Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks yesterday said cabinet was still considering an appeal from British Columbia to curb disorder from public use of cocaine and other narcotics. A current experiment with drug decriminalization in B.C. was to run until January 31, 2026: “What does that say to you about the policy?”
Cabinet effective today is repealing a regulation that allowed 982,880 foreign students to work full-time hours in Canada. Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s department has not commented on data suggesting it cost Canadians jobs: “The policy expires today and it won’t be renewed.”
Few young Canadians are enthusiastic about joining the army, navy or air force, says in-house research by the Department of National Defence. Data follow figures showing the Canadian Armed Forces are far below target strength: “A highly competitive job market has posed significant challenges.”
Liberal and New Democrat MPs yesterday rejected committee investigations of the hiring of foreign workers by taxpayer-subsidized electric vehicle battery plants. One union petitioned cabinet to force automakers that receive federal aid to hire Canadians: “Release the information. Prove me wrong. I dare you.”
Parliament’s Procurement Ombudsman testifies today on favouritism in federal contracting to McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm formerly led by a friend of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. The investigation ordered by the Commons government operations committee found “a strong perception of favouritism” in McKinsey contracts: “I knew Chrystia Freeland when she worked at the Financial Times.”
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s department promises to do better after it was caught concealing legislative briefing notes from the Senate. One senator was told the routine documents would not be released until after the next election: “I would say fundamentally this is unacceptable.”
Customs officers warn of another ArriveCan-style fiasco with a Canada Border Services Agency plan to digitize $32 billion in yearly tariff collections. The computer system to be launched May 13 has been delayed until October: “A rushed system is deployed as a solution to a non-existent problem.”
A bankruptcy judge has written the last chapter for one of Canada’s largest community newspaper chains. Creditors of Metroland Media Group Ltd. received less than a fifth what they were owed: “Core challenges are simply on account of a shift in the way readers obtain their news.”
A federally-funded immigrant aid society is petitioning Parliament to accept at least 10,000 people from Gaza. It also asked that Gazans gain access to the same free medicare, social services and legal counsel as Ukrainian war refugees: “We are all failing Gazans at this point.”
Sick leave by public servants:
two and a half times the
private sector rate.
Stress and depression among the
leading causes.
Experts say these are signs of a
toxic workplace.
On the bargaining table, between the
unions and the government:
a proposal to reduce sick leave allowances.
No one thinks it will cure the
disease,
but all agree it will quickly bury the
symptom.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Historical figures are ready props in any political argument. They are dead and in no position to complain. But this cuts both ways. Historical facts are set in stone: names, dates, embarrassing diary entries. Public figures who invoke history to justify a political impulse are taking a chance, which brings us to The Riel Problem. This is not another book about Louis Riel. It is much better.
In my Manitoba school days Riel was given short treatment as a messianic rebel leader who maybe didn’t deserve to be hanged for treason. The first public speech I heard in praise of Riel as a national icon was not by any Manitoba MLA but a Bloc Québécois MP, in Ottawa, in 1993. Today he is “a Franco Catholic martyr,” “an Indigenous hero,” “a Father of Confederation,” writes Albert Braz, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta’s Literature and English department.
Riel has inspired countless novels and screenplays. The iconography is mainly government-sponsored. Riel is not a folk hero but a prescribed Official Hero once called “Martin Luther King a hundred years before Martin Luther King.”
“By 2010 even such an eminent figure as the then-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, could declare that ‘Riel fought against Canada in the name of values that Canada now proudly embraces,’” writes Professor Braz.
Ex-Senator Murray Sinclair (Man.), chair of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, recited Riel’s best known quote: “My people will sleep for 100 years but when they awake it will be the artists who bring back their culture.” Problem: There is no evidence Riel ever uttered the phrase.
“There may be a discrepancy between the way the Canadian cultural and political elites perceive Riel and the way the general population does, evidenced by the ‘troubling’ online comments that tend to follow pro-Riel interventions,” notes the author. As Braz puts it, “A country’s conversion of a former enemy into a national icon is never innocent.”
There lies The Riel Problem. Braz documents why this charismatic and peculiar man became “the epitome of Canadianness.” His work is wry, engaging and good-humoured. It is a first-rate account not merely of Louis Riel but of his caricature as a political prop.
The bare facts are known: Riel was born in what is now Winnipeg in 1844 and executed in Regina in 1885. In between he studied for the priesthood, worked as a schoolteacher, was twice institutionalized for mental health, became President of the Red River Provisional Government and “has emerged as nothing less than the quintessential Canadian hero.”
Riel also took out U.S. citizenship, called himself “an American” and petitioned then-President Grover Cleveland to annex Manitoba. Riel described Confederation as an “immense fraud” and hatched a scheme to have Irish Catholics emigrate from Boston and New York to Winnipeg and build “a province of their own” with French Catholics.
“He embraced the United States as the defender of the Métis,” notes Braz. And those ancestral First Nations lands? They “belonged to France,” wrote Riel. As The Riel Problem explains, “Riel is an immensely complex but contradictory figure.”
Why the novels and screenplays and Supreme Court tributes? Because Riel “embodies some of the country’s great divides” that remain politically vexing, writes Professor Braz: “French and English, East and West and Indigenous and non-Indigenous.” He was the whole package.
“Why are we so invested in Riel?” asks Braz. “In light of the mid-twentieth century turn to the nation and away from empire, it is not surprising that Canadians would search for heroes deeply grounded in the national space. But this could include almost any Indigenous historical figures.”
Riel 139 years after his death remains politically useful. The Riel Problem is honest and compelling.
By Holly Doan
The Riel Problem: Canada, The Métis And A Resistant Hero, by Albert Braz; University of Alberta Press; 344 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-7348; $34.99
Auditors have uncovered routine irregularities in the hiring of consultants in Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s department. The review followed a public outcry over billions spent on consultants government-wide, said an internal audit report: “In the last five years the department signed more than 8,000 consulting service contracts totaling $567 million.”
Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s office yesterday did not comment after Miller told a U.S. radio interviewer Canada was “open country” for foreigners. Illegal immigration was a minor issue since Canada was surrounded by oceans, the United States and “a block of ice to the north,” he said.
Federal subsidies for the electric vehicle industry are now up to $52.5 billion, triple the $16 billion annual GDP of the entire Canadian auto industry. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday would not say how much his cabinet was willing to pay per job in the sector: “How much is the government paying for each of those jobs?”
An Afro-Canadien Museum dedicated to documenting slavery in pre-Confederation Québec has been cited for breach of migrant labour rules. Management yesterday did not comment: “The pay or working conditions didn’t match.”
