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CTV News
15 hours ago
- CTV News
Oak Bay, Saanich policing agreement nears expiry as negotiations unfold
A policing agreement that ensures Oak Bay, B.C. has the resources required to investigate major crimes is expiring in days. A policing agreement that ensures Oak Bay, B.C., has the resources required to investigate major crimes is expiring in days, with no immediate indication of renewal. The five-year service agreement between the Oak Bay Police Department (OBPD) and the Saanich Police Department (SPD) expires on Monday. The contract enables Saanich police to assist with or take the lead on major crime investigations in Oak Bay, which is a small community with a small police department. 'We are actively engaged in the negotiation process,' OBPD Chief Julie Chanin said in an email to CTV News. If those discussions continue beyond Monday, Chanin said the departments can agree on an extension. 'During negotiations, all services provided by SPD under the current agreement will remain uninterrupted,' an SPD spokesperson said in a statement. The departments first signed a service agreement in 2007 and have renegotiated it several times, most recently in the summer of 2020. The Saanich Police Association said it was consulted during the early stage of negotiations for a new agreement, but it isn't part of the current discussions, which are confidential. 'Like our partners in the Oak Bay Police Association (OBPA), we await a final decision — particularly as it relates to roles and responsibilities in what continues to be a resource-challenged environment,' union president Jason Whittaker said in an email. The OBPA could not be reached for comment. Oak Bay will not go without Former B.C. solicitor general Kash Heed said if the contract were to collapse, Oak Bay would still have access to investigative support. 'Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the solicitor general to make sure Oak Bay residents are looked after by their police service,' Heed said in an interview. 'If that is not possible, (the solicitor general) has the authority under the B.C. Police Act to intervene and make sure that takes place.' That means the province could tell OBPD to contract the RCMP or another agency on an as-needed basis, Heed said. 'It's down to a negotiation tactic that may go down to the wire, but at the end of the day, you have to ensure the residents in Oak Bay will be looked after with this comprehensive police service,' he said. As the departments negotiate, the nearby municipality of Esquimalt is eyeing alternatives to its agreement with the Victoria Police Department. Both cases serve as an argument for regionalized policing, Heed said. 'You can see how costly it is to police these balkanized areas; how ineffective it is,' he said. 'When you cross the street, you're in a different jurisdiction and you may get a different delivery of police service.'
Euronews
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Euronews
German lawmakers vote to curb family reunification programme
German lawmakers on Friday voted to suspend family reunification rights for migrants who fall short of full asylum status, part of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's push to crack down on immigration. The lower house of Parliament voted 444 to 135 in favour of suspending family reunions for migrants with subsidiary protection, a status granted to people allowed to stay because it's too dangerous to return home, even though they are not officially recognised as refugees. As of the end of March, more than 388,000 people in Germany, primarily Syrians, held subsidiary protection status. The new legislation suspends rules introduced in 2018 that allowed up to 1,000 close relatives per month to join migrants with this status. Until now, German authorities made case-by-case decisions based on humanitarian grounds, rather than granting an automatic right to family reunification. The law does not affect individuals who have been granted asylum or recognised as refugees under the Geneva Refugee Convention. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told lawmakers the change would reduce the number of people able to come to Germany by around 12,000 per year and would "break a business model" for human traffickers. Dobrindt defended the measure, arguing that the country's "capacity for integration simply has a limit." "Many people know they won't receive full refugee recognition," Dobrindt said, "but they still head for Germany because it's known that, even without asylum status, you can bring your family later. That creates a strong pull factor, and today, we are eliminating that pull factor." The Social Democrats (SPD) — a member party of Merz's governing coalition — expressed concerns about the legislation but ultimately agreed to it as part of a political compromise. Germany's Minister for Migration, Refugees and Integration, Natalie Pawlik, acknowledged the discomfort within her party, saying, "Integration works better when families are together." She added, however, that the SPD would support the measure, noting it does not apply to so-called hardship cases and is limited to two years. The bill approved on Friday marks the first migration legislation passed since Merz took office. His government has pledged tougher immigration policies amid mounting public pressure.
