Category Archives: Assignment 2

Cutting Down the Kaiser: How Canadian Lumberjacks Helped Win the First World War

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“”A well-made road runs through deep forest woodlands … [where] you would swear you had wandered in a day dream to a Canadian lumber camp. In fact, you have. It is a unit of the Canadian Forestry Corps at work in an English forest.” -The Observer, April 28, 1918
Image Source: The Daily Mirror, May 20, 1916
One hundred years ago, 500 Canadian lumberjacks swapped their axes for rifles. They were part of a military division originally tasked with felling and milling timber in Great Britain and France to fuel and build the First World War. They were the Canadian Forestry Corps.

BUILDING A WAR

By 1916, Great Britain was burning through its timber supply, and sourcing 70 per cent of its lumber from Canada had become unsustainable. Cargo space was nonexistent onboard transport vessels that were busy dodging German U-boat attacks on the trans-Atlantic journey. In February 1916, Great Britain demanded help from Canada, and two months later, 1,600 cross-cut-saw-wielding Canadian lumberjacks were sailing to Europe. By Armistice Day in 1918, nearly 24,000 men made up the Canadian Forestry Corps.

With trenches and tunnels drenched and rotting in the French rain, the demand for lumber seemed as perpetual as the war itself, says Maj. Michael Boire, historian at the Royal Military College of Canada. “You just don’t build something once on the Western Front, you rebuild it every other week.” 

TIMBER TO TRENCHES

When the call came from command in March 1918 for 500 additional Canadian soldiers to join the front line, 1,300 Forestry Corps men volunteered.  Meanwhile at home, Prime Minister Robert Borden struggled to muster the same enthusiasm, and had resorted to  a severely unpopular conscription law to fulfill his promises to Great Britain.

“Sure, the volunteering was oversubscribed [compared to that in Canada],” says Boire of the overwhelming response amid the Forestry Corps. “But that’s a typical reaction of the boys up front,” he explains. “They had to go home someday to answer the question, ‘What did you do in the war, Daddy?’” Volunteers compelled by notions of duty and honour spurred the surge in enlistments.

Tall, brawny foresters … marched into the vineyards [of France], pitched their tents on the fringe of a forest, and the next day the ring of their axes echoed among the tall pines.” – Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, Dec. 7, 1918
Image Source: Archive of Ontario, War Poster Collection
TOO MANY HEROES IN ENGLAND

Working deep in forests away from the front lines, the lumberjacks were not necessarily considered brave soldiers, says Boire. By 1918, many had resolved to prove their compatriots living and dying in trenches wrong.

Still, some saw the Forestry Corps as a means of avoiding battle. In a letter to his mother, front-line soldier John Row wrote of his uncle in the Forestry Corps: “he is a wise guy alright but it would look better if he took a spell at the front. There are too many of these heroes who stay in England.”

Meanwhile in Canada, some politicians doubted their usefulness. “It is felt the Forestry Corps staff is a refuge for personal friends of those in higher command,” argued opposition MP Rodolphe Lemieux in a parliamentary committee in April 1918.

Lemieux wasn’t alone in seeing a poorly functioning Corps. Newspapers in Great Britain reported it too. “A tremendous number of administration problems have to be worked out—from the handling of a special hospital service for the Corps to the proper handling of the discipline for the men, who are not trained soldiers, and a thousand other questions,” reads the Dec. 28, 1917, issue of The Scotsman.

FOREST FICTIONS 

Despite negative reviews, the Canadian Forestry Corps kept chopping, cutting, milling and sawing. In one day at a La Joux mill in France, workers produced enough timber to build 11 modern-day three-bedroom homes.

The Corps’ unbelievable productivity was praised by government and media alike. The same critical article from The Scotsman wrote that “[The Corps’] monthly output, if it could be published, would read like fiction,”echoing the words of the British Secretary of State for the Royal Air Force, who suggested that 170 Canadians could easily do the work of 600 Britons.

 

The First World War ended nearly 100 years ago in November 1918 and the mills in France, England and Scotland lurched to a halt. Trees regrew and forests renewed, and though saws and gears rusted in the camps, they would be raided again 20 years later by the return of war and with it, the Canadian Forestry Corps.

