Roundup: Why Statute of Westminster Day matters

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Yesterday was Statute of Westminster Day, which most people don’t have a clue about in spite of it showing up on their calendars. It’s a hugely important day in Canadian history because it was a turning point in our sovereignty as it relates to our relationship with the UK—the creation of the Canadian Crown as a separate and distinct entity from the UK Crown. Canada and several other realms (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Newfoundland, and South Africa) were all granted Separate Crowns because they decided that the Crown was indeed divisible (and in Canada, further divisible among the provinces), and that meant things like being able to control our own foreign policy.

Today is Statute of Westminster Day, which is the birthday of the Canadian Crown as a separate entity from the UK Crown. It’s an incredibly important day for Canadian sovereignty, but mostly gets passed over, or under-taught in schools. #MapleCrown

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-11T15:00:49.015Z

The problem, of course, is that we’re not taught this. We may be taught that that the Statute gave us more control over our foreign affairs (at least, I was in my social studies classes in Alberta), but it was couched more in terms of the aftermath of the First World War—the Canadian Crown was entirely absent from that discussion. And if you look at Parliamentary accounts on Twitter, for example, not one of them mentioned the Crown as the reason why we gained that autonomy and independence. It’s the whole gods damned reason why, and we don’t celebrate that at all. It’s a real problem as to why we don’t have a grasp of basic civics in this country, and something we need to rectify.

https://twitter.com/OurCommons/status/1866908079763120189

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian troops overran or captured several Ukrainian positions near the strategic city of Pokrovsk. Ukrainians struck a Russian airfield near the Azov Sea with US-made missiles, and a Ukrainian drone hit police barracks in Chechnya.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau met with the premiers virtually to lay out new border measures and to talk about possible retaliatory tariffs; Doug Ford started threatening energy cuts.
  • Mark Holland released new figures on uptake on the dental care programmed, but won’t say when it will expand beyond seniors and children.
  • A legislated deadline to seal records of simple cannabis possession was missed (but not surprisingly considering the complexity of the task on the timeline available).
  • The Labour Board complaint of Canada Post issuing temporary layoff notices has been resolved and the notices rescinded.
  • The Military Police Complaints Commission is looking into the handling of a case involving a General Officer.
  • The Chief Justice of the Federal Court says there has been an alarming decline in decorum and civility by lawyers in court since hybrid sessions became available.
  • Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec could be signing an agreement that could resolve the decades old Churchill Falls dispute.
  • UCP MLAs in Alberta are supporting a move to further weaken the province’s ethics rules, particularly for senior staffers and officials. (Surprise, surprise!)
  • Emmett Macfarlane has additional thoughts on the CCLA’s proposals for limiting the Notwithstanding Clause and why some of their ideas don’t mass muster.
  • Kevin Carmichael parses the Bank of Canada’s rate cut decision.

Odds and ends:

Just four more sitting days…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T02:38:46.534Z

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