Draft regulations on a first-ever federal ban on food ads targeting children have again been deferred. Advertisers warn the ban would cost a billion a year: “Industry is critical of the government advancing regulations.”
Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu’s department redefined “short term” to show progress in eliminating “long term” boiled water advisories on First Nations, records show. A Department of Indigenous Services report yesterday acknowledged even with the redefinition many First Nations will have undrinkable tap water into 2025 and beyond: “We can simply change the definition.”
Parks Canada managers two years ago acknowledged they failed to take full precautions to save Jasper, Alta. from wildfires, documents show. Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault was told Park managers failed to carry out controlled burns of dead pine trees that posed an obvious fire risk: “My heart is broken.”
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s department in focus group research says Canadians do not see “a clear path forward” on climate programs, question the point of federal regulations and are wary of the cost. There was “too much money spent too soon and too many risks taken,” said a report.
New federal data confirm Canadians are becoming more sharply divided over record high immigration quotas. Worries range from housing shortages to foreigners “causing Canada to change in ways they don’t like.”
Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory has finally installed X-ray scanners six years after suspected Chinese spies were found working at the Winnipeg facility, says a Department of Health briefing note. Other measures include a new rule prohibiting visitors from wandering the halls without a security escort: “See how easy it was.”
Home equity savers typically pay it forward to make their children homebuyers, says a Bank of Canada study. Researchers said the incidence of parents co-signing mortgages tripled in a decade: “How important are parents?”
Pedestrian crossing
downtown Ottawa
marked by silhouette:
John Cleese performing Silly Walk.
Tribute to a humourist
and the beauty of bureaucrats
handling tax payers’ money.
I look around.
Parliament.
Prime Minister’s Office.
National Defence.
Bank of Canada.
CBC.
All within walking distance.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Border towns have a unique world view rarely documented by historians. The city flag of Lethbridge, Alta. is red, white and blue. The Columbia in British Columbia is named for an American schooner. New York’s Buffalo News used to publish a monthly commentary of legislation passed by Parliament. Most residents of Emerson, Man. can name the best place to eat in Fargo, North Dakota.
Author Brandon Dimmel documents this border culture and its cataclysmic change born from fears of terrorism more than a hundred years ago. Engaging The Line is a smart, crisp account of the First World War’s impact on border life. The topic is not merely timely but compelling.
Most interesting in Dimmel’s account is the story of Windsor, Ont. and neighbouring Essex County, a place so Americanized newsboys used to hawk the Detroit Free Press on local street corners. Longtime residents still speak with a slight Michigan accent discernible to fellow Canadians.
Well into the 1880s Detroit’s fire department took calls in Windsor. For years Windsorites thought nothing of crossing the river to work or take in a Tigers’ ballgame. “Thousands traveled across the line,” writes Dimmel. “Many would make this trip across the border only a few dozen times during their lives, whereas others would do so on a daily basis, having established homes for themselves on one side of the line and using the efficient ferry system of the Detroit River to access employment or entertainment across the boundary.”
Southwest Ontario, like Michigan, had a large ethnic German population. When war came in 1914 the Windsor Evening Post wrote a cautionary editorial contradicting the ballyhoo of Toronto Anglophiles. “This is a time for sober thought,” wrote the Evening Post. “Reflect on the horrible consequences of participating in a war that really does not concern us.”
Engaging The Line dates the end of this era from June 21, 1915 when German saboteurs bombed a garment factory in the Windsor suburb of Walkerville, home of the famous Hiram Walker distillery that bottled Canadian Club. Other explosives were uncovered at the Windsor Armoury, a truck factory and the Invincible Machine Company plant.
“Windsorites were understandably shocked,” writes Dimmel. The border town “came to recognize U.S.-based German sympathizers as a legitimate threat to public safety.”
By 1917 the days of breezy border crossings were over. A cabinet order requiring that cross-border travelers obtain permits prompted a riot at the Windsor Customs office.
“The entire border crossing experience had changed dramatically since 1914, when immigration authorities limited their interrogations to visible and undesirable racial groups, criminals, prostitutes and people with obvious mental and physical illnesses,” writes Dimmel. “Now a fifth-generation Anglo-Saxon Windsor resident with a family living in Ypsilanti and job in downtown Detroit could expect the same kind of attention.”
Engaging The Line is likeable and meticulously researched, a warm account of an era we left behind.
By Holly Doan
Engaging the Line: How the Great War Shaped the Canada-U.S. Border, by Brandon R. Dimmel; University of British Columbia Press; 242 pages; ISBN 9780-77483-2755; $32.95
More than 3,000 Gazans to date have been approved for visas to enter Canada, says a Department of Immigration briefing note. Staff boasted Canada with its 5,000-visa program was “the only country in the world” to offer residency to Gaza residents ineligible under immigration programs: “We are being as flexible as possible.”
Media and public health agencies have misled Canadians on the true impact of federal drug policy, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre yesterday told reporters. “Be more responsible,” said Poilievre: “Results of their policies are plain for all eyes to see.”
Jews last year were targeted in more police-reported hate crimes than any other group, Statistics Canada said yesterday. Anti-Semitism led all other hate crime categories though Jews account for less than one percent of Canada’s population: “I never thought in my lifetime I’d see anti-Semitism like this in our streets.”
A $500 million Loblaw Companies class action settlement in a bread price fixing scandal represents a fraction of industry profits from the alleged conspiracy, according to court records. Loblaw yesterday apologized for cheating customers: “Sorry.”
The federal archives must release all relevant records to determine how many children died at Indian Residential Schools, the Senate Indigenous peoples committee said yesterday. The recommendation follows contradictory evidence regarding “unmarked graves.”
A taxpayer-funded guidebook instructing schoolchildren to identify the Conservative Party with bigots was approved by then-Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen’s office, Access To Information records show. The guide also called the Red Ensign a hate symbol and provided tips on how to confront classmates with incorrect thinking: “Hype up the initiative.”
