A subsidized “anti-hate” expert blames Blacklock’s Reporter for a review of its federal funding. Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said in a Friday podcast he thought Blacklock’s was “really cool” until it began reporting on his activities: “They’re the ones who recently reported that we target Catholics.”
Canadians nationwide would be directed to open Canada Day celebrations with Indigenous “sacred fires or other appropriate ceremony” under a petition sponsored by Liberal MP Karina Gould (Burlington, Ont.). It follows a federal report suggesting July 1 observances “adapt to emerging needs and social expectations.”
Illegal immigrants need more free legal help, Amnesty International says in a submission to the Commons finance committee. The Federal Courts Administration Service has complained immigration cases are already clogging dockets with taxpayers’ costs up more than 300 percent: “Provide Legal Aid funding to ensure certainty and consistency for refugees and migrants regardless of where they are in the country.”
Compasses of all shapes and sizes
on display
at the outdoor equipment store.
I check the selection,
wondering who’s buying them.
Don’t Canadians know
where the True North is?
By Shai Ben-Shalom
“We know ourselves only through stories,” writes Professor Daniel Heath Justice of the University of British Columbia. Canadians define themselves through stories of pipelines or Catholicism or the fisheries or our grandparents’ ethnicity. Why Indigenous Literatures Matter tells a poignant story of discovering his Cherokee roots through a 1976 bestseller The Education Of Little Tree by Forrest Carter, the biography of an Indigenous boy raised by Tennessee mountaineers.
“I read it every year,” writes Justice. “I suggested it to others. It told me a story that was so familiar; it became part of my story of self. But it wasn’t until I was an undergraduate that I learned the shattering truth.”
The Education Of Little Tree was a literary hoax. The author was Asa Carter, a Ku Klux Klan organizer and former speechwriter for Alabama Governor George Wallace who turned a quick buck with a false account of “simplistic, noble savages,” writes Professor Justice.
“Many of the stories about Indigenous peoples are toxic,” he says, from the romantic German novels of Karl May to Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves and Disney’s Pocahontas. Faux Indigenous literature is so popular it’s corporatized, and as corrosive as depictions of Chinese culture in a Charlie Chan movie.
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter examines popular culture. It is devastating. Professor Justice depicts it as an act of vandalism. “Without those ancestors, without their stories, there is nothing to carry forward,” he writes. “There is nothing to bring to future generations. Fortunately, our storykeepers are also our storytellers, and the possibilities for restory-ing those connections are limited only by our imaginations and the futures we envision.”
Even legitimate Indigenous literature is scrubbed to the point of misrepresentation, writes Justice. Mohawk poet Pauline Johnston in 2017 was shortlisted by the Bank of Canada for depiction on a banknote. Johnson’s nature poems were a staple of high school English courses for generations. Lesser known, the author notes, are the “scathing lines” of Johnson’s The Cattle Thief that tells of the hanging of an Indigenous man:
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter is more than an eloquent protest. It is a damnation of the subtle propaganda that turned First Nations, Inuit and Métis into literary caricatures.
“Today’s Indigenous people in North America are the descendants of those who survived the colonizing apocalypse that started in 1492 and continues today,” writes Justice. “We are more than just ‘of descent’ from those initial survivors, however – we’re survivors, too, every one of us.”
By Holly Doan
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, by Daniel Heath Justice; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 260 pages; ISBN 9781-77112-1767; $19.99
Shocking levels of federal borrowing are pushing the nation to a point where “something is going to break,” Interim Budget Officer Jason Jacques yesterday warned the Commons government operations commitee. His remarks came hours after Jacques tabled documents indicating cabinet skipped this year’s deficit target by 62 percent: “That’s what is shocking.”
It is not CMHC’s job to solve the housing crisis, the federal insurer’s $551,000-a year CEO yesterday told the Commons public accounts committee. Coleen Volk omitted all mention of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s earlier promise to ensure “everyone in Canada has a home they can afford” by 2030.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers last evening launched a national strike hours after cabinet abruptly announced sweeping cuts to mail delivery. Service cuts were similar to measures detailed in a 2013 Action Plan shelved by Liberals a decade ago: “We cannot accept this attack.”
Taxpayers will take a double hit on federal financing for Chinese shipyard jobs, union executives yesterday told the Commons transport committee. Costs of the subsidized loan are on top of waivers of tariffs intended to protect Canadian jobs, they said: “If we are using taxpayers’ money to fund projects, surely to God we can put people to work.”
Corporate tax delinquents would see their names and debts published on a federal website under a private bill introduced in the Commons by Conservative MP Adam Chambers (Simcoe North, Ont.). The Commons six years ago defeated a similar bill sponsored by a Liberal-appointed senator: “It is in the public interest.”
Auditors are faulting the Canada Border Services Agency for haphazard oversight of contraband seized at the border including cash and narcotics worth hundreds of millions. “There is an increased opportunity for misappropriation,” said a report.
Cabinet will reintroduce an internet censorship bill, its third try in four years. Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday said a pending bill would be similar to 2021 legislation, a failed bill critics called “overbroad and incoherent.”
Taxpayers have been billed hundreds of thousands for aid to universities in China, records show. The Department of Foreign Affairs would not detail Chinese grants that exceeded foreign aid paid to postsecondary schools in some of the world’s poorest countries: “The Chinese have always been looking for a respectful relationship.”
The labour department yesterday disclosed a $10,000 fine against a subsidized newspaper chain for breach of migrant labour regulations. The company, which described itself as “radically transparent,” declined comment.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice charged more than $21 million in billable hours on civil litigation targeting the Freedom Convoy, records show. The charge to taxpayers was more than double the compensation paid to Ottawa businesses that claimed lost income as a result of the 2022 protest: “What are the total legal costs incurred to date?”
