New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh yesterday said he has “not had any circumstances” to drop candidates including one who posted anti-Semitic conspiracies on Instagram. Party headquarters declined to answer numerous questions regarding the New Democrat who claimed Jews controlled the Government of Canada: “Has the NDP had to drop any candidates so far in this race?”
A Crown bank yesterday declined comment on its broadcast of TV and YouTube ads during the general election campaign. A federal policy forbids taxpayer-funded promotions in a writ period: “It it is especially important to avoid anything that could call into question political impartiality.”
Canada’s leading prescription drug middleman is under investigation by federal anti-trust lawyers. The Competition Bureau in a Federal Court affidavit questioned the business practices of Express Scripts Canada Services of Mississauga, Ont.: ‘The inquiry is focused on alleged patient steering and margin squeezing.’
Liberal MP Paul Chiang (Markham-Unionville, Ont.) last night abruptly resigned while under RCMP investigation after threatening a political rival with arrest for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party. “I served with integrity,” said Chiang, a former police sergeant.
Canada must develop its own nuclear weapons program, says the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. The group yesterday released a National Policy Guide recommending Canada arm itself with nuclear warheads as protection against Russian terror and American expansionism: “The future of Canada’s freedom and the freedom of Europe depend on our ability to defend our sovereignty.”
Cabinet to date has spent more than a quarter billion dollars on its Two Billion Trees Program with no deadline yet for completion, says a briefing note by Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s department. It will take several more years to ensure “the right conditions,” wrote staff: “Tree planting at this scale takes time and careful planning.”
All news media will be allowed to assign reporters to televised election debates. The Leaders’ Debates Commission dropped its blacklist of media critical of the Liberal cabinet after twice losing Federal Court challenges over censorship: “It is not the mandate of the Commission to regulate the journalistic profession.”
Alberta Attorney General Mickey Amery in an unusual court application seeks to pre-empt a new trial for a convicted murderer. Canadians deserve “intelligible and transparent reasons” that justify any claim of miscarriage of justice, Amery wrote the Federal Court: ‘They failed to provide any reasons.’
New Democrats yesterday declined comment over a candidate’s claim that Jewish lobbyists controlled the federal cabinet. Remarks by Ehab Mustapha (Mississauga-Erin Mills, Ont.) followed Party leader Jagmeet Singh’s 2021 pledge of more thorough vetting of candidates after two nominees were removed for anti-Jewish remarks: “Groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs have been influencing policy behind closed doors.”
Cabinet’s “safe supply” drug policy was cold-hearted and mean, says Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre. Millions spent on decriminalization in British Columbia and supervised consumption sites nationwide should have been diverted to counseling and treatment, he said: “What was cold-hearted and mean was leaving those people in tent cities dying of drug overdoses.”
Liberals on Saturday night acclaimed a new candidate without any Party meeting in Don Valley North, Ont., the Toronto riding that became the epicentre of foreign interference investigations. Ousted three-term MP Han Dong expressed disappointment: “You were aware then that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had concerns about foreign interference in Mr. Dong’s nomination?”
A federal labour board in the first ruling of its kind has upheld the firing of a government employee for falsely claiming thousands in pandemic relief cheques. “She knew,” wrote an adjudicator with the Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board.
Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard has ordered the Department of Justice to disclose thousands of memos regarding ongoing concealment of postwar files on Nazi fugitives let into Canada. The department promised to comply with a deadline but only after the election campaign: “I order the Minister of Justice to provide a complete response.”
A Mari Usque Ad Mare,
From sea to sea, the last whiffs of,
Nationalism are burned off.
Like an early morning fog.
Panjandrums bloviate,
As they vie for their spots in the,
Newest Order,
A new order for the Ages.
To those violated as they fed their families,
It seems contrived.
To those who lit the beacons,
It seems needless.
But sea to sea is the prize,
And sea to sea,
To sea,
A fortress is to be built,
It’s a hard thing,
The lesson not taught,
But the father rarely sits the child down,
And explains,
The true danger lies in paying attention.
By W. N. Branson
When picking his first cabinet in 2006 Prime Minister Stephen Harper arranged an odd series of background checks with an aide. Harper sat at one end of a table, the aide sat at the other end and asked all the embarrassing questions you’d expect of appointees being vetted for cabinet.
The arrangement meant candidates had to answer the aide while turning their back to the Prime Minister. With one exception all candidates faced the aide while saying, “Yes, Prime Minister,” “No, Prime Minister,” recounts Off And Running. The personal thoughts of cabinet appointees are lost to history.
By anecdote and candid interviews, author David Zussman recounts one of the most profound and least-chronicled democratic rituals, the peaceful transition of governments. The experience is “limited to a small, relatively secret team of people who work in isolation and away from the public eye,” notes Zussman, a former Privy Council assistant secretary.
“No one in government is ready for the monster of government,” Zussman quotes a former aide. “One characteristic of a newly elected government is that it is rarely ready for the demands and decisions that are required during the post-election period.”
Few had a rockier start than Harper. He suffered a severe asthma attack on the day he gave his first speech as Prime Minister-designate, presumably due to stress, and after the cabinet vetting process included among the new ministers a rival MP just elected as a Liberal, and his campaign manager newly minted as a senator.
Off And Running explains how post-election transition works. Some of this is ponderous. Are readers wiser for learning a former deputy minister developed a Hundred And Fifty Day Book to “help ministers survive the first months in government”? Nor are transitions inherently dramatic or meaningful. Canadians conduct themselves pretty well without bread riots or arson fires regardless of who is in government.
Yet Professor Zussman has a reporter’s eye for detail and a knack for snappy interviews. Readers are told for the first time that former Conservative staffer Derek Burney thought the size of Harper’s 38-member cabinet was ridiculous: “I think it’s egregious. I think it’s obscene. It’s not even helpful.”
They learn Paul Martin picked his cabinet in part on the views of his wife. “Sheila had a very strong view about what was going to happen to certain people because of her relationship with their spouses,” writes Zussman. “In the cases of some appointments, you could tell that a certain degree of cabinet-making had taken place in the bedroom”.
And we are told Mila Mulroney petrified the staff. Longtime Conservative aide Geoff Norquay recalls meeting her for the first time in 1984 with children in tow. “One of them made the mistake of saying, ‘Mommy, I’m bored,’” he recounted. “And there was this stream of Serbian that erupted, and ended in English. The last thing she said was, ‘In politics, you are never allowed to be bored!’ And she’s saying that to a six-year old, a four-year old, and a two-year old, very seriously. I vowed at that point never to cross Mila Mulroney.”
Off and Running reminds readers the monster of government is still run by human beings. Thank heavens.
By Holly Doan
Off and Running: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Government Transitions in Canada, by David Zussman; University of Toronto Press; 299 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-15274; $29.95
