Health Canada proposes to place tiny warning labels on individual cigarettes in a bid to lower smoking rates. Currently 5.3 million Canadians are casual or daily smokers: “The goal would be to increase awareness.”
Millions of people should join in 2019 film and photo celebrations of “queer Canadian history”, the heritage department predicts in Access To Information records. Programs will “educate the mainstream population” on gay milestones. Promoters received a $771,240 federal grant: “The project expects to reach 3.5 million participants.”
Warmest wishes to friends and subscribers for a safe and happy holiday. Blacklock’s pauses to bid you the best of the Christmas season. We’re back on January 2 — The Editor
By 2021 one of the nation’s largest observant religious groups will follow the Koran. Canadian Muslims already outnumber Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Mennonites, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Within seven years they will outnumber Anglicans and United Church members.
Professor Abdolmohammad Kazemipur, a sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, asks The Muslim Question: how exactly will this work out? Never before in Canadian history has national life been directed in no small part by Muslims. For generations officialdom frankly considered the group irrelevant; in 1944 the Dominion Bureau of Statistics deleted “Muslim” from its census questionnaire. “Canada’s encounter with Muslims is unlike that of any other major immigrant-receiving countries,” he writes. “It has a very short history with no colonial past, and Canada has a Muslim population that is both diverse and carefully selected.”
Dr. Kazemipur is originally from Iran. The Muslim Question is candid and compelling. It chronicles a society grappling with a fundamental change. Note Kazemipur’s plea for his co-religionists to be freed from hectoring: “The amount of media coverage they receive is a distinct feature of the lives of Canadian Muslims,” he writes; “One find’s one faith community and identity almost constantly under discussion, mostly in a negative way.”
In evidence Kazemipur cites the Herouxville Town Charter, a snide proclamation endorsed by six Québec municipalities in the manner of the Red Deer Legion that once insisted Sikhs remove their “hats” as a sign of respect for the Queen. Among the Charter’s declarations:
Professor Kazemipur explains: “This perceived unwillingness and/or inability of Muslims to live peacefully in secular democracies is tied to a set of perceptions about Muslims: for example, their strong attachment to their faith, the illiberal contents of their religion, the ‘all-encompassing’ nature of Islam…their proclivity for violence, the predominance of tribal-like loyalties among Muslims, and so on. Such perceptions heavily inform the debates involving Muslims and, from time to time, result in the advocacy of harsh and extreme measures.”
Of course there is more to this. Many Canadians outside the town limits of Herouxville know Muslims as neighbours, co-workers, employers and sweethearts who celebrate traditional Canadian values: hard work; self-reliance; community; family; mind your business and live-and-let-live. “If your fundamental values are not in danger,” one Muslim tells Kazemipur in an interview, “then I think associating yourself with the country you live in is of paramount importance.”
Canada is so big there is room for everybody. This is so fundamental they wrote it into the Constitution. We have no state religion, no official culture, no prohibition on the right of mobility. Kazemipur’s timely book asks, is Canada big enough for 2 million Muslims, too?
By Holly Doan
The Muslim Question in Canada: A Story Of Segmented Integration by Abdolmohammad Kazemipur; University of British Columbia Press; 224 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-27300; $32.95 
The Department of Foreign Affairs is out billions in lost profits on real estate in Tokyo, accounts show. Diplomats bought high and sold low in the costly 1991 construction of a new embassy now worth a fraction its original value: “There was no transparency then, and it’s worse now.”
Santa must not fly under the influence of narcotics, Transport Minister Marc Garneau’s office yesterday wrote in a statement. The news release followed a failed gag last Christmas by a Privy Council think tank that quipped Santa was a climate change refugee forced to flee the North Pole.
Garneau’s office in a statement Newly-Licensed Mrs. Claus To Join Santa As Co-Pilot For This Year’s Flight wrote: “While revising this year’s pre-flight checklist with Mrs. Claus, Minister Garneau stressed how important it is for her, Santa and the reindeer to get adequate rest and to avoid consuming alcohol or drugs to ensure that everyone is fit to fly on this very important mission.”
