Cabinet yesterday again extended an amnesty for various “assault style” firearms pending a final Supreme Court judgment. The amnesty was deferred to an unspecified date in 2027: “The government is providing certainty.”
A defence industry start-up whose chief lobbyist is the brother of Deputy Defence Minister Christiane Fox won a private audience with the Prime Minister to discuss drone technology, records show. The Privy Council yesterday had no comment: “Can you assure Parliament and Canadians that you won’t be using your office as a public office holder to further the interests of private individuals?”
It will take 1,000 years at current construction rates to fully restore housing affordability for the poorest Canadians, says Housing Advocate Marie-Josée Houle. The cabinet advisor in her annual report to Parliament said new supply of public and co-op housing was critical: “The current pace of building deeply affordable homes is so slow it would take over 1,000 years.”
Young Canadians respect the military though few want to actually enlist, says in-house Department of National Defence research. Cabinet is on a recruitment drive to meet its minimum target of 71,500 regular forces, trained and equipped: “The most compelling reasons to consider an Armed Forces career are practical and financial.”
Parliament spends more than $14 billion a year on Old Age Security for pensioners with household incomes over $60,000, records show. A federally-funded research group has petitioned cabinet to tighten income testing for seniors: “It’s appropriate to ask retirees with six-figure incomes to accept fewer taxpayer dollars.”
Alberta separatists are rational people who share “legitimate grievances,” Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. The native Calgarian said he personally opposed independence but cautioned critics from being snide or dismissive: “If you want frustrated Albertans to vote for Canada, the absolute worst thing we can do is dismiss their legitimate grievances.”
Managers have spent nearly $1.6 million advertising a regional high speed rail service that doesn’t exist, records show. The Crown corporation responsible for the railway-on-paper now has 13 vice presidents: “How many?”
Anti-trust lawyers are asking a federal judge to compel disclosure of confidential terms of leases held by one of the nation’s largest grocery chains. Operators of Sobeys are accused of breaching the Competition Act by negotiating restrictive clauses in leases with mall owners: “Real estate that is suitable and commercially attractive for grocery stores appears limited.”
Forty percent of poll workers and returning officers surveyed want to retain old-fashioned hand counting of paper ballots in future campaigns, says an Elections Canada report. It followed a 2021 Liberal Party proposal for voting by smartphone: “This is pretty significant.”
Commercial radio stations would receive forever licenses under a CRTC proposal detailed Friday. Regulations open for public comment to July 6 would extend AM and FM licenses in perpetuity, saving station operators the cost of attending regular renewal hearings every five to seven years: ‘This would save time and effort.’
The Senate has passed into law a cybersecurity bill rewritten by critics with greater privacy protection. The measure in final debate was rated better than none: “Yes, this legislation is long overdue.”
Applicants for Summer Jobs program
must check a box on the form.
Agree with women’s right to abortion.
I read the job description
of a military chaplain.
Advise on ethical dilemmas,
spiritual and moral issues.
Provide care after major life incidents.
Not a word on reproductive freedom.
No box to check.
How would Liberals assure
the Chaplain agrees with the Charter?
By Shai Ben-Shalom
The First World War gave Canada progressive income tax, national trade unions, the Department of Health, votes for women and daylight saving time. The price was 61,802 dead and 172,000 injured. Was it worth it?
With the passing of all eyewitnesses to the cataclysm, Canadian culture has “systematically diminished the violent effects of the First World War,” notes The Great War. Politicians sense it is now safe to stand on tombstones to speak on patriotic themes that play well with focus groups. It is left to historians to correct the record.
Great War is drawn from a Western University conference that saw researchers, genealogists and others examine the cost and contribution. “Military triumphs and narratives of sacrifice will have to be weighed carefully against the brutal realities of the war’s human cost,” editors write.
“How, for example, will the 500,000 casualties sustained during the Battle of Verdun influence France’s efforts to honour its war dead and underscore national unity in the face of present-day economic turmoil and state austerity? Will the 1917 army mutinies fit into a narrative that emphasizes collective sacrifice for the survival of the Republic?”
Canada’s record is often twisted into mythologies. Great War documents the distortion.
“In the Canadian context of what is remembered and what is forgotten, the victory at Vimy dominates the national memory of the war while the sinking of the hospital ship Llandovery Castle – with the greatest collective loss of life of medical personnel in the war – received much less attention, perhaps because it fits less easily into the story of victory,” authors write.
On June 27, 1918 the Llandovery Castle with its Canadian crew was torpedoed off the Irish coast and sank in ten minutes; 234 passengers vanished without a trace. Survivors who crowded lifeboats were rammed and shot by a U-boat crew. “It was beyond doubt the most atrocious crime of the entire war for there could be neither rhyme nor reason for the brutal murders,” author Edwyn Gray wrote in his 1972 account of the U-boat war The Killing Time.
Great War similarly recounts the fate of the Newfoundland Regiment at Gallipoli, an epic so obscure it’s forgotten even by Newfoundlanders. In September 1915 the regiment landed in the Dardanelles. Of 1,100 soldiers only 117 were left standing four months later, a casualty rate of 89 percent.
The catastrophe was overshadowed by the more disastrous fate awaiting Newfoundlanders at the Battle of the Somme the following July where 90 percent of the regiment was lost in 30 minutes. “From that moment on the Somme battlefield was the primary place for Newfoundland’s national mythology,” editors note. “Gallipoli remained unremembered and indistinct.”
Canadians now subjected to official histories and propaganda deserve a fair accounting of the First War – honest, unflinching and compassionate. Only historians can do the job. The Great War is a start.
By Holly Doan
The Great War: From Memory To History; edited by Kellen Kurschinski, Steve Marti, Alicia Robinet, Matt Symes and Jonathan F. Vance; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 440 pages; ISBN 9781-7711-20500; $38.99
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne misled Canadians on the size of his near-record 2025 deficit, Budget Office figures disclosed yesterday. Analysts said there is now a 99 percent chance the finance department will miss ongoing targets: “What credibility do you think you have on any fiscal matter?”
The Senate yesterday rewrote a hate crimes bill to restrict the public display of the noose. The amendment came on a personal appeal by Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard (N.S.) who recounted her own experience with anti-Black bigotry: “They yell profanities at you and tell you to go back to Africa.”
