Ottawa

Who is Todd Ross?

Tease the day: Until the other day, he was the only Liberal candidate in Toronto Centre. Not so, anymore.

Chrystia Freeland at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 25, 2013. (Pascal Lauener/Reuters)

Have you heard of Todd Ross? Probably, you haven’t.

Ross, a longtime assistant to former Ontario cabinet minister George Smitherman, would like to replace Bob Rae as Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre. Until just the other day, Ross was the only declared candidate for his party’s nomination in the downtown riding. Plenty of other potentials are musing about a run, including his former boss, Smitherman; TV personality Seamus O’Regan; and former Ignatieff aide, Sachin Aggarwal.

Just the other day was when Chrystia Freeland, a journalist who used to work at The Globe and Mail, became the second candidate. Freeland is currently a senior editor at Thomson Reuters, and lives in New York. She’s held various roles within Reuters and other publications, and lived in Kiev and Moscow and London. Last October, she published Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. Freeland’s got a reputation for writing about rising global inequality and, in effect, knowing what she’s talking about. In short, she’s worldly and she’s got some game.

Freeland is also a Globe and Mail columnist. If you’re prone to flipping through the paper’s business section, that’s where you’ll usually recognize her name—not this morning, however. Today, Freeland’s column found its way into the paper’s front section. In it, she lays out the “path leading to middle-class prosperity,” a pursuit that  Justin Trudeau has basically trademarked in his short time as Liberal leader. Skip to the end of Freeland’s column, and you’ll see that the path to prosperity requires ” new vision of politics and what it can and must accomplish.” Again, that new politics that Trudeau so energetically espouses.

All of this might be fair game. Freeland’s an accomplished writer, she has a vision, and the paper simply found space to showcase those things. Todd Ross must be pretty annoyed, though. He’s worth about a paragraph in every story about Toronto Centre’s next Liberal hopeful, and not much more. He put out a press release to announce his candidacy, and it sort of got picked up. Oh, and he’s on Twitter. And LinkedIn. Good luck, sir.


What’s above the fold this morning?

The Globe and Mail leads with Gary Doer, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, warning that Canadian oil exports south of the border will travel by rail if new pipelines aren’t approved. The National Post fronts the identities of six teenagers killed in a collision with a truck near Lloydminster, Sask. The Toronto Star goes above the fold with the shooting death of Sammy Yatim at the hands of police. The Ottawa Citizen leads with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s final appeal to voters before byelections in Ottawa South and four other ridings across Ontario. iPolitics fronts the influence of Canada’s foreign service workers’ strike on the Canadian brand. CBC.ca leads with Verizon’s attempt to enter Canada’s wireless marketplace. CTV News leads with the investigation of the teenagers’ deaths in Saskatchewan. National Newswatch showcases Maclean’s look at how the Canadian Museum of Civilization reflects a Conservative push to refresh how Canadians learn about their own history.


Stories that will be (mostly) missed

1. Helicopters. Maritime pilots are training on interim Cyclone helicopters, the next generation of maritime choppers, that don’t meet Canada’s requirements and cannot fly over water or at night. 2. Flooding. Hundreds of Filipino workers in High River, Alta., are scrambling to ensure their documents—many damaged by flood waters—are in order as they seek to remain in Canada.
3. Alcohol. The Innu community of Sheshatsiu, in Labrador, is considering an alcohol ban as a means of fighting back against a chronic influx of substance abuse–fuelled police calls. 4. Fish. After a tanker carrying jet fuel crashed into B.C.’s Lemon Creek and spilled 35,000 litres of fuel, dead fish have started washing up onshore—a temporary threat to the local ecosystem.
5. Cambodia. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party won 55 seats in the National Assembly—a jump from its 29 pre-election seats—but still wants the election results investigated. 6. Heist. An apparent lone thief struck the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, stealing what’s rumoured to be $53 million worth of diamonds from a temporary exhibit that allowed an easy getaway for thieves.

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