Blacklock's Reporter

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s claim of “fast tracking a trillion dollars of investment” is grossly inflated and drawn mainly from reannouncements of old spending, according to Budget Office figure released yesterday. Carney repeated the claim Tuesday in a speech to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos: “We are going to put more than $3,000 in the pocket of every Canadian.”

Authorities yesterday confirmed Housing Advocate Marie-Josée Houle spent two weeks holidaying in Egypt after booking a $13,684 business class junket to Cairo for meetings. A spokesperson denied Houle timed her vacation to subsidize her flights: “The Advocate extended her stay for personal reasons.”

New Democrats must counter an “incredibly active” Jewish lobby, Party leadership candidate Avi Lewis said last night. Lewis made his remarks in a leadership debate sponsored by an anti-Israel group, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East: “We have to expose the actions of the Israel lobby.”

Chrystia Freeland yesterday said she “behaved ethically at every moment” in accepting a job as an advisor to Ukraine’s President while acting as parliamentary secretary overseeing Canadian postwar aid to that country. Freeland spoke to Rebel News Network in her first public comments since resigning January 9: “I wasn’t on both sides of the deal.”

Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault is appointing new returning officers in three federal ridings that reported 2025 election irregularities, records show. Revisions to the List Of Returning Officers are in anticipation of another general campaign as early as 2026: “A ballot box got lost. How can that possibly happen?”

A self-described ‘watchdog for homelessness’ billed taxpayers nearly $14,000 for a business class junket to Cairo, records show. Employees in Access To Information emails questioned expenses charged by Marie-Josée Houle, cabinet’s $213,000-a year Housing Advocate: “It’s my job to be a watchdog for housing and homelessness in Canada.”

Costs to manage the Canada Dental Care Plan have jumped to nearly 9 percent or almost $860 million since the program was launched, records show. Health Minister Marjorie Michel’s department disclosed the program has already been audited but would not release the findings: “The report is confidential.”

The Senate banking committee yesterday endorsed a campaign proposal by Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre to compel rollbacks in municipal development charges as a condition of receiving federal aid. Ten of 13 senators on the committee are Liberal appointees: “Funding for municipal infrastructure is the main tool available to the federal government to require reductions in municipal fees and boost accountability.”

Canada had no choice but to repeal a 100 percent tariff on Chinese battery electric cars, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said yesterday. Moe acknowledged his province was a winner in trade talks with Beijing but denied it came at the expense of others: “To say this is favouring one province or another, that is just simply not a true statement.”

The Navy yesterday said it will pay the Royal Canadian Geographic Society $300,000 to develop “Navy-themed lesson plans” for schoolchildren. It follows declining membership in youth programs like the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets: “Being a cadet promotes pride in Canada.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford yesterday suggested the Prime Minister lacked backbone in granting Chinese automakers unprecedented access to Canada’s battery electric car market. “At least I know where I stand now,” said the Premier, who last year praised Mark Carney as a shrewd executive: “We get nothing.”

Federal managers should complete an 86-hour course at taxpayers’ expense for certification on “Canada’s colonial history,” says a Treasury Board memo. Workshops and seminars were a “journey that provides historical reflection,” it said.

The Public Health Agency confirms effective April 1 it will directly manage a national program that has paid out more than $18 million to Canadians harmed by Covid shots. Consultants hired to run the Vaccine Injury Support Program were blamed for causing “frustration and hardship.”

The diplomat whose hurried closure of our Embassy in Kabul left 1,290 Canadians trapped in Afghanistan has been recalled from his final overseas assignment. “Goodbyes are sad,” Reid Sirrs wrote in a farewell to colleagues: “Hello to a new adventure.”

Thousands of acres of dead pine left standing in Jasper National Park were a “key contributing factor” to a disastrous 2024 blaze that burned a third of the town, confirms a Canadian Forest Service report. Cabinet had blamed climate change: “Jasper saw a severe Mountain Pine Beetle attack that peaked around seven years before the fire.”