Blacklock's Reporter

A quarter-century after a federal health minister declared tobacco was socially taboo, it so happens about 5.7 million Canadians still smoke. The Department of Industry still grants patents for improved cigarette rolling machines, and for many Indigenous Canadians cigarettes are “an important industry that helps to provide the needs of life,” writes journalist Jim Poling, Sr. In Smoke Signals Poling documents tobacco’s role in the Canadian experience, and its long circuitous journey back to the First Nations peoples who first cultivated it. The result is a fascinating social history. Once offered to 16th century European explorers as “a sacred plant linked to the spiritual world,” tax-free tobacco is today again “a central part of Native life,” says Poling. He is thinking not of healing circles but cigarette bootlegging. READ MORE

Bonuses for executives in Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s department averaged almost $20,000 each last year despite a housing crisis, records show. The department in a memo said high bonuses proved housing was “a Government of Canada priority.” READ MORE

The internet was a winner since "we don't have to throw a lot of cash in at this to make it happen," then-Industry Minister John Manley told a confidential 1995 cabinet meeting called to discuss the worldwide web, newly-declassified records show. Two ministers advocated censorship of content: "The private sector is going to pay for virtually all of it." READ MORE

A Crown ferry service promises to buy Canadian next time after leasing its last new vessel through a Chinese shipyard. Management said it had a "very clear direction" not to charter another Weihai ferry: "They would ideally be built in Canada or at the very least would maximize Canadian content." READ MORE

Most First Nations are in breach of a federal law and Federal Court ruling that mandate disclosure of financial records, new Department of Indigenous Services figures show. “The law is still in effect,” said Senator Clément Gignac (Que.), who expressed frustration with federal managers’ lack of enforcement: "Did you comply?" READ MORE

A federal agency 104 years after Alexander Graham Bell’s death is faulting the inventor of the telephone for his views on genetics. Revisionism by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board followed a 2019 directive by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to review some 2,200 designations for offending omissions: "In Canadian history colonialism, patriarchy and racism are examples of ideologies and structures that have profound legacies." READ MORE

Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s department has quietly dropped its longstanding promise to target a minimum 500,000 housing starts annually as the minimum required to restore affordability. The department is no longer focused on “housing unit counts,” it said. READ MORE