Blacklock's Reporter

Parks Canada yesterday designated the Kamloops, B.C. Indian Residential School a national historic site but omitted all reference to alleged graves in a nearby orchard. Claims in 2021 by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation that it discovered 215 children’s graves on the schoolgrounds prompted an international outcry. No remains were ever recovered: “The possibility of unmarked burials is not a determining factor for designation.”

Managers at Manitoba’s International Peace Garden say they have received angry emails from Canadians threatening boycotts over cross-border politics. Hurtful comments were “hard to read,” said the North Dakota-based CEO of the Garden dedicated 93 years ago to eternal friendship: “I have never seen anything quite like this.”

Cabinet yesterday granted border agents new powers to cancel temporary visas for suspicious foreigners considered likely to remain in Canada illegally. It follows a 2024 admission by the Department of Immigration that it had lost track of as many as half a million foreigners here: “Travelers may be turned back at the airport.”

Employees who suffer layoffs due to “climate” disasters like wildfires will qualify for improved jobless benefits under a pilot project detailed yesterday by the federal Employment Insurance Commission. The three-year experiment will cost $4.3 million: “With climate change, natural disasters are expected to become a new reality.”

Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc yesterday in an ethics filing promised to avoid all discussions benefiting J.D. Irving Ltd., one of the largest private employers in his home province and operator of the biggest oil refinery in the country. Federal judges have ruled so-called “conflict of interest screens” are legal: “The Ethics Commissioner and I have agreed.”

Cabinet aides conducted 2024 focus group research over a proposal by then-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to ban corporate ownership of single family residences, records show. Canadians partially blamed speculators for high housing prices, said the Privy Council report: “A number were of the opinion that investor speculation in residential real estate had been a major contributing factor.”

Climate change may open Canada’s most northerly deepwater port to export markets 300 days a year, says a federal briefing note. The Port of Churchill initially built for wheat exports to the United Kingdom is currently icebound eight months out of twelve: ‘With a certain level of icebreaking, year-round shipping to and from Churchill is technically already possible.’

Calgary, Windsor and Saint John will take the heaviest initial hits in a U.S. trade war, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce warned yesterday. Analysts calculated the share of municipal GDP tied to U.S. exports in the 41 largest cities nationwide: “For some of Canada’s cities the threat is far more local and personal.”

A 60-day GST holiday passed by Parliament at a $2.7 billion cost was not worth the trouble, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said yesterday. A majority of storekeepers impacted by the tax break said it had no real impact on sales: “The government’s GST holiday was a flop.”

Steel and aluminum prices are expected to jump up to 40 percent under new tariffs invoked yesterday by U.S. President Donald Trump. Similar tariffs in 2018 were blamed for “killing Canadian businesses,” the Commons industry committee was told at the time: “These reckless tariffs threaten tens of thousands of good-paying jobs.”

Federal lawyers offered a low cash settlement to anti-Semite Laith Marouf over thousands he owed taxpayers as a Department of Canadian Heritage consultant, according to an internal memo. Marouf, a Montréal activist who once fantasized on Twitter about shooting Jews, left for Beirut after pocketing $122,661 to fund a national series of lectures on tolerance: “It was estimated that settling at this time would recover around $40,000.”

Any future Conservative cabinet will build an army, navy and air base in Nunavut complete with icebreakers and fighter jets, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. Canada must “stand on our own two feet,” he said: “Canadians will decide.”

The Department of Environment in an internal 1987 report predicted climate change would turn Prince Edward Island into a “cluster of four islands” and cut Canada’s hydroelectric output. The report was released yesterday under a federal program to digitize thousands of archived reports dating over a century: “The direction of the impact, whether it was a gain or a loss, was considered easier to predict than the magnitude.”

Canada failed Gazan refugees by refusing to let more into the country, Liberal Party leadership contender Frank Baylis said yesterday. The former MP (Pierrefonds-Dollard, Que.) and federal contractor said taxpayers should make it up by rebuilding Palestinian homes: “It’s a form of discrimination we have done against the Palestinian people.”

A federal agency is paying a Washington lobbyist US$85,000 a month to manage “outreach to government officials,” records show. The confidential contract signed last Wednesday followed Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly’s claim she had deep influence with the White House: ‘All discussions will be kept confidential.’