A fifth of Atlantic Canadians in federal research say a family member had to leave the region to find work in the past five years. Surveys by a cabinet-appointed business panel found residents divided on whether their home province could become “about as prosperous as the rest of Canada.”
Another cable TV channel, French-language TV5 Québec, is petitioning MPs for a bailout due to falling revenues. It follows federal research showing few Canadians under 34 watch conventional television: “The audience was an average 62 years old.”
On the way to work,
an ant with a broken leg.
Limping. Vigorously.
Drawing a circle in the
sandy pavement.
Antennae slapping in the air.
I debate whether to end her suffering.
Or let the pain run.
Sun will desiccate the
fragile body.
A bird might come.
A predatory bug.
I remember a cross-section under the microscope.
Hundreds of lenses in the compound eye.
Thousands of sensors.
A pinhead-sized brain, more complex than
anything man-made.
100 million years of evolution.
A life that cannot originate in the lab.
The three-thousand-year-old debate on
body and spirit.
The possibility of an act from above.
End of day.
Walking back to my car.
On the way, the ant,
slowly drawing her circle.
Antennae softly in the air.
A goodbye to a faraway colony.
I debate whether to step on her.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
When Pierre Trudeau died the Calgary Herald published a commentary calling him a Communist. As late as 1989 an Alberta Liberal running for a Senate seat drew protest after describing Trudeau as “a great Canadian.”
The provincial party has not won an election in more than a century. If voters send a handful of Liberals to Ottawa from time to time, statistically a Canadian has a better chance of visiting outer space than earning an MP’s pension as an Alberta Liberal. The last to serve three terms left office 19 years ago.
Yet author Darryl Raymaker recalls Trudeau was once cheered on horseback in the Calgary Stampede parade and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. He was “our very own JFK,” writes Raymaker.
If Trudeaumania was muted in Alberta in 1968 – one Liberal candidate in Red Deer had his car windows shot out – there were ripples of enthusiasm. “Western Canadians with a longstanding grievance against central Canada saw that Trudeau was different,” writes Raymaker. “Not only young and exciting, he was a potential leader from Québec who could put Québec in its place.”
Raymaker is a longtime Calgary barrister and Liberal organizer. Trudeau’s Tango is part memoir, part documentary of the geographic, cultural and political divisions that are a permanent fixture of Confederation. The fact we held it together remains a world-class achievement.
Prairie residents then were their own distinct society. Many were Dust Bowl refugees only a generation removed from pioneer sodbusters. They were hard people in a hard land. Author Raymaker recalls a 1969 Kiwanis Club speech by the Chief Justice of the Alberta Supreme Court, Val Milvain. “When police brutality is played up by the news media, it is playing into the hands of those who want to disrupt law and order,” said Justice Milvain; “We will be destroyed by the noisy clamorers after what they call ‘civil rights’.”
The law-and-order speech came the same year Trudeau liberalized divorce laws and decriminalized gay sex. The two worlds were bound to collide.
In 1968 Liberals elected four Alberta MPs. By 1972 the Party was decimated. “Their promise of 1968 shattered, they had gone down to a resounding defeat in every riding,” recalls Raymaker. What went wrong?
Farm protests and political foul-ups didn’t help. The provincial party contemplated a coalition with the decrepit Social Credit movement. “It was like necrophilia,” as former Alberta Liberal leader Nick Taylor once put it. And there was the Official Languages Act, passed in 1969.
“Many English-speaking people across Canada, Albertans prominent among them, were outraged at the federal government ‘shoving French down our throats’,” writes Raymaker; “English-speaking Canadians generally seemed to tolerate bilingualism so long as it included being tough with Québec or staring down the separatists.”
Bilingualism was considered alien, overbearing and Québec-centric. In Alberta today, French immersion runs at 6 percent. More than a third still oppose the Languages Act, according to federal polling.
Canadian history is much more than vanilla-bland observances. Trudeau’s Tango is a fresh and lively account of politics with sharp elbows.
By Holly Doan
Trudeau’s Tango: Alberta Meets Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-1972 by Darryl Raymaker; University of Alberta Press; 244 pages; ISBN 9781-7721-22657; $24.95
Industry Minister Mélanie Joly’s department in an Access To Information memo contemplates “legal action” against users on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites it suspects of spreading “false and misleading information.” The censored 35-page memo did not explain what action federal lawyers would take: “This strategy seeks to uphold the integrity of and public trust in government information.”
The CEO of Farm Credit Canada had her corporate Visa card suspended as “delinquent” for failing to make minimum payments, Access To Information records show. Staff questioned thousands in late fees and interest charges run up by Justine Hendricks in her role as the Crown bank’s $458,000-a year chief executive: “The audit division may find this particular transaction as non-compliant.”
A $1.45 billion bailout of Metro Vancouver condo developers is an “opportunity” for taxpayers, Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday. He did not explain what profit the public would see in buying thousands of vacant condos from speculators facing losses: “A bad development becomes a good development on the second or third owner, but in between there’s that opportunity.”
Cabinet yesterday withdrew a suggestion it might “adjust” a 2019 ban on oil tanker traffic off the northern British Columbia coast. “There is no way,” said B.C. Premier David Eby: “The tanker ban remains.”
Artificial intelligence “nonsense” has no place in Tax Court, a judge has ruled. The remarks came in the case of a taxpayer who challenged the Canada Revenue Agency using fabricated case law: “AI is no substitute for real lawyering.”
The $458,000-a year CEO of the Crown bank Farm Credit Canada billed four times the expenses of her predecessor including Filet Mignon steak dinners, round-the-world business class flights and a $543 Uber ride, records show. Justine Hendricks had no comment but earlier told employees to “tighten the belt.”
Attorney General Sean Fraser’s department says it uncovered an executive implicated in malfeasance but would neither name the person nor explain why police were not called. The latest case is in addition to 37 employees disciplined last year for wrongdoing: “The executive retired.”
Foreign agents operating in Canada will not be compelled to disclose how much they’re paid under regulations finalized yesterday. Disclosing cash transactions was too “sensitive,” said Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, though such disclosure is mandatory in the United States: ‘We do not intend to publish specific dollar amounts.’
TV reporters must attempt to verify all news, even breathless eyewitness accounts of breaking stories, a national broadcast ombudsman has ruled. The Canada Broadcast Standards Council faulted CTV National for televising a Canadian tourist’s alarming account of street violence in Mexico: “A clearly inaccurate statement, even if made by someone other than the reporter, can constitute a breach.”
A 10 percent tariff on Lebanese chickpeas, Filipino beans and other imported canned goods will have a “downstream effect” at supermarket checkouts, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said yesterday in a regulatory notice. Cabinet had no choice but to protect Canadian growers and canners, he said: ‘It is likely to have a downstream effect on the price of certain canned vegetables for consumers.’
Blacklock’s pauses for the 159th anniversary of Confederation to wish all friends and subscribers a happy Canada Day. We’re back tomorrow — The Editor
