Contractors must use all-Canadian materials and supplies in costly renovations to the Prime Minister’s official residence, according to a federal notice. The manor house at 24 Sussex Drive “must be completed by Canadians for Canadians,” it said.
One of the biggest federal spenders on consultants increased expenditures 10 percent above average last year, records show. The Department of Employment spent $998.5 million even as Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to cut spending on consultants by 20 percent: “I have a simple rule: spend less, invest more.”
You were a few seats away from me.
Darkness camouflaged my staring at you.
You seemed mesmerized,
smiling whenever DiCaprio
made his entry.
I was mesmerized by my own fantasies.
Still couldn’t make my move,
for all these people between us.
Blocking all options.
Perhaps I was also fearful
of your date, who sat beside you,
and mine
who sat beside me.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
In 1937 Canada had a higher infant mortality rate than South Africa and Ireland. Until 1919 all national medical services were managed by the Department of Agriculture. Child deaths were such an inescapable horror in family life that Prime Minister John Thompson (1892-4) lost four of his nine children in infancy.
Historian Mona Gleason documents the dawn of awareness that Canada’s infants could not be left to sicken and die in an expression of survival of the fittest: “Merely being small and young, in other words, required medical attention.”
Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and Health is a compelling social history that chronicles the country’s struggle towards the light.
Canada’s first children’s hospital ward opened in Montreal in 1822. By 1879 the first course in pediatrics was introduced, at the University of Laval. Yet there was little understanding of infant care beyond folklore. It’s a phenomenon still visible today in the sweep of gravestones depicting little lambs and cherubs that dominate any 19th century Canadian cemetery.
It was as if the small and weak were never meant to live. Gleason cites an 1897 medical text that warned the newborn “is almost certain sooner or later to exhibit tendencies to disease in the direction of the stock from whence it springs…it may receive an inheritance of tuberculosis or epilepsy, or a tendency to gout or rheumatism.”
Where health and hygiene were introduced in the classroom, the treatment leaned to morality and abstinence from sin. An 1896 text Gage’s Health Series for Intermediate Classes cautioned students to beware of wine jelly: “The appetite, becoming uncontrollable, may bring its owner to a drunkard’s grave.”
The result was the appalling infant mortality rate. A century ago approximately 1 in 6 babies Canadian babies died by age three. In the tubercular slums of the bigger cities the death rate was worse, 1 in 3.
“Overall, the high rate of infant mortality was a state of affairs largely accepted as tragic, but not yet a matter of concern,” writes Gleason, of the University of British Columbia.
Small Matters draws on our deepest childhood memories of illness. Who forgets the blight of chicken pox, or the smell of VapoRub in a shuttered bedroom, or soothing cool of vanilla ice cream after a tonsillectomy?
So, the most unforgettable voices in Gleason’s work are oral histories – like Theresa, who recalls being stricken with polio, the scourge that afflicted 50,000 Canadians till 1962: “When I went to Toronto when I was sixteen, they drilled into me that, ‘Your polio is in your mind. You can do anything. Don’t let polio keep you down’…I remember one girl had polio in both legs, and they stood her up against the wall and she walked with these crutches. And they said to her, ‘Come on, Doreen, you got to walk.’ ‘I can’t.’ She’d cry and she would cry.”
The country cried. Then we got better.
By Holly Doan
Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and Health by Mona Gleason; McGill-Queens University Press; 232 Pages; ISBN 9780-7735-41337; $29.95
A federal memorial to Afghan War dead will be inscribed with an Algonquin land acknowledgement in the name of “supporting reconciliation,” says an internal memo. Veterans Affairs Minister Jill McKnight’s department would not say how many of the 2,229 Canadian casualties in Afghanistan including 158 killed in action were Algonquin: ‘It’s to recognize the Indigenous peoples on whose traditional territory the Monument stands.’
The Federal Court yesterday in a rare order suspended all constitutional challenges of an immigration law passed March 12 by Parliament. All plaintiffs were ordered into case management on complaints that repetitive claims were clogging the docket: “New immigration proceedings have increased for a fifth record-breaking year and may exceed 30,000 files in 2026.”
Cabinet takes Canadian democracy as it is and will not pursue electoral reform, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon yesterday wrote the Commons. The remarks followed Justin Trudeau’s lament that dropping a 2016 proposal for a national referendum on reform was his greatest regret: “I do wish we had been able to.”
Workers whose jobs require sound judgment, physical contacts or special skills have little to fear from artificial intelligence, the Bank of Canada said yesterday. While AI to date had limited impact on jobs in Canada, analysts warned some occupations were vulnerable: “Exposure is lowest in occupations that rely more heavily on judgment.”
A Nova Scotia Court has ordered the eviction of a Halifax tenant over derogatory remarks against his South Asian neighbours. A “good behaviour” clause in tenancy laws of most provinces applies to rudeness, a Small Claims adjudicator ruled: “Good behaviour extends beyond merely refraining from threatening to commit physical or property damage.”
Opposition parties yesterday demanded Prime Minister Mark Carney disclose to Parliament the secret terms of a cross-border trade pact. A draft agreement outlined by U.S. authorities would end 61 years of tariff-free Canadian auto exports to the U.S. and grant unprecedented Canadian market access for American farmers: “We have the right to know what concessions are being granted to Donald Trump.”
The Privy Council spent $34,291 to poll the public on whether they fear Canada will run out of fresh water due to climate change. It followed earlier research on whether Canadians should be afraid of running out of food, though the country is self-sufficient in both: “Please rate your level of agreement or disagreement with the following statement: Canada will not have enough fresh water to meet its needs in the future.”
It may take “up to seven years” to 2033 before cabinet is anywhere near its targets on housing starts, says an internal Department of Finance memo. Delays were due to ordinary lags in planning and permits compounded by inflation and labour shortages, it said: “Homebuilder confidence has remained depressed.”
A federal agency, the Canada Energy Regulator, has tightened in-house ethics rules for politically-appointed directors. No specific reason was given, though Access To Information records earlier showed one unnamed staffer was caught trading in energy shares: “Appointees are expected to respect the principles.”
Turnout by Indigenous voters was far below the national average in 2025 and as low as 30 percent among Inuit, says new Elections Canada research. Analysts attributed the low turnout to younger demographics in Indigenous communities: “Younger electors tend to vote less.”
U.S. President Donald Trump last night taunted Canada’s cabinet with a 72-hour extension of a deadline on $28 billion tariffs and a pledge that the long-cancelled Keystone XL Pipeline “may be awoken from the grave!”
