Cabinet is shelving a long-threatened bill to regulate truth and disinformation on the internet. Canadians consider the measure unconstitutional, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc wrote in a letter to MPs: “Policies that restrict or otherwise limit speech based on the veracity of information would undermine freedom of expression.”
New figures show federally-subsidized transit operators have yet to regain pre-pandemic ridership. Statistics Canada yesterday confirmed fare revenues nationwide remain below 2019 levels despite historic population growth: “The pandemic’s impact on urban transit was profound.”
Two former ArriveCan executives are attempting to quash a “scandalous” investigator’s report alleging criminal wrongdoing, according to Federal Court records. Cameron MacDonald and Antonio Utano, both ex-Canada Border Services Agency managers, were suspended without pay: ‘Untested accusations are of such magnitude any reader could only be left to draw the conclusion of potential criminal activity.’
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland by cabinet order has granted herself authority to increase federal borrowing this fiscal year to a record $517 billion. The figure is $73 billion higher than estimated for the year ending March 31: “You’re simply saying, ‘Give me a blank cheque and then trust me.'”
MPs meeting behind closed doors have voted to cross-examine Liberal MP Anthony Rota (Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont.) over his “Canadian hero” tribute to a Nazi collaborator. Rota last September 26 became the first Commons Speaker in 66 years to resign under threat of censure: “It may not be good enough for some of you.”
A national daycare program to date has created only a fraction of 276,000 spaces promised under a $30 billion subsidy, says a Department of Social Development briefing note. The department acknowledged the daycare system is short thousands of workers who left for higher paying jobs: “My office is getting calls from parents saying there are no spaces available.”
The Department of Justice has surveyed Canadians’ support for a separate Indigenous court system. The initiative followed a 2021 proposal to study adoption of ancient legal practices on First Nations lands: “People think we’re a lawless, savage people and that’s not true. Our people were very highly organized.”
The Canada Border Services Agency last year assigned just 207 staff to criminal investigations nationwide including 48 in Greater Toronto, auto theft capital of Canada, records show. The disclosure follows a cabinet-sponsored conference on auto theft one MP dismissed as a “good photo op.”
A large number of health care workers including most nurses surveyed were reluctant to take Covid shots over fear of side effects, says in-house Public Health Agency research. “Many critical questions remain,” said the first-ever study of vaccine hesitancy among Canadian medical staff: “The prospect of losing their employment played a role in their decision to get vaccinated.”
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1988 told his cabinet it had captured “the soul of Canada” and made the Progressive Conservative Party stronger than at any time in 100 years, newly declassified records show. The Party was reduced to two seats in the following election: ‘Holding faithful to values would ensure the government retained office for years to come.’
Auditors have uncovered irregularities in spending by Canada’s embassy in Dakar, Senegal. The audit period coincided with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Senegalese tour in a failed bid to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council: “There is room for improvement.”
Records show Edmonton leads the nation in applying for federal home equity loans under a CMHC program. Cabinet had no explanation for millions of dollars’ worth of successful loan applications compared to other cities with similarly priced real estate: “Some were skeptical, calling this a Band-Aid solution.”
Beneath a colourful display
of peace and friendship,
athletes in Sochi 2014
competed under the most unusual
conditions.
Surrounded by security personnel,
snipers,
helicopter gunships,
they strive for peak performance
while their email accounts are sniffed,
text messages intercepted,
social media monitored –
so that no terrorists, gays,
or other such extremists
spoil the spirit
of the greatest show
on Earth.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Popular culture is rich in metaphors for mothers as life-giving and delightful, with scant mention of the other biologically necessary parent. The few that exist are mean: Father Time (mortality), Fatherland (Nazi Germany), Old Man Winter, etcetera.
Groucho Marx said for all the Tin Pan Alley sheet music written in tribute to moms a century ago, he could recall a single dedication to dads entitled Everybody Works But Father. The lyrics went like this: “Mother takes in washing/so does sister Ann/Everybody works in our house’/but my old man.”
Into the breach steps Montréal novelist Heather O’Neill with Wisdom In Nonsense: Invaluable Lessons From My Father, a warm and funny collection of memories of O’Neill’s dad, a single parent. O’Neill beautifully recounts the point in all our young lives when the centre of a child’s universe is the space occupied by a dominant parent. Even trivial recollections attain mythological stature: dining on Pepsi in teacups, and Jell-O in a champagne glass, and delicious cubes of Camembert cheese Father O’Neill shoplifted from the local groceteria.
“My dad was determined to take care of me properly,” writes O’Neill. “He made pancakes and cookies and sewed my clothes. He was actually really good at that. He was a little worse at what he regarded as an integral part of parenting: the dispensing of advice. But nonetheless, it was one of his favourite things to do.”
Father O’Neill was a maintenance man whose world view was shaped by manual labour and minor brushes with the law. Never keep a diary, he told Heather; they’ll just use it against you in court. Play with Jewish kids because they’re going places, and if you must pick an instrument in music class, choose the tuba.
“He said the world didn’t have enough tuba players, and, thus, there would always be a shortage,” writes O’Neill. “You could always get a job if you played the tuba. I was very worried about being able to earn a living.” At school, O’Neill looked longingly at the tuba “as though it were a fat millionaire in a tailored suit who would take care of me the rest of my life.” Heather was assigned the trumpet instead, and wept.
Father resented Paul Newman deeply, personally, as a talentless, pretty-boy Hollywood poseur whose life was blessed with dumb luck. “He steamed the labels off old bottles of Paul Newman salad dressing and filled them with a perfect mixture of oil and vinegar and spice,” writes O’Neill. “But he hadn’t made a cent off it. Where was the justice?”; “Sometimes the doorbell would ring out of the blue and I would be terrified that it was Paul Newman at the door, coming to stir things up.”
On birthdays, Father gave Heather unsigned NSF cheques. “They represented not what he could give me, but what he wanted to give me,” she writes.
If caught in a bar fight, grab a ketchup bottle, Father advised: “It is inconspicuous in your hand and creates high drama when it smashed against someone’s head.”
Never tell Teacher what your dad does for a living, since it is nobody’s business: “He told me to tell the teacher that he was a spy and therefore all the required information was classified. The gym teacher asked me if it was true that my father was a spy. I looked down at my burgundy running shoes. ‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ I responded.”
“By teaching me to lie about who I was, my dad instilled in me the notion that the differences were actually superficial,” writes O’Neill. “They were just outward trappings. And if you were to change coats with a rich person, then you would immediately become one.”
Look up Wisdom In Nonsense. Buy it. Give it to your own father. He will understand, and it will bring you closer.
By Holly Doan
Wisdom in Nonsense: Invaluable Lessons from My Father, by Heather O’Neill; University of Alberta Press; 64 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-3777; $11.95
Inflation has dampened public support for costly climate programs, says confidential in-house Privy Council research. Canadians are willing to pay no more than a 10 percent premium for green products and services, figures show: “69 percent strongly or somewhat agree environmentally friendly options are too expensive.”
