"Chrystia Freeland put out the bunting after her April 16th budget. The fiscal plan had three targets or “guideposts”: keeping the deficit below $40 billion in 2023/24; lowering the debt-to-GDP ratio in the current fiscal year, compared to last fall’s financial statement; and keeping deficits below one per cent of GDP in 2026/27."
But the Department of Finance now says the deficit was $50.9B.
"Some have quite rightly asked: Is it really worth $225 million not to have to wait another 18 months? The answer is absolutely not. It’s grotesque. What the government should have done was simply cancel the existing MFA with The Beer Store via legislation, on the grounds it was a product of rank political corruption. (In fact it said it would do this, but legislation to that effect was never enacted.)"
"What we really ought to learn from history’s grotesqueries isn’t “different strokes for different folks” or “we’re so much better than them.” It’s that we’d better be humble about our own virtue if giants like Macdonald could go so wrong on some issues. [...] So it’s worse than facile to assume if you’d lived back when you’d have supported Aboriginal rights or abolition. You’re not that great."
"During the 2015 election, the Liberals promised to end a Canada Post program, which was then underway, converting addresses from door-to-door home delivery to community mailboxes." A bad — but politically popular — decision of the Trudeau ministry.
For more radical change, @acoyne proposed many years ago that we give #CanadaPost to the postal union and let them find solutions.
"On Wednesday, Legault told reporters that the new Musee national de l’histoire du Quebec will focus specifically on the history of the French-speaking Quebecois nation. The 11 Indigenous nations in Quebec likely don’t consider themselves part of the Quebecois nation, he said, adding that their contributions will nonetheless be included in the museum."
“The idea is to show the history of the nation that was French-Canadian and now Quebecois, that started with Champlain,” he said in Quebec City. “But clearly we’ll talk about the Indigenous people who were there before we arrived.”"
I don't mind a museum of #Québec that focuses on the dominant culture here. But the conflation of Québécois and the French Canadians who live in Québec is frustrating: members of other nations live here too.
"The monument consisted of a small collection of bronze figures of forlorn mothers with children on a stone pedestal with this explanation: the French Republic erected this in homage to the victims of persecutions by racists and antisemites, the crimes against humanity committed by the government of France between 1940 and 1944."
“It’s important to mention that we are no longer defending the French language,” [Minister] Roberge told a news conference in Montreal. “We’re going on the offensive, no, not against anyone, but to regain lost ground and reverse the decline of French.”
The French language is one of the attractions of #Québec, for some who come here at least.
What the stories about the anti-Gaza War encampment at #McGill are missing is that the encampment is located in the same place where the university holds its commencement ceremony, an event occurring at the end of May.
I'm not sure if McGill would be more tolerant if the encampment were elsewhere, but I'm sure they want to re-establish control over that field soon.
Personally, I think the anglophones of Québec have a weak case for partition. The Cree and Inuit (inter alia), on the other hand, have at least as much right to their traditional territories as the residents of Montréal and southern Québec do to them.
The #NationalPost has decided to do a series about ten Canadians who arguably deserve to receive the #VictoriaCross, Canada's highest award for combat bravery. This article is an overview.
"Up to and including Mulroney’s time, the grand commission was a distinctively, if not uniquely, Canadian way to conduct high-quality academic research, consult widely and consider policy options on vexing problems outside of the partisan political framework. In sector after sector, from the Constitution and fiscal policy to newspapers and fisheries, much of the architecture of federal policy was drafted by commissions."
"Gone is the plaster, the flooring, wiring, plumbing, elevator — in effect the surface layer of almost the whole interior. Now the empty shell is standing waiting for the order either to renovate it from the top to the bottom or to demolish and rebuild."
"The restrictions [Japan] imposes on some freedoms beget other freedoms we no longer have: the ability for ordinary people to go about their business peaceably and the freedom for their kids to be independent. Sometimes, striking the right balance between liberty and security can mean thinking outside the box — and even, outside our country."
"As first reported in the Globe and Mail, Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper have volunteered to lead a campaign to raise the money required to restore the official prime minister’s residence, each of them calling upon their wide network to do so."
Wonderful news. It's crazy that PMs have been too afraid of the optics to have 24 Sussex fixed up while in office...
"In an era of conflicting identities and the rise of identity politics, it is not surprising that the ancient scourge of antisemitism would find new expression. In recent months we have seen it flourish on the secular left and the nationalist right, as well as the usual corners of Islamism. Christians have a duty to see that it does not spread in our own communities."