Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "Veterans Affairs struggles to handle thousands of phone calls from current and former military personnel. Staff shortages, technical glitches, and budget cuts are blamed..." READ MORE
Book Review: Like Mussolini
Author Wendy Dobson calls China’s system “authoritarian state capitalism.” Analysts similarly called pre-war Italy a “corporate state.” Like the Beijing Politburo of 2026, Mussolini in 1934 mesmerized outsiders with showboat statistics. Italian GDP appeared to defy Depression-era gravity, growing year over year from 1929 to 1939 while the Canadian economy shrank five percent overall. “Everything looks well ‘on the surface’,” wrote economist Henry Schultz of the University of Chicago on a 1934 Italian tour. “No debating, no complaints.” The UK Saturday Review in 1934 put Mussolini on its cover and enthused: “He dragged Italy out of the mire of socialism and in a few years has made it the most successful and prosperous country in Europe.” Interestingly, both pre-war Italy and contemporary China adopted the identical economic tools: over-valued currency, state management of the economy, price controls, abolition of independent trade unions, abolition of dissent, abolition of a free press, restrictions on mobility rights, property rights and rule of law, voodoo statistics and disastrous state spending. In fascist Italy one in five workers was a government employee. READ MORE
Lib MPs Block Cost Recovery
Liberal MPs yesterday rejected a motion to recover $34 million in federal grants wrongfully paid to ineligible applicants by a scandal-ridden federal agency. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly earlier told Parliament it was “not in the public interest.” READ MORE
Ridership Claims Questioned
The Budget Office that has already warned of 25 percent cost overruns on cabinet’s regional high-speed rail venture yesterday said it is investigating ridership claims. Promoters predicted 24 million Canadians a year would take the train: "There are 40 million people in Canada." READ MORE
Find Rent Takes Every Penny
A fifth of food bank users in Toronto spend 100 percent of their income on rent, the Commons agriculture committee was told yesterday. Others have disposable income of less than $9 a day after paying for shelter and utilities, said the CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank: "Here is the math." READ MORE
Broken Promise Not Yes-No
Providing safe drinking water to First Nations by a fixed deadline “is not a yes or no question,” Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty said yesterday. Cabinet earlier skipped its 2021 deadline to eliminate all boiled water advisories despite spending $3.6 billion: "It’s not a yes or no question." READ MORE
Last Appeal On Bank Freeze
The Supreme Court yesterday served formal notice it will hear a last appeal from cabinet over the legality of emergency measures it used against peaceful Freedom Convoy protestors in 2022. Two lower courts determined cabinet’s actions including the freezing of demonstrators’ bank accounts were unlawful: "It captured people who simply wanted to join in the protest by standing on Parliament Hill carrying a placard." READ MORE
Guest Commentary
Vietnam, China, North Korea, all have labour camps. All abuse human rights and rule of law. Perhaps these realities are too raw for Canadians. Instead we presume common interests and points of goodwill that do not really exist. These are not normal societies as you and I know them; normal gestures are pointless. Governments promote trade with communist countries but there is no evidence this diminishes the power of police states or has ever closed a single prison camp. I know how communists work.
