The Department of Foreign Affairs held a secret ceremony honouring Ambassador Reid Sirrs and other diplomats who fled Afghanistan aboard a half-empty military plane during the fall of Kabul, records show. Canadian military called the incident an embarrassment: “Some still carry this emotional weight to this day.”
Federal auditors have uncovered more irregularities over government-issue charge cards, this time at the Immigration and Refugee Board. A random check identified missing records, transactions that were “not properly signed and dated” and a lack of spending limits: “No documentation was on file.”
Drug deaths rose by a third in 2021, Statistics Canada said yesterday. The increase in fatalities due to “accidental poisonings” followed parliamentary proposals to decriminalize heroin nationwide: “What do you think the impact of decriminalizing small amounts of illicit drugs would be?”
Federal healing lodges account for a high number of prison breaks, according to Correctional Service records. New data show 70 percent of federal escapees are Indigenous: “Escapes from healing lodges represent a challenge for residents, staff and community alike.”
A federal lawyer implicated in editing Blacklock’s Wikipedia page yesterday was named a Superior Court judge. The 2016 incident led to disciplinary measures against an unidentified courthouse clerk.
“I wish Justice Kaufman every success,” Attorney General Arif Virani said yesterday in a statement. Alexandre Kaufman, formerly with the Department of Justice civil litigation branch, was appointed to Ontario Superior Court.
As a federal lawyer in 2016 Kaufman successfully defended the finance department in one Blacklock’s copyright action in Federal Court. Access To Information records indicated Kaufman within minutes of receiving a court judgment emailed it to 22 people including two Ottawa bloggers, a Globe & Mail columnist, two private law firms, two federal communications officers, the University of Western Ontario and several federal lawyers. “Christmas came early,” wrote. Kaufman. “Please enjoy.”
“Very well done Alex,” counsel for the Bank of Canada replied to one Kaufman email. “A wonder kick in the knackers for Blacklock’s.” Bank counsel later apologized for the note.
Documents showed during Kaufman’s email blitz an unknown person using a Federal Court computer edited Blacklock’s Wikipedia page with a disparaging entry. Managers refused to identify the person or answer if the Wikipedia entry was made at Kaufman’s request.
“We strive to be exemplary in everything we do,” the Courts Administration Service wrote in its Annual Report to Parliament at the time. “Judicial independence is a cornerstone of the Canadian judicial system.”
Kaufman resigned from the Department of Justice prior to release of records in the matter. Then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould left an investigation of the Wikipedia incident to the Courts Administration Service.
“Disciplinary measures were taken against an employee,” the Administration said in a statement. “The measures taken took into consideration the employee’s wrongdoing.”
Justice Kaufman in a separate incident emailed Blacklock’s witnesses who filed sworn statements to suggest “you are free to withdraw your affidavit” to avoid cross-examination. The Federal Court in 2018 dismissed allegations of witness tampering in the case. “I’m just doing my job,” Kaufman told Blacklock’s reporters.
By Staff 
A CBC executive, Michel Bissonnette, has billed nearly $30,000 in travel expenses to date this year including a now-cancelled junket to the French Riviera, records show. Bissonnette repeatedly flew business class to Paris and once hired a driver to chauffeur him five blocks through downtown Ottawa: “We simply can’t be in a position where we have to keep cutting.”
The cost of a federal tax credit once dubbed an “open bar” for corporations is now approaching levels last seen a decade ago when the previous Conservative cabinet cut the subsidy. More than 16,000 companies nationwide are now claiming the Scientific Research and Experimental Development credit, said a federal report: “I’m a big, big fan.”
There is no evidence a five-year, $133.7 million climate change program reduced diesel emissions in Northern Canada, says a federal audit. The program mainly resulted in “trusting and respectful relationships” with Indigenous people, wrote auditors.
The post office warns it is tracking another heavy loss this year. Revenues for parcels, letter mail and flyers all fell in the first half of 2023, said the Canada Post Corporation: ‘We acknowledge the magnitude and significance of recurring financial losses.’
CBC Radio billed more than $160,000 in legal fees to challenge a CRTC order over use of the n-word, according to Access To Information records. The network won its free speech case June 8 in federal court: “The CRTC overstepped its jurisdiction.”
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By Shai Ben-Shalom
It says in black and white in the Constitution Act everyone has “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression” in this country. In fact, there is little case law on the issue.
In truth, most Canadians have no real investment in the right of expression and could not tell you what it means. The Charter of Rights is squeezed through a Canadian filter that emphasizes conformity and quiet manners.
So we come to Lawrence Hill’s odd essay, Dear Sir, I Intend To Burn Your Book. The title lures the reader in anticipation of a vigorous defence of the right to make trouble. It delivers instead an apologia for hurting someone’s feelings.
In 2007 Hill published a bestseller based on a 1783 British military ledger documenting the migration of American blacks to Nova Scotia. The Book of Negroes sold 500,000 copies in Canada. However, when the novel appeared in The Netherlands under the title Het Negerboek, Hill’s publisher received a death threat and a Black rights group burned copies in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark.
“It really shook me up,” writes Hill; “It was personally troubling to see a segment of the very community that I would hope to court and connect with – people of Surinamese descent in The Netherlands – rising up against my book.”
Hill is a son of the first family of civil rights in postwar Canada. His father Daniel was the first Afro-Canadian chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. His mother Donna was a Toronto labour activist who campaigned in the 1950s for repeal of race-based immigration quotas.
“The very purpose of literature is to enlighten, disturb, awaken and provoke,” Hill writes. “Literature should get us talking – even when we disagree.”
Free speech by definition is intended to protect everything offensive. Yet the Supreme Court routinely waives it in circumstances simply because it offends, and most media cannot be bothered. When the B-film Innocence of Muslims provoked Arab protest, two of three commercial TV networks refused to broadcast even an excerpt of the film in news coverage for fear of something or other.
Which brings us to the bonfire in Oosterpark. “There is something particularly odious about burning a book,” writes Hill; “Just imagine. If the left-wingers and the right-wingers formed a coalition, they could yank half the books out of the Canadian school curriculum.”
Yet in his essay on liberty, Hill makes a jarring admission. He rewrote the title of The Book of Negroes for publishers in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand where the novel appeared as the milquetoast Someone Knows My Name. “U.S. bookstores were refusing to place advance orders for my novel because the word ‘Negroes’ was in the title,” he explains.
And Hill would have happily changed the Dutch title, too, if only the book-burners had called first. “I might well have argued for the use of a different title,” he says. “At least we would have had a chance to discuss the matter.”
So we are left with another addition to the crushing discourse on free expression in Canada. We will fight for our rights – unless it gets complicated, in which case we won’t. PS: Hill sold five times more copies of The Book of Negroes than he did under the tepid title.
By Tom Korski
Dear Sir, I Intend To Burn Your Book: The Anatomy of a Book Burning by Lawrence Hill, University of Alberta Press; $10.95; ISBN 978-0-88864-679-8
Fewer than half of suspicious packages entering Canada by cross border mail are X-rayed for guns, says a Department of Public Safety report. Auditors said they could find no information on how many guns were seized: “It was not specified.”
Inflation is the number one worry facing small business owners, says Department of Industry research. It follows in-house Privy Council polling that found Canadians seek tax cuts to compensate for the rising cost of living: “Those most likely to rate the cost of goods and services as their biggest challenge included businesses with two to four employees.”
Federal regulators yesterday said it will take years to finalize rules compelling Facebook to pay for free links to news stories in Canada. Facebook has already suspended all links under Bill C-18 the Online News Act: “The business would be over.”
