School boards nationwide should rewrite curricula to include education on seal hunting, says the Senate fisheries committee. Senators said lessons are needed to revive an industry that is “no longer economically viable.”
By the entrance,
names of employees
and their whereabouts.
Andy went for a dental appointment;
Shawn is in a conference;
Barbara on vacation.
I’m coming down with a cold;
haven’t slept all night.
Standing by the board
– a dry-erase marker in my hand –
I consider my options.
“Sick and tired”
sounds right.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Otto Boyko of Edmonton recalls the day he enlisted in the army during the Korean War, and went home to tell Mother he’d take basic training at Camp Petawawa, Ont. “Oh, that’s where your dad was held in the internment camp,” she said.
Another oldtimer, Andrew Antoniuk, remembered when his father bought his first car in 1937, he insisted on taking the family to see a clearing in the bush near Jasper, Alta. “He showed us the area where his eldest brother said he had worked clearing the forest in an internment camp,” said Antoniuk: “It didn’t mean that much, but now as I am reviewing the history, I see the place again and I think about it. Oh, my God.”
The Stories Were Not Told documents the First War internment of 8,579 people, most of them Ukrainians. Yes, detainees included women and children. Yes, men were shot trying to escape. Author Sandra Semchuk describes her work as an attempt at “gathering clues that have been emptied of meaning and forgotten.”
“While doing my research for this book, I found communities who did not want to speak about the internment at all,” writes Semchuk. “One man who refused to speak said, ‘Oh, I know what you are going to do.’”
Immigrants were forced from their homes as enemy aliens by a cabinet order signed October 28, 1914. Some 88,000 were initially required to carry ID cards and report monthly to police. One in 10 were then forced into labour camps. Two facts remain: Ukrainians’ detention served no military purpose whatsoever – the camps operated till 1920, long after the Armistice – and were not controversial at the time.
Semchuk notes Ukrainians were almost a sub-class of Canadian society, considered sturdy and dull-witted. Official documents likened them to livestock. One correspondent wrote then-Interior Minister Arthur Meighen in 1919 that Ukrainians could be “controlled as a lot of sheep.”
The Stories Were Not Told is a stark narrative. It is also beautiful. Semchuk is a skilled photographer whose works have appeared in the National Gallery. Readers are riveted by rare historic images of the camps, and before-and-after photographs that document the precise locations where detainees were held. “Barbed wire emerged from the core of a spruce tree at Castle Mountain and bound a cedar tree at Revelstoke, giving evidence to fact in time,” she writes.
Concealment of the WWI camps is no accident, Semchuk concludes. Cabinet in 1954 authorized the destruction of records from the Custodian of Enemy Property, and internees suppressed memories. “It was almost as if it was all a bad dream, a nightmare that would best be forgotten, certainly not something other Canadians would want to talk about with us, the victims,” Semchuk quotes one ex-child internee. “I can never forget what was done to my family and me.”
By Holly Doan
The Stories Were Not Told: Canada’s First World War Internment Camps, by Sandra Semchuk; University of Alberta Press; 352 pages; ISBN 9781-7721-23784; $34.99
The Department of Finance yesterday said it had no choice but to raise the debt ceiling by a trillion dollars in three years. “The increase is a result of the borrowing,” Alexander Bonnyman, director of debt management, told the Commons finance committee.
The Canada Revenue Agency last year fired 177 employees for security breaches, records disclose. The Agency did not explain each firing though past dismissals involved unauthorized snooping through tax files: “All 177 were revocations of reliability status.”
Nine independent publishers and commentators yesterday denounced federal newsroom subsidies. The first organized opposition to media bailouts was initiated by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa think tank.
“Our media companies will not accept the per employee subsidies currently on offer from government and industry,” said an Ottawa Declaration signed by publishers. Annual subsidies paid to cabinet-approved newsrooms are currently worth up to $29,750 per employee.
“We encourage other digital news outlets to sign this Declaration and reject the payroll subsidies,” it said. “In trying to ‘save’ journalism, these subsidies damage the independence of the press, stifle much needed innovation and private investment and fail to rebuild readers, listeners and viewers’ trust in our industry.”
