Cabinet yesterday transferred control of the Canadian Coast Guard to the defence department under Minister David McGuinty. It followed a 2024 audit that complained the maritime service fell into disrepair when managed by the Department of Fisheries: “Thirty percent of vessels have less than five years left.”
Steelworkers are “actually, personally very special to me,” Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday in pledging to promote Canadian metal products. Freeland made no mention of taxpayers’ financing of steel-hulled vessels in a Chinese shipyard or Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola: “People who produce steel and aluminum in Canada are actually, personally very special to me.”
University faculties are free to pass resolutions on world events like the war in Gaza, the British Columbia Supreme Court has ruled. The decision came on a petition by 13 faculty members protesting anti-Israel resolutions adopted by the Faculty Association of Simon Fraser University: “It is not the Court’s role to intervene in members’ political disputes.”
New Democrats are tripling the filing fee for leadership candidates compared to rates charged in their last race won by Jagmeet Singh in 2017. The Party yesterday said it would also take a 25 percent cut of all candidates’ donations: ‘It’s an administrative fee.’
Federal New Democrats were too immersed in “identity politics” and made the fatal mistake of voting confidence in the Liberal cabinet last fall, says Party leader Don Davies. “That was the beginning of the end,” Davies said in a candid podcast.
Cabinet to date is 89 percent shy of its target to plant two billion trees, figures show. The program announced by then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna in 2019 has cost $267.7 million so far: “Why?”
A cabinet appointee named to oversee “nation-building projects” was cited for failing in her duties in a 2023 Federal Court case, records show. Dawn Farrell, named Friday as CEO of the Major Projects Office, was taken to Court by federal Access To Information lawyers: “The CEO is in violation of her legal duty.”
A federal judge for the second time in five months has dismissed a class action claim alleging racism in government workplaces. The latest lawsuit alleged discrimination against civilian employees of the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces: “Being identified as racialized does not necessarily mean you have experienced racism or discrimination.”
Taxpayers are owed updated figures from Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne on the cost of subsidies for electric auto battery factories, says the Budget Office. Champagne had defended billions in subsidies as a “game changer for the nation” prior to industry slowdowns, “a pretty good deal for Canadians.”
Blacklock’s Reporter pauses today for the 131st observance of Labour Day in tribute to Canadian workers nationwide. We will be back tomorrow — The Editor
When I was three,
our neighbour Sarah
asked my friend Amos and me
to help her find the key
she’d lost in the yard.
A quarter was promised to the finder.
Amos went to the rear.
I saw him by the tin garbage cans
where we sword-played
the other day.
I remained in the front,
searching by the fence,
then along the path.
There it was, right in front of me:
shiny brass,
waiting.
Sarah kept her word,
awarded me a quarter.
But gave two quarters
to Amos.
“Because this is Amos,” she said,
looking me in the eye.
My first encounter
with Management.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Freelancer Justin Ling, a Toronto Star contributor, has written a lively campaign memoir. His account puts heavy emphasis on Conservative Party media relations. This is thin ice, but Ling skates on.
The campaign was the first in which a majority of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery faced unemployment if the Liberal Party lost re-election. Millions in media subsidies were at stake. Pierre Poilievre “vowed to defund the CBC and criticized the entire Parliamentary Press Gallery for being bought and paid for as ‘Trudeau’s media allies,’” says The 51st State Votes. Ling could apply for a grant, but complains he couldn’t get an interview with the Conservative Party leader.
Here was the Press Gallery conundrum in a nutshell: The government gives us money and story ideas, the opposition doesn’t even recognize our genius. How can we settle that score? Ling could not know everything that occurred in the campaign. There are many anecdotes. Here’s one.
Collin Lafrance, a House of Commons manager, on April 7 emailed Press Gallery bureau chiefs for a confidential mid-campaign talk. “It was suggested we might have a follow-up meeting during the campaign,” he said. Five bureau chiefs enthusiastically agreed. I replied to all:
Nobody replied. No meeting was held. It is unknown if Lafrance was acting at the direction of then-Commons Speaker Greg Fergus, twice censured for partisan hackery.
Press Gallery members are coated in conflict. Ling’s Toronto Star client is heavily reliant on government concessions – the publisher once put his losses at a million a week – and Ling himself received funding from the Michener Awards Foundation to help cover campaign expenses. The Foundation offered $35,000 grants to “qualified journalists.”
Ottawa is a small town. Awards Foundation president Margo Goodhand, a former Winnipeg Free Press editor, once wrote of Justin Trudeau: “I wish him well. I need him to stand up to the bullies.” Trudeau was “emotional and empathetic,” she wrote, “earnest and forthright enough, an open book compared to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.” Other Foundation directors and executives include the chief lobbyist for the subsidized press, ex-managing editor of the CBC, ex-Toronto Star editor and a former iPolitics editor named in 2024 as a Senate publicist.
“The 45th Canadian election was nothing short of an existential exercise,” writes Ling. The choice was clear.
Pro-subsidy Mark Carney was “authentic,” “cerebral,” “comforting,” “folksy” though “folksy charm isn’t something easily learned,” “personable” and “self-effacing,” a campaign dynamo “mobbed at each stop,” writes Ling. “The more Canadians saw him, the more they liked him.” Ling recalls at one rally, “I saw young men brandishing copies of his book Values keen for an autograph.”
Anti-subsidy Pierre Poilievre was “condescending” with a “tough guy routine” and “rhetorical shimmy-shake” who campaigned with “press heavies,” writes Ling. It was all wrong: “He severely limited reporters who did show up from asking questions. He declined the vast majority of sit-down interviews with real journalists.”
The 51st State Votes is preoccupied with journalists’ feelings. There are 23 references in 78 pages of text.
Ling concludes Poilievre was “dour,” “inauthentic,” “inflexible,” a “master of slogans,” “paranoid” and “tightly managed” by “little Napoleons,” a caricature who “opted to emulate Musk” and resorted to policies that were “morally repugnant and practically stupid.” Press relations? They were the worst.
“He turned up his nose at journalists and the media, eschewing them in favour of online influencers and conspiracists,” writes Ling. The Opposition Leader “began making time for a bizarre litany of streamers, podcasters and people with popular Facebook pages.”
Postscript: Liberals won re-election, subsidized media got another season and the minority Parliament slogs on. Of course this show has to end sometime. It may not be the curtain-crasher they have in mind.
By Tom Korski
The 51st State Votes by Justin Ling; Sutherland House; 100 pages; ISBN 9781-9983-65739l; $19.95
The trade department in an introductory report to newly-appointed Minister Maninder Sidhu said Canada is “focused on diversifying away from China” as a risky market. The stark analysis comes five years after cabinet polled support for a free trade agreement with the People’s Republic: “Trade Commissioner Services have focused on diversifying away from China.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage yesterday said it would not release until after the next federal budget a memo to Minister Steven Guilbeault on “a renewed approach” to CBC funding. Cabinet had promised the Crown broadcaster a multi-million dollar boost to its $1.4 billion annual subsidy if Liberals were re-elected: “It’s now or never.”
The Canadian audience for conventional TV is now aged over 50, the CRTC said yesterday. Television network revenues fell 8.6 percent last year to $1.3 billion, it said: “On average all Canadians read more online news than they watch.”