Cabinet on October 17 made Canada only the second country after Uruguay to legalize recreational marijuana under Bill C-45 An Act Respecting Cannabis. A companion Bill C-46 An Act To Amend The Criminal Code permits random roadside testing by police.
Garneau’s statement also quipped Santa would replace reindeer with remote-controlled drones for future Christmas deliveries. “Transport Canada inspectors traveled to the North Pole to inspect Santa’s sleigh and its safety systems,” wrote staff: “While at the North Pole, the inspectors also had the opportunity to visit Santa’s recently completed drone testing facility where they observed the elves piloting gift delivery drones, a new technology that Santa is exploring for future Christmas deliveries.”
“You Lie To Kids About Santa”
The Santa gag followed a December 19, 2017 statement by the Privy Council agency Policy Horizons Canada headlined Santa Is Moving To The South Pole. “Thanks to rising global temperatures, rapidly melting Arctic ice and human operations in the North, Santa Claus has signed an agreement with the international community to relocate his village next yar to operate in an exclusive zone in the South Pole,” wrote staff.
“Santa’s relocation agreement marks the first time the international community agrees on a common legal definition of climate change that includes refugees as corporations, as well as individuals,” the notice said. “This deal is expected to lead to the deployment of a global climate change refugee visa system that in the near future could help to more easily relocate individuals and corporations facing the impacts of climate change.”
Access To Information records indicate staff thought the Santa joke would “make us cool”, but instead prompted a flood of protests from offended parents. “Seriously, f—k off,” wrote one complainant. “What a thoughtless thing to do.”
Others described Santa quips by Government of Canada employees as “idiotic”, “disgraceful” and “insulting”: “This is pathetic: shame on you,” read one email to Policy Horizons. Others wrote: “You lie to kids about Santa”; “If this is satire, it is an epic fail”; “I can’t believe you would post a falsehood”; “Wow, just when I thought government could not get any worse.”
By Staff
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna yesterday confirmed cabinet is 36 percent short of meeting its climate change target. Higher fuel costs are likely but “minimal”, said McKenna. The admission came hours after Blacklock’s published an internal memo stating cabinet knew it could not achieve its target even with a 12¢ per litre carbon tax on gasoline: “It’s not really about our target.”
The Federal Court in 2019 will hear its first complaint of discrimination since cabinet proposed legislation mandating accessibility for disabled Canadians. A British Columbia man seeks a Human Rights Act probe of conduct by two airlines and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority: “You cannot reason with these people.”
Cabinet has ordered the Royal Canadian Mint to issue a $1 coin commemorating Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 repeal of criminal sanctions on homosexuality. The loonie depicts a figure wearing an earring and the word “equality”.
The Federal Court of Appeal has upheld the firing of a Canada Revenue Agency employee who flashed her employee badge while negotiating a house sale. The firing followed a 2015 complaint from a homeowner selling a property in Laval, Que.: “I work for the Agency.”
The Treasury Board in an Access To Information memo confirms cabinet cannot meet its climate change target with a 12¢ per litre carbon tax on gasoline. The statement contradicts repeated claims by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna: “We have a plan to meet a target.”
Senate Liberals yesterday shrunk to their smallest caucus since 1896 with the departure of a longtime member. Liberals now risk losing official party status in the Senate for the first time since Confederation: “It’s very painful.”
Cabinet is dropping its own deadline for a national plan to promote electric cars. Transport Minister Marc Garneau repeatedly promised results by year’s end. Garneau declined comment: “It would be very, very challenging to reach those targets.”
Alberta dirt bikers face large fines for killing a rare species of fish in a motocross race. A Lethbridge court cited racers for breaching the Fisheries and Species At Risk Acts by speeding through streams that are home to trout near extinction: “Trout died as a result of this race.”
The Federal Court of Appeal has cleared the way for a human rights challenge of elections under the Indian Act. The decision came in the case of a woman who claimed she was disqualified from running for council because her husband was Caucasian: “She was not a person of good character.”
