Free counseling, nursing, home visits, transportation, eyeglasses and other “supplemental health services” for illegal immigrants and refugee claimants cost hundreds of millions last year, new records show. Expenses tabled in Parliament followed a Commons health committee vote to audit the $884.6 million a year Interim Federal Health Program: “Six and a half million Canadians don’t have a family doctor.”
PM Drafting An ‘Auto Policy’
Cabinet is developing an auto policy after Prime Minister Mark Carney granted Chinese carmakers broad access to the battery electric vehicle market. The Department of Finance had accused China of predatory trade practices: “I look forward to seeing it.”
War Refugees Paid $839M
Cash grants to Ukraine war refugees cost taxpayers $839 million, says the Department of Immigration. Ukrainians offered free flights from the war zone were paid $3,000 per adult and $1,500 per minor child on landing in Canada: “There is a perception of unfairness.”
Feds Tree Scheme Cost $488M
Cabinet’s failed Two Billion Trees Program cost nearly a half billion dollars before it was wrapped up last November 4, documents show. The program fell 89 percent short of its tree planting target: “How many trees were planted?”
Candidates Spot Irregularities
A majority of candidates questioned following the 2025 general election said they were convinced foreign agents tried to influence voters, says Elections Canada research. And almost half believed illegal money was funneled into the campaign: “Forty-nine percent thought there were problems with foreign money.”
Gov’t Climbdown On Bill C-9
Cabinet yesterday in an abrupt climbdown suspended MPs’ study of what it touted as a key bill to combat anti-Semitism. The quick withdrawal by Liberals on the Commons justice committee came only minutes after the Government House Leader demanded passage of Bill C-9: “This is about making Parliament work.”
Proposes Billions For Credits
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday proposed a multi-billion dollar tax credit for lower income households. Carney denied it was a pre-election ploy, noting Parliament has yet to pass a $5.8 billion tax cut he proposed last year: “Are you considering calling a snap election?”
Predicted Immigration Threat
High immigration levels represented a “significant source of threats,” the Canadian Security Intelligence Service wrote in a confidential 1988 memo. The censored, six-page document released through Access To Information identified four ethnic groups by name: “Security aspects of Canadian immigration procedures appears to be on the verge of complete collapse.”
Will Not Identify Missing Art
Federal managers refuse to tell Parliament the titles and creators of artworks that vanished from a multi-million dollar Indigenous collection. MPs have suggested the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations deliberately downplayed suspected thefts from its offices over decades: “You shrug your shoulders and pretend it doesn’t matter.”
Alleged Fraud A Daily Call-In
The Department of Public Works last year logged 364 tips after launching “fraud awareness” campaigns involving federal contractors, records show. The department in a report to the Commons government operations committee said it also fired several employees: “This is a troubling outcome, something you never want to see.”
Predicts “Lots” Of Initiatives
Cabinet will have “lots of legislation” to introduce from today’s opening of Parliament’s 2026 sitting, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon said yesterday. He expressed no interest in a snap election this year: “We believe we have a strong mandate.”
Warn Of ‘Democratic Decay’
Canada is witnessing a decline in “democratic norms” and the “rule of law,” says a Law Commission report. Findings were drawn from interviews with MPs and senators, judges, lawyers and scholars: “Public institutions do not work unless they are reviewed and accountable.”
RCMP Feared Lougheed Run
The RCMP in a secret 1981 memo feared Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed could lead the West out of Confederation. Western separatism “lacks a dynamic leader” but might succeed with a charismatic organizer like Lougheed, wrote the Mounties counter-terrorism unit: “If Lougheed or someone of his stature agitates for Western independence, it could become a reality.”
Vax Objector Awarded $5,000
A federal employee suspended after declining a Covid vaccination has won back pay and $5,000 in damages. The Department of Public Safety employee was owed compensation for “loss of dignity,” a labour board ruled: ‘We have over 350 cases like these.’
Ottawa Lost: Russian Spy HQ
Atop a hill overlooking the Rideau River on Ottawa’s Charlotte Street stood a mansion that had its share of drama. It saw a sensational spy scandal and a suspicious fire.
Custom-built for a lumber baron’s son, John Frederick Booth, the home was cast in the ornate Queen Anne Revival style in 1917. The architect was John W.H. Watts, a former Department of Public Works designer who turned to building expensive homes for Ottawa’s elite.
The house was a baronial retreat for one of the city’s wealthiest families. Here Booth married off his only daughter to a Danish prince in 1924. It was after Booth’s death that the house at 285 Charlotte Street achieved international notoriety.
In 1942 the Government of Canada purchased it from Booth’s heirs for use by the USSR as an embassy. Prime Minister Mackenzie King would call it “a place of intrigue.” From the day the Russians opened the mission, the house on Charlotte Street “was almost immediately used as a source for espionage,” wrote one historian.
Here on September 5, 1945 cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko fled with enough secret cables to send eight Canadian spies to prison including MP Fred Rose. Gouzenko was sentenced to death in absentia by the Soviet Supreme Court. He spent the rest of his years hiding in southern Ontario under the pseudonym “Mister Sabotka.”
On New Year’s Day 1956 the Charlotte Street mansion burned to the ground. The cause was undetermined. Fire crews agreed the building might have been saved if only embassy staff had not blocked their entry. Instead, the Russians let the flames spread as they hurriedly carted boxes of secret documents to awaiting cars.
The Soviets, it turned out, had much to hide. KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin recounted in his 1999 memoirs The Mitrokhin Archive: “Between 1951 and 1953 the Ottawa legal residency, spurred on by Moscow’s criticism of its inertia since the defection of Gouzenko, recruited eleven agents.”
They stole the plans for the Avro Arrow and recruited Laval economist Hugh Hambleton as a Soviet agent, Mitrokhin wrote. They planted an agent in the RCMP and secretly financed the Canadian Communist Party with funds code named “U.S. wheat.” In a spy operation nicknamed Operation Cedar, the Soviets scouted areas to sabotage oil and gas pipeline installations from British Columbia to Quebec, and arranged an agents’ rendezvous at Lake of the Woods on the Minnesota border.
Only years afterward, with KGB defections and the collapse of the U.S.S.R., was the extent of Soviet skullduggery on Charlotte Street finally revealed. And today? The address at No. 285 remains the Embassy of Russia, rebuilt in 1957 as a grey Stalinist bunker.
By Andrew Elliott




