Governor General Mary Simon billed more than $1,100 for shoes last year in a continued expansion of her wardrobe at taxpayers’ expense. Disclosures of the latest accounts followed MPs’ warning to stop the spending: “We are in dire need of more transparency.”
Management of the Canada Dental Care Plan has cost taxpayers nearly a half billion so far. The figure, concealed for years by cabinet, was disclosed yesterday: “I’ve heard rumours floating around that it’s quite excessive.”
Investigators by year’s end will answer suspicions on whether ArriveCan emails were intentionally destroyed, Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard said yesterday. Deliberate destruction of records sought under the Access To Information Act is punishable by two years in jail: “This is a very complex investigation involving very serious allegations.”
Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon yesterday urged opposition MPs to vote as they’re told. The suggestion came ahead of an October budget bill with a “substantial” deficit, he said: “We have a mandate to execute.”
Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault yesterday acknowledged “unacceptable” irregularities in the April 28 vote including misplaced ballots, website crashes and random poll closures. Public complaints were up 64 percent compared to the 2021 general election, from 9,410 to 15,400: “We saw things we hadn’t seen before, errors that we hadn’t seen before.”
The Public Health Agency is ordering a first-ever audit of compensation for vaccine injuries. Auditors would ensure payouts were timely under a multi-million dollar fund that has seen successful claims triple in two years: “Canada has a system that provides financial support to those who have sustained serious and permanent vaccine injuries.”
Most Canadians are indifferent to cabinet’s attempt to blacklist plastic products as toxic, says in-house Department of Environment research. A Federal Court of Appeal ruling is pending on whether the listing is lawful: “For all activities that would reduce plastic waste and pollution, intent is higher than action.”
Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault today tables in Parliament his account of the April 28 general election. It comes ahead of committee hearings into irregularities and suspicions of “incidents during the election campaign that we don’t know about yet.”
A federal plan for an “easy to use” website to file benefits claims has cost $6.6 billion to date, records show. The program was launched in 2017 with a $1.8 billion budget and remains incomplete: “Why is the government proceeding?”
The Department of Public Safety in an internal audit praises itself for setting the highest standard on “values,” “ethics” and a “moral compass.” The congratulatory report followed disclosures the department played a lead role in falsely claiming the 2022 Freedom Convoy was a violent, Russian-funded insurrection: “As the department with the mission of building a safe and resilient Canada, public safety employees at all levels have a particular obligation.”
Placement of French text on a washroom bin is not a federal case, a judge has ruled. The Federal Court dismissed a claim by an Ottawa language activist that putting French “dead last” on the label of an airport waste container invoked “historical difficulties faced by French-speaking communities.”
Employment Insurance premiums are being reduced for the second time in two years. The penny cut in premiums is worth billions, the EI Commission said in a statement: “Expenditures were lower than projected.”
“Amsterdam is a large port city,”
explains the tourist guide,
“and the Red Light District
started as a service
to sailors.”
“Imagine if you were 6 months on the sea
without seeing a woman;
what would be the first thing
you would want to do
when you got on shore?”
I look at the women behind the window;
I imagine.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Canada never saw such an upheaval as the First World War. Income tax, trade unionism, votes for women, national health, Canada Savings Bonds, public pensions, federal regulation of industry, liquor controls – each is a legacy in its own right. Yet all were born in four electric years of struggle.
Only in recent decades have researchers documented this whirlwind in a succession of excellent books capturing the war’s impact on national life. A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service is a welcome addition.
The conflict shattered every preconception of women’s role in Canadian life. As Lucy Maud Montgomery put it, “The women who bear and train the nation’s sons should have some voice in the political issues that may send those sons to die on battlefields.”
Before 1914 bank tellers and office secretaries were exclusively male preserves. It was unthinkable that a woman would drive a truck or punch tickets on a streetcar. It was unlawful that any women would serve in any legislature.
“I don’t know what is the work of women and what is the work of men,” said Roberta MacAdams, a nurse elected to the Alberta assembly in 1917. “I don’t think we’ll be able to straighten it out again.”
By 1921 the number of women in the workforce was up by one-third. Women served in four legislatures, and the cabinets of British Columbia and Alberta, and the House of Commons.
A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service tells fresh stories of those astonishing years. Readers encounter new characters like Newfoundlander Margaret Davidson, who organized the Women’s Patriotic Association that raised $500,000 for soldiers’ aid – the equivalent of $7 million today — and William Fraser, a drugstore novelist who conceived of a Silver Cross medal for mothers who lost sons in battle.
“He wanted Canada to be the first country to create a medal of this kind,” and was, in 1919. And there was Edith Monture, the first and only woman from the Six Nations Grand River Reserve near Brantford, Ont. to enlist as a nurse overseas. Monture lived to 106 and for years was the only woman on the reserve who could vote since the Military Service Act granted nurses the ballot.
Editors Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw write, “When Canada and Newfoundland went to war in 1914, for better or for worse their entire populations went to war with them.” One vignette captured the transformation of those years.
In Holt’s Canadian Encyclopaedia of Etiquette pre-war edition, widows were prescribed a meticulous observance of mourning: a black veil to be worn for a month, no social contact of any kind for six months, black dress to be worn for 18 months.
And the postwar etiquette guide? “Rules regulating the trappings of woe are being relaxed more and more,” wrote Holt’s Encyclopaedia. “Many ladies of unquestionable taste and discretion now content themselves simply with wearing clothes that are black and have given up the rather ostentatiously funereal crepe.”
They had no time. By then, Canadian women were helping to run the country.
By Holly Doan
A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War edited by Sarah Glassford & Amy Shaw; UBC Press; 356 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-22572; $37.95
A federal program launched in 2018 by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to promote youth volunteerism remains unknown by youth despite more than $204 million spent to date, says in-house research. Trudeau at the time predicted ongoing subsidies would “inspire a new culture of service in Canada.”
