Canadians are resigned to ever-rising energy costs, says in-house research by the Department of Natural Resources. Expenses for fuel averaged $4,500 a year at pre-inflation prices: “By 2030 do you expect your energy costs will be larger, smaller or the same proportion of your household budget?”
A climate program to phase out diesel generators in Arctic Canada is nowhere near reaching targets despite millions in subsidies, documents show. The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations blamed the pandemic and inflation: “Is it a realistic target to start with?”
Canadians are wary of a federal proposal to build the biggest electronic database of personal information in the nation’s history. In-house Canada Revenue Agency research shows fewer than half of tax filers surveyed trust the Agency to keep the data secure: “Negatives that came to mind most often for participants had to do with data security.”
Attorney General Arif Virani says he is studying “international best practices” in censoring legal content on the internet. Virani gave no examples to follow when questioned by reporters: “We are looking at international best practices.”
A federal backlog of air passenger complaints is now over 60,000, a new record, despite millions in extra funding for the Canadian Transportation Agency. Wait times were “unacceptable,” said the Agency assigned to help passengers whose travels were disrupted by poor service: “It is taking steps to eliminate the backlog.”
A federal program to plant two billion trees must be “nimble,” says Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s department. The plan unveiled in the 2019 election has planted 110 million trees to date at an undisclosed cost: “Ensure the program meets its goals.”
A federal aid program for homeless veterans provided shelter for 277 people in four years, a fraction of the need, records show. The Department of Veterans Affairs insisted the program prioritizes ex-soldiers, sailors and air crew: “There are more than 2,600 veterans who experience homelessness annually.”
Politicians are not cats.
They do not eat kibbles from a bowl
do not catch flies on the window glass
do not sharpen their claws on furniture
do not sit on your morning paper
do not play with empty plastic bags.
Cats would feast
on the dead body of their owner
if there is no food around.
Politicians are nicer than that.
They only sink their teeth
into living members
of their own species.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
When 167 members of the Canadian Staff Band of the Salvation Army perished at sea in the 1914 sinking of the Empress Of Ireland, mass public observances were held. A prominent memorial was built in Toronto. The Royal family donated $132,000 to a victims’ fund. Canadian newspapers for 40 years afterward marked the anniversary date with annual features.
When 329 people, mostly Canadians, perished at sea in the 1985 Air India bombing, there was no fund, no mass public mourning. The only memorial was in County Cork, Ireland, near the spot where Flight 182 took whole families to their death. Few Canadians recall the year this mass murder occurred.
The victims were modest people of ordinary means and little public profile. Would it have been different if 329 bankers died, or 329 tennis players? Of course. Would it have been different if 329 white Christians died? Remembering Air India answers this last, jarring question.
“State-sponsored efforts to memorialize the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182 within Canada are quite recent, only undertaken with any seriousness beginning in 2007,” editors write. “An annual memorial service has been held – conspicuously, not in Canada but in Ahakista, Ireland – since the first anniversary of the bombing.”
Remembering Air India is a poignant postmortem on memory and culture. The Empress Of Ireland is honoured with a Canada Post stamp and a commemorative Mint coin. In the Air India murders, no stamp, no coin; the Department of Foreign Affairs did not think to send a single consular officer to County Cork to assist families who’d rushed to Ireland to identify their dead. Prime Minister Stephen Harper 25 years later apologized for the “scant respect or consideration” paid victims’ families.
“Victims did not fit popular imaginings of who is a Canadian citizen,” writes contributor Maya Seshia of the University of Alberta. “The coming together of race and nation, the equation of whiteness to Canada and Canadians, continued to impact ideas about who was a Canadian and what events were considered nationally significant. Race overwhelmed victims’ Canadian citizenship.”
There are memorials now, a generation later, located in obscure parks in Toronto, Vancouver and Montréal. The memorial in Ottawa, erected in 2008, is not on any tourist map, and difficult to find. “There were no Canadian people to wipe my tears,” authors quote Donna Ramah Paul, who lost her brother, sister-in-law and two nieces – an entire young family – on Flight 182.
Remembering Air India acknowledges subsequent corrections to the record, including a Harper-ordered inquiry and 2005 declaration of June 23 as a National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism. But this took a generation. Winnipeg poet Uma Parameswaran writes:
By Holly Doan
Remembering Air India: The Art of Public Mourning, edited by Chandrima Chakraborty, Amber Dean & Angela Failler; University of Alberta Press; 360 pages; ISBN 9781-7721-22596; $29.95
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will not release federal research justifying cabinet claims a GST holiday for builders will lower rents. Freeland called it confidential: “The Department of Finance doesn’t have very much respect for elected officials.”
Senators yesterday rejected a proposal to bill taxpayers up to $54,000 a year for sponsored Twitter and LinkedIn posts. A committee balked not at the expense but a condition banning partisan posts: “You may have to change how you use social media if you take the money.”
Cabinet is happy to help the CBC defend itself from the Conservative Party, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said yesterday. “It is something I hold very dear,” St-Onge testified at the Commons heritage committee: “I am really looking forward to talking more to Canadians about the future of the CBC.”
Thirty-three political aides, appointees and cabinet ministers traveled with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to a September 19 climate change conference in New York, records show. It followed a budget promise to cut spending on travel this year: “A better tomorrow requires effort.”
The Commons yesterday joined in all-party jeering of a Canadian Human Rights Commission report calling Christmas a racist observance “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism.” The House unanimously condemned the report: “It is still incredible we have to remind people Christmas is not discriminatory.”
