Defence Minister Bill Blair while testifying under oath misled the China inquiry, records suggest. Documents disclosed by lawyers marked the second time Blair’s explanation for the mishandling of security matters was contradicted: “It is evidence that a minister of the Crown gave under sworn testimony.”
Voters are resigned to illegal foreign money influencing federal elections, says in-house research by Elections Canada. More than two-thirds of electors say they suspect illegal foreign campaign contributions are commonplace: ‘What impact if any do you think it will have on the outcome of the next federal election?’
New evidence shows a former legislator came under federal surveillance for working on behalf of a foreign government to “influence” Parliament. Neither the ex-parliamentarian, party affiliation or the foreign government were named by the Commission on Foreign Interference: “This one is new?”
Liberal-appointed senators are protesting quick passage of a Bloc Québécois bill on dairy quotas. The Bloc has warned Bill C-282 must be signed into law by October 29 or it will “bring down the government.”
A federal labour board faces years’ worth of hearings into complaints Covid vaccine mandates discriminated against federal employees’ religious beliefs. The Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board put an end to in-person hearings to help clear the backlog of grievances: “Scheduling an oral hearing for every religious accommodation case would amount to an impossible burden.”
I examine the icons
on my new smartphone.
An old film camera;
a rotary phone;
a windup alarm clock;
a postal envelope
They should all be updated
to represent modern-day technology.
The camera
may be replaced
with an image of an iPhone.
The old telephone
could certainly be exchanged
for an iPhone.
The alarm clock,
the envelope –
they should all be switched
to an iPhone.
Not to mention the contact book,
the game console,
the media folder,
the calendar.
iPhones.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
It is an immigrants’ story like no other. British Columbia’s Kootenay region was for years a quiet, peaceful land of alpine valleys and crystal streams, peopled by Catholic loggers and miners, New Democrats and Social Creditors – “blue collar”, one MP called it. Suddenly, the Vietnam War happened.
Sociologist Kathleen Rodgers in her compelling narrative tells what happened next. From 1965 thousands of U.S. draft evaders crossed the border to settle in the Kootenays, cursing U.S. militarism and actually building communes with names like New Family and Harmony’s Gate. “Some focused on ‘free love,’” Rodgers notes.
There had never been anything quite like it. True, Canada has been a haven for American draft dodgers since the U.S. Civil War, and northern migrations are nothing new. It was the century-old influx of Montana cowpunchers and Utah Mormons that even today gives southern Alberta its unique view.
These immigrants were different. They were educated commune-ists armed with Jimi Hendrix posters and the mail-order Whole Earth Catalog. “The young Americans who crossed the Canadian border between 1965 and 1975 were not necessarily radical leaders of student politics or even committed activists, but they had come of age during a period of transformative political and cultural change,” Rodgers writes.
Resisterville chronicles the transformation. The title of the book draws from a 2004 New York Times article on protests that erupted in Nelson, B.C. when advocates attempted to erect a public monument honouring draft evaders. “The whole statue issue was just a shame,” one tells Rodgers. “When draft dodgers came to this country people were so willing to have us.”
Resisterville documents an astonishing fact. Of the 100,000 Americans of draft age who emigrated to Canada in the era of the Vietnam War, half stayed. Of those 40 percent settled in B.C. In the West Kootenays Americans comprised 25 percent of the immigrant population.
The result was a California-style “counterculture,” Rodgers writes. Americans inspired a short-lived newspaper The Arrow, a feminist theatre group that produced the works of Ibsen, a natural food co-op, “free schools” that taught candle-making and a lifestyle that irritated officialdom.
In 1972 one local MLA complained in the B.C. legislature that valleys were under siege by “an invasion of American hippies” who liked to skinny dip in the lakes. Local media lamented that “hippies had completely taken over the Steven’s Creek campsite.” MP Herbert Herridge, a New Democrat, disparaged the newcomers as “ragheads,” an epithet of uncertain origin.
“In the decades following their arrival in the West Kootenays the newcomers’ pacifist principles remained a core component of the countercultural identity in the community,” writes Rodgers. “Their activities included lobbying for the region to become a nuclear-free zone, marching in anti-war protests, traveling to peace rallies at the site of the Hanford nuclear reactor in Washington in the 1980s, organizing festivals in celebration of peace, protesting against the war in Iraq.”
Rodgers’ research is meticulous, including vivid interviews with scores of “hippies” who made the Kootenays home. “It was hard,” one remarked. “Somebody who had a PhD in biology got a job driving the coal truck at the co-op.”
“People found it wasn’t as easy to live the dream of peace and love as they thought.”
By Holly Doan
Welcome To Resisterville: American Dissidents In British Columbia by Kathleen Rodgers; University of British Columbia Press; 219 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-27348; $29.95
Government House Leader Karina Gould yesterday claimed cabinet’s climate plan cut emissions by “the equivalent of 60 million cars.” Aides did not substantiate the claim. Emissions went up in the last official reporting period, and Canada has never had 60 million cars: “We just got the news.”
Canadians face prosecution and jailing for a new crime of “downplaying or justifying the Indian Residential School System” under a private bill introduced yesterday. New Democrat MP Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre), sponsor of the bill, complained of “increasing Residential School denialism.”
Current housing starts are below rates needed to reach Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s affordability targets, CMHC figures showed yesterday. Starts in the first half of the year fell in three of Canada’s six largest cities: “This level of activity is not enough.”
Gambling addiction in Canada has worsened since Parliament legalized single event sports betting three years ago, researchers have told the Senate. The warning came at committee hearings on a bill to regulate advertising: “This is clearly a problem.”
Canada has collected more than $100 million in war tariffs on imports from Russia and Belarus, records show. A third of Customs duties were levied on contracted shipments of Russian fertilizer: ‘There are still some tariff revenues collected on sporadic imports from Russia and Belarus.’
Cabinet yesterday survived a non-confidence vote by a margin of 211 to 120 on a warning it may be a short reprieve. “This is a limited time offer,” said Bloc Québécois House Leader Alain Therrien (La Prairie, Que.): “There will be plenty of non-confidence votes between now and Christmas.”
Chinese-language media in Canada are dominated by Communist Party narratives and censorship of pro-democracy voices, says a top secret federal memo. The document was disclosed by the Commission on Foreign Interference: “China-friendly narratives inundate Chinese language media.”
MPs last night blamed poor oversight by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault for a disastrous fire in Jasper National Park. “When are you going to take responsibility?” asked Conservative MP Blaine Calkins (Red Deer-Lacombe, Alta.), a former Jasper warden, after Guilbeault said it wasn’t his job to “micromanage 4,000 Parks Canada employees.”