Zawya
19 hours ago
- Business
- Zawya
German commission recommends raising minimum wage to $17.11
Germany is set to gradually raise its hourly minimum wage to 14.60 euros ($17.11) by 2027 from the current 12.82 euros under proposals from a government-appointed commission, less than the ruling coalition had initially agreed to target. Raising the minimum wage can make it harder for companies to take on staff as higher labour costs may force businesses to cut jobs or reduce hours. This risk is especially high for small firms and low-skilled workers, potentially leading to higher unemployment. Initially, the minimum wage is to rise to 13.90 euros at the beginning of 2026. The proposal of the commission, a body comprising employers and trade union representatives, must be implemented by the labour ministry. Germany's Labour Minister Baerbel Bas welcomed the agreement, which "shows that social partnership in this country works," and asked the government to make this adjustment legally binding as of January 1, 2026. Under the changes, the euro zone's largest economy would see full-time workers on minimum wage typically earn close to 2,500 euros a month by 2027. The country would then have the second-highest minimum wage in the European Union behind Luxembourg, which mandates a monthly minimum of 2,638 euros, Eurostat data from 2025 show. Three other EU countries have a national minimum wage above 2,000 euros per month - Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland. In the coalition deal signed by the conservatives and Social Democrats (SPD) raising the minimum wage to 15 euros an hour in 2026 was framed as something "achievable", and was pushed by the SPD in the talks, but it appears that target will not be reached even by 2027. "In the long term, the minimum wage must provide protection against poverty and keep pace with overall wage developments," said Dagmar Schmidt, deputy chairwoman of the SPD parliamentary group at the Bundestag, welcoming the proposal while recognising that it fell short of what the SPD had hoped for. UNEMPLOYMENT ON THE RISE The commission's proposals come at a challenging moment for Germany after two years of economic contraction, when the weakness is taking its toll with a lag on the labour market and the number of unemployed people approaches the 3 million mark for the first time in a decade. "After years of economic stagnation, which has already left visible marks on the labour market, the time is likely over when minimum wage increases passed the labour market more or less without a trace," said Hagen Lesch, a labour expert at IW, an economic institute that promotes free enterprise, competition and open markets. Companies in Germany are growing more cautious in their personnel planning, the Ifo employment barometer showed on Friday before the minimum wage announcement. "Despite an improved mood in the economy, the labour market has not yet achieved the turnaround," said Klaus Wohlrabe, head of surveys at Ifo. "There is still a lack of orders for new staff to be hired." Jobs data show the number of unemployed people has risen by nearly a third since 2022, especially in helper occupations, which are mostly affected by the minimum wage. "A minimum wage of 14.60 euros threatens to exacerbate this development and could particularly push low-skilled workers out of the labour market," DMB president Marc S. Tenbieg said. ($1 = 0.8535 euros)
Bloomberg
20 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
German Coalition Risks Conflict Over Contentious Minimum Wage
An independent commission agreed Germany's statutory minimum wage should be increased in two steps to €14.60 ($17.11) in 2027, in a move that could stoke discord in Chancellor Friedrich Merz's ruling coalition. In their blueprint for government, Merz's conservative CDU/CSU bloc and his Social Democrat partners agreed that a minimum wage of €15 an hour was achievable already next year — a key SPD demand.
