Cabinet will not impose fines on agencies that provide English-only service or signage in breach of the Official Languages Act. Four ministers in a formal notice rejected a 2017 Commons languages committee proposal for cash penalties: “Thorough consideration is needed.”
Department of fisheries research confirms a federally-licensed pesticide used by fish farmers posed an environmental hazard. Inspectors twice approved use of a toxic chemical to kill parasites in Atlantic salmon raised in coastal waters: “It’s infuriating, to be frank.”
Parks Canada is conducting fresh research into former governor general John Buchan after the Minister’s office ordered a halt to a planned 2017 commemoration, say Access To Information records. Buchan was a pre-war Nazi appeaser who described Hitler’s 1938 occupation of Austria as “very largely our own blame”.
Parks staff in a January 30 email were told to “begin looking into any issues surrounding Buchan”; “We were advised to off on this one because of potentially negative and sensitive historical associations,” wrote Dr. Alexandra Mosquin, manager of historical services with the agency’s history branch.
Buchan, a Scottish novelist, served as governor general from 1935 to his death from a stroke at Rideau Hall in 1940. “We need to look into his past,” wrote one Parks Canada staffer.
A bronze plaque honouring Buchan was to be unveiled in Ottawa last fall on the 79th anniversary of a Rideau Hall speech in which Buchan suggested Commonwealth veterans serve as peacekeepers in German-occupied territories. Buchan’s November 11, 1938 remarks at a Canadian Legion banquet came two days after Kristallnacht, the anti-Semitic pogrom that saw Jews killed and synagogues burned in Germany. Buchan made no mention of the event.
“All defence carries a face of war,” said Buchan; “The defence of a country is always a difficult question. You dare not neglect it or you may be taken at a sudden disadvantage. But it is possible to overdo it, and thereby increase the very risk which it was intended to prevent.”
Buchan in a February 19, 1939 speech to Canadian Boy Scouts said: “There are many isms today to perplex us – Nazism, communism, fascism and so forth – and the greatest nuisance they are! But most of them will cancel each other out. There is only one ism which kills the soul, and that is pessimism.”
The late novelist Mordechai Richler in 1969 described Buchan as a “virulent anti-Semite”, noting a reference in Buchan’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps referred to “a little white-faced Jew in a bath chair with an eye like a rattlesnake.”
Governor General “Red Flagged”
Access To Information records disclosed Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s office told staff to halt any program to honour Buchan. “I was never given a reason to hold, just that his unveiling would not happen,” wrote one Parks Canada communications officer in a January 12 email; “We were told not to try and move forward with this plaque last year, but we do not know why.”
The agency then proposed to unveil a Rideau Hall plaque to Buchan this year to coincide with the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Awards. “We want to get ready for criticism,” wrote Historian Dr. Mosquin; “It will require ordering the relevant books and articles and looking into the debate online.”
“Do we feel we have done sufficient research to be able to answer any questions?” Mandy McCarthy, director of heritage designations, wrote in a January 15 email. “At this point we do not have a push to plaque this individual, but it should be in our plan somewhere and red-flagged so that we can give the Minister’s Office the head’s up.”
The federal Historical Sites and Monuments Board in 2017 recommended a plaque for Buchan reading: “While Governor General of Canada, Buchan raised national awareness of the Arctic through his 1937 northern tour. He instilled a sense of Canadian pride in the country’s geographical and ethnocultural diversity long before this became official government policy.”
Dr. Richard Alway, chair of the Monuments Board, said in an earlier interview that Canadians should not shrink from controversy in commemorating historical figures. “The whole question is, does commemoration mean the same thing as celebration, or is it simply a matter of historical marking for purposes of identifying significance?” said Alway.
“There are many questions here with respect to naming, de-naming,” said Alway, who cited the removal in Halifax of a statute of Lt.-Gen. Edward Cornwallis, a founder of the city who issued a 1749 bounty for the killing of Mi’kmaq villagers. “I think it is important to step back and take a little bit of time to make sure the consideration is complete, that the principles are well-examined and analyzed, and that there’s a consensus built around them,” said Alway. “Then you go forward with the case by case analysis.”
