The Commons public accounts committee yesterday agreed to summon federal managers to justify an $8 million expense for a solar-powered warehouse at Rideau Hall. It follows a separate report demanding that Governor General Mary Simon cut spending on Beef Wellington and silk jackets: “The list of ridiculous spending keeps growing.”
Parliament must enact legislation to unmask foreign agents, the Commons ethics committee yesterday wrote in an all-party report. A private bill to introduce a foreign registry has languished in the Senate for 18 months: “Why don’t we do our job?”
Most Canadian homeowners now spend more than $200 a month for heat and light, says in-house research by the Department of Natural Resources. A fifth of Canadians, 21 percent, said “my home energy costs are a significant financial burden.”
The Commons public safety committee yesterday voted to investigate Canada’s growing black market trade in vehicles hijacked for export. Insurance claims on stolen cars, trucks and SUVs last year totaled $1 billion: “This is an issue that is actually quite personal to me as my vehicle was stolen.”
Liberal MPs on the Commons health committee yesterday rejected a public inquiry into federal pandemic management. Cabinet favoured instead a closed-door review by advisors to the Minister of Health: “Canadians will never get the answers they deserve.”
A majority of the Commons ethics committee yesterday voted against questioning cabinet dealings with SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. “Unacceptable,” said Conservative MP Michael Barrett (Leeds-Grenville, Ont.): “We have government members looking to shut down a hearing on a very serious matter.”
China is likely responsible for another internet slander campaign targeting MPs, the second attack of its kind in four months, the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. China swamped MPs’ social media accounts with libelous remarks, it said: “It likely seeks to discredit and denigrate the targeted MPs.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will not release letters he claimed to receive from Canadians grateful for the carbon tax. Guilbeault said he had thank-you notes from a woman named Jill in Regina and “Bob, a teacher.”
Cabinet will take measures to curb housing demand, says Housing Minister Sean Fraser. The Minister in a letter to MPs said increasing the housing supply alone is insufficient: ‘Canada will need careful well-calibrated measures to moderate housing demand.’
Federal agents allowed thousands of inadmissible foreigners into the country under a program that failed four previous audits, says a new Canada Border Services Agency report. Fewer than half of permits issued under a Temporary Resident Permit program followed the rules: ‘They may potentially gain access to health and social services.’
Cabinet in 2024 will launch a public registry naming beneficial owners of all federal corporations, says Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne. The Senate banking committee approved a registry bill without amendment, ensuring its passage into law by Christmas: “We are serious about doing something.”
Federal auditors have recovered about $78 million in unpaid taxes to date as a result of the Panama Papers leak. The Canada Revenue Agency said numerous audits and two criminal investigations are ongoing: “It is very important for the Agency to be perceived as aggressively pursuing tax evaders to maintain the trust in the tax system.”
Visiting the restroom
in a New York restaurant.
A sign above the sink says,
“Employees must wash hands”.
Not being an employee,
I hesitate.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
In 1918 the Imperial War Graves Commission enacted two notable regulations. All dead were to be buried with their units, regardless of rank, near the spot where they fell. And all families of the dead could submit personal messages, to 66 characters, to be carved into kin’s headstones.
The effect was profound: mammoth, manicured battlefield cemeteries with indelible inscriptions. Wilfrid Laurier University Press asks, what did they write? Epitaphs were thoughtful, angry, ironic. They are collected in Canada’s Dream Shall Be Of Them. It is a beautiful, elegant book that will bring a reader to tears.
The epitaphs “were contributed not by the poets or artists we tend to associate with the Great War and modern memory, but by ordinary men and women,” writes Toronto historian Eric McGeer; “They are a window into another world, not a mirror to our own.”
The book is comprised of startling imagery by photographer Steve Douglas and McGeer’s crisp narrative. “Of the identified graves, just under half carry a personal inscription, many of which repeat formulae (‘Rest in peace’, ‘Gone but not forgotten’, ‘Son of…’) of little more than fleeting interest,” writes McGeer. “The number of inscriptions that offer insight into the minds of the bereaved, individually and collectively, comes to about 3,000,” approximately five percent of Canada’s war dead.
Headstone inscriptions were vetted – the Graves Commission reserved “absolute power of rejection or acceptance” on all submissions – though Commonwealth families were given latitude for personal expression. “Shot at dawn. One of the first to enlist. A worthy son of his father,” reads the epitaph of a British soldier executed for desertion. “Another life lost, hearts broken, for what?” says an Australian’s grave.
Canadian inscriptions expressed pride and loss. “Tell my mother I will meet her at the fountain,” reads the gravestone of Private William Rankin of the Royal Canadian Regiment, killed at age 17. “Frank! Jesus calls,” wrote the father of a private killed at 20. Other Canadian families wrote:
Most haunting is the fact few Canadian families would ever their see their hero’s grave. The epitaphs were written for posterity, not personal closure. “The only child of aged parents,” wrote the mother of a 16-year old private killed with the 58th Battalion. The family in six words described the end of the world in faraway France.
Canada’s Dream Shall Be of Them is stunning.
By Holly Doan
Canada’s Dream Shall Be of Them: Canadian Epitaphs of the Great War, by Eric McGeer; photos by Steve Douglas; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 224 pages; ISBN 9781-77112-3105; $49.99
Cabinet must suspend its “safe supply” drug policy as a killer, says a member of the Commons health committee. Conservative MP Todd Doherty (Cariboo-Prince George, B.C.), choking back tears, told the committee he’d lost a brother-in-law to an accidental fentanyl overdose and was unable to save another brother “who lives on the street.”
