Canada

Wednesday June 30, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 30, 2021

Make Canada Day a time for reflection

By almost any standard, Canada can be judged one of the world’s best countries. Yet its riches, rewards and life-changing opportunities are not enjoyed equally by all who inhabit this land.

June 25, 2021

By almost any estimation, Canada’s history is filled with rousing stories of courage, vision and achievement. Yet there remains a long and shameful record of past injustices — many of which have yet to be set right.

Most notably, evidence of the glaring wrongs done to the people who first called this place home is now out in full public view as never before. As shocking as the recent discoveries of almost 1,000 unmarked gravesites at former First Nations residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan have been, they have also provided one more necessary jolt to this nation’s collective conscience.

All these contradictions and paradoxes explain why it is so difficult for people to know how to mark Canada’s 154th birthday on Thursday. Do we wave the flag or lower it to half-mast? More than a year into a devastating pandemic and just as the arrival of another summer offers glimmers of respite, many Canadians ache for something to celebrate, something like the festive national holiday they’ve cherished in years past.

June 2, 2021

Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has wisely called for this July 1st to be a more sober affair. Having reached a similar conclusion, many communities across the country have cancelled their traditional Canada Day festivities.

This is not the same as cancelling Canada Day itself, however, and no one is seriously recommending such a move that would, even for this one, fraught year alone, deny the country its nationwide holiday. But let’s also agree that after the discoveries of the graves of so many First Nations children, many Indigenous people would understandably consider the traditional celebrations with their parades and fireworks to be completely tone-deaf. 

We do not anticipate a clear national consensus on the matter of July 1, 2021. Whatever people do or don’t do this Canada Day, we would only urge everyone to pause and reflect upon what Canada is, how we got here and what remains for us to do — together.

There are abundant national treasures for which we can all give thanks. Judged by our national living standard, our health care and education systems and by the enviable rights and freedoms we enjoy, it is easy to see why this is so. The land itself, in all its staggering beauty and enormity stretching across a continent, lies waiting for new generations to explore. No wonder hundreds of thousands of people from around the world arrive eagerly each year to start a new life with this goal in mind: becoming new Canadians. And how wonderful it is that they do.

June 26, 2018

But none of this can or should drown out the voices of the Indigenous people who knew and loved this land for millennia. They are reminding us daily of what we need to regret, lament and correct. For this to happen, the Trudeau government must move from reflection to taking the action it has promised for years. It continues to ignore far too many of the recommendations from the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

The recent passage through Parliament of new legislation, Bill C-15, could bring overdue, transformative change by codifying with greater meaning than ever before the rights of Indigenous people to their land and self-government. But an even greater commitment to learn and change must be there, not just for our federal leaders but for all of us.

When that happens, even those who feel unable to celebrate the creation of Canada 154 years ago may be able to support something different: the creating of a new Canada today. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday June 29, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 29, 2021

Catherine McKenna quitting federal politics, says years of online attacks were ‘just noise’

After enduring a barrage of online hate and physical attacks on her constituency office during her six years as an MP, Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna announced Monday she will not run again in the next election.

November 24, 2015

McKenna — who led the contentious fight to levy a national price on carbon emissions as environment minister — has long been the target of sexist attacks over her vocal defence of climate action in the face of entrenched opposition.

But she said the hardship she has endured in politics was not the motivation for her departure. Rather, she said, she wants to spend more time with her kids after many nights away during her time in office. She said the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to “step back and reflect on what matters most.”

McKenna also said she wants to focus her energies on fighting climate change from outside of government. She’s offered to help Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian delegation at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland later this year.

November 28, 2015

She’s no stranger to this forum. Only days after being named to cabinet in 2015, McKenna led the Canadian delegation at the COP21 conference in Paris where almost every country on earth agreed to emissions reductions to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

McKenna said her experiences shouldn’t dissuade young women from entering politics. While there may be some abuse, she said, elected office is still the best place to be to bring about change.

