancouver law firm Acumen Law is raising complaints about the machines picking up false positives from poppy seeds and coca tea and wants them replaced until they’ve been proven to be reliable.

Until Tuesday.