Blacklock's Reporter

Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “Security cameras caught you stealing. In one country, they take you to the city square, amputate your hand…”

High inflation, chronic deficits, shaky central bank leadership: This is the 2020s but also 1985. The parallel is striking. Michael Wilson in posthumous memoirs recalls an unpleasant meeting with then-Governor Gerald Bouey of the Bank of Canada where he could not get straight answers to important questions.

“When he sensed my building frustration he finally answered one of my questions by saying to me, ‘I don’t know, Minister. What do you think?’” writes Wilson. “What did I think? I exploded in frustration. ‘Gerry,’ I said, ‘I have been waiting for more than twenty years to get the inside information on what you guys are thinking about the financial markets. I finally get to ask you what happens in this Black Box and now you ask me what I think?’ I came to understand that the Bank knew little more about financial market facts than bond traders.”

Something Within Me is timely and unnerving. Why do smart people go to Ottawa and fall to pieces? Wilson explains it unwittingly, as if the captain of the Hindenburg titled his memoirs How To Navigate An Electrical Storm.

Since 1970 Canada has had eleven finance ministers who could not balance a budget. Michael Wilson was one of them. As fellow Upper Canada College alumni Michael Ignatieff would put it, “We didn’t get it done.”

Cabinet’s $393,000-a year science advisor Dr. Mona Nemer assigned seven employees to work on UFOs, according to records. Authorities yesterday said staff compiled tens of thousands of pages of research most Canadians rated pointless when questioned in a federal survey: "Enthusiasm and responses have been uneven."

The first petition of the 45th Parliament asks that cabinet apologize for the transatlantic slave trade. The petition was sponsored without comment by New Democrat MP Gord Johns (Courtenay-Alberni, B.C.): "Apologize for the historical and ongoing injustice."

The Canada Pension Plan tripled wartime investments in Israel even as dozens of MPs demanded an international boycott of Jewish industry. Pension managers put more than a third of a billion in Israel from banks to supermarkets: 'We navigate these turbulent times.'

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne yesterday announced a “call to action” on financial crime after meeting with G7 counterparts. Champagne made no mention of cabinet’s broken 2021 promise to create a white collar crime unit: "I can think about tackling financial crime."

Canadians can do what they like with public records including videos of open meetings, says an Information Commissioner. The ruling by Saskatchewan Commissioner Ronald Kruzeniski came in the case of a provincial board that threatened sanctions over the posting of a videotaped hearing on YouTube: "Applicants do not need to justify a request."

Most mortgage holders are struggling to pay their debts with nearly a quarter now using credit cards or other borrowing to meet bills as they fall due, CMHC said yesterday. The federal insurer said financial well-being of householders had deteriorated over the past year: "Fourteen percent missed a mortgage payment."

The CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board last year won a 24 percent hike in benefits to $6.3 million, records show. John Graham yesterday told Canadian workers it was his “privilege to lead this institution.”

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board more than quadrupled its holdings in Tesla stock even as share values yo-yoed and cabinet suspended its electric car rebate program, records show. Pension managers said they had a “focus on climate change.”

Advocates yesterday petitioned cabinet to eliminate the federal corporate income tax on small business. The rate has ranged from 20 percent in 2001 to the current nine percent: "Parliament needs to act quickly."

A scandal-ridden federal agency did important work in meeting climate targets, says an in-house Department of Industry report. The evaluation made only cursory reference to inside dealing that led to the collapse of Sustainable Development Technology Canada last June: "Yes, it has been seen as a great success."

Parliament must “take a stand” against Canadian companies that move jobs to the United States to bypass Trump tariffs, the nation’s largest private sector union said yesterday. “This is the fight of our lives,” Lana Payne, Unifor national president, told reporters. “We must take a stand now.”

Canada Post management that agreed to iron-clad job security for employees 40 years ago now finds the commitment “untenable,” says a federal report. “It agreed to it,” said the Report Of The Industrial Inquiry Commission: "Canada Post might no longer like this provision but it agreed to it. It is a legal obligation.”

A municipal councillor arrested for participating in the 2022 Freedom Convoy yesterday was acquitted of all charges. Harold Jonker of St. Ann’s, Ont. earlier told a public meeting he was proud to be among the first truckers to join the protest on Parliament Hill: "I am humbled that I was able to participate in a protest that brought immense joy and hope to so many Canadians across the country."