Morning Update: Toronto man charged in five murders; two major trials begin

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A Toronto serial killer suspect now faces five first-degree murder charges

Bruce McArthur, a 66-year-old landscaper, was originally arrested and charged in the deaths of two men. Police have now found buried dismembered human remains in garden planters at a property connected to McArthur. He has now been charged in the deaths of three other men, all of whom have connections to the area of Church and Wellesley, Toronto's gay village. Police have now dedicated hundreds of officers and a dozen investigators to the case, with scores of missing persons files dating back to 2010 under review.

Here's Marcus Gee's take: "It is harrowing for the scores of officers who are working on the case. It is deeply disturbing for Toronto's gay community, which feared for months, even years, that a killer was at large, but was assured by no less than the chief of police there was not. Even though McArthur has been charged, the case raises all sorts of questions. Again: Why did police say so definitely that there was no serial killer even after a string of unexplained disappearances of gay men? Do police really take the safety of the community as seriously as they insist? Do they, for that matter, take seriously the disappearance of marginalized people?" (for subscribers)

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Doug Ford has entered the race to become the next leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives

But there are still discussions happening within the party about reneging on a decision to hold a leadership vote before the Ontario election, which is just four months away. Ford, a former Toronto city councillor and the brother of late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, is already framing his bid as a populist counterpoint to the PC establishment (the party is falling "into complete disarray," he said).

Here's Adam Radwanski's take: "For a good number of Ontario Progressive Conservatives, the idea of going into this spring's election with Doug Ford at the helm is almost as much of a nightmare as what they have endured the past week."

The fallout from Rick Dykstra's exit

The PCs are coping with another high-profile departure after Dykstra resigned as party president amid allegations he sexually assaulted a Conservative staffer in 2014 while he was a federal MP. (Dykstra is friends with Patrick Brown, who resigned as PC leader last week after sexual misconduct allegations.)

Senior Tory officials were reportedly made aware of the allegations against Dykstra but opted not to drop him as a candidate in the 2015 federal election. On Parliament Hill, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel said those officials "should be ashamed of themselves" over how the Dykstra allegations were handled. And Tory Leader Andrew Scheer vowed to immediately remove any future candidate accused of sexual assault, pending an investigation. Parliament is in the midst of a debate on legislation to address harassment in federally regulated work forces.

Boushie and Fontaine: Two significant trials begin

Colten Boushie: Jury selection took place yesterday for the trial of a Saskatchewan farmer charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of 22-year-old Cree man Colten Boushie in 2016. Boushie's death exposed the province's racial divide, Joe Friesen reports. And now, an all-white jury appears to have been selected. Every potential juror who looked Indigenous was blocked, a not-entirely surprising result but one that left Boushie's family frustrated.

Tina Fontaine: The 15-year-old girl was found dead in Winnipeg's Red River in 2014. Raymond Cormier, now 55, was charged with second-degree murder the following year, just days after the federal government announced the start of the national inquiry into Canada's missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The trial began yesterday with testimony from Thelma Favel, the aunt who raised Tina. In a pre-trial interview, Favel told The Globe: "Maybe there was a reason why she died the way she did: So people could open their eyes, and change their cold hearts toward aboriginal girls."

The largest B.C. wildfire last year was human-caused

The RCMP have set up a tip line to try and find more leads on the source of the fire that burned nearly 2,000 square kilometres of land and destroyed 211 homes and structures. Known as the Elephant Hill fire, it started in B.C.'s interior, just west of Kelowna. B.C. grappled with a string of blazes last summer, with about 50,000 people forced to flee their homes during at the peak of wildfire season.

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The Cleveland Indians will be removing the Chief Wahoo logo from their uniforms

But the change won't happen until the 2019 season. The logo, in use since 1947, has long been derided as a racist caricature of Indigenous peoples. And it has a number of Canadian connections: In 2016, as the Toronto Blue Jays were set to face Cleveland in playoff baseball, an Indigenous activist filed a human-rights complaint in Ontario to protest the logo. A court turned down that request to block the use of the name and logo. Also in 2016, a youth baseball team in Ontario dropped the Indians name.

