Zookeepers are protesting a Senate bill to restrict the public display of elephants and apes. Exotic animals in Canada enjoy the highest standards of care, the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee was told: "It is very disappointing."
Federal investigators waited years to look into allegations a 2021 Liberal candidate benefited from thousands in undisclosed donations from friends of China, records show. Vancouver East candidate Josh Vander Vies’ campaign was ultimately fined $500 for poor bookkeeping: "I cannot speculate here."
Federal election monitors never caught any Chinese agents despite numerous tips but instead spent four years prosecuting Rebel News Network for improper signage, the China inquiry was told. A director of Elections Act enforcement testified it was complicated: "It is difficult to answer such questions."
The insolvent SaltWire Network newspaper chain pocketed more than $5 million in taxpayers’ subsidies in one year while failing to pay its tax debts, Court records show. Creditors in filings with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court described SaltWire management as incompetent: 'They mismanaged the business.'
A 2019 pre-election program promising to make home ownership “an achievable dream” failed, says a CMHC report. The billion-dollar scheme was poorly designed and delivered only a fraction of the promised benefits, wrote auditors: "The program has low uptake."
Middle class Canadians say they are overtaxed and underappreciated, according to in-house Privy Council research. Focus groups nationwide told federal pollsters they were fed up with rising costs and “the high tax burden.”
Easter greetings to all friends and subscribers. Blacklock's pauses today for the federal observance. We are back tomorrow -- The Editor
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “I was told that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Who created Steve, then?…”
In 1919 there were so many Bolsheviks in Port Arthur, Ont. the local MP called it one of Canada’s worst “breeding places of revolution.” The mayor calculated three-quarters of local Finnish immigrants were socialists. In neighbouring Fort William they held a memorial for Lenin in 1924 and sang the Internationale.
The twin cities on the north shore of Lake Superior were “storm centres in Canadian working-class history,” writes Michel Beaulieu, associate professor of history at Lakehead University.
It is popular now to dismiss Canadian communism as a historical curiosity peopled by colourful idealists. In its day it was serious business. Churchill scorned fifth columnists like the Lakehead Leninists as Moscow “missionaries”: “Obscure people awaiting the day when they hope to be the absolute masters of their fellow countrymen and pay off old scores.”
Yves Côté, now-retired Elections Commissioner, yesterday acknowledged dismissing complaints that Chinese agents were targeting Conservative Party voters in the 2021 campaign. “There is no duty to investigate everything,” Côté testified at the China inquiry.
Federal security agents in a censored 2021 election memo said they were aware China sought to “cultivate relationships with current MPs.” China-friendly Members of Parliament were not identified: 'China is interested in individuals who are viewed as ‘pro-PRC’ or ‘neutral' in key areas."
Security agents secretly warned Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault of irregularities at a 2019 nomination meeting in a Toronto riding, Don Valley North, the China inquiry disclosed yesterday. Perrault said he referred the incident to investigators but did no more: "Am I correct those concerns related to the Liberal Party nomination?"
One of the Prime Minister’s parliamentary secretaries yesterday accused premiers of wasting Liberals’ time by “spewing the same lines” on the carbon tax. MP Irek Kusmierczyk (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.), secretary for employment, complained of “the screaming hypocrisy of premiers coming here to decry a three-cent increase on the price of a litre of gas.”
Cabinet needs new “strategies” to restore public trust in the Government of Canada, says an Access To Information memo. The document complained of “growing evidence” of mistrust by the public: "What are some of the strategies that can be put in place to restore the public’s trust?"
The Canadian Embassy in Washington admits it displayed large friendship banners that mistakenly proclaimed sovereignty over Greenland. The banners were on display more than a week before the Department of Foreign Affairs noticed, a spokesperson said yesterday: "The banner was removed."
