A 65-year old Air Canada pilot has lost a challenge of mandatory retirement rules. A Canada Labour Code arbitrator said accommodating senior pilots was unreasonable though the Aeronautics Act does not mandate a retirement age.
You envision a world
of perfect harmony.
Show me two individuals
able to be in one room
without a conflict –
and I’ll show you
two liars.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, writes for Blacklock’s each and every Sunday)
Author Wendy Dobson calls China’s system “authoritarian state capitalism.” Analysts similarly called pre-war Italy a “corporate state.” Like the Beijing Politburo of 2021, Mussolini in 1934 mesmerized outsiders with showboat statistics. Italian GDP appeared to defy Depression-era gravity, growing year over year from 1929 to 1939 while the Canadian economy shrank five percent overall.
“Everything looks well ‘on the surface’,” wrote economist Henry Schultz of the University of Chicago on a 1934 Italian tour. “No debating, no complaints.” The UK Saturday Review in 1934 put Mussolini on its cover and enthused: “He dragged Italy out of the mire of socialism and in a few years has made it the most successful and prosperous country in Europe.”
Interestingly, both pre-war Italy and contemporary China adopted the identical economic tools: over-valued currency, state management of the economy, price controls, abolition of independent trade unions, abolition of dissent, abolition of a free press, restrictions on mobility rights, property rights and rule of law, voodoo statistics and disastrous state spending. In fascist Italy one in five workers was a government employee.
“Canadians will have to learn to deal with regimes that differ from theirs whether they like it or not,” writes Author Dobson, a former federal associate deputy minister of finance. “A narrative for deeper engagement with China should therefore accept that China is different, but cooperation is possible and differences can be acknowledged and managed.”
Living With China is an invitation to argument. “They are not like us,” writes Dobson, in an unnerving echo of Mussolini’s press clippings. T.S. Eliot called fascism “an Italian regime for Italians, a product of the Italian mind.” So Dobson writes: “China will be itself. Canadians should adjust their expectations by learning about it and living with it as it evolves.”
Dobson concludes China defies gravity and is on a trajectory leading ever upwards. She cites the Politburo’s Five-Year Plans, the Made In China 2025 policy to “realize the goal of the country becoming a world leader in advanced manufacturing.”
“All levels of government in China are involved,” writes Dobson. “Local governments in particular have pushed projects forward, speeding progress towards national goals, especially in robotics. Impressive indeed, but performance has to be weighed against evidence that funds are being misallocated and efforts duplicated in the rush. The heavy state role raises questions about the implications of such politicization for the innovation ecosystem.”
Living With China is neither an outright apology for Chinese fascism nor a critical analysis of its fatal flaws. It is a buy-and-save contemporary artifact of conventional wisdom: Chinese are different, they must be doing something right, they might play rough but we can’t shun them. “One goal for Canadian leaders’ increased attention should be to deepen public knowledge about China and to address the reservations and concerns about China,” writes Dobson.
As Tung Chee-hwa, the former Communist Party-appointed chief executive of Hong Kong, used to tell visiting reporters: “You don’t understand this. You are not Chinese.”
By Holly Doan
Living with China: A Middle Power Finds Its Way, by Wendy Dobson; University of Toronto Press; 192 pages; ISBN 9781-48750-4823; $32.95
The Public Health Agency of Canada is reviewing reports of 195 deaths of people who took Covid shots. The Agency said it was not proven all 195 fatalities were caused by vaccines though it budgeted for a $75 million compensation fund including payment of burial expenses: “These deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a Covid-19 vaccine.”
Canada must end the “race to the bottom” on corporate tax cuts, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday told reporters. The Liberal Party has proposed $4.2 billion a year in new taxes mainly on corporations: “Everyone else had to tighten their belt.”
Four million Canadians who’ve declined a Covid shot cannot all be characterized as anti-vaxers, says a leading epidemiologist. The executive editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal Of Health Sciences said cabinet “has not been clear” about the point of vaccine passports: “Our biggest value is our freedom and our democracy.”
The Department of Environment yesterday said it seeks data on whether “unnecessary plastics” can be eliminated in food wholesaling and distribution. Cabinet has said it will proceed with an initial ban targeting a half-dozen single use plastic items by year’s end: “At the end of the day voluntary compliance by companies is not going to be enough.”
The anti-trust Competition Bureau has reopened an investigation of Google Canada five years after dropping an earlier probe. The Bureau in Federal Court records seeks confidential data on the company’s YouTube ad sales and viewership in Canada: “It is considered by many advertisers as ‘must have’ inventory.”
The Department of Health yesterday would not comment on its own legal opinion that compulsory vaccination is unconstitutional. The finding dates from a 1996 report: “Your personal medical information is the most intimate and private information about you.”
No federal employee will be fired under a Treasury Board vaccination policy, according to internal documents. The Board yesterday would not comment on documents that also grant wide exemptions for workers who decline Covid shots based on sincere beliefs “religious in nature” regardless of whether they are recognized by any religion: “The validity of the belief itself must not be challenged.”
The Commissioner of Elections yesterday levied fines against 15 Liberal Party organizers for technical breaches of the Canada Elections Act including the agent for a Member of Parliament. MP Mike Kelloway (Cape Breton-Canso, N.S.) did not comment: “Publication of the penalties was not withheld.”
Federal regulators yesterday rejected appeals from airports and transport companies to delay enforcement of accessibility regulations. Companies had ample time before Covid to prepare, said the Canadian Transportation Agency: “It is not enough for transportation service providers to simply make an assertion that a cost is too high.”
Bats are neither pests nor rodents, a British Columbia court has ruled in a pre-Halloween judgment. The decision came in the case of a homebuyer who uncovered a colony of 85 bats roosting in a hidden ceiling: “Not everyone views bats as unwanted house guests.”
The post office, the biggest civilian employer in the federal public service, will permit unvaccinated employees to work by taking free weekly Covid tests, according to its largest union. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said accommodation was reached with management and lawyers to ensure workers “have options that respect your rights.”
Canada’s largest protestant church complains its “predominantly white” members lack understanding of the Black experience and have not atoned for slavery. “Some people in the United Church have been slow to respond,” the Church wrote in a report: “The Church has not yet been able to apologize for its role in slavery or work towards reparations.”
