Small business has received 14¢ on the dollar in carbon tax rebates promised four years ago, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. The figure follows repeated appeals from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business for full payment of promised rebates: ‘Enterprises are the backbone of the economy.’
An unnamed Canadian delegate to the last United Nations Climate Conference booked a $1,822-a night Dubai hotel suite, records show. The delegation led by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault cost taxpayers more than $1.3 million overall: “Together we will carve a brighter future.”
Cabinet will not “pick sides” in Israel’s war with Hamas, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said yesterday. Joly made the remark as the Commons passed by a 204 to 117 vote a New Democrat motion to end the conflict: “Where do we stand?”
Canadian cellphone customers are “getting more for less,” the CEO of Rogers Communications yesterday assured MPs. Members of the Commons industry committee ridiculed the testimony by Tony Staffieri: “Canadians are telling us different.”
Federal employees typically answer to seven levels of management, Budget Officer Yves Giroux said yesterday. “Yes, there is room to reduce,” said Giroux, who earlier calculated payroll costs at a record $67 billion a year: “An employee can have seven levels of management above them.”
Canadians say they’re able to spot fake news online without help from federal fact checkers, says in-house research by the Communications Security Establishment. Participants in federal focus groups expressed unease with the government “declaring what is true or not.”
A federal report cites the 2022 Freedom Convoy as “anti-Semitic and racist” but makes no mention of anti-Israel street protests targeting Jews. The Department of Canadian Heritage report was completed after Hamas attacks on Israel: “Address the rise of right wing extremist groups in Canada and the spread of alt-right and veiled white nationalist narratives.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage paid thousands to a Toronto pundit who disparaged Conservatives in a series of profane TikTok posts, Access To Information records show. Dylan Horner did not comment: “Shut the f–k up. This is exactly why you can’t trust Conservatives.”
Opposition MPs are signaling another slowdown on federal budget bills. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland last year faced a five-week filibuster on complaints of deficit spending: “Canada feels more broken than ever before.”
The Department of Immigration in an internal report acknowledges complaints of “privileged” treatment of Ukrainians compared to Afghan war refugees. Aid for Ukrainians included free flights and $490.7 million in cash grants: “There is a perception of unfairness.”
A labour board has upheld the firing of a federal employee for selling $1,663 worth of scrap metal without permission. The Montréal plumber with the Department of National Defence said he didn’t consider it stealing: “Although he argues he believed the scrap was sent to the dump, still, it was not his property.”
A fire drill
at my workplace.
Women reach for their purses,
adjust hair,
lipstick.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Wicked and revolting in its day, the First World War 110 years later is recalled through haunting vignettes: the Trench of Bayonets buried alive at Verdun, the Russian princesses thrown down a mine shaft in Siberia, the soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment who marched smartly to their doom at the Battle of the Somme.
One haunting vignette is the sinking of the Llandovery Castle, a Canadian hospital ship. “The blood boils at the very thought,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote at the time. Author Nate Hendley’s Atrocity On The Atlantic is a full accounting.
Hendley neither delves into psychoanalysis nor uses unnecessary adjectives. He is a crime writer. He gives the Llandovery Castle a crime writer’s treatment. It works. The sinking was simple murder, a gangland slaying at sea.
On a summer evening, Thursday, June 27, 1918 at 9:30 pm the Llandovery Castle was off the Irish coast on its sixth run from Halifax to Liverpool. It “was as brightly lit as a Christmas tree” with the Red Cross flag at full mast, writes Hendley. The journey was so pleasant, medical staff were quietly playing cards when a German torpedo blew the engine room to smithereens.
What happened next provoked “global revulsion,” writes Hendley. “Despite some years of brutal fighting some atrocities still had the power to shock.”
Five lifeboats hit the water. One eyewitness recalled the submarine that sunk the Llandovery Castle surfaced and “came at us at a high rate of speed apparently to run us down.” The German crew began shelling survivors as they thrashed in the water. Of 258 aboard, 234 were killed including 14 nurses. Lifeboats were “blown to bits by a submarine deck gun,” writes Hendley.
The Llandovery Castle became a synonym for atrocity. Germans were “possessed by devils,” said Prime Minister Robert Borden. New Brunswicker Andrew Bonar Law, a future British prime minister, called the murders the work of a “wild beast.” There was no parley with the enemy, said Bonar Law: “It is no use arguing or attempting to reason with it. We must destroy it.”
Atrocity On The Atlantic captures the terror in a tightly researched narrative. The Llandovery Castle fell victim to a “strange, savage weapon,” the U-boat on night patrol, writes Hendley. The story is unsettling and requires no embellishment for the sake of effect.
U-boat commander Helmut Patzig was listed among 850 German war criminals but escaped postwar prosecution by fleeing to South America. “No one was punished for torpedoing the Llandovery Castle and trying to murder those who survived the initial attack,” writes Hendley. Commander Patzig died in West Germany in 1984.
Atrocity On The Atlantic is a compelling account of a crime too long forgotten. Perhaps, writes Hendley, “humans are only capable of processing so much shock and grief.”
By Holly Doan
Atrocity On The Atlantic, by Nate Hendley; Dundurn Press; 240 pages; ISBN 9781-45975-1347; $24.99
MPs yesterday expressed outrage and anger after an ArriveCan supplier testified he couldn’t recall how many millions he’d made from federal contracts. “The damage has already been done,” said Darren Anthony, vice president of GC Strategies Inc. of Woodlawn, Ont.
Cabinet is researching a negative option insurance scheme to charge homeowners an extra $900 a year or more for overland flood coverage, according to records. The point was to reduce federal disaster aid payments, said a Department of Public Safety report: “Mandating that insurance companies include flood insurance in basic coverage with an option to opt out is a powerful mechanism.”
