Housing Minister Gregor Robertson is directing a Crown bank to finance “sports infrastructure,” Access To Information records show. Use of public money in sports was a priority, he said: “Investment areas of interest will emerge over time.”
Complaints over federal secrecy are running at a record pace, the Commons ethics committee learned yesterday. Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard told MPs there was no substitute for a “genuine commitment to openness.”
Newly-declassified records show the RCMP in 1955 secretly microfilmed private mail at an international union in a hunt for Communist agitators. Access To Information records did not indicate whether Mounties burgled offices or relied on an informant with a spy camera: “It is through manipulation and control of labour that the Communists intend to bring about an economic crisis.”
A cabinet bill to quash lawful strikes does not go far enough, Liberal-appointed Senator Jim Quinn (N.B.) said yesterday. Quinn sought a blanket ban on strikes in key sectors like marine ports: “Our reputation as a trading nation internationally is not strong.”
A final hunt is underway to recover billions in pandemic relief cheques pocketed by 432,000 people nationwide, says the Canada Revenue Agency. Fraudulent and mistaken applications for Covid relief cost taxpayers the equivalent of more than $12,000 per claimant, records showed: ‘Any individual who receives something they were not entitled to should pay it back.’
Indigenous dialects should be recited aloud at Remembrance Day observances, according to a First Nations recommendation to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Assembly of First Nations also urged the definition of “veteran” be expanded to include Indigenous fighters in pre-Confederation Canada: “First Nations Veterans Council members advised that ceremonial readings should be specifically noted as commemorative.”
The finance department polled Canadians’ views on the national debt ahead of Thursday’s budget by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, documents show. Federal focus group participants described the 13-figure debt as almost incomprehensible and “just a number.”
A federal labour board arranged sensitivity training on Muslim traditions to avoid “trivializing” workplace complaints, Access To Information records show. It followed a proposal by a separate department to cancel coffee breaks for a month in observance of Ramadan: “The ways Islamophobia can permeate a workplace can often be nuanced.”
Canadian contractors have filed more than a dozen complaints over the new “Buy Canadian” policy, says Parliament’s Procurement Ombudsman. “Suppliers are looking for clear explanations,” Alexander Jeglic told MPs: “We are hearing questions about whether foreign-owned multinationals operating in Canada should receive the same preferences as Canadian small and medium-sized businesses.”
The Coast Guard confirms it reclassified all 7,378 of its employees including six-figure executives as defenders of the nation to help cabinet meet NATO spending targets. They had been under supervision of the fisheries department until 2025: “A senator asked for a breakdown on the total number of employees affected by the transfer of the Canadian Coast Guard to the Department of National Defence.”
West of madness
And East of Justice.
In the traditional territories of our ancestors,
A performative ritual calls the Spirits.
Meant to reconcile the past to the future.
Gravely void of righteousness.
Empty words for most,
Breath of life for the Ottawa functionary.
The record will show,
We let the dead bury the dead.
By W.N. Branson
Fighting Words is a document of war, intriguing because so many of us know only peace. We learn the hanging of 1837 rebels was bungled so badly one prisoner was nearly decapitated, that rifles fired by Canadian troops in the Boer War sounded “like lightning humming birds,” zzz-zzz-zzz, that Hitler on weekends wore a tweed coat one size too small.
These are anecdotes of Canadian war reporting from the age of Vikings to al-Qaeda. “People seem to have a pathological need for conflict,” writes author Mark Bourrie. “They also have a very strong urge to tell stories about it.”
Bourrie recounts the most poignant reporting of anonymous diarists and acclaimed war correspondents like Stewart Lyon, who pioneered Canadian Press coverage of WWI, Dieppe correspondent and future Edmonton Journal publisher Ross Munro, and Gregory Clark, who filed on deadline from liberated Paris for the Toronto Star in 1944 though his own son was killed in action days before.
The result is compelling accounts of high-stakes conflict, human triumph and minutiae of depravity. Here is Laura Secord, on stumbling through the woods in the dark to warn Yankees were coming in 1812: “Here I found all the Indians encamped; by moonlight the scene was terrifying…Upon advancing to the Indians they all rose, and, with some yells, said ‘Woman,’ which made me tremble.”
Here is a Toronto Leader account of the death of a Fenian in 1866: “He was sensible and able to tell me that his names was James Gerrahty, from Cincinnati, and that one of his own comrades had shot him by mistake, and that he freely forgave him. He died in about thirteen minutes, one of his comrades holding a crucifix before him as long as he could see it. We buried him in an orchard.”
Here is Paul de Martigny, a Canadian reporter imprisoned by Nazis in occupied France: “Among the internees was a cultured Englishwoman with her 18-year-old idiot son. The guards delighted in torturing the mother by playing pranks on the boy. She spent most of the time in tears,” de Martigny recalled. “The more she wept, the more they teased.”
Tales of conflict are always the most indelible. In the words of one fighting man – not a Canadian – “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”
By Holly Doan
Fighting Words: Canada’s Best War Reporting by Mark Bourrie; Dundurn; 368 pages; ISBN 978-1-45970-666-8; $29.99
Health Minister Marjorie Michel yesterday said cabinet is still attempting to “sharpen” its multi-billion dollar dental program amid cost overruns and questionable claims. Critics faulted the health department for failing to determine whether claimants were gaming the Canada Dental Care Plan at taxpayers’ expense: “As you know with new programs, we are still looking to sharpen it.”
Grocery prices will rise by up to $1,000 next year for a typical Canadian household if high diesel costs persist, a leading food economist yesterday told the Commons human resources committee. “We have a trucking economy,” said Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab.
A 9/11 agency mandated by Parliament to track suspicious cash transactions between terrorists and organized crime yesterday was faulted by auditors as so lackadaisical it compromised police investigations. Sarah Paquet, the $292,000-a year CEO, resigned last May 19 while the audit was underway: “This is a very sobering report.”
