Dispatch from The Front Line: Canada's back!

Trudeau takes it on the nose from China's Xi Jinping; Lucki didn't think the Emergencies Act was necessary, but felt she ought not to speak up.

Hello dear Line readers;

Our apologies for the slightly tardy Dispatch this week. Gerson is still fighting the plagues and Gurney is off in Halifax with a broken computer after a disastrous decision to check in his laptop. Occasional business travellers, take note: Always bring your laptop in your carry-on.

But we digress. It was an odd news week here at The Line headquarters; some of what we have to offer today will follow on a theme from previous weeks’ files. The world’s leaders have navigated the risks posed by a stray missile in Poland, which killed two civilians. This is the sort of incident that keeps editor Gurney up all night, and given our current timeline, he was relieved to note the temperature of the heads that prevailed.

The World Cup begins in Qatar, of all places. As we are not soccer, uh, football fans, we have no qualms about publicly recoiling at the spectacle. Qatar, a modern slave state, is using its oil wealth to buy legitimacy from the broader world via a multi-billion-dollar sports tournament as so many autocratic states before it has done. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau travelled to Asia this week for a series of summits, and therein we begin our dispatch.