Her office was vandalized and her Twitter feed the source of many misogynistic messages — but McKenna said entering federal politics was the only way she could enact Canada’s price on carbon and implement the country’s first “meaningful climate plan” to dramatically drive down emissions by 2030.

December 15, 2015

After the Supreme Court upheld the carbon levy as constitutional, she said, all parties came to accept that pricing pollution is the best way to curb emissions — a sign that politicians can make a difference.

As infrastructure minister, she also signed cheques worth tens of billions of dollars to build public transit and other green-friendly projects.

“For the many people who are understandably cynical about politics, I hope you take that as hard evidence as to what’s possible. Things change, sometimes the biggest things,” she told a press conference along the Rideau Canal in her Ottawa riding.

“I have had my share of attacks, but that’s just noise. People want you to stop what you’re doing, and they want you to back down. We doubled down.”

October 9, 1997

She vowed to do more to tackle the hate some women face when in Parliament. “I’ll do everything to fight that when I’m gone,” she said. “We need good people in politics. Politics matters.”

McKenna’s decision not to run again in Ottawa Centre creates an opening for another Liberal in a riding the party carried easily in the 2015 and 2019 federal elections after years of NDP representation by former New Democrat leader Ed Broadbent and later Paul Dewar.

There’s been some speculation that the former Bank of Canada governor, Mark Carney, may jump into politics after endorsing Trudeau and the Liberals at the party’s convention in April. Carney, who lives in the area, could make a bid to carry the Liberal banner in this urban seat. (CBC) 

 

Friday June 25, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday June 25, 2021

Prime Minister Trudeau must expand residential school investigations

Like a nightmare Canada can’t wake up from, the real-life horror stories about the country’s Indigenous residential schools won’t go away.

June 1, 2021

On Thursday the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan announced it had located as many as 751 unmarked graves in a cemetery located beside the community’s former residential school. 

This mind-boggling discovery, which the band’s chief, Cadmus Delorme, believes is evidence of criminal acts, comes less than a month after the remains of 215 Indigenous children, some as young as three years old, were found in unmarked graves near a former residential school outside Kamloops, B.C.

That first, grisly finding stunned the country. It also led to a national outpouring of grief and solemn commitments from our political leaders to help discover the truth about what happened to Indigenous children who died or went missing at these hellish, misguided institutions.

Now more than ever, as the shock waves from the Cowessess First Nation reverberate across Canada, the federal government needs to ensure the money and expertise will be there to achieve this.

After all, the 2006 Indian residential School Settlement Agreement covered 138 schools across the country. So far, investigators using ground-penetrating radar technology are looking at unmarked, nameless gravesites at just two of them. We have but scratched the surface of what might lie buried across this land.

By now, everyone in Canada should have a basic awareness of the dreadful things that happened at institutions supposedly created to educate Indigenous children but which were, in reality, diabolical machines for forced assimilation, a practice the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.”

June 3, 2015

From the late 19th century to the late 20th century, about 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were torn from their families and compelled to live in appalling conditions in these institutions which, while instituted and funded by Ottawa, were operated by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches.

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation register counts 1,420 children as having died of disease or accidents while attending residential schools across the country. But Murray Sinclair, the former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has long maintained as many as 6,000 children died. The discoveries from the past month have led to speculation the final death toll could be even higher. 

That’s why the $27 million Ottawa has freed up to help Indigenous communities with their own searches is nowhere near enough when it comes to addressing the scale of the challenges ahead. It’s also worth remembering this isn’t new money. The Liberals set it aside in their 2019 federal budget and simply hadn’t spent it.

June 27, 2017

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should consider that money a mere down-payment on what this country still owes to its Indigenous peoples. We all need to find out if crimes occurred at these schools and if coverups took place. Investigators — who should be chosen by Indigenous communities — will need the power to subpoena records from governments and churches that ran the schools, as well as access to the locations.

We need as much information as possible to know what happened, what might remain to be done and if anyone alive today should and can be held accountable.

