Elections Canada yesterday said poll officers have been instructed to call police if necessary to enforce local pandemic rules. RCMP in one incident were summoned to an advance poll in West Kelowna, B.C. to question maskless voters: “You have to be careful here.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday said any re-elected Liberal cabinet will amend the Criminal Code to outlaw protests outside hospitals, clinics and pharmacies. The Code already prohibits unlawful assembly by as few as three people: ““Why would that legislation be necessary?”
The Bank of Canada in a review of Donald Trump tweets concludes the former U.S. president’s messages had a “statistically significant” impact on exchange rates. Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account last January 8: “His tweets were informative and potentially consequential.”
Cabinet aides were in personal contact with VIPs and Liberal Party insiders seeking federal Covid contracts from the outbreak of the pandemic, according to internal emails. Other suppliers were told to register with a federal website: “Could we reach out politically on this one as well?”
There are no data proving vaccine passports work, says Dr. Theresa Tam, chief public health officer. Tam told reporters the actual impact on vaccination rates has not been studied by the Public Health Agency of Canada: “That remains to be seen.”
The Newfoundland and Labrador government quietly petitioned the post office to hire replacement workers to deliver the mail, according to internal records. Neither Canada Post nor the Premier’s Office would comment on emails dating from a Covid outbreak in St. John’s: “The Newfoundland and Labrador government has requested that Canada Post look at hiring temporary workers.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage has spent three years devising a program to promote the arts at foreign embassies, according to a briefing note. Expenses to date were not detailed. It follows a fly-a-chef program by the Department of Foreign Affairs that cost $1.75 million a year: “People begin to gain a better appreciation of other perspectives.”
Local bans on home cultivation of legalized marijuana are constitutional, the Québec Court of Appeal has ruled. A similar challenge of a Manitoba ban is pending: “Do I understand the Government of Canada would leave it totally to the courts?”
Historian Jack Granatstein decades ago crisscrossed the country interviewing the last surviving senior Canadian officers to serve in the Second World War. Once newsreel heroes, they were now old men, in their 80s and 90s, forgotten by the public – bitterly so, in some cases. Luckily for readers, Granatstein saved his notes.
“Some of what I recorded was indiscreet, self-serving and gossipy, no doubt, but almost all of it seemed to me to be the truth,” writes Granatstein; “During the war, several of the officers whom I interviewed had refused to be disparaging about the abilities of their leaders, despite probing questioning. They had no such qualms in disparaging politicians, but the passage of decades and the gaining of perspective relaxed such instinctive attitudes in many interviewees’ remarks on their comrades.”
The result is a collection of warm, indelible profiles of fighting men, by turns poignant and pathetic. The Weight Of Command is a compelling account of the deathbed recollections of Canadians who participated in extraordinary events. One suffered a nervous breakdown during the war, and still teared up at the thought of being greeted by old soldiers on the streets of Vancouver. Another officer is recalled as a “bastard” who affected a black beret and liked to visit the troops in a white chauffeured scout car. A third commander was a physical coward who cringed in a trench on D-Day.
“To succeed in battle, recent field experience, a willingness to learn and adapt, and the ability to lead and inspire were essential,” notes Weight Of Command. “No Canadian officers had those qualities at the beginning of the Second World War, and there were few keen military minds among them.”
There was General Harry Crerar of Hamilton, Ont., commander of the First Canadian Army, driven to drink after the war. An impaired driving charge scotched Crerar’s secret ambition to win appointment as Governor General. “He was so upset,” a colleague recalled.
Crerar in wartime was a careful, meticulous man so lacking in spontaneity he filed away jokes written on index cards for retrieval at appropriate times. “Crerar was really a senior civil servant, not a fighting general,” said one officer. “The troops scarcely knew him.”
Major General George Pearkes, a former Alberta policeman, had won a Victoria Cross in the First World War but was recalled as “no great administrator” and a vain and unintelligent man. “Whatever brains he’d once possessed had been blown out in the Great War,” one oldtimer told Granatstein; “He actually traveled with a trumpeter.” Lecturing once at a Junior War Staff Course, Pearkes announced: “Tanks are stupid; can a tank go up a staircase to clear a house?” After the war he was appointed defence minister.
General Andrew McNaughton of Moosomin, Sask., another defence minister, emerges as a lackluster and ineloquent commander fascinated by technology. One officer recalled attending a conference at Corps Headquarters “and finding McNaughton under a truck, looking for the source of transmission problems.”
“Andy wouldn’t say hello to people in the elevator,” one interviewee recounted. “He wasn’t interested in war, but only in the instruments of war. He liked gadgets; for example, he once sent someone to Oxford to study Greek fire.”
“Canadians know very little of their nation’s role in the Second World War,” Granatstein writes. “This is a terrible shame.” Weight Of Command in vivid reportage introduces new generations to Canada’s wartime heroes and anti-heroes.
By Holly Doan
The Weight Of Command: Voices Of Canada’s Second World War Generals and Those Who Knew Them, by J.L. Granatstein; University of British Columbia Press; 312 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-32991; $34.95
Internal emails show federal employees had to script a town hall appearance by Prosperity Minister Mona Fortier that included written questions submitted in advance. The Department of Finance yesterday did not comment: “We’re really looking forward to some of those answers.”
An emergency fund for poor and homeless veterans has been oversubscribed by 35 percent, according to a Department of Veterans Affairs report. Auditors quoted one employee as stating the program was saving lives of desperate ex-military left on the streets: “Demand for the Fund has exceeded the funding.”
The Liberal Party yesterday did not comment after an Atlantic candidate was quoted as warning cabinet “unfortunately” will have to tax home equity. Jason Hickey, Liberal candidate in New Brunswick Southwest, made his remarks in a video recording distributed by the Conservative Party: “It’s what we have to do.”
New data by Statistics Canada yesterday confirmed most pandemic victims were over 85. The figures mirror research by other groups indicating a majority of deaths occurred among octogenarians: “The Covid-19 mortality rate for the 85 and older age group outpaced the overall increase in the mortality rate.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday appealed to Québecers to “make the right choice” after Premier François Legault publicly opposed the Liberals’ re-election. The Party won 35 of 78 seats in Québec in the last campaign: “It’s a tough situation.”
The Conservative Party yesterday said if elected it expects ongoing deficits to be about thirteen percent below the Liberal cabinet’s own forecasts over the next three years. Leader Erin O’Toole has said he would not advocate deeper cuts to federal spending: “That is our plan.”