MORNING MARKETS

Stocks tumble

Global stocks were in their biggest two-day dive in six months on Tuesday and commodities were also jammed in reverse, as rising U.S. borrowing costs cooled financial markets' euphoric start to the year. Tokyo's Nikkei lost 1.4 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng, 1.1 per cent, and the Shanghai composite 1 per cent. In Europe, London's FTSE 100, Germany's DAX and the Paris CAC 40 were down by between 0.2 and 0.4 per cent by about 5:20 a.m. ET. New York futures were also down. Oil fell for a second day as a strengthening U.S. dollar dented risk-linked assets such as equities and other commodities.

FYI: The Globe now provides all users access to real-time stock quotes for both Canadian and U.S. markets. Go here to find out about the major changes to our Globe Investor site.

WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT

Trump's threat to withdraw from NAFTA could loom for a long time

"The buzzwords for the latest round of NAFTA talks in Montreal were 'cautious optimism,' but in reality, that meant heavy on caution, light on the optimism – with a helping of grumpy U.S. warnings, and the ever-present reality that no one knows what U.S. President Donald Trump might do. … More and more, it looks as though this is going to be Canada's new reality: The talks continue for a year, perhaps even three years, with Mr. Trump's threat to withdraw from NAFTA constantly hanging in the air. On trade, Canada could be living dangerously for years." – Campbell Clark (for subscribers)

Populism is poisoning the global liberal order

"It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the global liberal order hangs precariously in the balance. If the Democrats can regain their majority in the House in 2018 and go on to win the presidency, then Donald Trump is likely to go down in history as an unpleasant aberration. But if the Democrats lose in 2018 and Trump wins the presidency in 2020, then polarization in the U.S. will deepen and the savaging of liberal institutions will likely increase. The withdrawal of the U.S. from the global order will continue and power will diffuse from the west to the east. The shift from a uni-polar to a multi-polar world will accelerate, with dangerous fallout." Francis Fukuyama, senior fellow at Stanford University, and Robert Muggah, co-founder Igarapé Institute and SecDev Group

Hollywood or not, it's every free agent for themselves

"Actress Michelle Williams says yes to doing retakes on the movie All the Money in the World for a measly grand, even sacrificing Christmas with her daughter to get the film to market on time. Her co-star, Mark Wahlberg, says I don't think so when asked to work for scale and squeezes the producers for $1.5-million (U.S.) for his troubles. In the popular retelling of this, she's a victim, he's part of the problem and the whole thing is an example of why women are treated like meat in Hollywood and in the broader economy as well. A blaze of bad publicity for Mr. Wahlberg had him donating $1.5-million to the Hollywood legal defence fund Time's Up, in what no doubt was an attempt by his PR people to make him look like a sensitive guy. But did he do anything wrong in the first place? If something was not fair, whose fault was it exactly?" – Linda Nazareth, senior fellow for economics and population change at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute

HEALTH PRIMER

Grab life by the poles: Science says you should take up cross-country skiing

The combination of high intensity and full-body exercise appears to be an important way to help fight heart disease, research has found. If you're doing it right, cross-country skiing can be a great arm workout, providing a nice substitute to going to the gym all the time in the winter.

MOMENT IN TIME

Final episode of Roots draws record audience

Jan. 30, 1977: The concept of must-see TV began with Roots. The sprawling, mega-budget ($6.6-million U.S.) adaptation of Alex Haley's bestselling novel focused on his family's origins, going back to how his ancestor Kunta Kinte arrived in America as a slave, and provided a mainstream reminder of African Americans' deep historical roots in the country. The miniseries kept the U.S. viewing audience – and a commensurate number of Canadians – glued to the small screen for eight consecutive nights. Courtesy of ABC's blanket advance promotion, the opening night of Roots generated 28 million U.S. viewers. For the Sunday-night closer, that viewership had grown to nearly 37 million, according to Nielsen numbers. In the final tally, roughly 140 million total viewers watched some or all of Roots – more than half the 1977 U.S. population of 221 million people – and the viewing marathon still boasts the second-most-watched series finale of all time (behind the 1983 sendoff for M*A*S*H). Beyond collecting nine Emmys and a Peabody award, and launching the careers of LeVar Burton, Ben Vereen and others, Roots legitimized the notion of turning lofty literary titles into mainstream TV entertainment – as evinced in years to follow with ratings blockbusters such as Shogun, North and South, Winds of War and The Thorn Birds. With Roots, the modern miniseries was born. – Andrew Ryan

Morning Update is written by Arik Ligeti.

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