DW
a day ago
- Politics
- DW
Controversial German-Brazilian nuclear agreement turns 50 – DW – 06/27/2025
On June 27, 1975, Germany and Brazil signed a treaty on cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. Despite Germany's nuclear phase out, it still applies today. The agreement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which almost nobody in Germany knows about, will be half a century old at the end of June. It has defied the German anti-nuclear movement, survived the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, and even the nuclear phase-out in 2023 with the shutdown of Germany's last three nuclear power plants. The treaty aimed to construct eight nuclear power plants, a uranium enrichment plant and a nuclear reprocessing plant in Brazil by Siemens, including training for scientists. The signatories were the German coalition government of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on the one side, and the Brazilian military dictatorship headed by President Ernesto Geisel on the other. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "It was celebrated in 1975 as the biggest technology agreement of the century, the enthusiasm was huge on both sides," recalls 73-year-old German-Brazilian sociologist Luiz Ramalho in an interview with DW. Ramalho is chairman of the Latin America Forum in Berlin and has been a critic from the very beginning. He has made terminating the treaty, which is only possible every five years, his life's work. At the end of 2024, he thought he had almost reached his goal with the center-left government the SPD, environmentalist Greens and FDP. There were talks in the ministries at the time, and a termination was examined, especially in view of the notice period on November 18. But then the government fell apart in November 2024. The Green Party has long wanted to end the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement. After all, the Greens are the party that evolved from the anti-nuclear protests in the 1980s. In 2004, the then-Green Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin tried unsuccessfully to convert the nuclear agreement into one for renewable energies. Ten years later, the Greens' urgent motion in opposition to terminate the nuclear agreements with Brazil and India failed due to resistance from the coalition government of the conservative Christian Democrats, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), and the SPD, under Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). For Harald Ebner, member of the Bundestag for the Greens, the outcome of the cooperation is sobering. "Even at the drawing board, six of the eight nuclear power plants stipulated in the agreement failed. But the other two are also anything but a success: Angra-3 became a 40-year unfinished construction site, and a single block, Angra-2, was finally connected to the grid in 2000 after 24 years of construction as the world's most expensive nuclear power plant at the time," he wrote to DW. However, Angra-2 is susceptible to earthquakes, landslides and flooding, while more and more hazardous nuclear waste is accumulating on the site, for which there is no solution, says Ebner. In other words, there is nowhere to store the nuclear waste produced there. His conclusion: "Brazil and Germany were both on the wrong track with the agreement, which failed in many respects." For Ebner, nuclear power belongs in the past, but not everyone sees it that way. On the contrary: it is experiencing a renaissance worldwide. According to a study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), more than 40 countries are striving to expand nuclear power in order to meet the growing demand for electricity. In Brazil, nuclear power accounts for just 3% of electricity generation. However, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who used to be rather critical of nuclear energy, expressed great interest in Russia's experience with small nuclear power plants at a meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a few weeks ago. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video And even in Germany, the debate on the use of nuclear energy, which was thought to be dead, has picked up speed again. Although former Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed through the German nuclear phase-out in 2011 shortly after the nuclear reactor disaster in Fukushima, Japan, during the last Bundestag election campaign, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, among others, called for the reactivation of three decommissioned nuclear power plants. The new Minister of Economic Affairs, Katharina Reiche from the CDU, also appears to be open to the use of nuclear power. She recently met with colleagues from the so-called European Nuclear Alliance, an association of countries such as France, Sweden and Poland that are committed to greater use of nuclear energy. What does this mean for the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement? Thomas Silberhorn, CDU member of the German Bundestag and long-time member of the German-Brazilian parliamentary group, told DW: "The agreement is an early example of technological partnership and therefore a milestone in our bilateral relations. Today, the focus of cooperation is on hydrogen and renewable energies. But openness to new technologies and energy policy independence remain relevant for Brazil and have also regained importance in Germany and throughout Europe." However, the future of the half-century-old nuclear agreement could depend on the SPD in government. Nina Scheer, energy policy spokesperson for the SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, wrote to DW: "The coalition agreement provides for an intensification of the strategic partnership with Brazil. Due to the importance of the energy transition for strategic and sustainable development potential, this also involves replacing the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement with partnerships in the transition to renewable includes ending the nuclear agreement." Miriam Tornieporth will undoubtedly be happy to hear that. She works for the German anti-nuclear organization "ausgestrahlt e. V.", which was founded in 2008 and has been campaigning for the termination of the German-Brazilian nuclear agreement for years. "This cooperation is simply totally out of date and does not include, for example, any safety aspects that should be included from today's perspective," Tornieporth told DW. The controversial agreement has become particularly explosive due to the latest geopolitical developments, more specifically the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. This is because the French nuclear company Frematome produces fuel rods for nuclear power plants in Lingen, Lower Saxony, in cooperation with Rosatom. The state-owned Russian nuclear industry company has, in turn, concluded an agreement with Brazil for uranium supplies in 2022. "We assume that Russian material is processed both at the Gronau uranium enrichment plant in North Rhine-Westphalia and in Lingen and sent from there to Brazil. In contrast to other forms of energy, the Russian nuclear industry is also exempt from sanctions," says Tornieporth. "As Germany has shut down its nuclear power plants, it would be logical also to shut down the plants in Gronau and Lingen to complete the nuclear phase-out."While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. 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