New Democrats deserve consideration as the Party with the balance of power in the minority Parliament, leader Don Davies said yesterday. Cabinet publicly rejected any waiver that would grant NDP members crucial votes on Commons committees: “We are going to be able to play a profoundly important role in this Parliament.”
Allowing a million foreign students into the country cost Canadian jobs and wages, Bank of Canada research shows. The latest study confirmed a 2022 employment department report that foreign labour had a “significant” impact in some sectors: “They accounted for a larger share of workers in low skilled occupations, replacing Canadian born workers.”
MPs yesterday elected their fourth Speaker in six years. Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac-Saint Louis, Que.), 67, an eight-term Liberal MP, told the Commons: “We are all equal here.”
Liberal MP Greg Fergus (Hull-Aylmer, Que.), first Black nominee elected Commons Speaker, yesterday was denied a second term in secret balloting. Fergus admitted errors that saw 149 MPs demand his ouster: “To be frank, it would have been a difficult time for anyone in that role.”
More than a third of Canadians are “feeling hopeless” about climate change, especially young people, says in-house research by the Department of Environment. Canadians over 55 expressed less alarm: “I felt isolated with no one to rely on.”
Canadian banks, credit unions and other cash dealers have reported more than 2.6 million suspicious transactions since the pandemic, Access To Information records show. The reporting coincided with cabinet’s unmet pledge to create a new police agency to fight white collar crime: “It is a step above simple suspicion.”
The next two years “will be challenging” as millions of low-cost mortgages come up for renewal, says Canada’s chief bank inspector. The warning from Superintendent of Financial Institutions Peter Routledge follows federal data showing most mortgage borrowers are already struggling: “2025 and 2026 will be challenging years.”
Liberal MP Greg Fergus (Hull-Aylmer, Que.) today is seeking re-election as Speaker of the Commons one year after he narrowly escaped ouster for partisanship. Fergus complained he was held to a “higher standard” as the first Black Speaker: “You want to make sure you lead the way so you won’t be the last.”
The Prime Minister’s Office has quietly shelved a First Nations folk tale from its annual observance of the 1914 Komagata Maru incident. The Office omitted all reference to disputed claims the Musqueam First Nation played a heroic role in aiding South Asian immigrants: “I would expect that federal cabinet ministers, before they made it part of the public record, would have verified it.”
The newest member of the 45th Parliament yesterday said he hoped for a national rematch within 18 months. Jonathan Rowe’s election by 12 votes was certified Friday by a Superior Court judge: “Forty-eight hours ago I was still wondering where I was going to be today.”
Security cameras
caught you stealing.
In one country
they take you to the city square,
amputate your hand.
In another
they bring you to court,
lay charges,
present the evidence.
You ask me to join you
in demanding an end
to such acts of oppression.
After all,
authorities should not be spying
on their own citizens.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
High inflation, chronic deficits, shaky central bank leadership: This is the 2020s but also 1985. The parallel is striking. Michael Wilson in posthumous memoirs recalls an unpleasant meeting with then-Governor Gerald Bouey of the Bank of Canada where he could not get straight answers to important questions.
“When he sensed my building frustration he finally answered one of my questions by saying to me, ‘I don’t know, Minister. What do you think?’” writes Wilson. “What did I think? I exploded in frustration. ‘Gerry,’ I said, ‘I have been waiting for more than twenty years to get the inside information on what you guys are thinking about the financial markets. I finally get to ask you what happens in this Black Box and now you ask me what I think?’ I came to understand that the Bank knew little more about financial market facts than bond traders.”
Something Within Me is timely and unnerving. Why do smart people go to Ottawa and fall to pieces? Wilson explains it unwittingly, as if the captain of the Hindenburg titled his memoirs How To Navigate An Electrical Storm.
Since 1970 Canada has had eleven finance ministers who could not balance a budget. Michael Wilson was one of them. As fellow Upper Canada College alumni Michael Ignatieff would put it, “We didn’t get it done.”
Wilson was an investment banker from Hamilton. “Many will assess my childhood as privileged,” he writes. One ancestor was vice president of Standard Chemical. Another was Lord Mayor of Liverpool.
His father was president of National Trust. Wilson hints at a conflicted relationship between the two. “At some point during many of my speeches I would see my father periodically slump over his knees, his head at his hands, as if groaning: ‘When will this ever end?’” he writes.
Wilson the private school boy took up ballroom dancing lessons – it was “the thing to do in social circles,” he explains – and joined a fraternity, Kappa Alpha. He scored in the 97th percentile on his Harvard Business entry exam and loved to golf in Scotland. “I was never interested in being poor,” he writes. “Who would be?”
He had a mania for fiscal prudence. Something Within Me invokes the flavour of Wilson’s speeches 37 years ago. “Living within our means represented the core of our approach,” writes Wilson. “The best medicine often has a bitter taste.” “It doesn’t take Economics 101 to grasp the most efficient way out of debt.” So writes the man who didn’t get it done.
Here is the timeliness of Wilson’s memoirs. Something Within Me makes it plain why Harvard Business came to Ottawa and failed: inertia, naïveté, lack of feral cunning or political awareness. Wilson betrays jarring analysis that is difficult to fathom. Even years after watching protests against his GST nearly destroy the Conservative Party he defends the tax in Biblical terms: “The Egyptians imposed taxes on cooking oil and other necessities as far back as 2000 BC.”
Wilson comes closest to a mea culpa on page 183. Politics is hard, he writes. “My background in finance and investment qualified me at least to some extent for the finance minister portfolio. But there was no way I could have brought similar levels of expertise on issues affected by decisions I made.”
“It never crossed my mind that I would be responsible for the impact of tariffs on mushroom growers or the challenge of determining taxation levels on software developers,” writes Wilson. “This proved a real stretch for someone with an introverted nature and a decidedly lower level of self-confidence than most born political leaders.”
Michael Wilson is gone. Inflation, deficits and an inept central Bank remain. His spirit marches on.
By Holly Doan
Something within Me: A Personal and Political Memoir, by Michael Wilson; University of Toronto Press; 352 pages; ISBN 9781-4875-44386; $24.95
Cabinet’s $393,000-a year science advisor Dr. Mona Nemer assigned seven employees to work on UFOs, according to records. Authorities yesterday said staff compiled tens of thousands of pages of research most Canadians rated pointless when questioned in a federal survey: “Enthusiasm and responses have been uneven.”
The first petition of the 45th Parliament asks that cabinet apologize for the transatlantic slave trade. The petition was sponsored without comment by New Democrat MP Gord Johns (Courtenay-Alberni, B.C.): “Apologize for the historical and ongoing injustice.”
The Canada Pension Plan tripled wartime investments in Israel even as dozens of MPs demanded an international boycott of Jewish industry. Pension managers put more than a third of a billion in Israel from banks to supermarkets: ‘We navigate these turbulent times.’
