Poet W.N. Branson writes: "West of madness and East of Justice, in the traditional territories of our ancestors, a performative ritual calls the Spirits..." READ MORE
Review: Bullets Went Zzz-Zzz
Fighting Words is a document of war, intriguing because so many of us know only peace. We learn the hanging of 1837 rebels was bungled so badly one prisoner was nearly decapitated, that rifles fired by Canadian troops in the Boer War sounded “like lightning humming birds," zzz-zzz-zzz, that Hitler on weekends wore a tweed coat one size too small. These are anecdotes of Canadian war reporting from the age of Vikings to al-Qaeda. “People seem to have a pathological need for conflict,” writes author Mark Bourrie. “They also have a very strong urge to tell stories about it.” Bourrie recounts the most poignant reporting of anonymous diarists and acclaimed war correspondents like Stewart Lyon, who pioneered Canadian Press coverage of WWI, Dieppe correspondent and future Edmonton Journal publisher Ross Munro, and Gregory Clark, who filed on deadline from liberated Paris for the Toronto Star in 1944 though his own son was killed in action days before. READ MORE
No Answer On Overspending
Health Minister Marjorie Michel yesterday said cabinet is still attempting to “sharpen” its multi-billion dollar dental program amid cost overruns and questionable claims. Critics faulted the health department for failing to determine whether claimants were gaming the Canada Dental Care Plan at taxpayers’ expense: "As you know with new programs, we are still looking to sharpen it." READ MORE
Everybody Pays For Diesel
Grocery prices will rise by up to $1,000 next year for a typical Canadian household if high diesel costs persist, a leading food economist yesterday told the Commons human resources committee. “We have a trucking economy,” said Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab. READ MORE
CEO Resigned During Audit
A 9/11 agency mandated by Parliament to track suspicious cash transactions between terrorists and organized crime yesterday was faulted by auditors as so lackadaisical it compromised police investigations. Sarah Paquet, the $292,000-a year CEO, resigned last May 19 while the audit was underway: "This is a very sobering report." READ MORE
Trudeau Pledge Was Buried
Cabinet quietly buried a promised ban on thermal coal exports announced with fanfare by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2021, auditors said yesterday. One auditor called it the first time he’d seen an entire federal program shelved without comment: "I don’t remember a time in the last 20 years where I’ve seen work stop like that." READ MORE
Finds No Proof Of Gov’t Leak
Commons Speaker Francis Scarpaleggia yesterday dismissed complaints Liberals fed favoured media confidential details of a cabinet bill before it was tabled in Parliament. There were not “sufficient grounds” to find wrongdoing, he said: 'The government’s assurance is it has no knowledge of a leak.' READ MORE
Guest Commentary
My mother was a brilliant, beautiful woman, a woman with a passion for great literature, high fashion and duplicate bridge. She was a woman who disliked sentimentality of any kind, so I hope somewhere she’ll forgive me if I say I’m still haunted by the memory of the day I took her for that fateful neurocognitive exam, the day the specialist delivered the bleak diagnosis: Alzheimer’s. I failed my mother when she needed me most.
