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Book Review: “I’m Betting On You…”

From 1949 to 1955 cabinet created two Royal Commissions on culture, one on arts and literature, the other on broadcasting. After beating Hitler and mastering hydro dams, the country for the first time was affluent enough to ask what it meant to be Canadian. Ordinary people subscribed to the Book Of The Month Club and their children read W.O. Mitchell at school. Canadian writers – Morley Callaghan, Mordecai Richler, Farley Mowat, Al Purdy – were genuine celebrities and dailies like the Winnipeg Free Press ran a weekly Young Authors contest. The University of Alberta Press documents the era through the warm, nostalgic filter of private letters between one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists and her publisher. It is a sweet book, funny and angry by turn, and a delight to read. READ MORE

CMHC Redefines ‘Affordable’

Housing in Canada is so unaffordable CMHC yesterday changed its definition of affordability. Canadians realistically should not expect a return to market conditions of 20 years ago, said the federal mortgage insurer: "Restoring affordability to levels last seen two decades ago is not realistic." READ MORE

Feds Questioned Graves Story

Parks Canada in confidential staff emails as early as 2023 questioned First Nation claims that 215 children were buried on the grounds of an Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C. No public statement was made since then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had visited the site to “pay my respects to the graves.” READ MORE

Aid Averaged $13K Per Job

A federal agency boasts in a briefing note its jobs program cost taxpayers the equivalent of more than $13,000 per employee on average. Individual grants approved by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario ranged as high as $62,500 per job: "We would have liked more money of course." READ MORE

Hot & Cold Safety Rules Soon

The labour department says it is finalizing new climate change regulations for 1.3 million workers in the federally regulated private sector. New rules would protect workers “affected by very hot or very cold temperatures” on the job: "How are you preparing for this?" READ MORE

Memo Knocks War Protestors

The Department of Foreign Affairs in a 2024 briefing note expressed unease with war protestors who likened Israel to Russia or condemned every Israeli military strike as a breach of international law. "Alleged double standards likening Israel-Gaza to Russia-Ukraine" were disingenuous, wrote diplomats. READ MORE

Vaccine Injury Data Hidden

Managers of a federal Covid vaccine compensation fund are concealing the number of injury and death claims paid at taxpayers’ expense. It follow a 2021 Privy Council memo that urged staff to downplay vaccine-related impacts: "News reports of adverse events following immunization and the government’s response to them have strong potential to influence public confidence in vaccines." READ MORE

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Guest Commentary

Mark Adler

Not A Word To The Children

All our neighbours were Holocaust survivors yet none said a word to the children. Nothing. As a boy I once asked my father about the concentration camp tattoo on his arm. “That was from the war,” my mother said. That was it. We knew intuitively this was a subject too painful to discuss, and never did. Almost everything I know about my father I heard from somebody else. My father’s silence about the war years left me with a sense of unease, that I am missing an important part of who I am.