The Competition Bureau since 2019 has been investigating sales practices by one of the country’s biggest furniture dealers, Federal Court records disclose. Allegations target The Dufresne Group Inc. of Winnipeg: “The Commissioner has reason to believe the respondents engaged in deceptive marketing practices.”
The Commons finance committee has cleared a private Conservative bill to save company pensions in cases of bankruptcy. MPs have tried and failed to pass similar amendments to bankruptcy law since 1975: “We know the history of all the companies – Eaton’s, Sears, Nortel.”
The idea of provincehood for the Territories is like a magnitude 8 earthquake in the St. Lawrence River Valley. It’s inevitable and slightly terrifying for the unprepared. Mere thought of a fifth Western province at the table upsets every place setting contrived since 1867. Author Tony Penikett recalls when the Northwest Territories was pressured to comply with the Official Languages Act, the legislature sanctioned French, English – and nine aboriginal languages.
“Nowadays nobody believes that provincial status is on the horizon for Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut,” writes Penikett, former two-term Yukon premier. “For the foreseeable future, devolution of legislative jurisdiction over lands and resources may be all the northern territories can hope to get.”
Hunting The Northern Character is an eloquent appeal to end condescending treatment of the one uniquely Canada region best known to the outside world. The Arctic is famous and famously patronized. More people today live in the Northwest Territories (44,500), Yukon (38,500) and Nunavut (38,000) than lived in Manitoba when it joined Confederation in 1870 (37,000). Yet vast regions remain under federal control and Northerners in some communities must still write Ottawa for permission to build a school gym.
“When southern Canadians spare a thought for land claims or northern treaties, they tend to think of the concrete aspect of the agreements: actual land,” writes Penikett. “They pay less attention to the more abstract concept of jurisdiction. In British policy, as set out in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, land and jurisdiction go together. To hold vast lands, one must have power to make rules about their use; otherwise, what would be the point? As it happens, intellectuals in Europe, the United States and Canada have argued for centuries about whether Indigenous people have the capacity to govern and administer their own lands.”
Canadians think of the Arctic as an uninhabitable fringe of the federation. Turn the picture and it becomes the centre, explains Penikett. “Hapless media shaping means that harried policy makers may frame issues to fit outdated images of the Arctic and its peoples,” says Hunting The Northern Character. “Spare the Arctic any political leader who models him or herself on historical figures such as Sam Steele, Bishop Stringer or even Sir John Franklin, much less the fictional characters from Jack London’s White Fang or John Wayne in North To Alaska.”
“Such mystic Arctic headspaces are ungovernable,” writes Penikett. “The true North has outlived and outgrown them.”
Penikett faults federal employees who control our Arctic empire from the “air-conditioned comfort of their cubicles” in Ottawa 100 kilometres from the U.S. border, and perpetuate a “deliberately constructed self-image” of the North. The author recounts attending a wake in a Dene village, so poor it had no running water, where mourners ate moose stew and platters of salmon and bannock.
“Crow Clan servers go round the room offering the elders on the wall benches low-bush cranberry jam with their bannock,” he writes. “This feast is a celebration of one life, but also of a life lived together and of the foods gathered from tribal lands and waters around the village.”
“The situation confirms something I’ve noticed before: the poorer the community, the richer the traditional culture,” writes Penikett. “Is that some kind of law, I wonder? Does southern-model prosperity inevitable lead to northern cultural poverty?”
Hunting The Northern Character is a warm depiction of a society that endured hardship and someday will gain home rule. Wait for it. It will be upsetting and tremendous.
By Holly Doan
Hunting the Northern Character, by Tony Penikett; UBC Press; 348 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-80008; $34.95
Taxpayers stand to lose $2.4 billion under a pandemic loan relief program, records show. The multi-billion loss was projected though cabinet extended a payment holiday for business borrowers to December 31, 2023: “We’ve had your back from day one.”
The Ottawa Police Service last night said its claim the Freedom Convoy had weapons referred not to firearms but tire irons and work tools. Patricia Ferguson, acting deputy chief of police, acknowledged officers did not find any guns in convoy vehicles: “We don’t know if there really were guns.”
The Freedom Convoy was among the most successful private fundraisers in Canadian history raising nearly $25 million in a month, data show. Figures yesterday released by a judicial inquiry confirmed most contributions, 59 percent, were Canadian: “I believe they just wanted to support the cause.”
Chinese Communists ran a propaganda campaign to steer votes from Conservative candidates in the last election, the House affairs committee was told yesterday. It was difficult to gauge the impact, witnesses testified: “It’s incredibly hard to measure the impact of these sorts of operations on election outcomes.”
A Christmas recession is likely, the Department of Finance yesterday confirmed in a Fall Economic Statement. “Times feel tough,” said Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland: “We cannot support every single Canadian in the way we did.”
The Commons yesterday by a vote of 173 to 149 ordered a detailed audit of the ArriveCan app. The $54 million program intended to check cross-border travelers’ vaccine status was suspiciously expensive, MPs were told: “There is obviously something fishy going on.”
Blacklock’s shareholders yesterday issued the following statement regarding threats of punitive sanctions by subsidized competitors on the Parliamentary Press Gallery executive: “We will fight these people. We are retaining counsel. We will vigorously enforce our lawful rights and the Gallery’s obligations under the Canada Corporations Act. We will seek costs and damages. We will hold directors personally liable for their misconduct. We will compel disclosure of confidential Gallery correspondence and cross-examine executive members under oath. We will name names.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage bought maple leaf flag pins from China even as the Commons voted to condemn the People’s Republic for crimes against humanity, records show. Federal contracts for patriotic paraphernalia were worth hundreds of thousands: “This is our national symbol. This is our country.”
A junket to Dubai by Governor General Mary Simon and 45 invitees cost taxpayers $1.3 million, according to accounts disclosed yesterday by the Commons government operations committee. Federal agencies have yet to surrender actual menus from the trip that were equivalent to $218 per plate for breakfast, lunch and supper: “Oh my God, this is an astronomically high price.”
The price of spaghetti is up 26 percent nationwide on average, Statistics Canada reported yesterday. New grocery inflation figures came ahead of a Fall Economic Statement that will provide some inflation relief, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “Yes there continue to be pressures.”
The state of Canadian journalism is terrible, a former CBC executive has testified at the Commons heritage committee. Legacy media are “memories of what they used to be” despite federal subsidies, MPs were told: “You need to give me money forever because nobody is buying my buggy whips.”
A winter recession will not be severe, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem last night told the Senate banking committee. Macklem acknowledged his earlier forecasts were wrong: ““It’s not like we got everything right.”
