Federal employees should counter disinformation by telling the whole truth, says a cabinet guidebook for public servants. “Acknowledge what you don’t know,” said the guide: “This approach can help build trust.”
If you live your life
like Hugh Hefner,
you must get excited
seeing a woman
all dressed up.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
This work by Peter MacKinnon, president emeritus of the University of Saskatchewan, went to press just before the Freedom Convoy hit town. I suspect he disapproved of the truckers’ aims and methods. Yet Canada In Question is so timely MacKinnon could have been taking notes from the cab of a Freightliner double parked outside the CBC building.
Some 15,000 Freedom Convoy demonstrators and many more cash donors set out to let off steam. This could only mean water was boiling somewhere. Cabinet then clamped a lid on the boiling pot, succeeding only in making a bomb.
Why were Canadians at the boiling point in the first place? Ask MacKinnon. He knows. “Canadians are losing confidence in their democratic institutions,” writes MacKinnon. He calls it ominous. “Reform efforts either have fallen short or have come to naught,” he says.
Canada In Question observes MPs’ power is nominal, cabinet is so mediocre it doesn’t even represent regions, Senate leadership is tolerated only because public expectations are so low and public service executives are “seen as occupying privileged and protected positions.”
This is a crucial point. MacKinnon does not ascribe public cynicism to political conspiracies or bad Facebook friends. He depicts it as a rational response to failure.
“We need effective and respected institutions and we are falling short on both counts,” writes MacKinnon. “The severity of shortcomings and their causes are debatable but we cannot sidestep the issues.”
Canada In Question does not invoke torches and pitchforks. It laments the rise of “populism” associated with a “flight from reason, science and humanism,” a “threat to our liberal democracy and the pluralism on which it rests.”
Yet MacKinnon is an honest correspondent with an unvarnished view of officialdom. He is almost sorrowful about it. “Institutions matter,” he writes. “They house the governance of our vast, decentralized federal state and our democratic processes.”
Canada In Question is concise, scalpel-like and refreshing. It seeks neither heroes nor villains. We are what we are, a land of “intermittent and sometimes smouldering resentments.”
No, we are not at the precipice. “Patriotism is an expression of sentiment and while Canadians may not be exuberant in their patriotism – except when their sports teams participate in international competition – their pride in country is robust,” writes MacKinnon.
Yes, the Government of Canada is a deserving butt of scorn. “The political class fares less well in our surveys,” says Canada In Question. “In the 2017 Ipsos poll more than one third of Canadians indicated the country’s form of government was the worst thing about the country.”
“Canadians may be so preoccupied with their private lives they pay scant attention to citizenship,” writes MacKinnon. “They look to personal, social and community allegiances to express their public impulses and wishes, or they may feel they don’t count.”
“Some may not care,” he concludes. “Political parties reflect this decline or indifference. Fault lines in the 2019 federal election emphasized predictable labels and differences on issues The only party that invoked citizenship was the Bloc Québécois.”
Canada In Question is good. How interesting that nobody in Ottawa thought to write it.
By Holly Doan
Canada In Question: Exploring Our Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century, by Peter MacKinnon; University of Toronto Press; 136 pages; ISBN 9781-4875-43143; $24.95
Liberal MP David Lametti (Lasalle-Emard, Que.) yesterday abruptly quit the House of Commons just 48 hours after a federal judge ruled he breached the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms as Attorney General. Lametti said he was proud of his service but made no mention of the Court ruling: “I am proud of this legacy.”
Federal managers mistakenly paid 120,000 striking employees millions in regular wages during a 2023 dispute, says the Department of Public Works. Most overpayments have been recovered, it said: “Human error.”
Auditor General Karen Hogan will disclose confidential details of a special audit of the $54 million ArriveCan program February 12, the Commons public accounts was told yesterday. Auditors would not comment when asked if they’d uncovered evidence of criminality: “When we identify issues that could raise the potential of criminality we do identify it for the RCMP.”
The Commons public accounts committee yesterday by a 7 to 3 vote rejected a motion condemning “apparent reprisals” against whistleblowers on the ArriveCan program. Two federal managers were suspended without pay after suggesting Canada Border Services Agency executives lied about the $54 million program: “It clearly goes back to disdain for anyone who would dare challenge their narrative.”
Cabinet is reconsidering its elimination of a 2009 Stephen Harper directive requiring that Mexicans obtain visas prior to boarding flights to Canada. The number of Mexican refugee claimants has grown from 120 to 22,875 since the visa rule was repealed in 2016: “It will be done in a reasoned manner.”
Federal auditors are summoned today to a hearing of the Commons public accounts committee regarding the costly ArriveCan program. MPs by a 173 to 149 vote ordered a special audit of ArriveCan after learning sweetheart contracts paid millions to sole-sourced suppliers: “There is obviously something fishy going on.”
All future cabinets are on notice against misusing the Emergencies Act to quash peaceful protest, civil rights lawyers yesterday told reporters. Asked for comment on cabinet’s appeal of a critical Federal Court ruling, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association replied: “We will fight them tooth and nail.”
Opposition MPs yesterday asked cabinet to reinstate visa requirements for Mexican visitors. Records show Mexico accounts for a larger number of refugee claimants in Canada than any other country: “We are always very much aware of potential criminality.”
Canadians should expect a weak economy and high interest rates through much of 2024, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. “We are not forecasting a deep recession,” he said: “Growth has stalled. It stalled around the middle of last year. We expect growth to continue to be close to zero.”
Transit use is in long term decline nationwide likely due to office telework, Statistics Canada said yesterday. New figures follow a Department of Infrastructure report warning taxpayers alone cannot carry the cost of system deficits: “The increase in work from home has reduced public transit use.”
Cabinet “delivered for millions of Canadians” under a 2017 National Housing Strategy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday. Figures tabled in Parliament show in fact just over 100,000 homes were built under the program: “We are going to continue as we have done.”
Richard Mosley, 74, the Liberal-appointed federal judge who ruled the Freedom Convoy crackdown was unconstitutional, yesterday said civil rights lawyers changed his mind about the case. Ottawa officialdom including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had condemned protesters as anarchists: “I was leaning to the view the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was reasonable.”
