A draft code of conduct yesterday cautioned bankers to mind the bonuses awarded to managers for aggressive sales tactics. The warning follows whistleblower testimony at the Commons finance committee that branch managers were rewarded for selling customers products they didn’t need or couldn’t afford: “Sales goals were an insidious thing.”
Federal departments spent millions advertising on a China-made app now banned as a security risk, records show. Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said effective today TikTok is banned on all government-issue smartphones: “It presents an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.”
Liberal MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.) yesterday said he welcomed an investigation of “insinuations” he kept secret contacts with Chinese Communist agents. Dong, the co-chair of the Canada-China Legislative Association, denied wrongdoing: ‘I look forward to refuting these anonymous and unverified allegations.’
Parliament should mandate rent controls, says a federal report. The Federal Housing Advocate also named corporations it accused of violating tenants’ rights: “Four walls and a roof do not alone constitute adequate housing.”
The CRTC is commissioning a “forensic level technical review” of the blackout of Rogers Communications’ national network last July 8. The investigation comes as cabinet considers whether to grant final approval to Rogers’ takeover of rival Shaw Communications: “This network outage left more than 10 million customers of Rogers without connectivity.”
A $1.5 billion class action lawsuit that alleged misleading mileage claims by Ford Motor Company has been dismissed by the Ontario Court of Appeal. Judges ruled Ford was in full compliance with Department of Natural Resources rules: “The estimated fuel consumption for highway driving was 36 miles per gallon.”
The public swearing of the oath, a Citizenship Act requirement since 1947, will lapse effective July 1. The Department of Citizenship in a legal notice Saturday said qualified applicants will be able to swear allegiance to Canada by clicking a box on a government website: ‘Whether online or in person it is intended to be meaningful.’
A small Ottawa weekly collected nearly a quarter million in federal funds last fiscal year, the largest sum of any newspaper its size, according to newly released records. Hill Times Publishing Incorporated, an advocate of media subsidies, earlier received an additional $584,318 under a sole-sourced Department of Public Works contract that expires next month: “What are the details of each expenditure?”
Marijuana tax revenues after four years have finally met federal estimates tabled when Parliament legalized cannabis in 2018. Statistics Canada figures did not account for any increased costs of policing, licensing, zoning and insurance: “There really isn’t much room for taxes other than the GST.”
Bankruptcy lawyers claim a bill to protect company pensions in case of insolvency may spell the death of defined benefit plans in the private sector. “Employers may abandon these plans,” partners with the largest law firm in Western Canada said of Bill C-228.
Enforcement of a bill guaranteeing prompt payment to contractors on public works remains stalled though Parliament passed the measure four years ago. Cabinet in a notice Saturday said it was still considering regulations: “They are some of the hardest-working people in our country and they are going bankrupt.”
It is Employee Appreciation Week
and my mailbox
is getting full.
The Director of Operations is proud
of our positive, inclusive,
and constructive hard work,
earning admiration and respect.
The Vice President recognizes
our commitment and dedication,
thanks us
for putting the needs of our clients
at the heart of our efforts.
The President, impressed
by our leadership, expertise and engagement,
wants us to celebrate our contribution
in driving an innovative, competitive
and sustainable business.
“Must have taken them time
to write so beautifully,” I think.
“One day, an app may do all that.”
I check emails of previous years.
Similar words,
comparable praises,
a matching tone.
Different executives.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
In 1926 the Manitoba Paper Co. founded a company town called Pine Falls northeast of Winnipeg. The community grew to 3,200 people by the 1950s. Raw sewage and mill effluent, 80,000 gallons a day, were dumped in the Winnipeg River, the only source of drinking water for the nearby Sagkeeng First Nation. Children were sick.
The Pine Falls Hospital had plenty of fresh, clean beds – it ran at 43 percent capacity in the 1950s – but townspeople objected to Indians receiving care in the same ward with Caucasians, so authorities built an Indian hospital instead.
Historian Maureen Lux picks up the story: “Between 1949 and 1958, in a population of less than 1300, 462 infants were admitted to the Fort Alexander Indian Hospital and 19 died. In July 1958 alone, 33 infants were admitted and one died.” The Indian Hospital operated at 128 percent occupancy.
“The Indian Health Service field nurse reckoned that mothers were negligent for bottle-feeding instead of breastfeeding their infants,” Lux writes; “Accordingly she advised that children should be taken from the parents as soon as possible and enrolled in the Fort Alexander Residential School. But the school’s water supply, also contaminated by raw sewage, was suspected as the cause of an infectious hepatitis outbreak in 1954.”
In painstaking research and matter-of-fact reportage, Associate Professor Lux of Brock University documents Canadian apartheid. Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals In Canada is a riveting and extraordinary account of mistreatment of citizens.
“Indian hospitals reflected the changing role of health care in an emerging welfare state, but they were also firmly rooted in persistent, century-long government policies that, regardless of political stripe, sought to protect, civilize and assimilate Aboriginal people,” writes Lux. “Such a remarkably consistent policy stemmed from the notion that Aboriginal people could not be considered true individuals in the classical liberal model that was hegemonic in Canada by the twentieth century.”
They were separate and unequal. Indian hospitals received a fraction of funding – as little as $4 a day for patients compared to $10 in general hospitals – and subsequently drew incompetent staff like the nurse at Pine Falls. Separate Beds recalls one Indian Health Service doctor who liked to diagnose patients from his car.
The heyday of Indian hospitals was short-lived but pernicious. “Overwhelmingly paternalistic, coercive in nature, and informed by the understanding of race as a biological reality that posed a threat to the nation’s health, Indian hospitals were the mid-century answer to the failures of the past,” Lux notes.
Consider Edmonton’s Camsell Hospital, opened in 1946, “the best the Indian Health Service had to offer,” writes Lux. It was opened by the Governor General and featured in a 1956 National Film Board production The Longer Trail.
What was it like? The building was decrepit with wiring rated a fire hazard. Sewer lines were ruptured and made the kitchen smell like dead rats. Fecal contamination in the water supply was blamed for a hepatitis outbreak in 1955. Linen went unwashed – surgeries were once cancelled due to lack of clean sheets – and the facility intended to care for 475 patients was soon stacked with 560 beds. The Camsell closed in 1996 due in part to asbestos contamination. This was the flagship Indian hospital.
“The history of Indian hospitals from the 1920s to 1970s is situated at the intersection of race, medicine and public policy,” explains Separate Beds.
Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals In Canada 1920s – 1980s, by Maureen Lux; University of Toronto Press; 273 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-13867; $32.95
Criminals are bypassing a multi-million dollar security system intended to keep dangerous foreigners out of Canada, says a federal report. Smugglers “found workarounds” of the electronic visa system, admits the Department of Immigration: “Those with malicious intent including associations with fraud, human trafficking and smuggling movements have found workarounds.”
Canada Student Loan write-offs are up 34 percent year over year, the Parliamentary Budget Office said yesterday. Losses to taxpayers rose even as Parliament voted to ease repayment terms by eliminating interest charges: “The value of unpaid student loans will continue to grow.”
