Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty’s department yesterday was cited for breaching an Act of Parliament in concealing records on the purported graves of 215 children at an Indian Residential School. The department was ordered to begin releasing files within 36 days: “Nothing in the Act allows the department to delay.”
Canada’s last Ambassador to Afghanistan in an Access To Information email released yesterday acknowledged diplomats were “not able to help everyone” in their hurried flight from Kabul aboard a half-empty military aircraft. The comment by Reid Sirrs is the only acknowledgment to date by the Department of Foreign Affairs that it failed to save thousands of Canadian citizens and allies from the Taliban: “There was a lot of scrutiny and negative publicity.”
Cabinet is dismantling its 11-year climate program, Tesla Motors has told MPs. The automaker questioned whether the government remains committed to electric cars after suspending introduction of 2026 sales quotas: “Canada has begun dismantling its environmental policies.”
Cabinet has polled public support for a national forest fire department similar to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, records show. Canadians in Privy Council focus groups supported the idea, complaining current efforts are inadequate: “It could have been more effective.”
The Immigration and Refugee Board yesterday said it needs private sector help to clear a backlog of “rising refugee claims” that is nearly four years’ long. The Board chair earlier described the volume as a shock: “They come, they ask for refugee status, they have to prove their claim.”
The federal prison system is so costly it is “not sustainable,” says an Access To Information memo. Thousands of cells sit empty in penitentiaries with fixed costs that now average a record $436 daily per inmate: ‘Reduce the number of low-performing, high cost assets.’
The health department in a memo to Minister Marjorie Michel says it has no legal duty to negotiate pharmacare agreements with provinces or territories. “We are focused on fiscal discipline,” said the note dated 14 months after Parliament passed Bill C-64 An Act Respecting Pharmacare: “To be clear, the Act does not require the Government of Canada to sign bilateral agreements.”
CBC News coverage of the Middle East is systemically pro-Palestinian with omissions, “emotional language” and selective facts that skew the audience’s perception of Israel, a B’nai Brith Canada report said yesterday. The network has denied its coverage is biased: “My perception is we are working very hard.”
Canada Student Loan write-offs cost taxpayers more than $200 million in 2024 despite a permanent waiver on interest for borrowers, says a federal briefing note. Individual student debts average $15,578 on graduation, according to the Department of Social Development: “The value of unpaid student loans will continue to grow.”
An employer cannot be faulted for following public health advice even if it’s unsound, the British Columbia Court of Appeal has ruled. The decision followed four years of hearings into a vaccine mandate enforced by taxpayer-owned Purolator Inc.: “It continued to be reasonable for Purolator to rely on public health authority statements about effectiveness even if, as a matter of objective fact, vaccination had ceased to be effective.”
The Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force is hiring a consultant to work as her private secretary at an undisclosed cost despite cabinet’s promise to cut spending on consultants, records show. The military did not say why none of its current 93,000 armed forces and civilian employees were incapable of filling the post: ‘We are cutting management consultants by 20 percent.’
Friends of Israel are asking Parliament to reject a petition by New Democrat leadership contender MP Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona) as discriminatory against Jews. McPherson declined comment on the petition that proposes mandatory background checks of all visitors from Israel, including Canadian citizens, and an investigation of charitable works by Indigo Books CEO Heather Reisman: ‘Reject this in its entirety.’
Cabinet is commissioning million-dollar research into impacts of its National School Food Program after admitting previous claims were guesswork. The Department of Social Development in a briefing note said it needed “evidence” to support the $1 billion program: “This is a game changer.”
Cabinet has approved a six percent budget hike for a government think tank famed for bleak forecasts of societal collapse. It was a “centre of excellence,” said a briefing note.
It was a magnificent colonial landmark, Canada’s first Supreme Court building. Here a Laval tax lawyer, Louis St. Laurent, pleaded his first federal case in 1911. He made such a reputation in law he was later propelled to cabinet as justice minister and then the premiership in 1948.
St. Laurent was twice offered appointment to the Supreme Court but declined. “Low salary,” his secretary explained. In private practice St. Laurent earned $50,000 a year in the 1930s.
Even in politics he retained the habits of a corporate attorney. St. Laurent demanded punctuality, kept his cigarettes in a silver case and never campaigned without a black Homburg hat or a lectern, insisting that all speeches be triple-spaced so he could read a sentence at a glance.
He had little interest in “light conversation and exchanges of humour,” a friend said. The Ottawa Journal described St. Laurent as a tax lawyer who merely “played the part of prime minister.”
When he graduated at the top of his law class in Laval in 1905 the Supreme Court seemed the pinnacle of ambition. The court’s home from 1882 stood at the corner of Bank and Wellington Streets in Ottawa, at the foot of Parliament Hill.
Designed in a subdued Gothic Revival style, it mirrored the larger Parliamentary precinct buildings. The architect was Thomas Fuller, renowned in the Confederation era. Fuller designed Parliament itself and the Prime Minister’s Office, the Halifax Armoury and Toronto’s St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church.
The courthouse was a witness to history. It heard pleas in the great conflicts of the era – rebellion and conscription, prohibition and the “persons” case that qualified women for federal appointments.
From his appointment to cabinet in 1941, St. Laurent passed the courthouse often. He walked to work from his apartment on Elgin Street and walked back home for lunch, “free from guards, sycophants or self-importance,” noted historian Desmond Morton.
The postwar era was not kind to architecture in the capital. Whole blocks of vintage homes and landmark buildings on Wellington Street were razed to make way for new structures including a modern Supreme Court, completed in 1945. The original court was left neglected and fell into disuse.
How much did St. Laurent care about the old courthouse where he’d made his name as a young barrister? As prime minister in 1956 he deemed the courthouse a fire trap and had it demolished to make way for a parking lot. It remains the only Parliament Hill structure to be razed by cabinet order.
Afterwards in 1976 a statue of St. Laurent was placed on the lawn of the new Supreme Court of Canada on Wellington Street. The site of the old courthouse today is the main RCMP vehicle checkpoint on Parliament Hill.
By Andrew Elliott 