 

Pipeline politics: Kinder-Morgan dispute is a tale as old as TransCanada

Assignment 2, Masters2018_2
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The signing of the TransCanada Pipeline Bill, June 7, 1956. Source: Duncan Cameron / Library and Archives Canada. No restrictions on use.

The embers of a fiery conflict between B.C. and Alberta over the Kinder-Morgan pipeline are still smouldering.

In early February, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley levied a province-wide boycott on B.C. wines after her counterpart, B.C. Premier John Horgan, proposed restrictions that would put the brakes on the pipeline project. Though the wine ban was lifted less than two weeks ago, the war wages on in court. On February 22, Horgan said his NDP government would seek an official ruling on the legality of halting diluted bitumen flows through the province.

The drama encircling Kinder-Morgan is far from unprecedented. In fact, Canada’s earliest major pipeline project started off with one of the biggest rows in Canadian parliamentary history.

In 1956, the smooth-sailing Liberal government hit the rocks for the first time in over two decades.

The government made plans in May of that year to allow the recently founded (and at that time American-owned) TransCanada Pipelines to move natural gas from Alberta to Quebec via what would then be the world’s longest pipeline.

But as Parks Canada recounts, the opposition parties were vehemently against the project, which in their view would subject Canada’s economy to the will of American capital. The Liberals needed a strong parliamentary showing through the spring months in order to stave off the oncoming windstorm of dissent in the house.

C.D. Howe at an official ceremony in Highwater, Quebec at the joining of the Portland-Montreal pipeline to a U.S. oil tanker, August 1, 1941.
Source: Library and Archives Canada. No restrictions of use.

Enter Clarence Decatur Howe. The Liberal Party’s Minister of Trade and Commerce was well seasoned, hard-nosed and unabashedly resourceful. In a 2008 blog post, Calgary-based oil historian Peter McKenzie-Brown explained Howe’s unofficial title, “the Minister of Everything.” He was the right-hand man of then Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, and had sway over much of the Liberal government of his day.

Having introduced a bill to authorize the pipeline, Howe swiftly gained the support of his fellow Liberals. Parliamentary Hansards show that Progressive Conservative opposition leader George Alexander Drew took exception to what he perceived to be a hyper-partisan display. “The anvil chorus is following instructions. The trained seals have now learned to make a sound in unison,” he said in parliament on May 8.

On May 15, Liberal finance minister Walter Edward Harris addressed the ‘trained seals’ label that had become a steady refrain in parliament. Rather than deny the accusation, Harris evoked the classic ‘takes one to know one’ rebuttal.

“Everyone in this house knows that all parties practically invariably follow a single party line,” he said.

In the end, partisan politics would win the day. On June 7, 1956, the bill was signed. While the ink dried, the house mourned the death of Liberal MP Lorne MacDougall, whose death the day before marked the end of the final debate before the deadline.

The pipeline was extended – all the way to Montreal by 1958 – but the Liberals’ term in office was not. Howe’s hardball tactics were topped off by the rarely used closure provision that served to cut short the debate. The move proved to be too forceful, if not undemocratic in the eyes of many Canadians, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. St. Laurent suffered a surprise defeat to John Diefenbaker’s Conservatives in the 1957 election, ending 22 years of Liberal leadership.

A lesson can by drawn by today’s Liberal Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who has stood steadfast behind the Kinder-Morgan project. With the national public split in half on the current pipeline debate according to the latest poll by Ipsos Global Public Affairs, too much force either way could mean falling off the tightrope in between.

If nothing else, the events in 1956 proved that Canadian pipelines are about more than the flow of bitumen or natural gas from one province to the next – they also tend to transport votes from one party to another.

 

Document 1: ‘Ottawa Letter’ by George Bain in The Globe and Mail, 30 May 1956 

Document 2: ‘Opposition Charges Guillotine Methods’ in The Globe and Mail, 16 May 1956 

 

Aboriginal groups holding management positions in the Canadian workplace

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Source: StatCan
http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=2820165&&pattern=&stByVal=1&p1=1&p2=31&tabMode=dataTable&csid

The data on this chart illustrates which of the Aboriginal group held most of the management positions across the Canadian workplace in 2017.

