Federal New Democrats are “becoming more and more irrelevant,” a former vote partner told the Commons Friday. Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North), parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader, made the remark as the Commons adjourned for its 12-week summer recess: “New Democrats are becoming more and more irrelevant.”
A federal Trade Commissioner who sought Covid compensation for high heel shoes, cosmetics and a French-press coffeemaker had her claims rejected by a labour board. The Commissioner assigned to the Canadian Embassy in Athens had claimed the items were “essential.”
The Senate has given Second Reading to a bill proclaiming the Whiskey Jack as Canada’s national bird. The species of jay is rugged, gregarious and thrives in winter, senators were told: “It even lays eggs in the winter when its minus 25.”
Men
twice as likely to die
than women
when subjected to nagging.
Members of the opposition,
take note;
His Honourable the Minister
finds your questions
irritating.
By Shai Ben-Shalom 
“Was it worth it?” Professor Stephen Saideman asks of the Afghan War. The question is poignant if unanswerable. It took deathbed memoirs and archival disclosures to reveal the whole story of the First World War some 40 years after the fact, and inside scoops are still a hot item for historians.
We are resigned to self-serving platitudes of participants with a deep personal investment in claiming victory. “There is a buzz in the air these days in Afghanistan, a sense of optimism,” Deborah Lyons, Canadian ambassador to Kabul, wrote in a 2015 blog entry. “I think we all feel it.”
The military in 2015 released a Post-Operations Report that enthused the number of local cellphone subscribers had nearly doubled from 12 million to 20 million, and that Afghanistan presumably has better wireless coverage than northern Manitoba. This is not why we spent $20 billion and suffered more than a thousand casualties. Post-Operations Report failed to note opium remained the mainstay of Afghanistan’s economy, and the official unemployment rate was 35 percent.
Adapting In The Dust is a pointed addition to the first wave of literature that examines whether we should have been in Afghanistan at all. “In the collective mind of senior officers the Afghanistan effort was a major success,” writes Professor Saideman, Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University. “Nearly every Canadian who commanded in Afghanistan has been promoted.”
Indeed. The best-known chief of the defence staff, General Rick “Hell-ya” Hillier, gave himself a $250,000 retirement send-off that included a farewell ride in a tank. Cabinet in 2006 had deployed a squadron of 17 military surplus Leopard tanks to Afghanistan. It cost $189 million. Only on arrival in the desert did commanders note the vehicles had no air conditioning, and that interior temperatures hit 60°. The question of who deploys tanks in a guerrilla war went unanswered.
“I heard one senior NATO officer say that he had more than 60 different metrics of success, which means that he did not really have a single good one,” Saideman writes. “Canadians may wonder whether it was all worthwhile.”
Interestingly, Adapting In The Dust concludes it was. “We can cloud the issue by talking about schools, vaccinations, and the like, but the reality is that Canadian leaders – three of them, from two political parties – sent troops into harm’s way because of Canada’s place in the world,” says Saideman. “We can look at the conflicting progress reports about what was achieved in Afghanistan, but the mission always was about Canada’s commitment to its allies.”
Our Asian land war was messy and confused. The mere decision to send troops into combat was made in a closed-door meeting with participants, including Hillier, who’d never been to Afghanistan.
“It is clear that Canada was not ready for a mission as intense and as complex as Afghanistan,” Saideman concludes. “The question now is whether and how Canada adapted during the conflict so that it will be better equipped the next time.”
By Tom Korski
Adapting In The Dust: Lessons Learned from Canada’s War in Afghanistan, by Stephen M. Saideman; University of Toronto Press; 184 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-14734; $19.95
MPs are protesting a cabinet bill to prohibit cash bank deposits of $10,000 or more. Banks are already required to report large cash transactions under a 9/11-era security law: “Does keeping our streets and borders safe always mean waiving our rights and freedoms?”
The Commons government operations committee yesterday by a 5 to 4 vote reopened its investigation of the purchase of an $8.8 million Manhattan penthouse for New York Consul Tom Clark. Liberal MPs opposed the motion: “He personally complained his taxpayer-funded residence wasn’t up to his standards because it didn’t have a luxury kitchen.”
Auditor General Karen Hogan yesterday she is baffled by serial irregularities in federal contracting. “I recommend the government find the root cause,” Hogan told the Commons public accounts committee: “During our audits we kept trying to figure out why we’re seeing the behaviour that we’re seeing.”
The central plank of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget plan is ill-defined and may prove irrelevant, the Budget Office said yesterday. Carney has proposed by 2029 to balance what he called the “operating budget,” not the actual budget: “This means the government could achieve its fiscal objective and yet be fiscally unsustainable.”
Canada’s Ambassador to Russia has drawn protest after celebrating with tweets and flowers our diplomatic relations with Stalin. One Prairie senator, the descendent of Ukrainian homesteaders, yesterday expressed revulsion: “Why on Earth is Canada’s ambassador celebrating this?”
Federal employees are attempting to “manage all the conflicts” involving Prime Minister Mark Carney’s private business interests, a deputy minister disclosed yesterday. Both Carney and his wife were paid by federal contractors prior to his January 15 run for the Liberal Party leadership: “We are working very closely with the Prime Minister’s Office to manage all of the conflicts he has declared.”
A national buy-back of “assault-style” firearms will cost more than a third of a billion, the Department of Public Safety said yesterday. Managers admitted the figure was based on police estimates of firearm ownership rates that were 13 years out of date: “There is a bit of a data gap.”
Internet “misinformation” is eroding Canadians’ faith in government, a Statistics Canada report said yesterday. Statisticians denied their research was sought by cabinet to justify a third attempt at censoring legal content: “The report was not requested by any public authority.”
Federal managers who spend billions on consultants are now required to sign an oath stating “they thought about” it, the Treasury Board said yesterday. Parliamentarians complain spending on consultants averaged $25 billion a year even as the public service payroll grew to more than 413,000 employees: “We have been doing work to strengthen managers’ understanding.”
Liberal-appointed Senator Kim Pate (Ont.) yesterday questioned why U.S. President Donald Trump was permitted to step foot in Canada to attend a G7 meeting. Pate pointed to regulations under the Immigration And Refugee Protection Act that prohibit travel by foreigners with criminal convictions: “I received many calls.”
