The Canadian Security Intelligence Service yesterday refused to say how many federal ridings were targeted by foreign agents in the 2025 general election. “I am not able to tell you the numbers,” Vanessa Lloyd, a CSIS election monitor, told the House affairs committee: “During the election period the Task Force observed instances of foreign interference.”
Housing starts will go down, not up, this year despite ambitious federal targets for record-high construction rates, CMHC data showed yesterday. The federal mortgage insurer said a national recession was possible: “This will make 2026 one of the weakest years in recent decades.”
Cabinet’s current $78.3 billion deficit, the highest in Canadian history outside of pandemic overspending, will likely rise even higher before the budget year expires March 31, the Senate national finance committee was told yesterday. No new figure was mentioned: ‘It may now run a bit higher.’
One cabinet member yesterday expressed alarm after U.S. President Donald Trump demanded 50 percent of the $6.4 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge at Windsor, Ont. The threat in a social media post prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney to call the White House: “When President Trump talks, we listen.”
A Department of Finance executive who oversaw a 192 percent hike in the deficit yesterday apologized after laughing about his inability to calculate basic interest. “I don’t find it very funny,” one MP told Deputy Minister of Finance Nicholas Leswick.
RCMP in an internal report admit mismanaging crime labs in three provinces. Service was so slow investigators were hiring private labs for testing despite the higher cost, wrote auditors: “Only 50 percent of surveyed clients were satisfied.”
Some 100,000 illegal immigrants and refugee claimants in Canada are awaiting security screening, the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board said yesterday. MPs earlier expressed unease with months-long delays in conducting background checks: “We don’t know if they are safe to be in the country because we are waiting for a security screening?”
The Commons industry committee yesterday voted to scrutinize cabinet’s decision to expand market access for Chinese battery electric autos and revive $5,000 rebates for American-made electric imports. The unanimous vote came after Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said she could not understand why anyone would oppose the measures: “You were against EV mandates, okay, we got rid of them.”
The Commons yesterday gave Second Reading to a private bill to name corporate tax delinquents. Conservative MP Adam Chambers (Simcoe North, Ont.), sponsor of the bill, called it “offensive to every sensible person” that the Revenue Agency quietly negotiated settlements with companies that owed millions: “Behind the cloak of secrecy officials within the Revenue Agency and the government in general are waiving millions and millions.”
Parliament should stop allowing cameras in Question Period, says a spokesperson for the Government House Leader. Canada’s Commons was the first to televise proceedings 49 years ago: “Maybe we could take away the television cameras during Question Period.”
Elections Canada is placing orders for 700,000 poll tally sheets and other balloting supplies in anticipation of the next national campaign. Cabinet has denied interest in going to the polls for a second time in two years, though one MP noted “people here are getting worked up.”
A digital identification system will cost $6.64 billion but not a dollar more, federal managers promise the Commons public accounts committee. The ten-year program to digitize claims for Employment Insurance and other benefits is “the largest IT transformation ever undertaken by the government,” wrote the Department of Employment.
Spending on Canadian consulates in the U.S.A. under then-Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly jumped 13 percent in two years to more than $130 million, says a new audit. Federal agencies still hired American consultants to promote Canada’s interests: “No U.S. mission had previously undergone an audit.”
Taxpayers should not expect any repayment of billions in Canada Post loans for “several years,” says management. The post office required the second loan in a year to avoid insolvency, according to a cabinet order: “It gets us to break even by 2030.”
In 1911, when Richard Bedford Bennett first arrived in Ottawa as the bachelor MP for Calgary West, his choice of accommodation was the Rideau Club. No finer meal could be had. Bennett loved food. “He believed if he put on weight he would present a more impressive appearance,” a friend recalled.
In the end Bennett ate his way to diabetes and heart disease and the Rideau Club burned to the ground. But once both were in their glory.
Bennett was a self-made millionaire and corporate lawyer. He was brash, opinionated, obsessive, mercurial, philanthropic and a workaholic. Bennett put in 16 hour-days amassing his fortune.
He said tersely of his time in Calgary: “I went West. I worked. The country and I grew with it.” In Calgary Bennett was somebody. In Ottawa this tall, portly man was a backbencher. His first impressions of both the capital and Parliament were thin.
“I am sick of it here,” he wrote a friend. “There is little or nothing to do, and what there is to do is that of a party hack or departmental clerk or messenger.”
In 1911, the Rideau Club opened a stately new four-story headquarters at Wellington and Metcalfe Streets in Ottawa, a stone’s throw from Parliament. The club was a terra cotta beauty and Conservative institution. John A. Macdonald was first club president. Prime Minister Robert Borden used the clubhouse for cabinet meetings.
One newspaperman observed, “Ottawans who cared not at all for the Rideau Club as a club cared a lot about the building. It presented an elegant, finely proportioned but unobtrusive façade that stared steadily across Wellington Street, decade after decade, towards the Parliament.”
With its upholstered lounges and elegant dining, it was an obvious attraction for the Calgary MP. A light lunch for Bennett was a dozen oysters with pie and maple syrup. He snacked on chocolates by the box. “His daily breakfast was immense: a plate of porridge, bacon and eggs, plenty of toast, honey or marmalade.” recalled Max Aitken, a lifelong chum.
At the Rideau Club, Bennett never lingered in the cigar lounge. He loathed smoking and could not stand a dirty ashtray. And the bar? “I promised my mother I would never drink and I never have,” he said, though Bennett took his meals with a glass of crème de menthe and laced his soup with tumblers of sherry.
Bennett served six terms in the House. He relocated in time from the Rideau Club to the Chateau Laurier Hotel where Bennett kept a suite. He won the Conservative leadership and served as prime minister, from 1930 to ’35. In retirement Bennett bought an English manor where his gardener recalled he liked to eat buttered asparagus by the pound.
Bennett died of a heart attack at 76. He remains the only prime minister buried outside Canada. And the Rideau Club? It went up in flames Oct. 23, 1979. A century of furnishings, artwork and irreplaceable mementos were lost. The elegant landmark was reduced to a smoldering shell. Today the site is a paved lot.
By Andrew Elliott