This chart includes both Aboriginal males and females aged between 25 and 54 years old.

The two Aboriginal groups analyzed on this chart are the First Nations and the Metis.

Why are some areas seeing a rise in common law couples?

Assignment 2, Investigative2017_4
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Teri Boates and Alex Stover have been living together for two years – officially, that is. They’ve been on the same lease for the last two years, but spent the year before that sleeping over at each other’s places.

“Just packing a bag and staying there for a few days and really spending most of my time there,” said Boates of her habits in her first year dating Stover. “So that’s when the next year we thought maybe we should just get one together instead of paying two rents for two different places.”

Boates and Stover spent the past academic year living at 5960 Spring Garden Road, along with two of their close friends. As unmarried romantic partners living together continuously for over 12 months, Boates and Stover qualify as a common law couple. And as a common law couple, they contributed to a growing trend in their neighbourhood.

Boates and Stover lived in a census tract with boundaries from Robie to South Park to the west and east and from South Street to the Commons and Citadel to the south and north, respectively. Between 2011 and 2016, the incidence of common law couples in that area increased by 36%.

A map showing the various census tracts in Halifax, colour-coded by percent increase in the incidence of common law couples. The darker the colour, the higher the increase. Click on an area to see its statistics.

 

Even though that statistic seems telling, Martha Radice, an associate professor of anthropology in Dalhousie’s department of sociology and social anthropology, warns not to read too much into it.

“It’s quite difficult to know what’s going on in the area without comparing that to other changes in family dynamics and household composition,” she said.

Between 2011 and 2016 there was a 15% increase in the number of families in that census tract, and only a 5% increase of married couples. Those increases are contrasted by a drop of over 30% in the rate of married couples with children in the same.

Those stats provide a clearer picture, but they still don’t tell the whole story.

“It all depends what the change is reflecting,” said Radice. “You might have a change in the kind of housing tenure in the census tract. So maybe it’s just that there’s a whole bunch of apartments built that offer great young couple accommodation.”

It’s a plausible theory, but according to this study on the history of condos in Halifax, the number of condos in the tract hasn’t changed since last census (map on page 38/72). So what are some other possible contributing factors?

“It might just be people are choosing not to get married. If it was a decrease in solo households, then you might start thinking about housing costs have risen. Instead of living alone, people are moving in with their partners,” said Radice.

That last reason seems to hold true for Boates, who has lived with up to 6 roommates at a time in an effort to reduce her rent.

“If you’re going to be sharing with roommates anyway, and you’re partner is also looking to find a place – besides just having that mushy someone’s always there for you, and you cuddle someone every night – it does unfortunately come down to money,” she said.

Boates is a Nova Scotia native while Stover is from Oakville, Ontario, but they’ve managed to spend the last few summers together; Boates would stay with Stover at his parents’ house. Now, for the first time in three years, they will be living apart. Boates is staying in Halifax this fall while Stover is still in Ontario trying to become a paramedic.

Boates talking about the pros and cons of living with Stover, her boyfriend

Halifax Census Single-Parent Families

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This map is from the Statistics Canada 2016 Census, which measures the growth of single-parent families the Halifax-area census tracts. The darker colours represent areas with the highest increase. The lighter areas, the lowest increase. Click on each census tract to see the result.

Source: Statistics Canada

Federal funding for water advisory crisis is questionable

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  • The topic: Funding to eliminate water advisories on First Nation reserves.
  • What’s new: The provincial break-down of funds.
  • Why it’s important: The funding strategy’s effect hints that there might be an imbalance in the province’s allocation of funds that may mean missing the five-year target.
  • What the government says: The government stands by the funds the allocated last year. The minister of health said in a statement earlier this year that there’s still a lot of work to do.
  • What others say: Emily Lui says the way the government is distinguishing long-term advisories from short-term advisories being overlooked while the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the government should be spending more money on this issue.
  • What’s next: The government is sticking to their planned targets.

Manitoba’s provincial government has been allocated an estimated $356.4 million over five years as part of a federal strategy to end long-term drinking water advisories on First Nations reserves.

