Parliament must investigate the role of “smaller investors” in housing including Airbnb listers, says New Democrat MP Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood-Transcona, Man.). Liberal members of the Commons finance committee expressed interest, noting another Commons committee is already acting on an NDP motion to review “financialization of the housing market.”
Federal managers need “tips, tools and techniques” to deal with media on sensitive First Nations controversies, says the Department of Indigenous Services. It proposed to hire media coaches at undisclosed hourly rates: “Figure out who is taking the training and why.”
A federal agency that overpaid employees thousands of dollars by direct deposit waited too long to recover the money, a labour board has ruled. Federal lawyers likened the mistake to a “lottery” for lucky winners.
Canada’s oldest public broadcaster has repeatedly breached terms of its license, says the CRTC. Regulators imposed no sanction on Alberta’s CKUA Radio network: “It must comply at all times.”
Dead organisms
buried,
decomposed,
turned into crude oil,
waiting.
Until they are brought to the surface,
eager to make contact
with today’s living organisms,
drag them across the boundary
that separates life
from death.
The list is long –
Exxon Valdez;
the Persian Gulf;
BP Deepwater Horizon –
but revenge-seeking zombies
are looking for more
than just fish,
ducks,
otters.
In the late night hour,
a tanker train
starts its way
to Lac-Mégantic.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
“It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk,” wrote English author Rebecca West. This is enough to make you wary of history that smells like violets.
Winston Churchill & Mackenzie King casts these “two elderly statesmen” as wartime peers out to save democracy. Author Terry Reardon is struck by parallels. Both were Sagittarians born in 1874, both had blue eyes and “large egos,” both stood 5’6”.
In chronicling their fifty-year acquaintance Reardon sees two dynamos of the Second World War. Well, not exactly. Churchill’s own Foreign Office in 1940 described King as “lukewarm about any war measure which he cannot show to redound to Canada’s own advantage.”
King took no part in battlefield strategy. No Allied leader took his advice too seriously. Even fellow Liberals considered King a partisan, cheese-paring functionary who was forever “traveling in the ditches of expediency,” as Air Minister Chubby Power put it in 1948.
Angus Macdonald, Canadian navy minister, considered King “weak at all points where pressure has been exerted – on conscription, on labour matters, on financial concessions to this or that group,” he wrote in 1944.
In his wartime diaries King emerges as a lonesome bachelor and scheming administrator devoid of any heroic impulse. To read King’s daily scribbling is to search pointlessly for any broad insight into WWII as compared to, say, a byelection in Cartier.
An example: On July 12, 1941, with Nazis approaching Leningrad and the RAF executing daylight raids over France, King confided the highlight of his day was singing to his little dog Pat: “I sang over to myself and to him the little hymn Safe In The Arms Of Jesus, as beautiful a hymn as I knew from those childhood days.”
“King’s reputation did not survive the day of his resignation,” Max Aitken, Churchill’s wartime supply minister, wrote in 1959. No historian has yet made a persuasive case that King was any more than what he was, though many have tried including Reardon.
“During the lifetime of these two products of the Victorian age the world evolved into a global village,” he writes. “On the world stage, Winston Churchill still towers as the great leader in the cause of freedom. In Canada the orchestrator of the successful development of the country during the turbulent first half of the twentieth century has been recognized as Mackenzie King.”
There is no evidence Churchill thought much about King. His most candid reflections are sadly lost to history. We will never know Churchill’s reaction in 1947 when King privately told him of his fascination with séances and Ouija boards.
In pairing Churchill and King as wartime giants, “so similar, so different,” the author unfortunately omits evidence to the contrary including juicy bits. In 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain, as Churchill galvanized his people with a pledge to fight to the death, the Luftwaffe bombed Westminster Hall. On hearing the news, King secretly cabled the Canadian mission in London to retrieve stones from the rubble for his private rock collection. The British declined.
By Tom Korski
Winston Churchill & Mackenzie King: So Similar, So Different by Terry Reardon; Dundurn Press; 432 pages; ISBN 97814-5970-5890; $35
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday boasted “Canada did pretty well” on Covid though death rates here were higher than in Australia, South Korea, Norway and other industrialized countries. A proposal to conduct an inquiry into cabinet’s pandemic management is currently stalled in the Commons health committee: “Of course we could learn lessons about how to do better.”
Hundreds of artifacts have vanished from two federal museums, auditors disclosed yesterday. Missing items included museum pieces “of great historical significance.” They were not identified: “We were particularly concerned.”
Ratepayers in four provinces face steeper hydro bills, as much as 15 percent more, under draft Clean Electricity Regulations released yesterday. “It’s time to roll up our sleeves,” said Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault: “Higher incremental rate increases are expected.”
Government-issue digital currency is unnecessary and would only be feasible if most Canadians asked for it, the Bank of Canada said yesterday. Consumers would have to “drive its use,” said a Bank report: “Acceptance and use of a central bank digital currency could be challenging.”
The Supreme Court of Canada yesterday declined to hear petitions from church groups challenging pandemic bans on in-person worship. No reason was given. “We are disappointed,” said Marty Moore of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms that acted as counsel in two cases: “Prohibiting in-person worship is not a matter of national importance.”
Cabinet yesterday for the first time acknowledged “highly suspicious and abnormal” activity in Chinese-language media targeting an Opposition MP. The Department of Foreign Affairs said while it was impossible to prove the Chinese Embassy was involved, “China’s role in the information operation is highly probable.”
Ottawa and Toronto lobbyists boosted attendance at the Prime Minister’s annual Calgary Stampede fundraiser, records show. A fifth of donors to the Laurier Club event were Ontario lobbyists and political aides: ‘Thousands of Canadians are chipping in.’
Poutine would became Canada’s dish under a Commons petition sponsored by Independent MP Kevin Vuong (Spadina-Fort York, Ont.). Petitioners asked that an Act of Parliament proclaim fries, gravy and cheese curds our national food: ‘We can generally agree it is delicious.’
Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan yesterday said he will investigate conditions on the waterfront following a two-week strike at West Coast ports. Another strike or lockout is “not good enough,” he said: “It’s high time we dig into these underlying issues.”
