duty

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) 

 

Saturday April 10, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 10, 2021

Prince Philip loved Canada, and knew this country in good times and bad

Prince Philip, in personal encounters, had a special ability to put you immediately at ease at the same time as he kept you on edge. It was his style: he loved to demystify the monarchy so you didn’t sound like a blithering idiot when you were addressed by a member of the family. But at the same time, he also brought to conversation a degree of forthright questioning that sometimes could turn you into … well, a blithering idiot.

October 3, 2002

He loved Canada and probably visited this country more than any other on the planet, both officially with the Queen he served so dutifully and lovingly all those years, and privately on many more occasions, especially in connection with the Duke of Edinburgh Awards or the World Wildlife Fund.

In a life spread throughout most of the 20th century and well into the 21st, he met thousands of people and graced hundreds of institutions. When he made one of several visits to Massey College in the University of Toronto during the Golden Jubilee Year (2002) to become the college’s first Honorary Senior Fellow he was asked — inevitably — to unveil a plaque honouring the visit. The college flag was draped somewhat ornately over the plaque and he went up to it with a certain degree of familiarity:

June 11, 2016

“You about to see the handiwork of a master unveiler of plaques,“ he said with a wry smile. Then he took one corner of the flag and with a few twists of the wrist made it twirl in the air which made everyone laugh.

He wrote later that he had “a soft spot” for Massey College. He had laid its cornerstone in a previous visit in 1962 and he was a particular friend of the college’s founder, Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born governor general. It was part of a much larger soft spot for Canada as a whole.

January 23, 2021

And he knew the country in good times and bad. Famously, during the troubled visit of 1964 during the height of the Quiet Revolution Quebeckers backs were turned on him and the Queen as their official car headed for the provincial legislature. Later at a press reception, he pointed out that if Canada was tired of being a monarchy perhaps we could try to end it with a bit of civility. “We don’t come here for our health,” he pointed out. “We can think of other ways of spending our time.”

Although a deeply intelligent and inherently kind man with an extraordinary sense of duty, it was his testiness that was a big part of his appeal, and also what got him into trouble. Depending on your views of the monarchy, his off-the-cuff quips were either a sign of the blatant ridiculousness of the Crown or proof of its enduring power. It was usually a matter of perspective.

April 9, 2002

He certainly understood the often murky deal between the Crown and the media that both sides played. On the one hand, there was deep resentment within the Royal Family and those officials who served them at the brutal way the media could often push into their lives during troubled periods. At the same time, the media has for some time now been the leading handmaiden in securing the Crown’s hold over people’s imagination, to the equal irritation for their own reasons of republicans and royalists alike.

He was a man marked for life by his earliest experience of being poor but royal, impoverished but often in the presence of vast wealth, alone in the world but determined to survive and make his mark. And it was all done with a sense of duty that has few parallels in our own time. (National Post) 

 

Saturday August 8, 2020

August 8, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 8, 2020

More than $250K spent on Gov. Gen. Julie Payette’s demands for privacy at Rideau Hall

Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent to satisfy Gov. Gen. Julie Payette’s need for privacy at Rideau Hall, but she still hasn’t moved into her official residence almost three years into her five-year mandate. 

December 5, 2019

CBC News has learned new details about costs the public is incurring to meet Payette’s requirements before she agrees to move in. 

They include almost $140,000, spent studying and designing a private staircase that was never built, and more than $117,500 on a gate and series of doors to keep people away from Payette’s office, according to the National Capital Commission (NCC), which manages the official vice-regal residence.

Those costs go well beyond the usual transition expenses, which normally involve some fresh paint and new furniture, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the project. Those sources asked for confidentiality because they are not authorized to publicly discuss Rideau Hall’s requests. 

They paint a portrait of a Governor General who is uncomfortable with being in the constant presence of staff, RCMP security and, to some extent, the public.

July 14, 2017

Governors general have to accept a degree of privacy loss when they take on the vice-regal role.

Much of the verdant grounds of Rideau Hall are open to the public, who wander freely around what is seen in the national capital as a public park. Family picnics and pick-up football games abound on any particular summer day.

But Payette “wanted to come and go without anyone seeing her,” said one source with knowledge of the project.

According to multiple sources, Payette doesn’t like maintenance workers in her line of sight. Even RCMP paid to protect Payette are no longer allowed to stand directly outside her office door and must hide in a room down the hallway, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. Only some select staff currently have access to the restricted area by her office. (CBC) 

November 1, 2018

Meanwhile, The Privy Council Office (PCO) has launched what it says will be a “thorough, independent and impartial” workplace probe into claims of harassment and verbal abuse in the office of Gov. Gen. Julie Payette.

The investigation follows a CBC News report that quoted unnamed sources saying Payette has created a toxic environment at Rideau Hall by verbally harassing employees to the point where some have been reduced to tears or have left the office altogether.

A dozen sources with direct knowledge of the office during Payette’s mandate told CBC News the Governor General has yelled at, belittled and publicly humiliated employees. They accuse her of throwing tantrums in the office and, on one occasion, tossing an employee’s work aside and calling it “shit.”

Sources also accused Payette’s secretary and longtime friend, Assunta Di Lorenzo, of harassing employees — calling some “lazy” and “incompetent.” (CBC) 

 

Tuesday April 9, 2002

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 9, 2002

A Queen for Canada

A snap of history’s thread, a chunk of Canada’s past cut adrift. It will get harder now, with Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon gone, to remember who we were and what our national problems were six decades ago when she first came here as a queen. To remember what her importance was to Canada’s story of the day.

The British Monarchy

To view the country as it was in May, 1939 — when the CPR’s Empress of Australia and four accompanying naval ships sailed up the St. Lawrence River, bringing Elizabeth and her emperor-husband, King George VI, to Canada for a four-week visit — is to look at a quaint curiosity. Like a photograph of one’s parents, much younger, sweetly smiling, dressed in old-fashioned clothes.

The king’s assistant private secretary, Alan (Tommy) Lascelles, saw Canadians thus: “They sing ‘God Save the King’ as if it really was a prayer.”

Our prime minister’s behaviour, as always, was interesting.

William Lyon Mackenzie King recorded in his diary that the late king, George V, had visited him in spirit form to tell him the reason George VI and Elizabeth were coming to Canada was “due to their affection for you.”

Most engaging of all was how Mr. King, for whom the adjective “wily” eternally seems appropriate, so skilfully used the presence of the king and queen in Canada — especially the media-savvy, charismatic queen — to address Canada’s perpetual difficulties around national unity, French-English fissures and, above all, recognition by others of Canada’s sovereignty. (CP)