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Review: Ditches Of Expediency

“It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk,” wrote English author Rebecca West. This is enough to make you wary of history that smells like violets. Winston Churchill & Mackenzie King casts these “two elderly statesmen” as wartime peers out to save democracy. Author Terry Reardon is struck by parallels. Both were Sagittarians born in 1874, both had blue eyes and “large egos,” both stood 5’6”. In chronicling their fifty-year acquaintance Reardon sees two dynamos of the Second World War. Well, not exactly. Churchill’s own Foreign Office in 1940 described King as “lukewarm about any war measure which he cannot show to redound to Canada’s own advantage.” READ MORE

Will Borrow Another $182.4B

Cabinet will add $182.4 billion in new borrowing over the next three years under a budget plan tabled yesterday. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne justified ongoing deficit spending as reasonable: "I stand by our projections." READ MORE

Audit’s All Wrong, Says CEO

The head of a federal anti-money laundering agency that failed an October 29 audit yesterday declared auditors were all wrong. “I do not agree,” Stéphane Sirard, interim CEO of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, told the Commons public accounts committee: "That is deeply disturbing." READ MORE

200,000 Foreigners To Remain

Cabinet will grant permanent residency to nearly a quarter million foreigners in Canada on temporary permits, according to a budget document yesterday. The Department of Finance did not specify whether it would include amnesty for illegal immigrants subject to deportation: "Up to 200,000 temporary residents already in Canada would have the opportunity to become permanent residents." READ MORE

Millions More For Paid Media

Cabinet-approved media will gain another $539 million in federal subsidies including extension of pandemic payroll bonuses that were to expire in seven weeks, plus $300 million more for the CBC. Measures detailed in yesterday’s budget followed “terrific” praise from the chief lobbyist for paid publishers: "The Government of Canada, I have to say, has been terrific." READ MORE

MPs Wary Of China Electrics

Cabinet must enforce its national ban on imported slave goods including Chinese auto parts, says the Commons industry committee. MPs specifically targeted Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to grant Chinese electric auto makers an unprecedented five-year import quota of 278,989 vehicles: "Do you believe there is forced labour in China?" READ MORE

Gov’t To Speed Deportations

Cabinet yesterday enacted new regulations to speed the deportation of illegal immigrants. Minister of Immigration Lena Diab in a legal notice said the typical refugee claimant was male, Haitian and under age 30: 'Lengthy processing times make the removal of failed refugee claimants harder.' READ MORE

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Guest Commentary

Senator Paula Simons

Mother

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.