The Department of Public Safety is finally installing full body scanners in federal prisons 15 years after the devices were first introduced at Canadian airports. Parliament approved their use in prisons in 2019: “The use of body scan search technology is considerate of inmate, staff and visitor gender considerations.”
Successful prosecutions under federal usury laws number only four or five a year, according to Department of Justice figures. Cabinet wrote revisions to loansharking bans into Bill C-47 its Budget Implementation Act: “We haven’t seen much.”
One of Canada’s largest mortgage brokers describes as “a fishing expedition” an investigation of its business practices by anti-trust lawyers. The federal Competition Bureau seeks a court order compelling Dominion Lending Centres to surrender confidential records: ‘It is essentially a fishing expedition.’
It’s been said
great nations act like gangsters,
small ones like prostitutes.
Watching Canada navigate
between the United States and China,
one must conclude
we are no gangsters.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
A New Brunswick schoolgirl was so anxious over her father’s deployment to Afghanistan she felt like vomiting every time the phone rang. Another recalled a sibling who “had nightmares that my dad blew up and he had no face.” A third remembers being reprimanded for weeping in class: “My teacher told me to stop crying because there was no reason to cry, and that it was stupid for me to cry over something like that. I got mad at her because my dad just left to go to war for six months, and I’m pretty sure that’s a valid reason to be upset.”
These are the stories in Armyville: Canada’s Military Families During the Afghanistan Mission. The narrative is compelling. Poet Raymond Souster, a WWII volunteer, said every patriot who would send Canadians to war should first walk through the ward in a veterans’ hospital. They should also read Armyville.
The public has largely forgotten our 12 years in Afghanistan. A 2014 Department of Defence survey found 31 percent of people were unaware Canada’s war had ended. Yet the conflict was indelible for the families of 40,000 Canadians who served, and the 2,229 injured, and the 138 killed in action.
Professors Deborah Harrison of the University of New Brunswick and Patrizia Albanese of Ryerson University arranged interviews with sons and daughters of Afghan veterans in Oromocto, N.B. Sociologists know little “about the unique ways in which deployments” affect military families, notes Armyville. In the absence of research Canadians were left with snapshots of Support Our Troops rallies, and unsettling accounts of a four-fold increase in rates of family violence at Petawawa, Ont. after the troops came home.
“This monograph has provided a glimpse into the lives of Canadian military adolescents during a historically unique time,” authors write. Seen through the eyes of teenagers, Armyville is warm and heartfelt, disturbing and human.
One child recalls attending a government resource centre program intended to cheer up the kids: “It’s annoying and it’s boring, and they don’t do anything. I went to this one thing – it was like a military thing. And we pretty much did this obstacle course. It was a military obstacle course. We had to jump over and under stuff, and monkey bars, and go around. And then we had to run, and I was like: ‘Oh my God!’ Like, ‘We’re not military. Why are we doing this? This isn’t fun!’”
The war repelled and attracted. Some veterans’ families were driven apart – “Mom pretty much told us right off the bat, ‘Don’t ask him about Afghanistan’,” said one boy – and others grew closer. “I see him as more of a man,” a teenager said of his father. “I try to be more like him. I suck everything up. I don’t complain.”
Another boy recalls a haunting incident the time his father was working alone in the basement when his brother returned from school and dropped his book bag on the floor with a loud bang. “When he looked up, my dad was there with a baseball bat. He put it down right away and he was like, ‘I’m going to go for the mail’; “My brother had scared him. He put it down right away as if it was nothing, and then he tried to cover it up by saying he was going to go for the mail.”
Armyville confirms statistically the children of veterans are no more likely to have trouble in school, or skip class, or suffer mental health issues than other Canadian kids. Yet most shared a sense they’d had a profound experience known only to those who lived it. “The majority believed that only adolescents from Canadian Armed Forces families could be sufficiently understanding,” note authors.
Armyville helps.
By Holly Doan
Growing Up in Armyville: Canada’s Military Families during the Afghanistan Mission, by Deborah Harrison and Patrizia Albanese; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 262 pages; ISBN 9781-77112-2344; $38.99
The Prime Minister’s Office yesterday acknowledged it was told two years ago of a security memo detailing Chinese threats against the family of Conservative MP Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont.). There was no explanation of why Justin Trudeau said he only learned of the threats last Monday: “He closed his eyes. It’s only now that he is interested because the information leaked out.”
Room and board for illegal immigrants who entered Canada at a single Québec border crossing cost more than $127 million in the past five years, new data show. The figures, the highest disclosed to date, include hotel room bookings from Surrey, B.C. to St. John’s: “Staggering.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland faces an opposition filibuster over her latest omnibus budget bill. Conservative MPs at the Commons finance committee delayed all clause-by-clause votes until Freeland appears for questioning: “Oh my goodness.”
Cabinet’s estimated $5.2 billion cost of settling with striking federal employees did not include the expense of $2,500 bonuses, says Treasury Board President Mona Fortier. Bonuses would add more than a third of a billion to the settlement: “We can adjust the amount.”
Canada Post yesterday reported a pre-tax loss of $548 million last year. Cabinet has yet to detail a management plan to return the post office to profitability but polled Canadians on service cuts: “To what extent would you support or oppose an end to door to door home delivery?”
Alexandre Trudeau yesterday said Canadians “need to recognize certain accomplishments” of the Chinese Communist Party. “I am a reader of Confucius,” the Prime Minister’s brother testified at the Commons ethics committee: “We need to recognize certain accomplishments of that regime.”
Cabinet yesterday would not say how many MPs have been harassed by Communist Chinese agents. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said security advisors never told him foreign agents threatened Hong Kong relatives of Conservative MP Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont.): ‘Are any other MPs the subject of similar threats?’
Cabinet does not know how many federal employees are working from home, says Budget Officer Yves Giroux. Testifying at the Senate national finance committee, Giroux said he asked and had no response: “There seems to be a great lack of information.”
The Commons yesterday passed into law a bill to name and shame Canadian importers that deal in slave-made goods. One MP described slave goods as commonplace in Canadian stores: “These people are harvesting our coffee or the sugar we eat or making the clothes we wear.”
A small fraction of veterans are homeless, about half of one percent, according to Department of Veterans Affairs figures. The Department said data were estimates only: “The total number of veterans who experience homelessness might be higher than this.”
