Here are the federal departments that aren’t a disaster under Trudeau

Article content material

First Studying is a each day publication conserving you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the Nationwide Put up’s personal Tristin Hopper. To get an early model despatched on to your inbox each Monday to Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET (and 9:30 a.m. on Saturdays), join right here.

Article content material

TOP STORY

Currently, one in every of Conservative Chief Pierre Poilievre’s favorite slogans is that Canada is “damaged.” And based on a February ballot commissioned by the Nationwide Put up, 67 per cent of Canadians would agree with him.

Whereas there’s been no scarcity of latest scandals within the federal cupboard, the brokenness has additionally manifested itself in a gentle sample of incompetence or neglect among the many on a regular basis departments of the Authorities of Canada.

Some examples from simply the previous couple of months …

Article content material

However the federal authorities is an enormous place, and there stay a number of scattered corners of the civil service that aren’t but a flaming catastrophe. 

Beneath, within the curiosity of injecting some cheerfulness into our regular protection of dangerous information, right here is your First Studying information to the federal departments which can be quietly doing an incredible job (as far as we all know).

THE CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY 

You’d be forgiven for those who thought the Canadian Area Company was largely a glorified journey company paying hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to Russia each time it wished to ship one other Canadian as much as the Worldwide Area Station.

However the CSA has been leaning onerous into lunar exploration of late. An all-Canadian lunar rover is already beneath development. A Canadian is about to be onboard Artemis II, the primary crewed mission to the moon for the reason that Apollo period. And, in fact, we’re constructing a robotic arm for the Lunar Gateway, an area station in lunar orbit designed to behave as a waypoint for astronauts travelling to the moon’s floor.

Article content material

Article content material

The company even has a brand new emblem!

Article content material

STATISTICS CANADA 

There’s an excellent likelihood that Statistics Canada information underlies numerous your perceptions on the present state of Canada. They’re those who crunched the numbers on the extent of the physician scarcity. They keep the Client Worth Index, and as such are the explanation we all know that inflation is presently at generational highs. It’s Statistics Canada’s Crime Severity Index which has confirmed a marked rise in violent crime over the previous few years. And again in September, headlines had been dominated by new Statistics Canada projections exhibiting that Canada would have 50 million folks by 2041, half of whom could be members of immigrant households.

THE NATIONAL BATTLEFIELDS COMMISSION

There’s admittedly not a lot for the Nationwide Battlefields Fee to screw up, for the exact motive that Canada doesn’t have all that many battlefields. In actual fact, the NBC solely takes care of 1: The Plains of Abraham in Quebec Metropolis. Whereas there are different battlefields (corresponding to a handful of Battle of 1812 battle websites on the Niagara Peninsula) all of these are within the custody of Parks Canada.

Article content material

And the Fee is doing simply effective operating their one battlefield, thanks very a lot. In January, they even opened a brand new and improved community of cross-country ski trails.

Article content material

CANADIAN FOOD INSPECTION AGENCY 

Though Canada’s meals retains getting dearer, a minimum of it’s not inflicting any mass poisonings. It’s the Canadian Meals Inspection Company that’s been chasing down an “unprecedented” outbreak of avian flu. In February, they caught traces of listeria in a batch of artisanal fondue, and once more in a cargo of PC model cheddar cheese. And CFIA inspectors preserve busting “meals fraudsters”; producers who reduce their product with low cost filler. It’s a very troublesome downside with high-end cooking oils. Based on CFIA testing, as a lot as a 3rd of premium oils characteristic extreme adulteration.

Article content material

THE ROYAL CANADIAN MINT

Canadians will not be conscious that their pockets jangle with a few of the world’s most superior coinage. The Royal Canadian Mint is routinely pioneering new strategies of coin manufacture that simply don’t exist wherever else. They discovered easy methods to mass-produce full-colour cash. They had been the primary to churn out cash that includes multifaceted high-relief designs. And Royal Canadian Mint cash are a few of the hardest on this planet to counterfeit.

It’s for these causes that the Mint is completely raking in overseas contracts; greater than 80 nations have a minimum of a number of Canadian-made cash in circulation. Tack on the truth that the Mint sells truckloads of memorabilia to coin collectors annually, and the entire operation earns the Authorities of Canada a somewhat tidy annual revenue.