The first publishers to sign the pledge were Holly Doan of Blacklock’s Reporter, Sam Cooper of The Bureau, Rudyard Griffiths of The Hub, Tara Henley of Lean Out, Candice Malcolm of True North, Substack commentator Paul Wells, Derek Fildebrandt of The Western Standard and Claire Lehmann of Quillette. Columnist Andrew Coyne also signed the petition.
None of the publishers previously solicited federal aid. Blacklock’s in an earlier February 19 submission to the Commons heritage committee opposed the ongoing $595 million bailout as wasteful, corrupting and futile.
The Ottawa Declaration represented the first act by a coalition of independent publishers in opposition to News Media Canada, the newspaper lobby that successfully sought taxpayers’ aid. CEO Paul Deegan claimed in 2023 testimony at the Senate transport and communications committee that publishers could not survive without federal money.
“We have a market failure here,” testified Deegan. “It isn’t working so we need a solution. That’s why we have come to the government even though, frankly, we would like to stay as far away from government and the CRTC as we can. But we do need them.”
The Ottawa Declaration yesterday disputed the claim. “The broadly unpopular subsidy regime represents a challenge to our democratic process insofar as it raises questions in the public’s mind about the independence of the press, thereby undermining the perceived veracity of reported news,” it said. “The subsidy regime also creates an uneven playing field whereby some news outlets, primarily legacy media companies, are able to qualify for government support and others are not.”
Privy Council in-house research confirms taxpayers do not support newsroom subsidies and are indifferent to media failure. “Asked whether they felt that protecting and supporting the Canadian news industry should be a priority for the federal government, few agreed,” said a 2023 report Continuous Qualitative Data Collection Of Canadians’ Views. “Only a small number believed the news industry in general should be a top priority,” it added.
“It was generally felt most Canadians had access to a wide range of news sources on a variety of platforms and there were currently more pressing issues for the federal government to focus on such as housing affordability and the cost of living,” said Canadians’ Views.
By Staff
Canadians should beware of federal censorship of social media for partisan gain, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill) yesterday told the House affairs committee. Her remarks followed testimony by two Liberal MPs who complained opponents were uniquely hurtful on Twitter: “You aren’t suggesting the Liberal Party hasn’t made statements that agitated people?”
A bill to unmask paid friends of China and other foreign agents will likely not be in place before the next election, the Commons public safety committee was told yesterday. MPs said the lack of such a law contributed to foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 campaigns: “We could be running into that very thing.”
Treasury Board President Anita Anand yesterday issued a new directive reminding federal executives to read the Values And Ethics Code For The Public Sector. It follows Anand’s testimony she was unaware of ArriveCan irregularities while responsible for Government of Canada contracting: “They shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic every couple of months.”
A federal judge has dismissed an attempt by two ArriveCan executives to quash an investigator’s report that alleged criminal wrongdoing. Antonio Utano and Cameron MacDonald were both suspended without pay January 11 but never charged with any crime: “I understand the applicants’ concern regarding their careers, reputations, dignity and livelihoods.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday denied federal spending is out of control after she raised the debt ceiling to a record $2.13 trillion. “I love answering questions about fiscal responsibility,” Freeland told the Senate national finance committee.
Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard (N.S.), a Liberal appointee, yesterday said cabinet must apologize for what she called Canada’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. No Canadian Parliament ever legalized slavery. Most Black people arrived here after 1971, according to Statistics Canada: “It would be really good for Black Canadians to know why there is such resistance to issuing an apology.”
Mortgage default rates are low but rising, CMHC said yesterday. The federal insurer counted a total $2.16 trillion in mortgages loans nationwide: “Under current interest rate conditions more mortgage holders find themselves in precarious financial situations.”
CBC managers in the fiscal year just ended March 31 awarded themselves $14.9 million in bonuses even as CEO Catherine Tait claimed financial hardship and laid off 141 employees, documents show. Records tabled in Parliament directly contradicted testimony by Tait that she had no idea whether or not bonuses were paid: “I really take objection to being called a liar.”
New Covid ventilators bought at $22,000 apiece were sold in a hurry as scrap to “further understand” the recycling business, the Department of Public Works says in an Access To Information document. Records show the ventilators bought under a sole-sourced $169.5 million contract were scrapped even while the pandemic was ongoing: “This has not been a cheap enterprise.”
