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A federal Crown corporation provided $41-million (U.S.) in financing to help a South African family at the heart of a high-level corruption scandal buy a luxury jet from Bombardier Inc. Leaked e-mails show Export Development Canada provided the money to the powerful Gupta family, who have close ties to South African President Jacob Zuma and are embroiled in an escalating scandal over corruption allegations. In December 2014, well into the scandal, Export Development Canada approved financing to help the Guptas purchase a $52-million Global 6000 jet from Bombardier. The deal came to light ahead of a non-confidence vote against Mr. Zuma set for next week. Export Development Canada and Bombardier both say they have extensive due-diligence processes for every transaction.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Eleanor Davidson in Toronto and James Keller in Vancouver. If you're reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Let us know what you think.

CANADIAN HEADLINES

For the first time in Canadian history, the percentage of Canadians living alone is higher than any other type of household. The latest data from the 2016 census, released Wednesday, shows that over 28 per cent of households in Canada are one-person, 26 per cent are couples with children and 26 per cent are couples without children. Since the mid-20th century, the number of one-person households in Canada quadrupled. The family dynamics of the people in those households is also changing: over a fifth of Canadian couples are common-law, compared to 6.3 per cent in 1981. The census also found an increase in same-sex couples who are married, with about a third of them choosing to tie the knot more than a decade after it became legal.

The Nanaimo city council has devolved into allegations of bullying, harassment and assault. Council in Nanaimo, a city of 100,000 located about 60 kilometres from Vancouver, has been overshadowed by problems for over a year. Last year, the city's mayor faced calls from his own council to resign over complaints of bullying, and in November councillors tried to get the RCMP involved. A video captured earlier this year allegedly showed a councillor assaulting the city manager in the middle of a meeting. A report authored by a Vancouver labour lawyer and obtained by The Globe and Mail concludes the council's members need tutoring on basic ground rules for respectful behaviour.

B.C.'s NDP government says it will continue building a massive hydroelectric dam in the province's north for the next three months as it awaits a review that could help determine whether to cancel the project. That means more than 2,000 workers will remain on the job — and the province's Crown-owned electricity company, BC Hydro, will continue spending an estimated $60-million per month until at least November. The New Democrats campaigned on a promise to review the Site C dam to determine whether the province needs the power from the $8.8-billion project, and to explore if there are cheaper and less destructive ways to generate it. Even if the government concludes the province doesn't need the dam, it might not be the end of Site C: one option under consideration is simply putting construction on hold and revisiting the issue in 2024.

Candidates for the federal NDP leadership tackled questions about party discord and the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline at a debate in Victoria last night. Ontario legislator Jagmeet Singh described the fractures between Alberta and B.C.'s NDP governments as "big disagreements" while member of parliament Guy Caron said the NDP "should have been able to talk this through before it degenerated." Niki Ashton, also a member of parliament, said the NDP is stronger when members work together. Charlie Angus was not able to attend the event, but used a recorded video to address the crowd. The candidates are pushing to sign up as many party members as possible before the registration cutoff on Aug. 17. Voting is scheduled to begin in mid-September.

And Caroline Mulroney, the daughter of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, is seeking a nomination to run for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives in the 2018 provincial election. Ms. Mulroney will run for the York-Simcoe nomination, which has been held for over 20 years by Julia Munro, also a Progressive Conservative. Ms. Munro tweeted on Wednesday that Ms. Mulroney has "her full support."

Jim Stanford (The Globe and Mail) on the cancelled Petronas LNG project: "Far from blaming government red tape for the collapse of this misguided project, we should be collectively grateful. Those rules likely saved us from wasting tens of billions of dollars on the biggest white elephant in Canadian history."

Susan Delacourt (iPolitics) on the Rolling Stone cover: "There seems to be a vague sense, though — even among people well disposed to Trudeau — that okay, maybe that's enough foreign fawning over the PM. It's clearly not doing anything for his modesty. So perhaps the Brazeau controversy is a good check on this prime minister's ego as he nears the two-year mark in power."

NAFTA UPDATE

Former interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose was one of 13 members named to the Liberal government's NAFTA advisory council on Wednesday. The council's aim is to create a unified, non-partisan approach to the negotiations. The members include NDP and Conservative politicians, as well as business and labour leaders. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland appointed three new consuls general in Atlanta, Seattle and San Francisco who will focus on trade, and announced trade expert Kirsten Hillman as deputy ambassador to the United States.

