Taxing the nation’s wealthiest 1% will not raise the billions forecast by cabinet, the Senate finance committee has been told. Analysts including the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said creation of a new 33 percent top federal income tax bracket will have far-reaching negative effects: “It may look simple on paper”.
At the sport medicine clinic,
posters on the walls show
foot and knee injuries,
dislocated shoulders,
close-ups of ruptured tendons, ligaments.
Here, the anatomy of a sprained ankle.
Over there, the mechanism of concussion
caused by a violent blow to the head.
On the table, a set of acupuncture needles
next to models of a spine, a skull, and a hip bone.
I hear someone groan behind a closed curtain,
“Relax,” says the physiotherapist
as he presses down on my ribcage.
“You’re too tense.”
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
They say Cape Buffalo ward off predators by instinctive mobbing behaviour. Many buffalo will join to protect the herd. Among nations, this is called “multilateralism”. It sounds co-operative and altruistic, but in practice can be narrow and cynical.
Seeking Order In Anarchy examines the phenomenon with first-rate essays by political scientists. The book is timely, in an age of rising nationalism and a receding tide of free trade. “If, as realists claim, states are more interested in themselves than anything else, why has there been a proliferation of multilateral arrangements?” asks editor Robert W. Murray, senior business advisor with Dentons Canada LLP.
“Why would self-interested actors willingly choose to sacrifice their independence with others?” writes Murray: “The answer becomes clear. States use multilateralism to help in securing themselves and hope to get something out of it”.
The only reason the world headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization is located on Robert-Bourassa Boulevard in Montréal is that Canada in 1945 owned one of the world’s largest air forces. We “played an important functional role in the creation of the postwar system of international civil aviation,” notes Assistant Professor Paul Gecelovsky of Western University.
“Like war, multilateralism is a strategy states can consciously choose to increase their relative power position and increase their society,” writes Editor Murray. Canada is an enthusiastic joiner.
We belong to NATO and La Francophonie, the Commonwealth and G7, UNESCO and the Order of Malta – some 20 herds, by official estimate. “Canada promotes commonly-shared values such as equality and democracy,” the foreign ministry enthuses. The department might have added the asterisk, “**When we feel like it.”
Since 2006 Canada has contributed fewer than 60 peacekeepers to United Nations missions in Africa, writes Assistant Professor Edward Akuffo of the University of the Fraser Valley. That is a smaller contingent than the police department in Brandon, Manitoba.
When the terror group Boko Haram kidnapped some 300 Nigerian schoolgirls, “The Canadian government’s response to the Boko Haram crisis was rhetorically robust, espousing Canadian values of human rights, rule of law and democracy,” writes Akuffo. “However, it is not clear as to what Canada’s contributions will be to assist Nigeria.”
Canada’s most enthusiastic herd instinct has been in trade. We have signed literally dozens of pacts in the twilight of the free trade era. “But to what end?” asks Professor Christopher Kukucha of the University of Lethbridge. “Are these agreements innovative ways of managing international trade and entering new markets, or are they instead an extension of an older, deeper approach to Canadian foreign trade policy?”
“Canada continues to play the traditional role of follower,” Kukucha concludes. We’re just happy to be one of the herd.
By Holly Doan
Seeking Order In Anarchy: Multilateralism As A State Strategy, edited by Robert W. Murray; University of Alberta Press; 296 pages; ISBN 9781-7721-21391; $34.95
Federal judges have upheld a 2013 license for a U.S.-based biotech firm to produce the nation’s first genetically modified fish for human consumption. The Court of Appeal dismissed claims by the Ecology Action Centre and Living Oceans Society: “The legislation confers significant discretion”.
A common expletive does not constitute offensive language if used sparingly and in French, a national TV regulator has ruled. The Canada Broadcast Standards Council had earlier cited English-language expletives as a breach of a Code Of Ethics: “The word in French does not have the vulgar connotation it can have in English”.
MPs last night endorsed in principle a Liberal bill to celebrate the Atlantic seal hunt. One legislator said the hunt should not be stigmatized by “vegan activists” who are “happy to eat a hamburger”.
Parliament should restrict foreign ownership in farmland, Prairie agriculture groups have told a Senate panel. Canada will be reduced to a “serf system” without curbs on institutional investment, the agriculture committee was told: “Isn’t free enterprise a bummer?”
Cabinet faces its first federal lawsuit under a national electronic cargo system intended to speed cross-border transport. A small trucking company is suing the Canada Border Services Agency alleging it was arbitrarily fined over garbled data: “It could happen to anybody”.
The national Truth and Reconciliation Commission spent millions of dollars over budget, say Access To Information records. Files cite federal complaints of “speculative” invoicing, overpaid staff and five-figure discrepancies in hospitality expenses. Costs included flying Tim Hortons treats to a Commission event in Inuvik: “Finance is getting nervous”.
Cabinet faces a court order on equity appointments at universities nationwide. The Canadian Human Rights Commission applied to Federal Court to enforce a 2006 mediation agreement to appoint more women and minorities to senior research positions: “They have not done anything”.
VIA Rail will face ongoing deficits for at least six years even if cabinet approves a multi-billion dollar refit of the Crown railway, says its CEO. Management said a final report on a $5.2 billion upgrade will go to Transport Canada by November 30: “Infrastructure investment the size of a railway does not produce a return within 12 months”.
Cabinet must amend or withdraw from at least three international treaties if it legalizes marijuana, says a federal report. It follows a Department of Public Safety study that regulators have little data on the impact of a cannabis bill: ‘The government is not even close to considering the ramifications’.
MPs are being petitioned for a 15 percent tax credit on home refits for radon poisoning. Nearly two-thirds of a million homes nationwide have excessive levels of the cancer-causing gas, says the Canadian Environmental Law Association: “People are reluctant to test”.
MPs last night endorsed in principle the nation’s first genetic anti-discrimination bill. Second Reading came as one MP was near tears in recounting constituents’ fears of becoming uninsurable over DNA: “This is not the country that we should live in”.
CBC claims it can absorb a 69 percent decline in TV ad sales with the loss of lucrative NHL licensing rights, but faces “enormous” competition from unregulated internet television. New data show most young Canadians now subscribe to Netflix: “They are the biggest game in town”.
