The Canada Revenue Agency may audit certain GST charges dating back 33 years under an obscure provision of cabinet’s omnibus budget bill. The Canadian Bar Association called it a bad precedent: “This type of legislation is not only unfair to taxpayers but also a breach of the rule of law.”
Appointment of Manitoba’s Raymonde Gagne as $241,300-a year Speaker of the Senate comes 20 years after a reform bill to elect speakers lapsed in the Upper House. The Senate is among the last national assemblies in any English-speaking country that does not elect its speaker: “The Senate will gain in independence and dignity with the election of its speaker by secret ballot.”
A civil war in South Sudan.
This mother of five is
hiding in the swamps,
feeding her children with water lilies
until the next shipment of grains
is airdropped.
They are the lucky ones.
Elsewhere,
aid workers are kidnapped for
ransom.
Relief agencies
unable to reach
those in need.
A manmade disaster.
I grab my car keys, heading to PetSmart.
Cat food this week
30% off.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Off the highway in Morrisburg, Ont. is a “historic site,” Upper Canada Village. The attraction is a fake.
“What was it really like to live and work in the 19th century?” the pamphlets ask. “Visit Upper Canada Village and travel back in time!” It is in fact a 1961 recreation of a genuine 1761 community destroyed to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway. To actually travel back in time you must read Negotiating A River, the saga of a mega-project that created an engineering marvel and submerged a piece of the national fabric under 40 feet of water.
In a celebration of “faith in progress and technology,” writes author Daniel Macfarlane, seaway builders decided “it was worth erasing key parts of Canadian history, literally flooding the site of Crysler’s Farm from the War of 1812. The memorial there was relocated to a hill on the new shore beside Upper Canada Village.”
Macfarlane is a visiting Michigan State scholar at Carleton University’s School of Canadian Studies. He recounts authoritatively the decades of Canada-U.S. diplomatic wrangling that preceded actual construction of the seaway beginning in 1954.
The venture itself was phenomenal, “the tallest water staircase west of China, as the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation once put it. It carries ships from Lake Superior 600 feet down to sea level and out the Atlantic. It is still something to see a Great Lakes freighter two city blocks long chug past the Thousand Islands.
From 1909 Canada and U.S. diplomats grappled over terms of what became a truly international venture. Americans had pushed for an all-Yankee route down the Hudson River. The first seaway treaty was rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1934 and never even put to a ratification vote in the House of Commons.
Negotiating A River is more than an engineering handbook or summary of diplomatic cables. Macfarlane skillfully recounts the most sorrowful chapter of seaway construction, the relocation of 9,100 people from their hometowns: “Although it was a national – even international – story at the time, it has been largely forgotten outside the St. Lawrence Valley.”
Ontario Premier Leslie Frost promised expropriation would be “decent and humanitarian” – well, as decent as expropriation can be. One official said residents of the lost villages “don’t have much to complain about.” They got to move to a new suburb with new shopping centres, didn’t they?
The toll of properties to be drowned for progress numbered 225 farms, 18 cemeteries, 531 homes and barns and old colonial towns like Farran’s Point and Aultsville, Moulinette and Dickinson’s Landing, founded circa 1783. “It was a disorienting experience for those who lived through the relocation,” Macfarlane writes. “For many, the best way to describe it might be traumatic.”
We are left with a seaway, the works of researchers like Macfarlane and the overpriced Upper Canada “reconstituted replica pioneer village,” he calls it. No plaque tells visitors the whole truth of what happened there.
By Holly Doan
Negotiating A River: Canada, the U.S., and the Creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway, by Daniel Macfarlane; University of British Columbia Press; 356 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-26440; $34.95
Conservative MPs yesterday asked to summon Chinese Ambassador Cong Peiwu for questioning over clandestine operations by his Embassy. One Chinese diplomat has been expelled to date for harassing an MP’s family: “It is about as low as it gets.”
The Canada Revenue Agency yesterday hinted it may “take a look” at the federally-subsidized Trudeau Foundation. “Could be,” Revenue Commissioner Bob Hamilton testified at the Commons public accounts committee as MPs from all opposition parties sought an audit of the charity’s books: “The potential for us to take a look? Could be.”
Cabinet yesterday served notice it will invoke closure to get its budget bill out of the Commons finance committee. Conservative MPs are filibustering the bill until Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland appears for two hours of questioning: “We are running out of time.”
Federal drug regulators in a memo to the health minister complained of the “hard reality” of political influence by pharmaceutical lobbyists. The Access To Information memo was disclosed yesterday by New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh: “It is very clear the Liberal government is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry.”
Seal hunters yesterday appealed to the Senate fisheries committee to encourage Canadians to eat more seal meat. “It’s super good,” testified one sealer, but added: “It’s not going to replace beef.”
Canada’s chief bank inspector yesterday said he’s concerned over billions loaned in certain variable rate mortgages. “We are watching very carefully,” Superintendent of Financial Institutions Peter Routledge told the Senate banking committee: “What I am concerned about is the build-up in variable rate mortgages with fixed payments.”
CRTC censors must mandate corrections to “errors of fact” in newspaper and online news articles, says the National Council of Canadian Muslims. Members of the Senate transport and communications committee expressed alarm over the proposal: “Are you actually calling for regulation of the free print media?”
Almost six million Census users identified their ethnicity as Canadian, according to Statistics Canada data detailed yesterday. Census takers for years would not list “Canadian” as an actual ethnic group, prompting public protest: “How many generations do we have to go back before we’re Canadian?”
Figures don’t support a Conservative MP’s protest that his 2021 election loss was due to Communist Chinese agents, say Liberal members of the House affairs committee. Ex-MP Kenny Chiu yesterday testified the very nature of election interference made it difficult to document: “In your particular riding the NDP vote actually went up.”
Chinese subterfuge against parliamentarians will be investigated by the House affairs committee. A unanimous Commons vote for full hearings came yesterday as one cabinet representative complained of “innuendos” against the Prime Minister.
A filibuster of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s budget yesterday entered its second week as Conservative MPs talked out the clock at the Commons finance committee. The opposition demanded Freeland appear for a minimum two hours’ questioning if she wants the budget passed: “I feel sad about that.”
