New records show a federal blacklist of Freedom Convoy sympathizers was privately circulated to thousands of corporations. No account to date has documented the consequences for individuals named under the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act by a cabinet order subsequently ruled unlawful: “There was no verification.”
Repeal of electric car mandates will save Canadians billions a year, according to new federal figures. Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin on Saturday served legal notice that mandates suspended six months ago will be permanently abolished: ‘Risk of job losses in the Canadian auto sector need to be considered.’
Opposition to a $90 billion regional high speed rail venture is growing, the Department of Infrastructure admits. An internal memo warned impending deadlines must be met if Alto Corporation, the Crown agency overseeing the project, is to start construction in 2029: “The project is increasingly scrutinized for its cost, timeline and potential impacts on communities and agricultural land.”
A legal scholar has filed a constitutional challenge against Québec to save the Oath Of Allegiance to the King. The Supreme Court of Canada is to hear a separate challenge of the oath required of MPs, senators and new citizens: “Abolition of the Oath Of Allegiance requires unanimous consent of Parliament and the provinces.”
The warmth of the summer sun,
Fades as it sets below the mountain,
Alongside the lake,
In the Okanagan.
Sitting on the bench,
Ice cream melts,
Before you can eat it,
In the perfect summers eve.
Golden shoes,
On a child,
Who will never run,
Pushed along by his mother.
Remind one,
Of what’s just below,
The veneer of this world,
And the heart aches in a way that can’t be expressed.
The same way it does,
For a nation that,
Will never run again,
Subsumed to the diktat of the PMO.
Golden hopes wearing golden shoes,
Remind one,
Of what’s at stake,
On the perfect summer eve.
By W.N. Branson
In 1968 the government passed a Narcotic Drugs Act to pursue a “vision of a drug-free society.” Thousands of people were jailed. Even simple possession of marijuana was punishable by up to six months’ in custody. Drug testing was punitive and commonplace and treatment was “based on obtaining complete abstinence,” noted a federal report.
The country was not the U.S. but Sweden. The scheme worked. Marijuana use by young Swedes fell to 9 percent, less than half Canada’s comparable rate.
Few analysts ever mentioned Sweden in our national debate over marijuana policy. Discussion was coloured instead by the politics, religion and demography of the U.S. Even the title of Paula Mallea’s pre-legalization book The War On Drugs, is an American invention.
Drug policy is complex. It was the subject of seven parliamentary committee reports and commissions in 30 years. It’s also divisive. No government achieved any consensus, though Mallea notes most Canadians might agree simple possession should not be a felony.
Mallea worked as a defence lawyer for drug defendants in Manitoba and Ontario. She recalls one client, Jane, who lost her job after pleading guilty to smoking marijuana at a house party: “I expect she has not worked at a decent job since, much like thousands of others across the country, because her criminal record will be held against her.”
“You would think that someone who has defended legions of drug offenders in criminal court would have formed a substantial and sophisticated opinion on the war on drugs, but you would be wrong,” Mallea writes. “I knew it was a cruel and wasteful system, but the question of what to do about it never surfaced long enough to produce an informed opinion.”
War On Drugs is constructive but speaks mainly to the like-minded. “Drugs are just drugs,” writes Mallea. “Why did we think it appropriate to criminalize people for ingesting substances that we disapprove of, even when there was no victim and no violence involved?”
Well, yes. But we also punished people who did not pay parking tickets or sold milk off-quota. The author cites with approval a 2002 Senate report that recommended legalization of marijuana, but fails to mention the recommendation came with a warning: “An exemption regime making cannabis available to those over the age of 16 could probably lead to an increase in cannabis use for a certain period.”
Our drug debate was coloured by selective statistics, anti-Americanism and blanket assertions camouflaged as fact. At pre-legalization hearings of the Commons health committee, former Victoria councillor Philippe Lucas asserted marijuana smokers were just smarter than everybody else, a claim that angered then-Conservative MP Terence Young (Oakville,Ont.):
Canada didn’t have the drug laws we had because of evildoers in Parliament or vast right-wing conspiracies. We had them because opinions were hardened on both sides, and politicians saw no profit in devoting the time and deft touch required to build a consensus – or investigate how it worked in Sweden.
By Holly Doan
The War On Drugs: A Failed Experiment by Paula Mallea; Dundurn Press; 256 pages; ISBN 9781-4597-22897; $22.99
Debt levels for the working poor are now “staggering,” says one of the country’s largest credit monitors. Equifax Canada yesterday in a report to the Commons industry committee said financial circumstances for millions are much worse than headlines indicate: “This gap has widened drastically.”
Newly-declassified records show cabinet’s 2005 decision to send Canadian troops into combat in Afghanistan followed cursory discussion. Casualties would number 2,229 including 158 killed in action: “The Canadians would be the best equipped task force in Afghanistan.”
Opposition members yesterday compelled the Commons public safety committee to address the detention of an accused Chinese-Canadian spy at NATO. “Canadians need answers,” said Conservative MP Frank Caputo (Kamloops-Thompson, B.C.): “What happened?”
The Canadian Embassy in Washington yesterday had no comment after it interrupted trade negotiations to celebrate Justin Trudeau’s dating habits. “Kinda chic to date Katy Perry,” staff posted on the Embassy’s official Instagram account: “I get the PR value but it just doesn’t seem very prime ministerial.”
Operators of a radio service for German-speaking Alberta farm families yesterday won federal approval to expand programming to “satisfy demand for local content,” said the CRTC. It follows Census data showing French outside Québec has been eclipsed as a second, third and fourth language in many provinces: ‘One in four Canadians had a mother tongue other than English or French.’
Heritage Minister Marc Miller on a July junket to the United Kingdom scheduled confidential briefings on a Labour Party proposal to promote “social cohesion,” according to an Access To Information memo. A Labour report targeted individuals it called “digital grifters” and “politicians of grievance.”
Cabinet’s $90 billion regional high speed railway faces new barriers, specifically land use restrictions at federally-designated historic places along the proposed route including a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Parks Canada in an Access To Information memo expressed concern over “possible impacts.”
Canada was the best prepared country in the world for pandemic risk, officials boasted in newly-declassified 2005 cabinet minutes made public yesterday. The Public Health Agency to date has failed to explain what went wrong: “Canada was the best prepared among countries for a pandemic risk.”
Sales of heat pumps grew sixfold nationwide even before cabinet launched a costly subsidy program to promote their use, new figures from the Canada Energy Regulator showed yesterday. The devices were most popular in Atlantic Canada where oil furnaces had been a mainstay of home heating: “Once you make the switch to get off oil and gas you can save hundreds.”