The path ahead will not be a straight one. The Cowessess cemetery was used by the community both before and after the residential school operated there. There are likely adults buried there, too. Only a much broader investigation will take us to the truth. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Wednesday June 23, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 23, 2021

The retreat of North Americanism: Canadians and Americans keep moving further apart

Back in the day, when Canada signed the landmark free trade agreement with the United States, there was a good deal of fear and loathing.

February 6, 2001

The Progressive Conservatives led the way on reciprocity and the Jean Chrétien Liberals, as former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy recalled in a phone call this week, reluctantly climbed aboard. Like many, he worried the border would weaken, that continentalism had won out.

Then, deus ex machina, beginning with 9/11, expectations were overturned. The response to the terrorist horror – with many Americans believing the hijackers had come through Canada – was to fortify the world’s longest undefended border. Passports became necessary.

A bitter split with the George W. Bush administration ensued over Canada’s refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq. Later, under the Republicans, came the populist explosion on the right. Donald Trump treated Canada more like an adversary than an ally. His medieval empire, his attack on truth, democracy and decency, soured the opinion of Canadians on America like never before.

April 30, 2021

Maybe the bigger the border, Canadians reasoned, the better.

Then, taking the boundary divide to the max, came the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, which had the effect of cocooning Canada, shutting down the border to all but essential traffic. The closure has endured more than a year and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in no hurry to end it. He’s been hearing from his public: Keep the Americans out.

It doesn’t make sense, Maryscott Greenwood, the North Carolinian who is head of the Canadian American Business Council, said in an interview. “You’re saying vaccines don’t matter.” Canadians shouldn’t underestimate the opposition and frustration this has provoked in Washington. She’s hearing from top officials, she said, that the U.S. is considering opening its side of the border fully on June 21. If Mr. Trudeau and company don’t respond in kind, so be it. To heck with them.

October 10, 2020

All said, there’s been quite a turn since the heady days of free trade. Instead of continental cohesion, much division. Instead of a border thinner than ever, one thicker than ever. Instead of a new North Americanism, a retreat to a more fragmented mindset.

“The heyday of the Canada-U.S. relationship has come and gone,” said Christopher Kirkey, director of the Center for the Study of Canada at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. “The trend is toward more divergence than convergence.”

In addition to the advent of Mr. Trump, the calamities of 9/11 and the coronavirus, there were other factors. Free trade, as Mr. Kirkey observed, coincided with the end of the Cold War. That termination meant Canada needed the U.S. less and the U.S. needed Canada less. The special relationship between the two countries that was built in the period 1945 to 1990 became too difficult to sustain and it isn’t, in his view, about to be restored by Joe Biden’s protectionist Democrats. “I can tell you Canada is hardly on the radar screen in Washington. Let’s be blunt about that.”

 

July 14, 2020

Michael Adams, the head of the Environics Institute who has been surveying Canadian attitudes toward Americans for decades, concurs that the North Americanism envisaged with free trade is pretty much kaput. In the post-Second World War years, Canadians used to look up to the U.S. in so many ways, he said. “It used to be like the utopia.” Now, given the hold Mr. Trump’s populist authoritarianism has on such a large swath of the population, “it’s more like the dystopia.”

 
Of course, as was rightly noted by Goldy Hyder, chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada, economic dependence on the American market is here to stay, despite any other decoupling tendencies. The Trudeau government better be careful, he warned. With companies reviewing their supply chains in the wake of the pandemic, more investments will remain in the U.S. if the Canadian border poses too much of a barrier.

March 13, 2021

If the Liberals were following the science, they’d quickly open the border, he added, but instead they’ve been following the politics (their polling). He said Mr. Biden told Mr. Trudeau in Europe that he promised freedom for Americans by July 4 and that opening the Canadian border is part of the deal.

The Prime Minister will take his sweet time in reciprocating. Continental consolidation isn’t as big a priority as it was before the century turned. Since that time, it’s become increasingly clear how different Canadians are. Rather than welded to an American block, they much prefer their own. (Globe & Mail)