Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic yesterday faulted the Department of Transport for unfairly disqualifying low-cost contractors on arbitrary grounds. Jeglic has complained the entire federal system rewards insiders: “We are seeing consistent problems across the federal procurement landscape.”
RCMP recruitment is declining so sharply the Mounties can’t spare constables for the Musical Ride, says an internal audit. Hiring private equestrians to pose as police was contemplated but deemed too risky if the public found out, said the report: “Legitimacy and effectiveness of the Musical Ride could be negatively impacted if the riders were not police officers.”
Taxpayers wait an average eight weeks for the Canada Revenue Agency to reply to emails or letters, records show. Documents did not disclose how often the replies contained incorrect information: “You’re the big machine.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office yesterday falsely claimed Canada “was among the first countries to recognize Israel’s independence” in 1948. Canada in fact waited seven months and was the 19th country to recognize the Jewish state after Guatemala: “Canada had abstained.”
The federal cabinet yesterday approved $103.7 million in subsidies for homeowners who switch from natural gas furnaces to electric heat pumps, but only in British Columbia. The province’s NDP government faces a general election October 19: “Thanks to the work of the British Columbia NDP.”
United Nations investigators yesterday began a tour of Canadian jails to investigate complaints of arbitrary detention. It follows a cabinet proposal to use federal prisons to temporarily house deportees suspected of criminality: “The experts will gather information from places where people are deprived of their liberty.”
A Senate committee has landed in the midst of a threatened lawsuit after it distributed links to a video alleging sadistic abuse of animals at a Canadian theme park. The Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee released the video as part of its study of a bill to restrict breeding of elephants in captivity: “We are currently seeking legal counsel.”
Access To Information records uncovered by Conservative MP Arnold Viersen (Peace River-Westlock, Alta.) show cabinet waited until after it invoked emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy to seek advice from Crown prosecutors. MPs for years have sought proof of cabinet’s claim it was told by lawyers beforehand that the action was lawful: “We will never know because Justin Trudeau censored it.”
New Democrats petitioned the Prime Minister for a Royal Commission into “the rise in the deep distrust some Canadians have of our media,” Access To Information records show. Catherine McKenney, a Party organizer and then City Councillor, privately complained after the Freedom Convoy that some Canadians no longer believed the news: “What is the reason?”
The lone New Democrat on the Commons public accounts committee complains MPs are having too many meetings investigating the $59.5 million ArriveCan program. “I am getting more concerned about the cost to taxpayers that these surprise meetings are having,” said MP Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach): “Stop spending on a bunch of meetings. We have all these meetings.”
The Senate two years after it legalized bookmaking will reopen committee hearings on the harms of online gambling. “It is clear where this is going,” said one proponent of repeal of an 1892 ban on single event sports betting: “We can still correct our course.”
Slowing down
for a red light
in a city intersection.
Cars in front of me.
The sign on my left says,
“Panhandling Not Permitted.”
In English and French.
And in picture.
The man at the corner
starts his routine.
He holds a white Styrofoam cup,
making eye contact with
unsuspecting drivers.
I see one rolling down his window,
stretching his arm.
The man stops, nods,
then continues.
Cars behind me.
Too late to leave my spot.
I focus on the red light.
The man is by my window.
Looking at me.
Time to call Crime Stoppers.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
All religions have customs scorned by tactless unbelievers, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are no exception. The fact the earth orbits the sun and oceans still flow may be disappointing to Witnesses who’d predicted our world would end 24 years ago.
Few produce their own eloquent critics, which brings us to Marvin James Penton, a Witness and professor emeritus of history at the University of Lethbridge. Penton’s Apocalypse Delayed, a crisp examination of the church, has been in print for decades.
“When the first edition came out,” Penton writes, “Jehovah’s Witnesses still believed that by the year 2000 the apocalypse would have destroyed the present world system and that they, the survivors of the battle of Armageddon, would be dwelling in a revitalized paradise earth under the millennial rule of Christ Jesus. Of course that did not happen.”
Apocalypse remains a compelling account of the faith, meticulously researched. If church leaders have “failed dismally” in their prophecies of impending doom and salvation, believers have also suffered persecution and ridicule. Jehovah’s Witnesses remain one of the few groups outlawed by Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and liberal Canada all at the same time.
Statistics Canada counts 138,000 Witnesses nationwide, outnumbering Mormons and Mennonites. They are best known for speedy construction of suburban churches, and proselytizing. House to house preaching is a hallmark of the faith, Penton notes from a 1979 Watchtower commentary: “Many well-known versions of the Bible use this expression, ‘from house to house’”; “Christians today search for spiritually inclined householders, making return visits to those homes and studying with interested persons.”
Witnesses have historically opposed aluminum cookware, blood transfusions, organ transplants, beards and moustaches (“a sign of vanity”) and observances of Christmas, birthday parties and other popular customs “described as of pagan origin, unchristian, and hence not to be celebrated or practiced.”
If Witnesses today practice a conservative lifestyle, Penton notes the church’s co-founder was sued for divorce by his wife in 1906 for scandalous relations with a 25-year old secretary. Apocalypse does not stint on details. It is a fascinating and unvarnished account of the church.
Witnesses believe the world is 6,000, possibly 7,000 years old, meaning end times are nigh according to clues in Scripture. “No major Christian sectarian movement has been so insistent on prophesying the end of the present world in such definite ways or on such specific dates,” Penton writes. The end of the world was forecast in 1874, then 1878, followed by 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1975 and of course 2000: “When these prophesies failed they had to be reinterpreted, spiritualized or, in some cases, ultimately abandoned.”
Witnesses have also paid a high price for their convictions. Canada outlawed the church in 1940 – members refused to sing the anthem or salute the flag – and arrested numerous believers. “Jehovah’s Witnesses are not much of an asset to any country,” one letter-writer wrote the Globe & Mail in 1946. “They don’t believe in military service, and had they had their way during the recent war we would all have been vassals of the Nazis today.”
As late as 1950 the Government of Québec arrested and jailed Witnesses for sedition over pamphlets critical of the Catholic priesthood. It took a Supreme Court ruling to quash mass arrests.
Apocalypse is lively, frank and smartly written. Penton’s work has outlived prophecies of Armageddon.
Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by M. James Penton; University of Toronto Press; 584 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-47930; $39.65
John Ossowski, former $273,000-a year executive responsible for the ArriveCan program, yesterday was summoned for questioning by MPs after he declined to appear voluntarily. Members of the Commons public accounts committee vowed to follow all leads in uncovering sweetheart contracting for the $59.5 million app: “These are unruly witnesses.”
Housing Minister Sean Fraser yesterday said he will “be the person who actually goes and does” fix the national housing crisis. Testifying at the Commons human resources committee, Fraser complained his predecessors did not do enough to restore affordability: “I am going to be the person.”
