The Department of Social Development yesterday said it is hiring researchers to study actual impacts of its $200 million-a year school lunch program. Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the program 16 months ago on claimed benefits that appeared to be inflated: “The goal is to build a strong, evidence-based program.”
Mounties should conduct themselves with more “humility,” says a federal report. The RCMP acknowledged it was not obvious what the reference meant in practical policing: “The status quo isn’t working.”
Immigration Minister Lena Diab yesterday said she was extending special permits for Gazan refugees but would not specify if a cap of 5,000 will remain unchanged. Diab’s department also declined to discuss costs of tax-free grants that pay $3,000 per adult and $1,500 per minor child: “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is devastating.”
The Commons transport committee by a 5 to 4 vote has summoned all confidential records detailing $1.1 billion in federal financing to buy Chinese-made vessels for British Columbia Ferry Services Inc. “We can stop this loan,” said Conservative MP Dan Albas (Okanagan Lake West-South Kelowna, B.C.), sponsor of the motion.
A lawyer at the Department of Finance in Ottawa, Timothy Huyer, is the first federal employee to withdraw tweets under a new Treasury Board policy prohibiting vulgar and partisan social media posts. Huyer tweeted 9 to 10 times in a typical workday including messages ridiculing Conservatives and profane posts like one that boasted: “The nice thing about being in government is being able to introduce laws that allow you to f—k up without people being able to sue you for it.”
New Democrat MP Gord Johns (Courtenay-Alberni, B.C.) complained of “an affront to democracy” after being sidelined at a Commons committee hearing. Other parties signaled they had no interest in making concessions to New Democrats after they were reduced to seven seats in the April 28 election: “I think I have a lot to offer.”
The federal prison system now has more employees than inmates, according to Correctional Service figures. It follows a finding by the Correctional Investigator that Canada has one of the costliest prison systems in the world: “In some institutions the number of correctional officers alone exceeds the number of inmates.”
Cabinet expects the post office and its largest union to come to terms “as soon as possible,” says Labour Minister Patty Hajdu. One business group proposed Parliament impose back-to-work legislation on the Canadian Union of Postal Workers for the third time in 14 years: “The government is monitoring this situation closely.”
Blacklock’s pauses for the August bank holiday with warmest regards to subscribers. We wish you a safe, happy holiday. We’re back tomorrow — The Editor.
“I believe in equality for everyone,
except reporters and photographers.”
Gandhi’s words.
Little did he know,
an American President
would share this same animosity
towards journalists,
while ignoring other such teachings as
forgiveness,
compassion,
and the difference
between the power of love
and the love of power.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
The National Gallery of Canada’s director of publishing and new media was on the line. Blacklock’s asks: What is your acquisition policy on folk art please? Pause. “Well, we don’t have a collection of folk art.” Pause. “What you consider folk art and what I consider folk art is probably not the same thing.”
The Gallery’s Acquisitions Policy running to 16 pages decrees the national collection must reflect aesthetic qualities “of the highest possible nature.” No whirligigs. No macramé. Folk art gets no respect.
It is the squeezebox accordion of the Canadian art world, so ill-defined it’s confused with Christmas crafts or macaroni glued to a tin. “The term is unclear,” note authors John Fleming and Michael Rowan, and is hobbled by raw assumptions that folk art “is aesthetically unsatisfying,” “empty of any serious purpose or moral end,” “unimportant and even trivial” and “requires no formal training.”
Translation: Folk art is the expression of ordinary people with simple tools documenting familiar things, unashamedly and without being self-conscious. It is “the aesthetic of the everyday,” as Fleming and Rowan put it, which “asks nothing of us in return.” Canadians acknowledge the art form as worthy in others – the wood carvers of Bali, cave painters of New Mexico or matryoshka doll makers of Russia – but rarely in ourselves.
Canadian Folk Art To 1950 attempts to balance the scale. It is a celebration. It spies the land on a simple mission: “To draw from the objects of everyday life their grandeur, mystery and magic, to represent the fantastic and hallucinatory related to the operations of the subconscious.”
If the results are crude, they’re joyful. Here is a hooked rug with the image of a fat man, 1916. There are boxes and dressers, paper cuttings and cow portraits, stoneware jugs and model ships, a cigar store Indian and barber pole. Canadian Folk Art To 1950 devotes an entire chapter to 19th century trade signs like the shoemaker’s wooden boot that “punctuate urban spaces.”
And yes, there is even a whirligig, from New Hamburg, Ontario circa 1880. It depicts a militiaman in a snappy peaked cap. It would be magical in a stiff breeze.
By Holly Doan
Canadian Folk Art to 1950 by John Fleming & Michael Rowan, photographs by James Chambers; University of Alberta Press; 600 pages; ISBN 978-0-88864-556-2; $45
A Tax Court judge has faulted the Canada Revenue Agency for misunderstanding its own regulations in penalizing a couple over an RRSP withdrawal. Parliament to date has rejected Opposition calls for an enforceable “duty of care” owed taxpayers when the Revenue Agency is wrong: “There really isn’t any legal recourse.”
A Liberal-sponsored petition is asking the Commons to criminalize political lies. MP Karim Bardeesy (Taiaiako’n-Parkdale, Ont.), parliamentary secretary for industry, sponsored the petition: “MPs have been accused of making important public statements that are false and without evidence.”
The number of long-term boiled water advisories on First Nations is up 32 percent from last year, says Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty’s department. Dozens of First Nations still have tap water unfit to drink more than four years after cabinet promised to eliminate all water advisories at a $3.6 billion cost: “Advisories remain in effect.”
The president of the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group yesterday said he will “continue to work with like-minded colleagues” in the Liberal caucus despite the Prime Minister’s unilateral recognition of Palestine as a country. MP Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal, Que.) in the past called legitimization of Palestine “a really bad precedent.”
