MPs yesterday asked cabinet to undertake a sweeping investigation of costly real estate holdings by the Department of Foreign Affairs. it followed the purchase of an $8.8 million Manhattan penthouse for Tom Clark, Canada’s $232,000-a year Consul in New York: "He wanted to live like a king."
The Commons government operations committee yesterday voted to compel disclosure of cabinet’s subsidy agreements with Stellantis. MPs have sought confidential terms since 2022 when cabinet committed ongoing subsidies totaling $15 billion for battery plants in Windsor and Brampton, Ont.: "Were there any assurances in that deal that jobs would stay in Canada?"
Cabinet does not expect to meet its housing targets until 2035 at the earliest, Housing Minister Gregor Robertson said yesterday. The admission came under questioning at the Commons finance committee: "We can only work with the facts we have in front of us."
Canada since 2015 has awarded more than $100 million in foreign aid to China, figures show. The Department of Foreign Affairs said the funding promoted “sustainable development.”
Marie-Philippe Bouchard, $562,000-a year CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, yesterday acknowledged a network claim that millions subscribe to the CBC Gem video streaming service include many who signed up for free, one-time accounts. The CBC is in Federal Court attempting to block disclosure of the number who bought $72-a year subscriptions: "How much money have you put into Gem in the last five years?"
Canada has normalized anti-Semitism and made public spaces unsafe for Jews including children, the Senate human rights committee was told yesterday. Witnesses testifying at the start of hearings on anti-Semitism said public expression of hatred was so commonplace it had become “pervasive and casual, even fashionable.”
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne yesterday reannounced a 2021 proposal to create a Canadian Financial Crimes Agency but set no deadline on enforcement. “We have been consulting,” he told reporters.
Valuable paintings, sculptures and other artworks have vanished from a multi-million dollar federal collection managed by Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty’s department, say auditors. An internal report disclosed more than 130 works disappeared with security so lax there was “an increased risk of theft.”
Cabinet in a briefing note likened Chinese concentration camps to Canada’s Indian Residential School system. Diplomats privately told Chinese Communist Party officials “not to repeat Canada’s past mistakes,” said the document: "Canada continues to urge China not to repeat Canada’s past mistakes."
The federal agency responsible for the $60 million ArriveCan program has yet to fill “gaps” in fraud detection, warn auditors. The in-house report faulted Canada Border Services Agency managers for being slow to tighten controls after ArriveCan irregularities: "Fraud regardless of whether it is alleged or proven can erode public trust."
Political aides would not comment after Prime Minister Mark Carney told a podcaster he’d have police arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited Canada. The Department of Foreign Affairs as recently as October 8 expressed no interest in the question and called it “a matter for the courts.”
A Liberal-appointed senator declined comment after misrepresenting a news story to question if Canadian Jews committed war crimes. Records show Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) garbled facts to post a provocative message on his Twitter account: "Why has the media been so one-sided?"
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "A welcoming gas station by the Canada-U.S. border offers two kinds of coffee: a regular House Blend and a pricey, Fair-Trade, Organic-Certified brand..."
1968 is so layered in mythology it takes a surgeon’s scalpel to cut to the facts. Historian Paul Litt of Carleton University deftly slices and trims until the truth emerges in Trudeaumania. Even in death Pierre Trudeau remains a polarizing figure. Professor Litt traces the phenomenon to that long-ago campaign.
Yes, Trudeaumania was invented by media, writes Litt: “Yet the media could not have made Trudeau without a complicit audience.” Most strikingly, it could never happen exactly the same way again. The ’68 phenomenon was a collision at the intersection of time and place. Many political fixers have schemed to recreate the experience, and many have failed.
“For those caught up in the mania, 1968 was a historic turning point in which Canada left its dowdy colonial past behind and assumed a new autonomous identity as a model modern liberal democracy,” writes Litt. “They may have been deluding themselves, but since nations are fictions with real-world effects, Trudeaumania had lasting influence.”
Cabinet advisor Amira Elghawaby lobbied government managers to install Muslim prayer rooms in federal buildings though only two percent of employees self-identify as Muslim, records show. Failure to accommodate Muslim prayers in business hours was “Islamophobia in the workplace,” she wrote in notes disclosed through Access To Information: "Islamophobia is a clear and present danger to our social fabric."
