Liberal MPs last evening invoked national security in concealing records concerning Reid Sirrs, Canada's last ambassador to Afghanistan. Sirrs was the first G7 ambassador to close the embassy and flee Kabul with staff aboard a half-empty military plane, according to eyewitness accounts: "What went wrong?" READ MORE
A federally-subsidized report yesterday complained media are subject to “online abuse” from Canadian social media users and Freedom Convoy sympathizers. Authors stopped short of endorsing federal censorship of Twitter and Facebook: "We are holding this event here on Parliament Hill, a place where so many journalists have been exposed to trauma and harassment." READ MORE
Small Business Minister Mary Ng faces questions for a second time over contracts to Toronto friends and ex-colleagues. A Conservative MP uncovered a sole-sourced contract awarded by Ng to a former campaign aide and CBC pundit: "This is regrettably just another installment." READ MORE
Janice Charette, a federal executive critical of the Commons over a China spy scandal, yesterday was appointed Clerk of the Privy Council on a permanent basis. “Janice’s leadership and expertise as head of the public service of Canada is vital,” the Prime Minister said in a statement. READ MORE
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation yesterday named annual winners of its dubious Teddy Awards for wasteful spending. Canadians face a “huge tax bill” for record deficits, said the Federation: "Canadians want to leave their kids and grandkids with a shot at financial success." READ MORE
Cabinet is invoking confidentiality in refusing to detail actual cash payments to individual publishers under a $595 million press bailout. Newspaper executives mandated to help cabinet design terms of the bailout in 2019 agreed to conceal payments: "They chose the people they wanted to get the answers they wanted." READ MORE
A cabinet bill detailing legal grounds to search travelers’ cellphones and laptops may lead to political witch hunts, says a Liberal-appointed senator. “Travelers could be targeted for phone and computer searches based on their political views,” Senator Paula Simons (Alta.) said yesterday: "It will put the privacy rights of thousands of Canadian travelers in real jeopardy." READ MORE
My hometown of Stirling, Alberta is a village of about 1,000 people. The community is very united in Mormonism, the religion to which most of us belong. Imagine if the government removed all the children from Stirling because we were Mormon, that Mormons were declared unfit parents, that parents left behind could not leave Stirling and were governed by petty regulations. Then imagine parents knew our children would be told everything they’d been taught was not only wrong but ridiculous, that our morals were evil, our faith childish, our family values absurd, our self-image distorted. Would you not feel an agonizing sense of failure?
