The fate of tax-funded Sustainable Development Technology Canada is uncertain following an upheaval over inside dealing. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters he’d “reserve judgment” on whether the federal agency will continue after 22 years: “I am not satisfied with the current situation.”
The Correctional Service is asking telecom companies to jam cellphones at federal penitentiaries, records show. Thousands of bootleg mobile devices have been smuggled into custody: “The Correctional Service continues to explore new, innovative means of preventing and seizing contraband.”
Noam Chomsky
must be popular.
100 books and counting.
I see copies at the Salvation Army store,
at St. Vincent de Paul,
and in every other used book place
in town.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
The Humboldt Broncos catastrophe begs for treatment by a skillful Canadian poet. Prairie road, quiet night, the sickening rip of metal as a busload of clean-cut, small-town kids perished on their way to a playoff game. It inspired an extraordinary outpouring of national grief beyond any celebrity death. Yet there are few hockey poems in Canada, “no doubt related to the snobbery with which the Canadian cultural elite has treated hockey historically,” notes Writing The Body In Motion: A Critical Anthology On Canadian Sport Literature.
Editors Angie Abdou of Athabasca University and Jamie Dopp of the University of Victoria compiled this beautiful anthology on literature and sport. “Hockey, as a game, is a potential source of fun and play,” writes contributor Jason Blake. “That said, sport and play are not synonymous, nor does a game necessarily engender enjoyment (as anyone who has played Monopoly knows).”
Contributors recount a haunting story from poet Randall Maggs’ 2008 Sawchuk Poems that tells of the night legendary goaltender Terry Sawchuk was given a misconduct penalty for telling referee Red Storey to “go f—k yourself”; two days later, Sawchuk skated up to the ref at the Montreal Forum to ask why he was penalized.
“‘What was it for, you big Palooka?’ I say, ‘You told me to eff off. You can’t say that to a referee.’ What I really wanted to say was you can’t treat friends that way. He just stares at me a moment and you know how dark and scary his eyes could be, I don’t even know what he was feeling, sad or sorry or angry. ‘I don’t remember that,’ he says. ‘I don’t remember any of that.’”
Writing The Body offers a moving epilogue: “Over his twenty-one seasons in the NHL (1949-1970), in an era when few goalies had a career lasting more than a decade, Sawchuk recorded 447 wins and 103 shutouts, NHL records that stood for decades. The price his body had paid by the time of his early death at the age of forty included broken bones (including a poorly healed broken arm that wound up two inches shorter than the other), six hundred stitches, torn tendons, a devastating eye injury, ruptured discs in the spine, a swayed back from his famous crouch stance, and a nervous breakdown.”
The literary world typically treats sports heroes as caricatures or figures in a morality play, the “underdog-to-podium sport narrative”, says Writing The Body. They are so much more. Canadians pause at the mention of Marilyn Bell or Tom Longboat, Cyclone Taylor, Ernie Richardson or Etienne Desmarteau, the Montréal policeman who won the hammer throw at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. “It’s about the stories we tell about ourselves, about who we are as a nation, and most importantly, about why we need these stories,” editors explain.
Writing the Body in Motion is wonderful Canadiana. From poet Richard Harrison’s 1991 Hockey Player Sonnets:
By Holly Doan
Writing the Body in Motion: A Critical Anthology on Canadian Sport Literature, edited by Angie Abdou and Jamie Dopp; Athabasca University Press; 200 pages; ISBN 9781-7719-92282; $34.99
A doubling of pre-election payroll rebates for government-approved newsrooms crosses the “line of integrity” in journalism, the Commons heritage committee was told yesterday. Conservative MP Kevin Waugh (Saskatoon-Grasswood), a former broadcaster, said cabinet appeared to be throwing money at favoured media outlets “When you see millions of dollars being spent on journalists there is a line of integrity I think has been crossed.”
Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre yesterday contradicted garbled claims by the Canadian Press news agency that he falsely incited terrorism fears. It followed an earlier CP story on Poilievre that editors corrected three times: ‘I am checking with the Guinness Book of World Records to see if there has ever been a news agency that had to issue three corrections for patent falsehoods in one single article.’
The New Democratic Party yesterday declined comment on a former candidate who threatened to privately prosecute Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a friend of Israel. Yavar Hameed of Ottawa accused Israel of “war crimes.”
Federal regulators yesterday fined an Ontario trust company $1.6 million for failing to plainly disclose a $100 statement fee it charged mortgage customers. The penalty was five times the amount collected in fees: “Accurate disclosure of fees and costs is fundamental to fairness, honest business practices and the integrity of the financial system.”
The CRTC will hold a special hearing on licensing of all foreign cable and satellite television services available in Canada, an executive said yesterday. It follows separate petitions to ban China Central Television and the Fox News Channel after Russia Today was blacklisted by Parliament: “We are going to hold a broader hearing – that is forthcoming – on how we treat foreign services.”
The House affairs committee behind closed doors has agreed to public hearings into how a Waffen SS member was given a hero’s welcome in Parliament. Liberal MPs had objected to open discussion of the incident: “Deal with this matter openly and transparently to get to the bottom of one of the greatest international embarrassments.”
The Commons ethics committee yesterday voted against hearing whistleblowers’ testimony on insider dealing at a tax-funded foundation, Sustainable Development Technology Canada. “The committee voted to silence a whistleblower,” said Conservative MP Michael Barrett (Leeds-Grenville, Ont.). “I can’t abide that.”
Public anger over economic failures is reminiscent of the 1970s, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. However Macklem ruled out any interest rate relief in 2024 as “a huge mistake.”
Cabinet yesterday introduced a promised 50 percent bonus on loan forgiveness for medical students who agree to work in rural Canada. The measure will cost millions but attract more than 5,000 new doctors and nurses, said the Department of Employment: “Canada’s health system is experiencing an unprecedented health workforce crisis.”
A security scare that prompted closure of four cross-border bridges yesterday put Parliament on edge over terrorism fears. The fiery crash of a speeding car at Niagara Falls, N.Y. had the Prime Minister cut short his attendance in Question Period: “When an incident like this happens and it’s shown in media and it’s shown worldwide it does have an impact.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is doubling pre-election federal aid for publishers approved by the Liberal cabinet. Freeland in a Fall Economic Statement yesterday said payroll rebates originally promised to expire in 2024 are now extended past the next election at almost $30,000 a year per newsroom employee: ‘This is to ensure a strong and independent press can continue to thrive.’