“Dangerous Rationalization”
Ottawa historian William Galbraith, author of a 2013 biography John Buchan: Model Governor General, wrote Buchan was capable of “dangerous rationalization” about Germany in pre-war years. “The error we too often make is viewing history with hindsight – bad history – and not understanding the opinion and mood of the time itself to explain why people acted and reacted the way they did,” Galbraith told Blacklock’s in 2013.
“What we’re dealing with is a question of approaching history honestly,” said Galbraith. “If we view that period honestly, we see millions of Canadians supporting appeasement well into 1938.”
Galbraith noted there is no evidence Buchan was anti-Semitic; his wife supported Montreal’s Hadassah chapter, and two sons served in the Second World War.
Access files indicated Parks Canada staff initially expressed enthusiasm for a Buchan commemoration. “He is a former GG,” wrote Marie-Helene Brisson, manager of ministerial events in a January 11 email. “Could be a cool thing to do at Rideau Hall.” Buchan introduced the Governor General’s Literary Awards in 1937.
B’nai Brith Canada said it welcomed a frank assessment of Buchan. “Taking the wrong position on a certain issue should not automatically disqualify political figures from commemoration,” said Michael Mostyn, CEO. “B’nai Brith does not believe in erasing uncomfortable parts of our past.”
“Commemoration provides a unique opportunity to assess both the positive and negative aspects of historical figures,” said Mostyn. “Commemoration materials ought to provide a ‘warts and all’ account of these figures that honestly and openly addresses their failings.”
By Staff 
Federal Taxpayers’ Ombudsman Sherra Profit dismissed 3 out of 4 complaints to her office last year, according to records. The office has a $2.3 million annual budget: “People deserve respect.”
The Commons environment committee has approved a Liberal bill mandating an Indigenous perspective on historic commemorations. One Conservative MP cautioned national tributes should not be skewed: “All biases need to be left at the door.”
Canada should beware of the impact of U.S. corporate tax cuts, an International Monetary Fund analyst has told the Senate banking, trade and commerce committee. An earlier Access To Information memo from the Department of Industry said matching U.S. cuts could cost Canada billions: “It could result in profit or production shifting away from Canada.”
The U.S. administration
is crafting its immigration policy.
Newcomers from Africa
are only welcome
if it’s good for the economy.
Which is why Africans
were brought to America
in the first place.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr vows Canada will recover every penny of U.S. duties imposed on softwood lumber shipments. “We will recover the duties that have been collected,” Carr yesterday told the Senate agriculture and forestry committee: “Don’t leave a nickel on the table.”
Library & Archives Canada has permanently sealed records donated by a Canadian lawyer allegedly linked by conspiracy theorists to the JFK assassination. The order appeared to breach a Federal Court ruling that archivists could not hide the files in perpetuity: “What is there to hide?”
Legislators yesterday expressed alarm over threats of high U.S. tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum exports. Cabinet promised “appropriate measures”, but did not elaborate: “Let’s work together to fight foreign-dumped steel from places like China.”
Canada lacks enough trained enforcers to combat cybercrime, the Senate banking, trade and commerce committee was told yesterday. Hearings followed a 2017 Statistics Canada report that digital fraud and other offences have grown 58 percent since 2014: “Follow the money.”
Cabinet faces new controls on borrowing under a Liberal bill yesterday introduced in the Senate. It follows February 27 budget data that current federal debts are worth $1.066 trillion including borrowing by Crown corporations: “Hold the government to account for its management of the public purse.”
Canada Post has lost a bid to fire a manager who sent personal mail at the corporation’s expense. A federal judge upheld an adjudicator’s ruling that dismissal was too harsh.: “Not all dishonest conduct justifies the dismissal of an employee.”
Crown prosecutors say they are not prepared for the impact of legal marijuana. “We’re doing the best we can,” one prosecutor yesterday told the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee: “Do we have enough on the ground for the coming into force of legalization? I don’t think we do.”
A Commons committee yesterday proposed granting a privacy ombudsman unprecedented new powers to pick and choose investigations, audit private companies, and impose five-figure fines for breaches of federal privacy law: “It’s important that I have these powers.”
