Conservative leader Erin O’Toole is making obligatory right-flavoured populist noises, decrying “cancel culture” because Queen’s University’s board voted to consider changing the name of their John A. Macdonald building, as is much the flavour of the day. It’s this juvenile, performative noise, but this is the kind of thing that O’Toole built his leadership around, without any critical thinking whatsoever, so here’s @moebius_strip to point out the sheer absurdity of it all.

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1316454539596234753

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1316465701100552192

https://twitter.com/moebius_strip/status/1316465838468198401

Meanwhile, there is consternation because the Library and Archives websites haven’t yet updated their biographies of prime ministers like Macdonald and Laurier to adequately convey that they had racist policies, and lo, cookie-cutter journalism gets the same four voices to decry this that appear in every other story. Never mind that Library and Archives says that they are doing consultations in order to do the work of reconciliation, and that there will be updated versions coming – it’s not good enough because this all needed to be done yesterday.

Part of the problem here, however, is that it will take time to get a properly nuanced version of history that both acknowledges their contributions to building the country while also acknowledging the racism of the era – particularly because it’s not simply black-and-white, and anyone who has read Macdonald’s biography will find it hard to simply pigeon-hole him as some kind of cartoon racist, which is certainly what some of the online dialogue would have us do. Yes, he’s a complex and problematic figure, but he was also a moderating influence, and his racist policies were actually the less-bad ones that were being demanded by a lot of voices of the era, which I doubt is going to be acknowledged to the satisfaction of his modern-day critics. It’s not a simple conversation, but that seems to be what is being demanded.

Good reads:

• The government is pleading with seniors to file their taxes so that they can maintain their benefits. You know, something that automatic filing would take care of.
• The situation with the East Coast fishery got more intense as non-Indigenous fishers trapped two Mi’kmaq fishers in a lobster pound and destroyed their vehicles.
• Canada has signed onto the Artemis Accords, which are part of a global framework for guidelines on next steps in space exploration and use of “space resources.”
• Transparency International’s latest report is critical of Canada’s apparent reluctance to deal with foreign bribery cases.
• Rideau Hall has spent over $110,000 on legal fees and PR consultants as a result of the news stories on the alleged harassment and bullying of employees.
• A new taxpayers’ ombudsman has been named, and he wants to focus on how the CRA is dealing with Canadians in light of the pandemic.
• Apparently a number of people, including a former Senate Ethics Officer, don’t grasp the importance of parliamentary privilege with the new audit committee.
• A settlement agreement for compensation has been reached between the Senate and the former employees of retired Senator Don Meredith for his harassment.
• Kevin Carmichael notes the poor ways in which financial journalists report on the Bank of Canada, which is prompting the Bank to move to directly engage the public.

Odds and ends:

For the CBA’s National Magazine, I spoke to the justice minister and the leaders of diverse law associations about getting more BIPOC lawyers to apply to be judges.

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