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Third Borrow For Food, Rent

A third of Canadians borrow from friends or run up credit card debt to buy food, pay the rent or cover other monthly expenses, says in-house federal research. Figures show nearly 4 in 10 people surveyed now carry credit card balances typically charged at 19 percent: ‘There are difficult economic conditions.’

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Feds Enforcing Law That Isn’t

The Canada Revenue Agency yesterday would not comment on warnings it will enforce a $17.4 billion increase in capital gains taxes though the measure never passed Parliament. An Agency manager publicly stated auditors will “continue to administer the proposed legislation” as if it was law: “This makes no sense at all.”

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Feds Admit Olympian Gaffe

Parks Canada admits it got its facts wrong in a historical commemoration. The agency called Saskatchewan high jumper Ethel Catherwood the first Canadian woman to win a gold medal in Olympic track and field. Catherwood was neither Canadian nor the first gold medalist: ‘We ask those who covered the story to issue a correction.’

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Report Spikes Pension Claim

Alberta’s share of the Canada Pension Plan is only worth a third the amount claimed by the province, says a federal report. The analysis by Canada’s Chief Actuary was commissioned after Premier Danielle Smith released data stating Alberta was owed more than half the fund: ‘It is of particular significance.’

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44th Parliament Unraveling

Parliament must cut short its five-week Christmas recess to end “total mayhem” in the federal cabinet, says Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre. The appeal followed the loss of more Commons votes that left the two-member Green Party as the only opposition caucus to support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “I have never seen anything like it. It is hallucinogenic.”

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Wants Spanking Criminalized

Spanking harms children and should be criminalized, says the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime. Benjamin Roebuck in a letter to senators said Parliament must repeal an 1892 clause of the Criminal Code that allows parents to use reasonable force to correct misbehaving children: “I remain deeply concerned about violence experienced by children.”

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54% OK’d In Single Province

Homeowners in one province, Prince Edward Island, accounted for more than half of successful federal applications for the subsidized purchase of heat pumps, records show. Islanders’ claims numbered in the thousands while only a handful of Prairie homeowners qualified for grants: “How many?”

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Sunday Poem: “135-58”

 

Ancient verdant seats,

Filled in absentia and

Used to breathtaking effect.

 

Bewildered subjects of

His Majesty,

Flash with a piercing light.

 

Tremors are felt within,

And an undercurrent builds,

To a dangerous quavering.

 

The Law of the Land,

As rags to the cleaner in the stall.

But bereft of the honour found in that work.

 

Incompetence or malfeasance,

The result is the same at the end.

As Buster Keaton ponders the Pacific

And turns around.

 

By W.N. Branson

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Review: It Was 38° With Many Snakes

It was Canada’s longest military deployment. On Sunday March 15, 1964 peacekeepers landed in Cyprus and stayed 29 years. The mission cost some $700 million and saw deployment of the nation’s last aircraft carrier, HMCS Bonaventure.

There is no library of literature on the Cyprus mission. The island itself was a beach resort for English tourists. No Victoria Crosses were awarded, no wounded veterans came home to parades. For all that, Under the Blue Beret should be required reading for anyone who is thinking of joining the military.

In crisp prose author Terry Burke captures the minutiae of army life. It is neither heroic nor desperate. It is nothing like the military caricatured by non-combatants. It is what it is.

Burke’s account of his service as a peacekeeper in Cyprus and the Middle East runs as a series of indelible vignettes. Here’s one: Christmas, Cyprus, hot and snake-infested, soldiers assemble in a mess hall to watch a film of holiday greetings from families back home. It was a bad idea, Burke writes. The film became a sequence of crying children and frazzled spouses.

“At some point I heard someone suggesting that maybe the projector should be turned off, but it just kept going as the images of family after family rolled across the screen,” he recalls. “Even in the semi-darkness of the room you could see the tightly locked faces of those watching.” Later they got drunk and started fistfights.

Cyprus beyond the beach resorts is an oven where the average daily temperature is 38 Celsius. More than 25,000 Canadians were deployed through the island, mandated to enforce a ceasefire between warring Turks and Greeks: “All that separated the opposing groups was a small outpost, with a U.N. soldier patrolling the road between them.” Burke writes that one observation post was nearly the size of a phone booth, equipped with a Korean War-vintage radio and a hot tin roof.

Later the Canadians made barracks in a bullet-riddled structure in downtown Nicosia that had once been a five-star hotel. He remembers the chandelier in the mess hall.

And, there were the people. Burke recalls a Turkish lieutenant who spoke fluent English. He’d been a student at Boston University. Or the street peddler, a 10-year old boy who sold coffee to soldiers at a handsome profit, 20¢ a cup. Or the little girl trampled at a refugee camp as Burke tried to hand her bread. Or the Canadian corporal who became unhinged and started decapitating cats.

And, he remembers being reunited with his own son as a 10-month old infant who screamed in protest when Burke tried to give him a hug. “The look of fright in his eyes told me he wanted absolutely nothing to do with this man in the strange uniform.”

Under the Blue Beret is neither a celebration nor exposé of military life. It is just the truth.

By Holly Doan

Under the Blue Beret: A U.N. Peacekeeper in the Middle East by Terry Burke; Dundurn; 256 pages; ISBN 9781-4597-08327; $22.99

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Coast Guard’s Rated Obsolete

The Canadian Coast Guard in an internal report says its fleet is so old it now spends a third of a billion a year on maintenance as “30 percent of vessels have less than five years left.” Defence Minister Bill Blair counts Coast Guard spending in claiming Canada is on a path to meeting minimum NATO requirements for military preparedness: “The age, condition and obsolescence of Coast Guard vessels and their electronics and informatics infrastructure represent a key risk.”

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