Airlines cannot blame factors they “should have known about” to deny passengers compensation for poor service, federal regulators said yesterday. The Canadian Transportation Agency itemized excuses it would no longer accept under Air Passenger Protection Regulations: “People are tired.”
The Department of Finance says its budget forecasts “should not be viewed as a prediction of the future,” according to a letter to the Parliamentary Budget Office. The admission follows cabinet’s raising of its debt to GDP ratio in what Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland had called “a line we will not cross.”
A federal Covid vaccine death and injury compensation program has paid out nearly $7 million in claims to date, records show. The Department of Health said it anticipated $75 million in claims by 2026: “The benefits outweigh the potential risks but it is still a drug.”
Federal employees with disabilities are routinely harassed by managers, says a Treasury Board report. Workers complained needling and “public humiliation” were commonplace four years after Parliament passed Bill C-81 An Act To Ensure A Barrier-Free Canada: “Incidents of harassment occurred routinely.”
A 2021 heat wave that broke an all-Canadian temperature record was the result of a high pressure system, the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society confirms. “Climate change was not the sole cause of this event,” wrote scientists.
Federal regulators yesterday invited public comment over labeling of imported goods from “contested territories.” It follows a long running Federal Court feud over labeling of Israeli wines: “This is a matter of particular sensitivity and importance to the organized Jewish community in Canada.”
Three times as many Department of Employment staff were investigated as were reported fired for defrauding pandemic relief programs, says a federal briefing note. The disclosure follows confirmation of widespread fraud investigations at the Canada Revenue Agency: “We know in times of crisis the risk of fraud is heightened.”
More than a quarter of Atlantic startups that receive federal subsidies fail within five years, says a federal briefing note. The disclosure follows a 2020 audit that faulted the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency for failing to conduct risk assessments on companies applying for taxpayers’ aid: “Once a project is funded the Agency has limited control.”
Snooping by public employees is the worst kind of privacy breach, a Commissioner has ruled. The warning came in the case of an employee of the Town of Hafford, Sask. caught browsing through property records: “Even worse is when an employee snoops and uses the information for potential personal gain.”
The Department of Industry spent $76 million since 2016 in recycling government-issue computers for use by schools and charities, says an internal audit. It was better than throwing them away, wrote auditors: “These results represent a significant second life for equipment.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department says it does not know the extent of ecological damage caused by an all-Canadian contaminant, road salt. Tonnes are used annually, mainly in Ontario and Québec, though federal researchers have rated it a bigger environmental threat than fracking: “Freshwater ecosystems have shown increasing chloride concentrations.”
Exploring the landscape
of the English language,
I find Fee in Coffee,
Off in Office.
There’s Cat in Catastrophe,
Dog in Dogmatic, and
Water in Waterloo.
Even Colour in Colourless
– that’s odd –
now imagine my thrill
to discover God in Pagoda
and Gold in Marigold!
Here’s Paper in Papers
– that’s easy –
but despite my effort
I cannot find
Wisdom, Truth, or Hope, in Trump,
or any Guarantee in Democracy.
There’s no Glory in Aging,
or Fairness in Promotion.
And no Infrastructure in Attawapiskat.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Mississauga, like Winnebago or Pontiac, is a vaguely colorful name popularized to describe the bland and conformist without much thought as to what it means or who it represents. Business reporters call this “branding.” In 1967 voters in a Toronto suburb chose “Mississauga” as the name of their city. Few knew then or now who the Mississauga were, or why they vanished.
Mississauga Portraits is a rich, vibrant account of a people who thrived for generations on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Their whole history is erased from the landscape in the same way that revisionists would retouch a painting.
Historian Donald B. Smith recalls that, as a student finalizing his 1975 doctoral thesis, he looked up a 19th century portrait of the Mississauga’s Joseph Sawyer in the art collection of the Toronto Reference Library: “In the oil painting, the head chief of the Mississauga of the Credit appears strong and resolute, neither happy nor sad, without any apparent attitude.”
Years later, Smith makes a disturbing discovery. The chief’s portrait had been retouched to conceal his true expression. “The overpainting mistranslated the painter’s interpretation of his subject’s facial expression. Now, the chief’s look of dejection, deception and betrayal clearly emerged. This is the accurate image.”
The Mississauga hunted, fished and farmed on what is now Dundas Street West in Toronto, when the water was so clean you could angle for salmon. They produced maple syrup and paddled Lake Ontario by birch bark canoe. They also encountered settlers who gave these Ojibwe their mistaken Anglicized name of Mississauga, from ma-se-sau-gee, meaning “clan.”
All this ended by 1820, when the last of the Mississauga’s lands were expropriated for a keg of rum and an ox. “The Mississauga still had no idea of what buying and selling land meant, no idea of the implications of the agreement,” writes Smith, of the University of Calgary.
The epilogue is recounted in vivid detail in Mississauga Portraits. There was Chief Sawyer, who was driven to drink and became such a hopeless alcoholic he sold his own son as a farm labourer for a gallon of whiskey. The boy escaped, and father and son later reconciled.
There was Catherine Sutton, a Christian convert who travelled to London and petitioned Queen Victoria for help. “How can the poor Indian be civilized?” she asked. “As soon as he makes his land valuable then he is driven further back.”
And there was Maungwudaus, another Methodist convert. Out of work and with a family to feed, he organized a “Wild Indian” show and spent the rest of his life on tour. Maungwudaus played the Eastern U.S. where he presented President Zachary Taylor with a pair of snowshoes. He wowed London, where he dined with the Duke of Wellington, and played for royalty in Paris, the whole time jotting meticulous notes of his impressions.
French gentlemen, he said, “never shave their faces; this makes them look as if they have no mouths.” And the English? “The women cannot walk alone; they must always be assisted by their men. They make their husbands carry their babies for them when walking.”
Maungwudaus, like the Mississauga on the Credit River, vanished in the end. The people and their stories are preserved in the pages of Mississauga Portraits.
By Holly Doan
Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada by Donald B. Smith; University of Toronto Press; 520 pages; ISBN 9780-8020-94278; $37.95
Two Liberal MPs held shares in Facebook even as cabinet vowed to lead a national advertising boycott against the company. Neither MP commented yesterday after cabinet said it was “doing our part” to cut dealings with Facebook: “If the government and politicians don’t stand up against that kind of bullying or intimidation, who will?”
Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough’s department fired 64 employees as security risks, according to records. One was confirmed as a foreign spy: “For sensitivity reasons we cannot provide additional information on specific cases.”
