Mismanagement of the national emergency stockpile of pandemic supplies was folly, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer yesterday told reporters. Federal buyers have overpaid more than $500 million for medical supplies that could have been purchased at a fraction of the cost: “Prices are increasing rapidly.”
Federal employers are giving themselves a poor rating on workplace accessibility a year after Parliament passed a bill to remove all jobsite barriers nationwide. A management survey of staff with partial blindness, deafness, use of wheelchairs and other conditions found widespread complaints of grudging treatment on accommodation requests: “I was bullied and betrayed.”
Federal failure to stock up on vital medical supplies has cost taxpayers some half-billion dollars, according to figures submitted to the Commons government operations committee. The Department of Public Works said it’s now forced to pay a 380 percent pandemic price mark-up for masks needed by doctors, nurses and paramedics: “If the stockpile had been stocked up we would have saved a lot of money.”
Public Works Minister Anita Anand is justifying a pandemic distribution deal with Amazon by claiming it’s a “Canadian company”. Staff would not disclose terms of the Amazon contract after a deputy minister suggested the firm could profit despite cabinet claims to the contrary: “Is Canada Post not capable of doing the same thing?”
The Department of Employment acknowledges pandemic relief programs have been announced without details or even definitions on how benefits will be paid. MPs in the Commons human resources committee questioned the Prime Minister’s offer of $5,000 grants to students “who choose to do national service”.
Cabinet will not detail the multi-billion dollar cost of a pandemic relief program to pay half the cost of commercial rents for shuttered businesses. Restaurants alone pay $750 million a month in rents nationwide, the Commons finance committee was told: “Can you continue to spend at this rate?”
A cabinet appointee who held public office while president of an Ontario construction company breached no conflict laws, says the Ethics Commissioner. Moreen Miller’s conduct as chair of a Crown corporation prompted a $2 million lawsuit pending in Ontario Superior Court: “I find it unlikely.”
He is not yet the Minister,
nor the Deputy Minister,
or even the Assistant Deputy Minister.
He is the newly appointed
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister,
with a lengthy –
and no less challenging –
list of responsibilities.
One hopes
he will get an assistant.
(Editor’s note: Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
9/11 was an inglorious episode for journalism. The reaction to extraordinary events ran the gamut from A to B: anxiety and bravura. When commentators weren’t beating the drum for war, they were cringing every time the floorboards squeaked. Consider the scare that started with an insect bite.
On October 15, 2001 Nancy Rochon, a Parliament Hill employee, went to a nursing station for calamine lotion. Rochon had been gardening and developed a rash on her hands after she was bitten by a ladybug.
A Senate security guard happened by. Had Nancy opened mail recently? Why yes, she replied; Rochon worked in the Journals Branch and opened mail all the time. Mail – hands – rash — anthrax!
Alerted by the ravings of the Senate guard, police sealed Parliament Hill and MPs were told a mysterious white powder was found in an envelope. Media went berserk. “Could you ever imagine having potential death mailed to you? It’s unimaginable!” said CTV Canada AM host Rod Black.
The Globe & Mail headline read, ANTHRAX FEAR GRIPS OTTAWA. There were false anthrax reports in Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park, where police were summoned over a mysterious “white substance” found near the Israeli ambassador’s home. It turned out to be seagull droppings.
Mission Invisible authors Mahmoud Eid and the late Ross Perigoe set out to document the Big Scare with the kind of scalpel-like precision discarded by media in the 9/11 era. They selected one stream of coverage in one town over one month. Their target was the Montreal Gazette, a venerable daily serving sophisticated urban readers. The findings are unsettling.
Within four hours of the World Trade Center collapse, the Gazette rushed a 16-page special edition to press. WAR ON AMERICA, it read. It was all downhill from there. “From that day on, then, war was portrayed as inevitable and acceptable,” the authors write; “This lack of contextualization produced a sense of inexplicability of the actions of Muslims”.
Eid is a professor of journalism at the University of Ottawa; Perigoe taught journalism at Concordia University till his death from cancer in 2012. Both ask questions that reporters and editors failed to ask at the Gazette.
How many people died in 9/11? “More than 5000,” the Gazette told readers on September 15. Within a week the toll was elevated to “more than 6000”; then “more than 7000”. The figures were never attributed. The actual death count was 2992.
Who was to blame for 9/11? “Barbarians”, said the Gazette; the noun appeared five times. “Fanatics” was used 32 times; “cowards” 17 times. It was bloodcurdling commentary but not actual reportage. “In their effort to ‘fill in the blanks’ for readers, the Gazette’s journalists presented their own opinions,” authors conclude; “Nowhere in the twenty days of our study period was there a review of the countries in which Islam is the majority religion, nor was there any indication of how many Muslims live in Canada.”
Instead the Gazette reverted to confusing commentary that ranks among the most unfortunate articles ever published in that daily. At the very moment when accuracy and coolness mattered, Gazette staff began panting.
When false suspicions grew that 9/11 suspects traveled through Canada, columnist Brian Kappler wrote that “every escaped killer, Triad gang lord, terror-mastermind, fugitive con-man and ‘snakehead’ people-smuggler around the globe knows full well what a soft touch Canada is.” When calm voices appealed for some thoughtful response to 9/11, Gazette editor Peter Stockland ridiculed the “bromides of chrome-domed York University professors.”
When the dust settled at the World Trade Centre, commentator Elizabeth Bromstein advised readers it was normal to be frightened of non-Caucasians: “I am in the Place des Arts metro station. I see three men, one of them wearing a turban. I start to shake. I want to get out of the station but force myself to get on the train. For the entire ride, images of being trapped in the tunnel after an explosion keep popping into my head.”
As Eid and Perigoe put it, “Some journalists appeared fearful in their writings. Using the newspaper as a platform to express their own fear and confusion might have been cathartic for them, but doing so might have also heightened the sense of fear among readers.”
If 9/11 was a test of a newsroom’s character under stress the Gazette failed along with so many others. The daily did not win any National Newspaper Awards that year. No staff were reprimanded for their coverage.
By Holly Doan
Mission Invisible: Race, Religion and News At The Dawn Of The 9/11 Era, by Ross Perigoe and Mahmoud Eid; University of British Columbia Press; 332 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-26488
Cabinet will not detail any federal guidance on easing pandemic shutdown orders. Saskatchewan yesterday became the first province to fix a schedule for reopening by storekeepers, golf courses and campground operators: ‘They don’t need handouts, they need to get back to work.’
A recession Black Friday will strike a week today as commercial rents fall due on small businesses hit with pandemic shutdown orders, MPs were told yesterday. Thousands face insolvency: “We’re on the cliff.”
The Treasury Board yesterday invoked employee safety in withholding pandemic records including details of sole-sourced contracts. Opposition MPs cited “an awful lot of questions” over concealed files: ‘Accountability is key.’
Mass photocopying of works for university course packs breaches the Copyright Act, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled in a decision released yesterday. Authors and publishers blamed the practice for a disastrous fall in copyright income: “It is theft.”
Lawmakers worried about physical distancing could reconvene Parliament in a hockey arena, the House affairs committee was told yesterday. It would be the first change of venue since a 1916 fire forced MPs to debate in a dinosaur museum: “I must admit it’s quite interesting.”
Christmas came early at Canada Post as housebound consumers did so much shopping by internet, parcel deliveries soared to holiday levels. Management yesterday said deliveries on a single day, April 20, totaled 1.8 million parcels: ‘Volumes are well over thirty percent higher.’
