A first-ever bill to mandate bilingualism in the federally regulated private sector yesterday was signed into law. Bill C-13 An Act To Amend The Official Languages Act will “reverse the decline of French,” said Languages Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor: “It’s a good day for official languages.”
Statistics Canada yesterday added the price of charcoal barbecues but removed DVD players from its benchmark inflation calculator. Revisions to the Consumer Price Index reflect changing times, said analysts: “Spending patterns change.”
Maxime Bernier, ex-foreign minister, last night lost a third bid for a seat in Parliament as leader of the People’s Party. Bernier lost by almost 15,000 votes in Portage-Lisgar, Man., one of four stand-pat byelections won by incumbent parties: “I’ll be back.”
Governor General Mary Simon burned through almost 25,000 litres of jet fuel to deliver a climate change speech in Finland, records show. Simon said the world must “act now” to save the planet: “What we do as stewards of the Arctic both Indigenous and non-Indigenous has a direct impact globally.”
There is no evidence retailers and wholesalers are profiteering from inflation, the Bank of Canada said yesterday. Research showed companies appeared to be passing on higher costs without suspicious markups: “The cumulative growth of markups of consumer-oriented firms was close to zero.”
Covid closures of churches, temples and mosques were a justifiable infringement on religious freedoms, the Manitoba Court of Appeal ruled yesterday. The province at the height of the pandemic limited attendance at weddings and funerals to five people: “Freedom of religion can be limited when the exercise of it can interfere with the rights of others.”
Cabinet yesterday denied the RCMP is investigating the Prime Minister’s Office over attempts to quash a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin Group Incorporated. Police in a letter to the advocacy group Democracy Watch said an investigation was ongoing: ‘They were hounding me and my staff.’
Millions of unsafe vehicles are on Canadian roads due to an odd gap in federal regulations, says the Department of Transport. It counted up to 6.6 million “unsafe vehicles” driven by unwitting owners: “Yes, there is always room for improvement.”
Immigration of African francophones is “crucial” to saving French in Canada, says Languages Commissioner Raymond Théberge. “We need to recruit where there are pools of French speakers” like Mali and the Ivory Coast, he testified at the Commons languages committee: “It is clear the future of French is found in Africa.”
Lockdowns were the least popular national Covid control measure, says in-house research by the Privy Council Office. Only a Québec curfew was rated worse: ‘If the following public health measures were to be reintroduced would you support them?’
The Department of Public Works will not disclose how many federal ads are flagged in breach of a ban on partisan promotions. The department in a briefing note said the number was irrelevant: ‘The number of times that issues were flagged does not provide any relevant information.’
Canada’s homeless population is smaller than originally estimated, Statistics Canada data show. A Census count of people living in shelters was less than half the number in 2016: “Some people who experience homelessness do not access shelters.”
My friend overseas
inquires
about Canadian politics.
“I’ve heard your Prime Minister
is losing popularity,” he says.
I agree that’s what the polls show.
“Think he might lose the election?” he asks.
I say that’s a possibility.
“So the Leader of the Opposition
could become your next Prime Minister?”
I tell him that’s not what the polls show.
“I don’t get it,” he says.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Those who live long enough reach a point where all regrets and anxieties simply vanish. No one on their 100th birthday recites a century’s worth of petty gibes. Perhaps it’s the distraction of arthritis, or the comfort of knowing there are no surviving witnesses to our most embarrassing incidents.
Cherie Dimaline, Governor General’s Award-winning author, is only in her 40s and not there yet. Dimaline vividly recalls all her regrets and anxieties, like the time she got drunk on Jägermeister.
“Remember there was that party you went to in your early twenties, when they were giving out free Jägermeister and you were still broke enough to think you needed to drink the hell out of that Jägermeister because, well, it was free, and then you got so drunk you started an argument with that group of strangers who said you were an idiot?” writes Dimaline. “Oh, man, you really were an idiot. Wait, let me play that back in detail for you.”
An Anthology Of Monsters is the text of a lecture Dimaline gave to the Canadian Literature Centre’s annual Kreisel Lecture Series. It is warm and human. Remember the time you had that panic attack at age 7 and locked yourself in the bathroom before First Communion? Dimaline remembers.
“What if I pee my pants in front of everyone?” she writes. “What if I say the wrong words and the priest stops the whole thing to demand I find the right ones? What if I take the Eucharist and then throw up the Eucharist?”
“And then I went to the church to take my First Communion in front of two hundred people,” writes Dimaline. “And while I might have otherwise forgotten it, that day was sharply carved into my memory.”
Dimaline depicts anxiety and regret as a pushy house guest with a photographic memory. “Anxiety, she remembers,” says Dimaline. “She remembers the weather and what I wore and the looks on people’s faces, even people I never saw again.”
Many recollections are funny and not at all hurtful: “Hey girl, remember in 2012 when you were at the airport in Montréal and the Air Canada employee at the desk said, ‘Have a great flight’ and you said, ‘You too’?”
Other recollections bring a stab of pain: “I have the horrifying talent of still feeling embarrassed about something I said or did twenty years ago. Do I remember how I felt when I was on the front page of the New York Times arts section? No. But I remember, word for word, a mean tweet directed at me from a man who never met me but decided to question everything about me as if I was not a real person.”
Dimaline finds safety in family and words. An Anthology Of Monsters has advice for anyone with a keyboard or paper and pencil.
“The reason I always advise people to write things out, is that you get to organize yourself, figure out how you feel, and record the truth before your anxiety twists everything like a funhouse mirror,” writes Dimaline. “Think about how much better you feel when you take all the dangling threads of deadlines and errands and put them into a list. Then you know what you have to do and for who and for when.”
By Holly Doan
An Anthology Of Monsters: How Story Saves Us From Our Anxiety, by Cherie Dimaline; University of Alberta Press; 56 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-6822; $14.99.
New Democrat and Liberal MPs yesterday sought to censure Conservative finance critic MP Jasraj Singh Hallan (Calgary Forest Lawn) in apparent retribution for a 37-day budget filibuster. “You want to get rid of me?” Hallan told the Commons finance committee: “I am not here to make friends.”
