Good evening, readers.

Prime Minister Mark Carney says he spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump today about the Gordie Howe International Bridge after Trump threatened to prevent it from opening.

In a social media post late Monday, Trump insisted the U.S. must be compensated before he’ll allow the bridge to open.

He claimed the bridge was built with virtually no U.S. content.

Carney says he explained to Trump that Canada paid for the bridge, that the ownership is shared between the government of Michigan and the government of Canada and that steel from both countries was used in its construction.

The bridge connecting Windsor, Ont. and Detroit is supposed to open sometime this winter after delays.

The Trump administration endorsed the bridge project in 2017 during his first term in office.

CP reports.

Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer says his party would help the government pass its budget implementation bill if it removes sections that would give new powers to allow ministers to “ignore certain laws and regulations.”

Scheer told reporters Tuesday the Conservatives have put forward “a series of compromises” that, if accepted by the Liberals, would allow the budget bill to proceed.

Those changes, he said, would “prevent ministers from being able to completely circumvent the law without any kind of parliamentary oversight or scrutiny.”

“We know what happens when Liberals think no one’s looking. They have a long track record of funnelling cash to their friendly insiders and their political supporters,” Scheer said before question period.

The massive bill brings in changes to laws to implement measures spelled out in last fall’s budget, the first under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s leadership.

Marco Vigliotti has more.

The federal Liberals are open to amendments to their anti-hate bill that has been stalled at committee but it’s unclear if that would go beyond a controversial deal the party reached with the Bloc Quebecois.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser on Tuesday said the Liberals were open to changes that would refine the language around the contentious Bloc amendment removing religious exemptions to the hate speech crime, but accused the Conservatives of choosing to instead “obstruct” the work of the committee.

He said potential changes included refining the definition of hate in the bill, clarifying that reading religious texts wouldn’t qualify as hate speech and changing the requirements for consent of the provincial attorney, which is required before hate speech charges are laid.

But based on conversations with the Conservatives, Fraser said it’s clear there’s no opportunity for negotiations.

“We want to ensure that as we move forward with a proposal from the Bloc that we accommodate some of the concerns that we’ve heard from religious communities who don’t believe their religions constitute hate, but want to see that clearly reflected in the text of the bill,” he told reporters before Tuesday’s cabinet meeting.

“We would entertain amendments to that effect. But it seems in our dealings with the Conservatives that they’re saying there is no accommodation that can be made on the concerns that we’re raising, and are going to choose instead to obstruct.”

The Conservatives warned the Bloc amendment risked criminalizing religious teachings, and have resorted to filibustering meetings of the committee to derail study of the legislation.

Vigliotti also has that one. 

In Other Headlines

Internationally

Mexican Federal Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said Tuesday that four people arrested in connection with the abduction of 10 mining company workers in Sinaloa last month told authorities that the victims were mistaken for members of a rival cartel faction.

In recent days, authorities located 10 bodies on a property in Concordia, Sinaloa, the same municipality where the employees of Canadian mining company Vizsla Silver were abducted on Jan. 23.

To date, five of the bodies have been identified as belonging to missing miners.

At President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Tuesday morning press conference, a reporter asked officials whether they had information about the motive of the crime allegedly committed by members of the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.

“With the first arrests that the army carried out, of four people allegedly responsible for the abduction, what they say is that [the victims] were mistaken … with members of an opposing group,” García Harfuch said.

“Those are the first statements [of the people detained]. We’re going to have more information and of course we’re going to have more people arrested,” he said.

More from Mexico News Daily.

Elsewhere, a key route for trade along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border faces closures.

For more than three months, Afghan truck driver Anwar Zadran has been parked in Pakistan with a truck full of cement he was supposed to transport from a factory in Nowshera district to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

The task became impossible starting in mid-October, when Pakistan and Afghanistan shut their borders in response to fighting between the two countries, stranding Zadran mid-route near the Torkham border crossing.

He now spends his daylight hours huddled at roadside tea stalls with other stranded drivers, waiting for a sign that restrictions at Torkham will loosen.

Every day, Zadran puts on the same thin clothes he arrived in months ago, when the weather was warm — retreating to his truck to sleep in the evenings when the air turns icy cold.

“The people are destroyed and the goods are damaged as well,” he says. “I wish the border would open soon so that we can get some relief.”

Read more on NPR.

In Other International Headlines

The Kicker

We leave you with this story from the Beaverton…

U.S . President Donald Trump has threatened to halt the opening of an international bridge linking Windsor and Detroit, excluding Canadians from country that they have absolutely no interest in travelling to.

Have a great night!