Approximately 19.8 per cent of the federal government’s 2016 pledge of $1.8 billion has been allocated to address the water supply issues. According to an access to information request, the percentage of funding allotted to Manitoba reflects the share of Canada’s Indigenous population that lives in the province.

In the year since the announcement, several communities are still plagued with long-term advisories. According to the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada’s own website, 71 of the 76 long-term advisories across Canada are still in place despite the plan to lift all drinking water advisories by 2021.

In Manitoba, only one of two long-term drinking water advisories is slated for funding so far. The advisory for this project affecting the Pauingassi First Nation has yet to be removed despite the province having significantly less advisories to address compared to other provinces.

Little can be determined on the impact of the government’s 2016 investment based on the way the government is publically tracking improvement. For example, neighbouring provinces Ontario and Saskatchewan had 62 long-term advisories between them during the funding announcement. However, the government site provided by a spokeswoman from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada indicates that nine have been removed since 2015—disguising that only five long-term advisories across the country that have been removed.

The designation of long-term and short-term advisories as determined by the government is a topic of concern for Emily Lui, a spokeswoman for the Council of Canadians who says she uses her position to raise awareness on water issues in First Nation communities.

She shared what she believes is an overlooked aspect of the government’s approach to the investments in an email exchange which read: “A review of the long-term advisories (in place for one year or more) versus the short-term advisories (in place for less than a year) raises questions about whether the dates set for the DWAs show the full picture.”

Last March, the government released a statement addressing its continued commitment to the five-year plan to remove all long-term advisories despite achieving less than ten per cent in the first year. The written statement quotes the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Carolyn Bennett, as saying “Many First Nation families are just now able to drink their water and we have a solid, achievable plan to end the remaining long-term drinking water advisories affecting INAC-funded public systems on-reserve within our promised five-year timeframe.”

Meanwhile, the Minister of Health, Jane Philpott, said: “while there is still much work to be done, I am pleased to see progress is being made to lift long-term drinking water advisories.”

On the same day the statement was released, the national think tank “Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report which included a reimagined federal budget called The Alternative Federal Budget 2017: High Stakes, Clear Choices. They assigned $1.9 billion per year over the next three years to deal with the water advisories nation-wide—more than three times the current funding.

The federal spokeswomen weren’t available to address any specific questions regarding the situation in Manitoba, the federal funding strategy, or the rationale behind allocating funds to provinces based on the percentage of their Indigenous population as opposed to the condition of their facilities or the number of communities affected.

Helpful documents:

ATIP requests:

Access to Information Requests

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Original Municipal ATIP Request – The City of Montreal:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525033-MTL-ATIP-1.html

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525032-MTL-ATIP-2.html
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525031-MTL-ATIP-3.html

Original Provincial ATIP Request – British Columbia:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525035-BC-FOI-1.html

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525034-BC-FOI-2.html

Original Federal ATIP Request – Employment and Social Development Canada:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525040-ATIP-ESDC-1.html

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525039-ATIP-ESDC-2.html

Request for Previously Released Records from the Federal Government – Canadian Food Inspection Agency:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3525036-ATIP-CFIA.html

The legacy of the 1967 Omnibus Bill and those still waiting for “an act of recognition.”

Assignment 2, Masters2017_2, Whatever-Happened-To? Assignment
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Pierre Elliott Trudeau speaking to the press after Bill C-195 is tabled. Photo courtesy of the CBC Archives.

Fifty years ago, it was a bold statement. Pierre Elliott Trudeau declared publicly that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” As Minister of Justice, Trudeau introduced The Criminal Law Amendment Act or C-195 on December 21st, 1967. The omnibus bill proposed controversial reforms to the Criminal Code including the decriminalization of homosexuality and the legalization of abortion under certain conditions.

Days before Trudeau tabled the bill, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson tendered his resignation and Cabinet Members questioned the bill’s language, suggesting it be pushed to later session. Trudeau urged them to proceed with the reforms, regardless of timing or politics: “If the government was prepared to deal with abortion, it might just as well deal with gross indecency as well.”

(Please click the link below to view some Cabinet Conclusions from December 19th, 1967.)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480317-1967-12-19/annotations/343255.html

The legislation was amended and passed as Bill C-150 when Trudeau was prime minister.