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on non-partisan NAFTA talks: "the Liberal government wants these negotiations to be seen a national project, not a Liberal one. This advisory council helps them project the image that the home team is the whole country, not the Trudeau government. It follows on the highly-visible move to solicit former prime minister Brian Mulroney's advice. That might be good strategy for the negotiations, with so much potentially at stake for the Canadian economy. But it's almost certainly good politics." (For subscribers)

David Parkinson (The Globe and Mail) on Chapter 19: "Over the nearly three decades since the two countries agreed on the dispute-settlement process, the Chapter 19 mechanism has gone from a high-profile arbiter of frequent cross-border spats to the equivalent of a vintage Rolls-Royce in Canada's free-trade showroom: A prized showpiece that is rarely taken out for a spin." (For subscribers)

INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

A pivotal vote in Brazil has blocked a corruption charge against President Michel Temer — for now. The vote in Brazil's lower house of Congress could have sent the charge against Mr. Temer, who is accused of taking bribes, to the Supreme Court for trial and threatened his presidency. The vote means Mr. Temer can now press ahead with reforms to Brazil's pension system as the government attempts to plug a wide budget deficit and recover from recession. But it's not over yet: Mr. Temer is expected to face more corruption charges in the coming weeks. The president has denied any wrongdoing.

After Sunday's election in Venezuela, the country's government bragged about record voter turnout numbers. Observers commented that these numbers were likely hyperbole, which was confirmed by voting technology firm Smartmatic on Wednesday. Smartmatic's voting systems showed that the official turnout figure of over 8 million votes was tampered with. Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica could not give a precise figure for the real number of votes, and said the company would have to conduct a full audit.

U.S. President Donald Trump grudgingly signed new sanctions against Russia yesterday. The sanctions target Russia's energy sector, and limit U.S. investment in Russian companies. Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev said the sanctions amount to a "full-scale trade war." The legislation was overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. Congress, but Mr. Trump said the sanctions were "significantly flawed." The new law gives Congress the power to stop any effort made by the president to ease the sanctions on Russia.

And when AP reporter Hannah Dreier arrived in Venezuela in 2014, life in the capital city Caracas was optimistic: trips to white-sand beaches were frequent and bars stayed open late, serving foreign whiskey. Affordable food was so widely available that obesity became a growing epidemic. Within three years, Ms. Dreier saw obesity traded in for hunger. Lineups formed outside of bakeries -- first to buy bread at ever-increasing costs, then to have a chance to scavenge through the bakery's garbage bins to find a scrap to eat. Ms. Dreier chronicles the country's rapid descent in a reflection for the Associated Press.

Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on the Republican Party's soul "By the time Mr. Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in mid-2015, the GOP no longer had much of a soul to sell. It had become a collection of factions and free agents beholden to special interests. Its anti-tax wing answered only to Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, and the Koch brothers. Its second-amendment wing worshipped at the altar of the National Rifle Association. Its social-conservative wing curried favour with money-sucking televangelists. Its anti-immigration wing fed off the talk radio hatemongers. The GOP was still home to a few principled fiscal conservatives, free-traders, libertarians and foreign policy hawks. But they were largely marginalized in a party that had opted for the low road at every turn."

Paul Gooch (The Globe and Mail) on the dignity of public office: "High office requires on certain occasions a kind of high rhetoric, or at least rhetoric that rises above the trite and commonplace. Not every leader is a powerful speaker; and powerful speakers can be dangerously destructive leaders. Nevertheless, the language of the holders of high office should be trustworthy and sometimes inspire citizens to act and think with common purpose, determination and hope. Divisive speech contradicts the very meaning of high office itself."

The Globe and Mail editorial board on Venezuela's collapse: "The best course is for the democratic world to continue to demand the return of the country's legislature, and the end of the sham constituent assembly that usurped it. Impartial outsiders, working with both the opposition and Mr. Maduro, could help negotiate a schedule for the return of legitimate elections.Canada should state clearly whether or not it will do business with the constituent assembly. And it should open its doors to anyone fleeing the president's fledgling dictatorship."

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