Cabinet will “eradicate” slave-made imports already banned under the Customs Act, says Public Works Minister Filomena Tassi. The pledge follows the Senate’s approval last Thursday of a private bill mandating public reporting on ethical contracting by large Canadian corporations: “What are you doing in ensuring Canada is procuring ethically sourced goods?”
The Laurentian Bank has been fined almost a half million for breach of a 9/11-era disclosure law. Bank management in Montréal was cited for failing to report suspicious cash transactions: “We will be firm. We will take appropriate actions when they are needed.”
Wladyslaw Niewinski, a Polish combat veteran of WWII, recalled taking the train all the way from Halifax to Lethbridge and standing outside the depot, a man without a country. “Farmers started arriving to pick up soldiers,” said Niewinski. “They were picking us up like piglets.”
Niewinski was assigned to a farm near Cremona, Alta. where he slept in the barn. Later he moved to Calgary, and served 15 years as treasurer of the Polish Credit Union.
Calgary was home to so many Polish war veterans they formed a club, Polish Combatants’ Association Branch No. 18. Author Aldona Jaworska interviewed the last survivors for Polish War Veterans In Alberta, a haunting account of a little-known corner of Canadiana, the 1947 Polish Resettlement Act.
At war’s end some 250,000 Polish veterans were stranded in Europe. Returning home was a ticket to the Soviet Gulag. The Resettlement Act assigned veterans to Commonwealth countries. Canada accepted 4,527 as contract farm workers at $45 a month, 25 percent less than prevailing wages. Some 750 landed in Alberta.
They were “like slaves”, Niewinski recalled. At 92, he told his story over tea and banana bread in his tidy Calgary bungalow. “Nobody came for me,” he said. Author Jaworska writes that Niewinski seemed pleased to find someone interested in his story.
Anatole Nieumierzycki, who died at 94, remembered a treasured 1937 Polish travel book on Canada. “The way the author described Canada inspired me,” he said.
“We couldn’t return to Poland because we already had our Polish citizenship taken away,” said Nieumierzycki. “We learned that if we returned, we would be taken to Siberia.”
Nieumierzycki worked two years on an Alberta ranch, was cheated of a year’s back pay – all the veterans complained of unpaid wages – and later became a Calgary electrician. “I’d trained as a telemechanic while in the Army,” he explained.
Canada accepted Polish veterans on four conditions: young, single, fit for hard labour, with some agricultural know-how. Zbigniew Rogowski remembered his immigration test: “They put seeds on the table and asked me to recognize them” – wheat, oats, barley. “I know all the grains. ‘Good! You will go to Canada,’ the examining committee told me.”
Rogowski was an 11-year old schoolboy when the war broke out. “The Russian police officers in blue uniforms came to our home to arrest my father,” he tells Jaworska. “I was still in bed. As they were taking my dad away, he looked at me and nodded toward my mother and my three younger sisters. I understood that he wanted me to take care of them.”
Author Jaworska is a passionate writer. Her interviews with survivors are compelling. Polish War Veterans In Alberta has a melancholy quality – no survivor dreamt of working as a Prairie farm labourer – with a very human ending. Electrician Nieumierzycki cannot forget his 1937 travel book.
“I was never disappointed,” he said. “Canada is a beautiful country.”
By Holly Doan
Polish War Veterans in Alberta: The Last Four Stories, by Aldona Jaworska; University of Alberta Press; 328 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-3739; $29.99
Claims that cabinet needed emergency powers to save lives during a 2021 strike at the Port of Montréal were fabricated, Access To Information records show. Then-Labour Minister Filomena Tassi claimed the strike was a matter of “life and death.” Documents show the main issue was spoiled fruit: “Fearmongering is not a valid or compelling argument.”
Cabinet has evidence justifying emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said yesterday. His remarks came as another allegation of unruly misconduct by truckers, the desecration of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, was disproven: “Canadians are increasingly wondering whether the Liberal government even had the evidence at all.”
The Ottawa Police Service yesterday said it identified a mystery woman who jumped on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during Freedom Convoy protests but dismissed the case as insignificant. The woman was not from Western Canada and had nothing to do with the convoy, police said: “There was no admitted association to the Freedom Convoy truckers.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday defended a green rights bill one senator called a field day for litigators. The cabinet bill is the first to invoke a “right to a healthy environment” without defining the term: “You’re right. You know this may be litigated.”
Canadian diplomats are “always there” to help citizens abroad, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly yesterday told the Senate foreign affairs committee. Joly made no mention of diplomats’ hurried departure from Afghanistan that was so abrupt one army commander called it embarrassing: “We were the first embassy to depart.”
The economy is “not going to play out exactly the way we forecast,” Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem last night told the Senate banking committee. Macklem made the remark when asked to predict the likelihood of another recession: “We’ve never come out of a pandemic before.”
The Commons heritage committee yesterday opened hearings on whether to ban hate symbols in Canada. Liberal MPs proposed hearings in response to the Freedom Convoy but deleted a specific reference to “the swastika and the Confederate flag” after one Conservative suggested the ban also apply to blackface: “This cannot continue.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday permanently put in force regulations requiring crowdfunding platforms to report cash donations over $10,000. The rule was introduced as a temporary precaution during the Freedom Convoy: “What we are facing today is a threat to our democratic institutions.”
Cabinet must educate parents on how to avoid accidental cannabis poisonings of young children, Families Minister Karina Gould said yesterday. Poisonings rose sharply after Parliament legalized cannabis in 2018: “We certainly don’t want to see children going to emergency rooms.”
Overland flooding knocks an average eight percent off property values, says a University of Waterloo report commissioned by CMHC. It follows a federal recommendation that cabinet mandate homeowners’ purchase of climate change insurance: “Canada is an outlier among many advanced economies offering some form of nationalized flood insurance.”
Cabinet relied on CBC stories for justification in using emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy, Attorney General David Lametti testified last night at parliamentary hearings. Lametti said he invoked the Emergencies Act after CBC News falsely reported foreigners bankrolled the protest: “There were reports. CBC reported.”
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino last night repeated false claims Freedom Convoy protesters attempted to burn down an Ottawa apartment building. Mendicino made the remarks in committee testimony as MPs and senators puzzled over why cabinet declared a national emergency to end the protest: “It’s unacceptable, almost irresponsible.”