Rebecca Bromwich is a lawyer and a professor at Carleton University. Bromwich describes the legislation as a “watershed” event in Canadian criminal law which allowed for further legal reforms and for the development of a more accepting society.

“People have called it the “Bedroom Bill” because it moved criminal law out of a kind of moralizing of people’s sexuality into a very kind of different perspective on what types of conduct should be criminal,” Bromwich says. “And so it decriminalized homosexuality. And at the time, there were people in penitentiaries serving time for same-sex, sexual conduct.”

(Please click the link below to see the introduction of Bill C-195 to the House on December 21st, 1967.)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515695-Debates-From-December-21st-1967/annotations/343235.html

Bromwich explains that the charge of “gross indecency” criminalized consensual sexual contact. At the time, she says there was no recognition of same-sex sexual contact and no distinction between assaultive and consensual sexual contact in this area of law.

“It was all an abomination. It was all criminal,” Bromwich says.

The last person to be criminally convicted for homosexual acts was Everett Klippert. Prior to the reforms, Klippert was incarcerated twice on dozens of charges of gross indecency in the 1960s. Following his last conviction, he filed an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on the charge of “dangerous sexual offender.”

After the application to appeal was granted, lawyer Brian Crane received a request to assist Klippert. Crane drafted a factum and appeared before the Supreme Court, arguing Klippert’s case briefly in the early stage of his appeal.

“It was a question of whether the law was appropriate. And that was the issue – a pretty simple issue,” Crane says.

In November 1967, Klippert lost the appeal at the Supreme Court in a 3-2 ruling. The dissenting justices wrote reasons “indicating the unsatisfactory state of the law,” Crane remembers. He also recalls the case being cited in the House by different parliamentarians. Crane describes Klippert’s case as having a “significant effect” on the Liberal omnibus bill.

“It became a matter of public attention and it certainly was one of the factors, if not the major factor, in having that legislation come forward.” Crane says.

Decades later, with a second Prime Minister Trudeau in office, the question of legal legacy arises. In November, the government announced the repeal Section 159 of the Criminal Code – a law widely-held as discriminatory to homosexual Canadians. This week, they announced further revisions with the removal of “zombie laws” on abortion and other areas.

But the legal history raises another concern for Klippert’s lawyer. Crane asks about a general pardon for those like Klippert, convicted of similar crimes.

“It’s righting a historical wrong,” Crane says. “And I think from the gay rights perspective it would be, would be certainly, important and useful and I imagine would get unanimous consent in the House.”

In 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced its recommendation for Klippert’s posthumous pardon but it has yet to be granted.

“To have a pardon – it’s an important historical act, I would think. An act of recognition,” Crane says.

Brian Crane is a partner at the Gowling WLG law firm in Ottawa.

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Documentation Notes for the Instructors:

Document 1
What is the documentation?
The debates or Hansard from the House of Commons on December 21st, 1967.

How did you find/obtain it?
After looking through different government archives online, I reached out to a source at the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery. The source was able to locate the Hansard and send me a copy. We verified the copyright conclusions prior to posting online.

Why was the documentation helpful?
It was helpful though the tabling of C-195 was succinct. It was my assumption that lengthier debate ensued after the Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau tabled the bill on the floor; however, it went to committee it seems. The bill was amended (to C-150) over several parliamentary sessions and years, therefore there was much documentation to sift through ultimately. This was a useful perspective for the initial C-195 tabling.

Document 2
What is the documentation?
A selection of Cabinet Conclusions from December 19th, 1967 which notes discussion on the Criminal Code reforms.

How did you find/obtain it?
I accessed it through different searches on the Library and Archives Canada website.

Why was the documentation helpful?
It was very helpful. There were numerous Cabinet Conclusions from the week before the bill was tabled that were incredibly interesting. The internal politics at the end of that particular session appeared tenuous – not to mention the wider societal political context. Specifically, the documentation helped me to better understand the discussion around the bill’s language and timing. It also re-inforced the idea that Minister of Justice Trudeau was adamant about the bill’s tabling at the end of 1967.

Additional Documents
I also included hyperlinks to the Klippert Supreme Court Case in 1967 and to Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s 1967 comments to the media for added reference.