Processing of Employment Insurance cheques has never been faster, says the Department of Employment. Managers claimed turnaround times averaged 18 days last year after longstanding complaints of poor service: “Canadians are growing impatient as they wait months.”
The West Block
of Parliament Hill.
Eight years renovations.
Glass-domed ceiling
covers the interior courtyard, home
of the interim House of Commons Chamber.
Light pours in.
Sunlight.
The best disinfectant.
Little wonder discussions
between the PMO and SNC-Lavalin
and
between the PMO and the former Attorney General
were held elsewhere,
in the building across the street,
behind shuttered windows and
under a copper-sheathed roof.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
For a certain generation Two Freedoms invokes a nostalgic era when Canada briefly strode on the world stage. In 1955 the nation had 118,000 men and women in uniform and the world’s fourth largest air force. And now? “When a Canadian surface vessel HMCS Athabaskan sailed to Haiti to position itself off the coast where Canadian forces, replete with medics, nurses, technicians and doctors were to be deployed to come to the aid of the local population, amphibious small vessels had to be borrowed from the Americans to get our own folks ashore,” Hugh Segal wrote.
Critics lament a “decade of darkness” in Canadian defence spending and foreign policy but it has been five decades and “darkness” is debatable. Electors decided generations ago they could not have a big navy and pensions and medicare and good schools all at the same time, and made their choice. This was not a conspiracy. It was the will of the voters.
Hugh Segal, former senator, died last August 9 at 72. He published Two Freedoms in 2016. He was a warm and thoughtful man and Two Freedoms is a warm and thoughtful book. Segal lamented Canada was not a big power or even a middle one.
“There is nothing particularly venal or myopic about Canadian foreign policy goals or desired outcomes in the key regions of the world,” he wrote. “They are simply wildly unambitious and surprisingly narrow for a modern democracy like Canada.”
“We need a radical reboot,” wrote Segal. The instinct of the Department of Foreign Affairs was to “go along to get along.” Segal lamented Ottawa thinks small: “We spend less than 1.5 percent of our GDP on defence and deployment capacity.”
Yet the current tide is unmistakable and Two Freedoms swam against it. The cabinet rates Indigenous land claims a more pressing challenge than military recruitment. We live in an age of nationalism, and everyone wants the right to be left alone.
This troubled Segal. He advocated a muscular Canadian foreign policy committed to combating freedom from fear and freedom from want. “The lessons of history are sadly and inevitably clear,” warned Two Freedoms. “The collapse of freedom from want into a state of economic and social despair can produce huge, even cataclysmic consequences.”
We embraced a “lazy, liberal optimism” of “sovereignty uber alles”, Segal wrote. “The freedoms that matter most and whose protection should be central to Canadian foreign policy are the freedom from fear and freedom from want. How these two freedoms are built, strengthened, attained and defended should form the true nucleus of a modern foreign policy mission worldwide.”
Instead, cabinet since 2012 sold 52 embassies and missions abroad and decided they’d sooner spend the money on children’s tax credits. Nobody seemed to mind.
By Holly Doan
Two Freedoms: Canada’s Global Future, by Hugh Segal; Dundurn; 228 pages; ISBN 9781-4597-34456; $19.99
Grants to Ukrainian war refugees will cost nearly a half billion, says a federal briefing note. To date 189,194 Ukrainians in Canada have applied for subsidies to temporarily resettle here: “It’s one thing to promise the money. It’s another thing for that money to hit Ukrainian bank accounts.”
The Commons industry committee yesterday adjourned without calling Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne to answer for claims he would cut cellphone prices. Rogers Communications has announced prices on some plans will rise by up to $108 a year effective January 17: “This is like going around in circles.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday said she played no role in police handcuffing of a Rebel News reporter after he asked her a question outside a public meeting. Freeland would not discuss Monday’s incident or her past advocacy of press freedoms: “We categorically condemn anyone who in any way intimidates and harasses journalists.”
Ed Broadbent, son of an autoworker from General Motors who led New Democrats to a then-record number of Commons seats as federal Party leader, is dead at 87. His passing was announced yesterday by the Broadbent Institute: “He lived a long life of hope.”
The first South Asian manager hired by Senate administration has won his job back following a nine-year legal fight. The executive complained he was fired after white female colleagues treated him as a problem employee: “Mr. Singh is reinstated.”
The Commons industry committee meets today by request of Opposition MPs to consider hearings into mobile phone rates. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne promised lower prices 10 months ago when he approved one of the biggest telecom takeovers in Canadian history: “What I’m telling you, everything is on the table.”
Israel may detain Canadians who criticize it on Twitter or Facebook, claims a travel advisory by the Department of Foreign Affairs. The department did not explain the unusual notice: “We have professionals in the government whose job is to look carefully around the world and monitor whether there are particular dangers to particular groups of Canadians.”
Cabinet’s “safe supply” drug policy has had minimal impacts despite costing more than $820 million, says a health department report. Researchers said while supervised consumption sites saved some lives “opioid-related deaths have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels.”
Groceries are so expensive Canada’s poverty rate is expected to rise this spring, says a Department of Social Development briefing note. Ongoing food inflation sees Canadians pay an extra 14 percent or more year over year for basic groceries like hamburger and peanut butter: “As food prices increase poverty thresholds are likely to follow.”
A majority of Canadians, 81 percent nationwide, have some type of prescription drug insurance typically through work, new Statistics Canada figures showed yesterday. The latest data follow in-house Privy Council research indicating voters are indifferent to pharmacare as promised by Liberals and New Democrats: “Few felt this to be a significant issue.”
More than a third of a million foreign students were allowed to remain in Canada as permanent residents in the past three years, the Department of Immigration disclosed yesterday. The number coincided with the highest federal immigration quotas in Canadian history: “It is too much too fast.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday had no comment after police handcuffed a reporter who attempted to question the Minister. Freeland is a former newspaper executive who said any reporter could ask her any question “without fear of retaliation.”