Article content material

ENVIRONMENT CANADA (THE WEATHER FORECASTING PART)

That is the division headed by former Greenpeace activist Steven “Part Out the Oil Sands” Guilbeault, and it’s the one singularly answerable for the truth that you may’t get a good straw anymore.

Nevertheless, Setting Canada can be the company tasked with offering 24-hour climate forecasts internationally’s second largest land mass – they usually do it comparatively properly. Subsequent-day forecasts are virtually at all times right, and even the company’s seven-day forecasts are proper about 70 per cent of the time.

To do that, the company’s meteorologists keep hundreds of monitoring stations (a few of that are extremely distant), they launch 62 climate balloons a day they usually’ve constructed the world’s strongest climate pc.

Article content material

ELECTIONS CANADA 

Whilst Ottawa is embroiled in scandal over allegations of Chinese language electoral interference, it’s notable that no one is questioning the integrity of the fundamental mechanics of the Canadian electoral course of. The gist is that China used hinky means to affect Canadians’ votes, however that the precise casting of ballots was all above board.   

That is primarily as a result of Elections Canada is fairly constant at delivering electoral outcomes promptly and with out too many suspicious anomalies corresponding to lacking poll bins or malfunctioning voting machines (the company resolutely refuses to maneuver away from paper ballots for this exact motive). 

IN OTHER NEWS

Though it’s been 61 years since Canada final executed somebody, the citizenry has by no means actually misplaced its enthusiasm for killing criminals. A latest Analysis Co. survey turned simply the most recent ballot to indicate {that a} majority of Canadians (54 per cent) wouldn’t thoughts a return to capital punishment for the crime of homicide. In actual fact, the sentiment is trending upwards: A 12 months in the past, solely 51 per cent of respondents favoured state executions. As has been proven in prior Canadian surveys on capital punishment, it is a somewhat predictable public response to the truth that vanishingly few Canadian murderers ever keep behind bars for greater than about 20 years. In simply the previous couple of years, the Division of Justice has granted launch to cannibals, serial killers, cop killers and even baby murderers.

Article content material

One of many weirder issues surrounding the continued hubbub about alleged Chinese language electoral interference is that it’s not likely primarily based on any new data. It’s been recognized since 2016 that Chinese language businessmen had been throwing cash on the Trudeau Basis in an obvious try and influence-peddle the prime minister. And for the final 12 months there’s been no scarcity of studies exhibiting that Liberal campaigns within the 2021 election had been receiving in-kind assist with uncomfortably shut ties to the Chinese language consulate. However the motive the allegations are abruptly hitting onerous this time round is because of a sequence of leaks from CSIS reporting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was repeatedly briefed on Chinese language interference operations, however didn’t do something about it.

Article content material

On Friday, a type of CSIS leakers broke their silence, though they’re nonetheless not revealing their title as a result of danger that they might face prison prosecution. In an op-ed for the Globe and Mail credited to a “nationwide safety official,” the leaker mentioned they went public solely after years of frustration at seeing “proof of senior public officers ignoring interference.” The official additionally urged Canadians to relax about what all of it means.  “I don’t imagine that overseas interference dictated the current composition of our federal authorities. Nor do I imagine that any of our elected leaders is a traitor to our nation,” they wrote.

As we’ve talked about, the Supreme Court docket of Canada is down a decide after Russell Brown was allegedly caught up in a sequence of drunken shenanigans at an Arizona resort. That is dangerous information for those who like pipelines. The Supreme Court docket is quickly set to think about a Authorities of Alberta problem to Invoice C-69, a bit of 2019 laws that broadens the factors by which a useful resource venture (corresponding to a pipeline) will be rejected. It was already a protracted shot that Alberta may get C-69 quashed by the Supreme Court docket, but it surely’s now additional unlikely provided that Brown was thought-about to be one of many courtroom’s extra reliably pro-Alberta votes.

Get all of those insights and extra into your inbox each weekday at 6 p.m. ET by signing up for the First Studying publication right here.