The Department of Health yesterday said it will pay schoolchildren as young as 12 to encourage classmates to eat their vegetables. The four-year campaign is to promote the Canada Food Guide that recommends Canadians drink tap water and eat more carrots, nuts and seeds: ‘It will instill lifelong healthy eating habits.’
An Ontario judge is defending an out-of-court settlement over misconduct by Volkswagen AG at a fraction the cost of U.S. penalties. VW settled in Canada for less than a tenth what it paid in the U.S. for faking emissions data on so-called “green” diesel cars: ‘It signals a new era.’
The “lives of Canadians” were put at risk by lack of pandemic preparedness at the Public Health Agency, managers acknowledged in an internal memo. Executives privately issued the stark warning even as they reassured the public their work was in hand: “Time is of the essence.”
Increasing coronavirus infection rates are “not a good sign”, the Public Health Agency yesterday told reporters. Dr. Theresa Tam, chief public health officer, would not say whether a feared second wave of infection was underway: “We don’t want that to happen.”
Fewer than half of people surveyed in a federal poll, 49 percent, say they trust the Government of Canada to balance national security with civil liberties. The finding follows false alarms by cabinet over foreign interference in the 2019 election: “I am concerned about information that government intelligence agencies may be collecting about me.”
Canadians can no more reclaim factory jobs from Asia than they could turn the ocean tide, says China’s ambassador to Canada. Ambassador Cong Peiwu made the remarks in a webinar sponsored by Canada’s Building Trades Unions: ‘It is the trend of the times, you know.”
A British Columbia carbon tax hailed by cabinet as a model for the nation has not lowered greenhouse gas emissions, says the Department of Environment. Even rebates for electric car buyers failed to cut pollution in B.C.’s transport sector: “British Columbia shows it.”
Attorney General David Lametti is being cited for “intolerable” and unlawful interference in court business. The Federal Court of Appeal struck down a cabinet bill to freeze civil proceedings: ‘It is incorrect in law and should not be followed.’
Federal spending on pollsters has tripled in five years, says the Department of Public Works. Figures show cabinet spent a total $54.8 million on public opinion surveys since 2015: “The Government of Canada works hard to ascertain which issues Canadians care about.”
The Canada Revenue Agency is citing pushback by small businesses over an obscure part of the Income Tax Act. Owners must annually file a separate form for every single payment for service of $500 or more under threat of a $7,500 fine: “They should not have to do the Canada Revenue Agency’s job.”
The Department of Environment is declaring a rare woodpecker endangered in Canada. A federal recovery plan for the Red-Headed Woodpecker would spell million-dollar fines for any company that destroys its habitat: “This is a striking bird.”
A Senate committee meets Thursday to review recommended compensation for ex-staffers who worked for former senator Don Meredith. The committee on internal economy has already apologized to employees who complained they were harassed by Meredith: “Is it too little, too late?”
Imagine a room
full of people.
Perfect venue to meet,
chat,
interact.
You could make friends,
pitch for a job,
find love.
Social media is that place
—without a room,
without people.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Canada’s Second World War began with a good sleep. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, staff in Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s office first heard the news from a reporter who called for comment. Aides hesitated to wake King. The bulletin waited till breakfast.
Mobilize! is the title of this account of unpreparedness. Journalist Larry Rose might have renamed it The Long Nap. It is a lively narrative chronicling the nation’s sleepwalk through the age of dictators.
At the outbreak of war the cash-starved navy kept its headquarters above a delicatessen on Queen Street in Ottawa. The artillery had fewer men than the Montréal Police Department. Camp Borden’s Armoured Fighting Vehicles School had no tanks but a single truck nicknamed Old Faithful. The air force still flew a standard light bomber, the 1918 Wapiti biplane, with an air speed of 210 km/hr. It “glided like a brick”, one pilot recalled. Air crews called it What-A-Pity.
What accounted for the shocking state of military preparedness? Québec, argues Rose. French Canada was 29 percent of the population: “Our own domestic situation must be considered first, and what will serve to keep Canada united,” King explained.
The conscription crisis of WWI nearly destroyed King’s Liberal Party in 1917 and still evoked bitter comment in Québec. King himself skipped the First War draft by working as a corporate consultant in the U.S., and was so uninterested in the military he was known to confuse ranks.
“So what?” writes Rose. “So what if Canada’s army was unprepared? So what if William Lyon Mackenzie King’s military program amounted to armament lite? Did it really matter that it was ill-trained, poorly led and equipped in 1939?”
It did, Rose concludes. The price was paid in casualties at Hong Kong in 1941 and Dieppe in 1942, and soldiers’ suspicions that King was a political schemer who did not care for their fate. When the Prime Minister lost his own seat in the 1945 election, it was the soldier vote that tipped the balance.
Mobilize! is vivid and wonderfully researched. Author Larry Rose has a TV producer’s eye for the indelible detail. We learn one of the first Canadian casualties of the Second World War was a 10-year old schoolgirl, Margaret Hayworth, drowned in the U-boat sinking of the liner Athenia on the first day of war. And that Hitler’s nephew observed the outbreak of war with a Canadian lecture tour in which he described his infamous uncle as “crackers”. And that 26,614 landlocked Prairie boys joined the Royal Canadian Navy. The Pacific horizon still looks a lot like sunset on the plains.
By Holly Doan
Mobilize! Why Canada Was Unprepared For The Second World War by Larry Rose; Dundurn Press; 336 pages; ISBN 9781-4597-10641; $28.99
Most Canadians consider cheating on the GST a lesser offence than stealing from their employer or parking illegally in a disabled spot, says Canada Revenue Agency research. Paying cash to avoid the federal sales tax is “excused because it is seen as ‘the little guy’ trying to save a little money,” said an Agency study.
