YEAR END: Stories that captivated the nation this year

2018 was host to quite a few first for Canada. Here are some of the top stories that surely kept Canadians on the edge of their seats.

Mail gets delayed as postal workers go on strike

Mail service across the country was disrupted due to five weeks of rotating strikes by postal workers from mid-October to late-November 2018. This strike was the culmination of nearly a year of negotiations between the crown corporation and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

The walkouts led to backlogs of mail and parcels at main sorting plants, forcing Canada Post to revoke its holiday guarantee. However, by early December, they were able to restore normal holiday delivery service guarantees for most of the country.

The Senate passed controversial back to work legislation (Bill C-89) by a vote of 53-25 on Nov. 26.

Although parcels are back on track for average citizens, CUPW concerns, such as pay disparity between urban and rural postal workers, forced overtime, working conditions, and health and safety, are still largely unaddressed as we enter the new year.

Weed is legalized in Canada

Whether you support it, smoke it, like it, or not, cannabis was officially legalized Oct. 17 2018 in Canada, making our country the second in the world after Uruguay to legalize the drug on a national level.

Many Canadian citizens have been divided on how this should be approached, and concerned about how it would be legally and criminally regulated.

As we enter largely uncharted territories, only a few aspects of this law are dictated at the federal, level, the rest of which is under provincial jurisdiction.

The legalization of cannabis has hopes of boosting the economy with cannabis startups and trade stocks. Canada’s launch of legal pot sales has the potential to make Canada a global leader on regulatory cannabis if it is done right.

We are sure to keep tabs on how this pans out in 2019.

Opioids continue to cause devastation in Canadian cities

The growing number of opioid-related overdoses and deaths has become a national public health crisis over the last few years, and 2018 has seen the situation become even more dire.

According to Health Canada, between Jan. and June of this year, 2,066 opioid-related deaths have occurred, 72% of which involved fentanyl or fentanyl analogues.

The majority of these deaths occurred in B.C, Ontario, and Alberta. In 2016, it was 3,005 deaths and in 2017 it was 3,996 in total.

As recently as November, MPs have debated the best way to tackle the crisis in the House of Commons. While the Liberals have approved over 25 supervised consumption sites and worked to increase awareness of naloxone, they have also been criticized for not deeming it a public health emergency under the Emergencies Act.

Ginette Petitpas, federal Health Minister, said “there is no silver-bullet solution when it comes to the opioid crisis.”

The provinces and territories have asked the feds for more help to combat the rising numbers, and Petitpas has said the government was willing to do more and spend more if that’s what is needed. This is sure to be an election issue as Canadians head to the polls Oct. 2019.

Trudeau’s controversial trip to India 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s February trip to India rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, making international headlines.

Documents revealed that the nine-day trip cost $1.66 million taxpayer dollars. Despite some outcry, this was not the most expensive trip for a Canadian leader, as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2012 trip to India costed $2.5 million. 

Financial matters, though, were only part of the headache this trip would cause Trudeau.

The trip also made headlines for a photo of Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau and Jaspal Atwal, who was convicted of the attempted murder of an Indian cabinet minister in 1986.

To make matters worse, the family also faced flack for a number of photos of the Trudeau clan wearing different traditional Indian outfits, some calling this a photo-op, insensitive, and even downright offensive.

Will the India trip damage Trudeau and the Liberal government’s chances at re-election? Only 2019 will tell.

Feds buy trans mountain pipeline

This year, the federal government made the decision to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion from Kinder Morgan.

The expansion would triple the capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline from near Edmonton, AB to Burbaby, B.C.

This has caused much debate amongst Canadians, as many Indigenous and environmental groups, as well as the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby and even the province of B.C openly oppose it.

The Federal Court quashed approval of the project based on a lack of consultation with Indigenous groups and a lack of the consideration of environmental impacts.

Having delayed the project, this federal court case was hugely significant, and it may still be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau has stated the government will continue with the purchase, putting the work into redoing the processes that were deemed inefficient.

This conflict amongst various groups, as well as between the provinces of Alberta and B.C and the federal government, are sure to continue well into 2019 as this matter makes its way through the courts.

A new era of trade relations

Many Canadians followed the news closely as our Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and the prime minister worked to renegotiate NAFTA with Mexico and the U.S., which President Donald Trump dubbed 'a disaster' shortly after coming into office.

On Nov., 30, Canada, the U.S and Mexico signed the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), officially replacing the historic North American Free Trade Agreement, which was established in 1994 to remove barriers to the exchange of goods and services among the three countries.

The signing of CUSMA was two years in the making, and there is still a ways to go before it is ratified. It is expected to make its way through each of three countries’ legislatures by mid-2019, coming into effect Jan. 1, 2020.

However, since Canada and Mexico still have not received an exemption from U.S tariffs on steel and aluminum products, talks are expected to continue in the hopes that tariffs will be lifted prior to ratification.

Exporters and manufacturers are hopeful as we enter the new year, and a new era of trade agreements, that this will improve their global strategies, as foreign tariffs, trade barriers, in particular on steel and aluminum, have had an impact on Canada-U.S trade.

Canada cries for Humboldt

The country united in grief in April 2018 when a bus carrying a junior ice hockey team collided with a semi-trailer who failed to yield, killing 16, including the driver, statistician, announcer, assistant and head coaches, and injuring 13.

The devastating accident prompted condolences, vigils, tributes of hockey sticks on the front porch, songs and poems to cope with the grief that, for hockey-loving, winter-driving Canadians, hit close to home.

The GoFundMe campaign set a national record, raising over $15 million for survivors and the families of victims.

The tragedy resulted in the charge of 29-year-old Jaskirat Singh Sidhu in July.

As we ring in the new year, the government of Saskatchewan is hiring a private consulting firm to do a safety assessment of the intersection. There is also talk of Alberta consulting with the public and industry stakeholders about reforms to the province’s trucking industry.

Asylum seekers to Canada at an all-time high

Canada is on track to receive the highest number of refugee claims in almost thirty years.

The first 10 months of 2018 saw 46,245 claims, is almost in line with 2017’s total of 47,800 claims, according to Immigration and Citizenship Canada.

Currently, the country is working through a massive backlog, and Trudeau’s government is facing a lot of flack for it. The Liberals will walk into 2019 continually working to balance Canada’s reputation as a safe haven with not being seen as a ‘free ticket.’

Since millions of refugees are fleeing war-torn countries, and these conflicts have shown no sign of letting up, we can foresee an estimated 50,000 plus annually next year.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has stated that an additional $74 million has been allocated to speed up the processing of claims.This is likely to impact the 2019 federal election, as Canadians are largely divided over whether or not to keep accepting refugees.

Issues within the housing market

2018 marked a turning point in Canada’s closely-watched housing market.

Canada tumbled to 37th place in the latest global ranking of housing markets from commercial real estate firm Knight Frank. With average price growth falling to 2.9 per cent in the latest survey, Canada has officially fallen behind the U.S. on price growth; a rare occurrence since the U.S.’s housing bubble burst in 2008.

It seems as though rising mortgage rates and tougher new mortgage rules have reduced the maximum buying price that homebuyers can afford.

Count Swiss bank USB ranked Toronto and Vancouver third and fourth respectively in a survey of housing bubble indicators. In Vancouver, inflation-adjusted house prices have doubled in 12 years, putting a strain on affordability.

Additionally, RBC found that home ownership costs in Canada are now at their worst levels since 1990. Following this, a massive housing bubble peaked and burst in Toronto, leading to seven straight years of price declines. This suggests that, rolling into 2019, we aren’t out of the woods yet.