The year 2021 in figures | Press

The number seven is said to be lucky. It is therefore from seven digits that Press draws up an assessment of the year 2021 on the federal political scene. A little, perhaps, in the hope that luck will be better in 2022, which we will talk about in a few days, also under the federal eye.

Melanie Marquis
Press

2

This is the number of additional seats that the Liberal Party managed to win after the election last September, which Justin Trudeau called in the hope of regaining the majority lost in 2019. The Conservatives lost two seats, the New Party Democracy won one, while in the Bloc Québécois, we were entitled to the status quo. “I heard you. You no longer want to talk about politics and elections, ”said the Prime Minister on the evening of his third electoral victory, at the end of a campaign where the need for an election was a burden. hang out for the liberals. Useless, this invitation to the polls? “It was necessary, I think. She indicated that Canadians were not ready to give their full and complete confidence to a single party, ”argues political scientist Thierry Giasson, of Laval University.

5

With the fourth wave of the pandemic barely subsiding, the fifth wave has started to surge in the country, propelled by the Omicron variant. In the economic and budget update that she filed virtually because she was in administrative segregation on December 14, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland included a $ 4.5 billion “insurance policy” for deal with the potential devastation of the variant on the income of individuals and businesses, but also to finance border measures. Borders whose tightness was also quickly tightened. “We see that with the new wave, the government wanted to respond more quickly, in airports, in particular,” notes Stéphanie Chouinard, associate professor of political science at the Royal Military College in Kingston.

21

The Law on the secularism of the State. It will have given a boost to the Bloc campaign, which had lead in the wing. “A boiler of insults in the face of Quebecers”, railed the chef Yves-François Blanchet at the end of the debate of the leaders in English, on September 9, after the host of the oratory game, Shachi Kurl, accused Bill 21 of “racist”. The issue was resuscitated in December, when news of the reassignment of a teacher from Chelsea who wore the hijab in class, which the law prohibits. Bet that Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown’s initiative to rally cities ready to fund the ongoing legal challenge will continue to spill ink on both sides of the Ottawa River next year – and that Justin Trudeau has not finished being hounded in Parliament.

215

Those who attended residential schools always said so. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrote it down in its report. However, it seems that it took the discoveries of hundreds of anonymous children’s graves to make an impression. To the 215 graves found in Kamloops, British Columbia, were added the 751 from Cowessess, Saskatchewan, then the 182 near Cranbrook, also in British Columbia … and with the arrival of technology that made it possible to find these remains. buried humans, that of penetrating radar, the chances are high that others are found. In the wake of the discovery in Kamloops at the end of May, the maple leaf was put at half mast. It regained its place at the top of the mast just over five months later on Remembrance Day last November.

1019

That’s the number of days Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have spent behind bars in China. “What it confirms is that they were hostages,” responded Guy Saint-Jacques, former Ottawa ambassador to Beijing, after Justin Trudeau confirmed that the two men had left space. Chinese air force on September 24. Their arbitrary detention ended after Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was given the green light to return to China, after extradition proceedings to the United States against her were dropped. The two Michael’s are considered by Xi Jinping’s regime to be on parole. “They confessed to their crime,” Cong Peiwu, Chinese Ambassador to Canada, alleged on December 10. The day before, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, declared in an interview with CBC that there remained “elements to be settled” in their file.

1341

The appointment of Mary Simon as Governor General of Canada has elicited mixed reactions. While some hailed the entry on the scene of a first Aboriginal head of state, others denounced the fact that she does not master French – she speaks English and Inuktitut. The Commissioner of Official Languages, Raymond Théberge, knows a thing or two about this: he received no less than 1,341 complaints in his office, all of which he deemed admissible. “We saw the two solitudes overlap during his appointment with the reactions in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. In Quebec and in French-speaking Canada, there was unease with the fact that she did not speak French at all, while in the rest of Canada, there was an appreciation of the arrival of this figure of reconciliation, ”notes Professor Thierry Giasson speaking of the one who succeeded Julie Payette, part of Rideau Hall in disgrace on January 21, 2021.

19,061

The number of complaints submitted to the collective action of victims of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces has given a clearer idea of ​​the extent of this scourge in the military ranks: on December 21, 2021, there were 19,061. It has been an eventful year in the Armed Forces: within three weeks, we learned that two Chiefs of Staff – Jonathan Vance, then his runner-up Art McDonald – were targeted by allegations of sexual misconduct. . Other prominent officers followed. “In memory, this is the first time that a strictly speaking military issue has taken on such importance in the public space in Canada. What happens in the Armed Forces traditionally concerns a fairly small circle within the public sphere. This issue has really captured the attention of Canadians, ”says political scientist Stéphanie Chouinard. The new Minister of Defense, Anita Anand, who promised the “end of the era of impunity”, apologized to the victims on December 13.