Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and MPs yesterday demanded assurances cabinet will not strong-arm collections of a national carbon tax. The finance department in Access To Information memos said the tax is an issue in renegotiating cash transfers to provinces – a measure one MP called “a gun to the head”.
Loan defaults under federal small business guarantees have increased 21 percent since 2013. The cost of claims rose as cabinet increased loan limits to $1 million: “Is this big program with a large bureaucracy really what we need?”
The Department of Canadian Heritage is budgeting $10 million for a national Indian Residential Schools monument. Staff in Access To Information memos expressed concern a smaller, more modest memorial would be dwarfed by a $7.4 million National Holocaust Monument: “The memorial would require up to five years to build.”
The finance department will not introduce any new tax credit for commuters after eliminating a $200 million-a year program, say officials. The department rated a 15 percent Public Transit Tax Credit as ineffective: “Credits are not the best way.”
A federal department is purchasing book scanning technology to copy thousands of library titles. Publishers and writers have objected to use of scanners as a breach of copyright: “Once a scanner is in use, copyright lines are easily crossed.”
Conservative MPs vow to “fight back” against any cabinet attempt to restore a Canada Labour Code provision dating from 1944. Cabinet introduced a motion to revive card check certification of new bargaining agents: “The field is tilted towards employers.”
The carbon tax will be “one of the issues” in renegotiating cash funding for provinces in 2019, says a secret Department of Finance memo. Staff declined comment on the document obtained through Access To Information: ‘There is a change to the treatment of carbon revenues.’
MPs have sped passage of a bill celebrating the Canadian seal hunt. The May 20 observance coincides with the European Union’s Maritime Day. A 2009 E.U. ban decimated seal exports: ‘We do not judge them nor should they judge us.’
Most Canadians who’ve purchased homes on flood plains are unaware of the fact, says University of Waterloo research. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said homeowners have a responsibility to plan for disasters: “A changing climate is having serious impacts.”
MPs on the Commons industry committee have rejected amendments to a statistics bill despite protests from three former chief statisticians. Ex-heads of Statistics Canada said the legislation sanctions political interference in the agency’s work: “We have to rely on the Senate.”
We don’t subsidize
our aerospace industry.
We just hand them a
15-year interest-free, 372 million dollar
loan
so those at the helm
can turn the ship as they please
– shares, bonuses, and salary hikes, to senior executives –
leaving 14,500 laid-off employees to
fend for themselves.
The sign may say Bombardier;
the course, Costa Concordia.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Politics are rough and failure is never celebrated. Conservatives choose a new leader May 27. The party lost 235,000 votes in the last election. New leadership may bring great change, or none at all. George Drew, John Bracken, “Fighting Bob” Manion – all were intriguing characters with rich biographies whose federal party leadership ended in failure, and today are forgotten even by Conservatives.
“I am not the only Conservative (or former Conservative) who believes that our party (or former party) has betrayed both its own best traditions and the Canadian people by practicing a quality of politics unworthy of the country,” writes former MP Tom McMillan. “Interviews and correspondence I conducted with a large number of my former cabinet colleagues and ministerial and political staff for this book revealed to me, in private, a shocking level of discontent with the party.”
McMillan’s memoirs are agonizing and intriguing at the same time. This is how teammates talk in the locker room after a championship loss. “I myself believe a once-great national institution is in ruins, or will be if the Conservative Party membership at large does not soon come to its senses,” writes McMillan.
“A broad swath of the party is progressive but went underground during the Stephen Harper leadership years,” he says. “They were intimidated to the point of paralysis by the power that the prime minister and his tight inner circle ruthlessly wielded over both the party and the government and, ultimately, the country. Many Tories just gave up.”
Not My Party: The Rise and Fall of Canadian Tories is part memoir, part score-settling. It reveals the emotional investment politicians make in their party and its methods. It details the glory of victory and despair of defeat. It is personal.
McMillan describes John Diefenbaker as mentally unhinged and Reformers as bigots. McMillan met Stephen Harper once, but says the ex-Calgary MP “corrupted what it means to be a Conservative”. McMillan is angry, not least of all with media. “The internet – such a force for good in many other ways – has rendered politics a murderous killing field for people’s reputations,” he writes.
“A lot of the scrutiny is unfair and unbalanced or just plain wrong,” says McMillan. “By the time offenders are exposed and taken to task – if that happens at all – the public, with the attention span of a hummingbird, has already flitted to the next hyped ‘BREAKING NEWS’ story, the next faux exposé, the next manufactured scandal, or whatever else is in line to feed the rapacious ratings beast. And the ‘news’ cycle continues. Perpetually.”
Politics are stressful and hard-bitten and sometimes venomous, and Not My Party bares it all. Very successful politicians typically keep these team secrets to themselves. Voters have their own troubles.
Perhaps what Conservatives need is not a snarling, slashing score-settler but a character like Leslie Frost. As Ontario premier in the 1950s, Frost was so tyrannical he once went six months without calling a caucus meeting, and could cuss cabinet members like a WWI infantryman. Frost was a combat veteran. He knew how to bark orders.
Yet in public, Frost projected the warm image of a small-town Rotarian who served homemade sandwiches to reporters and campaign staff. “The Great Tranquilizer”, one opponent called him.
“I come to you as Leslie Frost the man, with no trappings of office – just a servant of the people,” Frost said in his last campaign. He went out a winner.
By Holly Doan
Not My Party: The Rise and Fall of Canadian Tories, from Robert Stanfield to Stephen Harper, by Tom McMillan; Nimbus Publishing; 624 pages; ISBN 9781-7710-84239; $34.95
Senators last evening passed a bill mandating prompt payment to trades and subcontractors on federal public works. A Senate committee heard testimony that large general contractors typically pocket government payments to finance operations, then defer settlement of bills with small suppliers: “We want something done. Figure it out. Find a way.”
The new president of the Public Service Commission promises to do more to hire medically-released veterans. A 2015 law promising preferential government hiring of ex-military has largely failed, authorities say: “No veteran deserves to be left behind like this.”
Captive whales are content and don’t miss ocean life any more than household dogs miss running in packs, says the chief veterinarian of the Vancouver Aquarium. The comments came during Senate fisheries committee review of a bill to ban the purchase and transfer of whales in captivity: “They have happy lives with happy people.”
