Blacklock's Reporter

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.’

Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s department in confidential surveys is asking people if they’d accept the first-ever introduction of mandatory identification papers such as a passport for use within Canada. MPs have repeatedly opposed any national ID system as intrusive and costly: “Identification cards allow us to be identified when we have every right to remain anonymous.”

A federal agency created 14 years ago to streamline government IT services says it’s about two-thirds through its assignment. Progress was slow despite 10,000 employees and billions spent last year on contractors, said a Shared Services Canada briefing note: “To date Shared Services Canada has closed 490 out of 720 legacy data centres.”

Baltej Dhillon, a retired Surrey, B.C. policeman who as a 23-year old immigrant broke the RCMP barrier against observant Sikhs, has been named to the Senate. Dhillon in an earlier interview said he had no hard feelings against Canadians upset by his 1991 enlistment as the first bearded, turbaned Sikh to join the Mounties: “After I had graduated and met with my detachment commander he said to me, ‘I don’t agree with you what you did, but you’re a member of this detachment and I will back you 100 percent.’”

Compensation for federal employees affected by bungled payroll software has cost taxpayers $711 million and counting, records show. Payments are in addition to reimbursement for staff shortchanged by the Phoenix Pay System: “This is an estimate.”