Canada’s oldest retailer Hudson’s Bay Company fell millions behind in commercial rents due to Covid lockdowns, according to court records. The scope of pandemic damage in the retail sector was detailed in legal disputes with landlords: “March 2020 changed everything.”
Treasury Board President Mona Fortier yesterday rejected any language bonus for federal employees who speak an Indigenous dialect. The Board currently authorizes an $800 annual bonus to bilingual employees fluent in English and French under a program dating from 1966: “Currently we are continuing to explore.”
Freedom Convoy judicial inquiry hearings will open September 19, the same day the Commons returns from summer recess. The chief of the Public Order Emergency Commission yesterday said cabinet must be held to account for its claim a truckers’ protest outside Parliament represented a national emergency: “Hearings are vitally important.”
Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough’s department in a briefing note boasted it processed a record number of permits for migrant workers even as auditors warned foreign labour may cost Canadian jobs. “The Temporary Foreign Worker Program has processed a record high number of files,” wrote staff.
The federal IT department Shared Services Canada spent almost $50,000 to interview 58 computer students to ask if they’d like to work in Ottawa, records show. Students rated it “bureaucratic, boring and hierarchical.”
Parks Canada has been ordered to pay a penalty for secretive contracting. The agency did not treat all bidders fairly, said Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic: “Parks Canada did not meet its obligations with respect to transparency.”
Candy maker Mars Canada Inc. has won a $144,600 Federal Court judgment against marijuana dealers who sold cannabis-laced edibles under a copycat Skittles label. A federal judge condemned the cannabis dealers: ‘It represents a marked departure from ordinary standards of decent behaviour.’
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra knew last spring the federal airport security workforce was short-staffed by 25 percent, according to a briefing note. Alghabra at the time blamed airport delays on Canadians eager to travel: “Does that mean we have a shortage?”
Naloxone kits will not be distributed in federal buildings in case of drug overdoses, says a Treasury Board report. Federal employees should not be taking drugs at the office, the Board said: “Employees are expected to report fit for work.”
Municipalities cannot block federally-approved projects under the guise of bylaw enforcement, an Ontario judge has ruled. The decision came in the case of the Town of Milton, population 112,000, that tried to block a railway megaproject already licensed by the federal cabinet: “Federalism may require tolerance and cooperation where people may not wish to be tolerant or to cooperate.”
Cabinet must curb CRTC powers under a YouTube regulation bill, says a coalition of unions and publishers. Bill C-11 An Act To Amend The Broadcasting Act would grant the Commission too much authority without oversight, it said: “The fears are varied.”
Canadians required to self-quarantine due to monkeypox should receive federal aid, says Dr. Theresa Tam. The remarks by the chief public health officer followed estimates the virus has resulted in 28 hospitalizations in Canada: “Support people who do the right thing.”
The greatness of Canada is that it’s even here. We’ve had every reason to be at each other’s throats for 155 years yet kept the federation together. Anyone who doubts the achievement should ask Czechs and Slovaks, Tutsis and Hutus, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Confederates and Yankees. The roll call of nations that absorbed bitter factionalism without revolt or disintegration is a very short list.
Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based On Incomplete Conquests documents this remarkable story. In 1867 the Dominion Bureau of Statistics estimated the population was 28 percent French with few surviving Indigenous people, about 118,000. Today it is 22 percent French and the Indigenous population has grown tenfold.
“Canadians have not agreed that they belong to a single ‘people’ whose majority expresses the sovereign will of their nation. The holdouts are the French Canadians and members of the nations indigenous to North America whose historic lands are in Canada,” writes author Peter Russell, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto’s political science faculty.
Russell explains: “These Canadians do not accept that the tide of history has somehow washed away these nations of their first allegiance or diluted their constitution significance. Their enduring presence as ‘nations within’ Canada is fundamental to understanding Canada, as is the often troubled, uncomfortable accommodation of the ‘nations within’ by the country’s English-speaking majority.”
The Canadian experience is one of incremental adjustment and maddening deliberation. This remains a hard place to get things done. Professor Russell cites the example of radio.
The first Broadcasting Act was introduced in 1932 only after a Royal Commission, one Supreme Court reference – who has jurisdiction over radio waves? – and a ruling of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. “There was some doubt about the issue because, of course, there was no mention of radio in the British North America Act,” notes Russell.
Canada’s Odyssey chronicles the teeter-totter of the past 155 years with a warm narrative and compelling facts. By example: John A. Macdonald wanted Canada proclaimed a “kingdom.” It was the British who suggested “dominion.”
The 1864 Charlottetown Conference was the invention of Lord Stanmore, later governor of Fiji. When Stanmore died in 1912 the Globe & Mail knocked his obituary down to a single paragraph. Also, cabinet in 1914 prohibited traditional aboriginal dancing in public and in 1927 passed regulations forbidding First Nations from hiring their own lawyers.
And the most incredible fact of all: Canada in 1867 was 93 percent English and French. By 1961, the proportion of descendants of the so-called founding peoples was down to 74 percent. Today it is 66 percent. We are slightly revolutionary after all, writes Russell.
“Canada has not returned to the quest for a big bang, popular resolution of all its constitutional concerns – and let’s hope it never does,” says Russell. “That kind of constitutional politics may be appropriate for a country based on a single founding people. But Canada, a country based on incomplete conquests, is clearly not such a country.”
By Holly Doan
Canada’s Odyssey: A Country Based On Incomplete Conquests, by Pete Russell; University of Toronto Press; 544 pages; ISBN 9781-4875-02041; $39.95
Climate change rewrites to the National Building Code will have a cost impact, the National Research Council warned yesterday. The Council said it will hire consultants to calculate the additional expense for new home construction: “Until we talk real numbers we can’t talk reality.”
The Department of Public Works says taxpayers could save a fortune on office space if federal employees continue to work from home. The department has estimated 230,000 staff are working remotely: “Infrastructure is the second largest expense to the Government of Canada after salary expenses.”
