Cabinet would gain exclusive powers to exempt China from a slave labour ban under a new Commons bill. Prime Minister Mark Carney has already guaranteed Chinese automakers market access for 278,989 vehicles with slave-made parts."Do you believe there is forced labour in China?” READ MORE
Suppliers submitting bids under cabinet’s Buy Canadian program must promise not to hire foreign subcontractors, says the Department of Public Works. The new paperwork followed MPs’ complaints of numerous loopholes benefiting foreigners: "A new Declaration Form has been introduced." READ MORE
Canada is soon welcoming a “high level delegation” from Cuba, says the chair of the Senate foreign affairs committee. “Cuba needs friends,” said Senator Peter Boehm (Ont.), who singled out the United States for criticism. READ MORE
Health and medical benefit claims in the RCMP will cost more than $1.1 billion this year, an enormous figure, said one senator. The Mounties’ chief financial officer expressed alarm: "The rate of active regular members on long term off-duty sick leave has increased by 128 percent." READ MORE
The number of Canadian businesses using artificial intelligence remains marginal, fewer than a fifth, and typically only for mundane chores like drafting a Word document, says a federal report. It follows claims by Industry Minister Mélanie Joly that Canada was a world leader in AI: "Overall levels remain low." READ MORE
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "This questionnaire is anonymous. Data collected will be used exclusively for statistical purposes. We aim to improve workplace experience..." READ MORE
Nobody’s published an anthology of celebrity draft dodgers though there are many: William Lyon Mackenzie King, Pierre Trudeau, Bill Clinton. Robert Menzies, the Australian prime minister, as a law student enthusiastically joined his campus militia unit but declined to fight overseas in the First World War. Menzies for decades afterward faced Opposition jibes that the war had interrupted his military career. Boxer Jack Dempsey took work as a longshoreman with a draft deferment. As heavyweight title holder, “reference to the new champion as a fighter often elicited sneers about the kind of fighting he had done in previous years,” historian Joseph Furnas wrote in 1974. None of the personalities in Crossing Into Canada are celebrities. They would not even publish their surnames. One declined to be photographed. All came to Canada to evade U.S. military service. “Support for draft evaders and deserters during the war in Vietnam was not homogenous or guaranteed in Canada,” writes editor Alison Mountz. “Resistance was controversial then and remains so today.” READ MORE
Anti-Semitism was not uncommon in those days. The worst MP I ever saw? Social Credit’s John Blackmore of Lethbridge. People couldn’t understand how he kept getting elected in Alberta. He was a kook, just out of control, and a blatherskite. He was once cited for using his House mailing privileges to distribute anti-Semitic literature. In 1954, Blackmore sought a federal commission to probe an “imperialist conspiracy of Eastern European Reds of Mongol and Turkic affinities.” He became a figure of fun in the Press Gallery because of the silly things he did, but with a dark, racist tone.
