The future of cabinet’s $90 billion regional high speed rail venture yesterday fell in doubt after Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre pledged any future Conservative government would cancel it as a costly fantasy. Promoters estimate construction will require at minimum a decade’s worth of federal financing: “Ridiculous.”
Defence spending peaked at $63.5 billion before the expiry of the budget year at midnight last night, according to the Department of National Defence. NATO says it did not verify the figure which is not itemized in any federal budget document: “We have full confidence in the process.”
The Public Health Agency today assumes direct management of a national compensation fund that to date has paid out $21,474,722 on injury and death claims attributed to Covid shots. Consultants previously hired to manage the Vaccine Injury Support Program were blamed for causing “frustration and hardship.”
A federal labour board has upheld the firing of a Coast Guard captain for ignoring a distress call at sea. The captain of the fisheries patrol boat Dudka denied misconduct, testifying he was waiting for orders: “He was wrong.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday would not say whether he believes China uses slave labour. It followed cabinet’s announcement of “a new foreign policy” that encourages Canadians to get to know the People’s Republic: “Do you believe there is forced labour in China?”
Police-reported hate crimes against Jews remained high through 2024, Statistics Canada data showed yesterday. New figures followed testimony at parliamentary hearings that Canada had normalized anti-Semitism to the point it was “casual, even fashionable.”
New Democrat leader Avi Lewis yesterday said he will be “clear and consistent in my position” on alleged Israeli genocide and claims of a powerful Jewish lobby in Canada. Jews expressed alarm over Lewis’ election Sunday: “The NDP has become a hostile place for the vast majority of Jewish Canadians.”
A federal plan to “modernize” the CBC will remain secret, the Department of Canadian Heritage said yesterday. It censored 21 of 22 pages of the confidential memo written weeks after Prime Minister Mark Carney won the 2025 election: “The government has recommitted to protecting Canada’s cultural sovereignty and identity by strengthening CBC.”
Veterans Affairs Minister Jill McKnight is delaying release of records sought by MPs regarding millions in unpaid benefits for Métis veterans of the Second World War. A $30 million fund approved by Parliament paid only a fraction to old soldiers, sailors and air crew: “It is difficult.”
A federal judge has faulted Revenue Minister François-Philippe Champagne for disobeying a Court order in a tax case. The Minister’s office and Canada Revenue Agency failed to comply with a 2025 order to disclose emails and memos regarding treatment of a Jewish charity: “Orders of the Court must be obeyed.”
Vancouver activist Avi Lewis yesterday said Canadians were at war with a corrupt elite he blamed for inflation. Lewis won the federal New Democrat leadership on the first ballot with his pledge to “tax the rich.”
A historic site dedicated to 19th century Prairie homesteaders will be reimagined as a monument to “inequities on the Prairies” including mistreatment of Indigenous people, says a Parks Canada report. Celebration of European settlement at Saskatchewan’s Motherwell National Historic Site lacks diversity, said the plan tabled in Parliament: “Motherwell’s second wife is noted for her connection to the difficult history of the Residential School system.”
More than 57,000 Canadians living abroad voted in the 2025 federal election, a record, according to an Elections Canada memo. More are expected in the next election with the passage of a cabinet bill granting citizenship to the grandchildren of Canadian citizens abroad: ‘There is increasing demand by international electors.’
Cabinet last year pocketed a 25 percent profit on mandatory security fees charged airline passengers, records show. Advocates have sought relief from fees introduced in 2002 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks: “How much is collected from passengers?”
John A. Macdonald was a vagabondish fellow who never stayed in one place for long and occasionally had trouble paying the mortgage. Our founding prime minister had at least five homes in Ottawa. Few survive.
In 1865 he bought his first bachelor pad, a stone row house at 63 Daly Street near what is now a youth hostel. “I don’t know what you have got in the way of furniture that you can spare me,” he wrote his sister. Macdonald took in three boarders to help pay the bills.
A widower, he married his second wife Agnes in 1867. She set out to improve the place. In her diary Lady Macdonald complained the family home had become a caucus hangout: “Here, in this place, the atmosphere is so awfully political that sometimes I think the very flies hold parliaments on the table.”
There would have been a lot of flies. Daly Street had an open sewer that reeked in summer and left a residue of human waste mixed with snow and mud in winter. This first home is gone forever, destroyed in an 1873 fire. A second home, on Chapel Street, was demolished after the First World War and is today a parking lot.
In 1870 the Prime Minister again went house-hunting. He found a place at O’Connor and Nepean Streets, seven blocks south of Parliament Hill. It was a sturdy three-story brick home with a gingerbread veranda. A single photograph of the place exists, a grainy image published in a 1904 Ottawa travelogue The Hub And Spokes by Anson Gard.
The house on O’Connor was demolished. Today it is replaced by an economical grey, mid-century apartment tower across the street from a now-vacant convenience store that once peddled cigarettes and lotto tickets.
Macdonald would have appreciated the affordability of the neighbourhood. In April 1875, on being expelled from the House for election fraud, he was reduced to auctioning his furniture and even light fixtures to pay creditors.
From the auction catalogue: “One large bronze hanging lamp and burners with porcelain shade,” “large oak book case in two parts,” “one oval oak extension table.” Bidders were free to cart away the household treasures of the Father of Confederation. Macdonald took off for Toronto to await the resurrection of his fortunes.
With re-election in 1878 Macdonald returned to the capital and a new address, Stadacona Hall, a large gated home on what is now Laurier Avenue built by a lumber baron and fit for a prime minister. Macdonald lived here through his second term as leader. The place is still there, now home to the High Commission of Brunei.
In 1883 Macdonald purchased for $10,400 his last and most famous address, Earnscliffe, a Gothic Revival manor overlooking the Ottawa River. Here Macdonald spent his final years, and died in an upstairs bedroom in 1891.
Not for another 70 years would Parliament provide an official residence, forever ending the era when a prime minister might have lived next door.
By Andrew Elliott
