Blacklock's Reporter

The Commons government operations committee will investigate more than $70 million paid to a contractor that once hosted a VIP retreat near a Chinese internment camp. “What are the results of this management company’s ingenious work?” Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday.

Federal agencies have approved more than $140 million in grants to Ukrainian refugees, records show. Figures were based on the fraction of eligible Ukrainians who applied for funding: “I am really humbled when it comes to how much we should all respect Ukraine.”

A federal program to pay $5,000 rebates to electric car buyers went more than 150 percent over budget, say auditors. Rebates cost taxpayer more than three quarters of a billion and were “an ongoing concern.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs is a bloated bureaucracy with 18 assistant deputy ministers and 90 directors general but few employees who know how to speak a foreign language, say former diplomats. “The current situation in the department is dire,” retired staff wrote in a report to a parliamentary committee.

VIA Rail paid millions in bonuses even as it pled hardship in lobbying cabinet for a Covid bailout, records show. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation yesterday disclosed Access To Information records showing 650 VIA managers received bonuses at taxpayers’ expense: “If VIA Rail has enough money laying around to hand out millions in bonuses and raises during a pandemic then it shouldn’t be relying on taxpayer bailouts.”

Most Canadians would never report a tax cheat since it is “none of their business,” says in-house research by the Canada Revenue Agency. Taxpayers in focus groups said informing on neighbours with tax troubles felt Communistic: “There is great reluctance to report personal or business tax evasion even when certain.”

Deputy Finance Minister Michael Sabia wanted to ‘keep the heat off the bank branches’ after accounts belonging to Freedom Convoy sympathizers were frozen, according to internal emails. His complaints went to the RCMP Commissioner and cabinet: “This is a MISTAKE.”

The Commons transport committee yesterday by a unanimous 11-0 vote summoned Minister Omar Alghabra to explain repeated breakdowns in air and rail service. MPs agreed to launch hearings Thursday on travel snafus that stranded Canadians passengers from Kelowna to Havana, Cuba: “We want answers from the Minister.”

Public employees cannot take photos of citizens without consent, a privacy commissioner has ruled. The decision came in the case of a Yellowknife hospital employee who allegedly attempted to take a cellphone snapshot of a visitor who complained about a mask mandate: “That action was inappropriate for an employee of a public body.”

All eligible MPs have completed mandatory ethics filings after a lone Liberal scofflaw was named and shamed for late filing in 2020. “If someone deserves to be punished for handing something in late, I am guilty,” MP James Maloney (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.) said at the time.

Cabinet this year proposes to launch its long-promised national buyback of prohibited firearms starting in Prince Edward Island, according to a federal memo. Islanders own few guns and represent a low “risk assessment” before RCMP expand the program nationwide, it said: “Prince Edward Island will be used as a pilot.”

The Department of Public Safety in internal emails complained it had “better things to do” than take reporters’ questions about its use of the Emergencies Act. Records show the department instead wanted news media to focus on discrediting the Freedom Convoy: “Get in on this growing narrative of the truckers.”

At least 2,400 former soldiers, sailors and air crew are homeless in Canada with the actual number likely higher, says the Department of Veterans Affairs. An emergency fund to provide impoverished veterans with winter parkas, food and shelter went over budget last year: “It is minus 40 and all the shelters are full.”

Disproportionately few Filipino and Chinese-Canadians are in federal prison, says a study by the Correctional Service of Canada. No reason was given. Findings were drawn from a decade’s worth of data on the penitentiary population: ‘Research on ethnocultural offenders should be conducted regularly.’