Canada shorts (Canada).

October 25, 1999, was pension day for Members of Parliament elected in 1993; having completed six years in the House of Commons, they are entitled to generous pensions. One hopes that MPs of more independent minds than their party whips will be emboldened to ignore party discipline on matters of conscience.

Meanwhile, all is not well with our MPs. Writing in the National Post, Jonathon Gatehouse commented, "Marital woes are so prevalent--an estimated 75 percent of long-term federal MPs end up divorcing their spouses--that successful political unions have become newsworthy oddities" (Post, Aug. 23, '99).

Statistics Canada economists are looking to explain the falling birth rate in Canada. They decided to blame "low incomes" (Post, Dec. 23, '99), this at a time when Canada has never been more prosperous. Do they not think that abortion--2.2 million since 1969--has anything to do with it?

The same Stats Canada is threatening to remove questions on religion and ethnicity, two of the most useful and interesting topics of the census, but ones which are politically incorrect (it remains an embarrassment to the secularists to find that 80 per cent of Canadians continue to profess their faith in Christianity). The cabinet will decide whether to go along with it for next year's census. Write your MP about it. Address of Stats Canada: Stats Canada Census Department, Jean Talon Building, Tunney's Pasture, Ottawa, ON, KlA 0T6. Phone: [phone], fax: [phone].

Larry Fisher was sentenced on January 4 to life imprisonment for murdering a young nursing aide in Saskatoon in 1969. It was also announced he could get parole in seven years.

"Gays"--i.e., homosexual activists--from around the world are coming to Canada to file refugee claims because their chance of being accepted is excellent, so say reports to the Immigration and Refugee Board (Toronto Sun, December 5, '99).

In our January issue we reported Canada's five big banks firing 17,500 employees over the coming year while they have reaped enormous profits in 1999. On January 11, 2000, the Bank of Montreal revealed it had paid the obscene sum of $21 million to departing CEO Matthew Barrett. On the same day (as the news item), the bank laid off 310 employees in Halifax.