Blacklock's Reporter

Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “CEO Steve Jobs wanted my money. In return he will grant me with access to something attractive to look at, fun to touch, that will keep me busy for quite a while…”

Canada is not the kind of country that wakes up in the morning to the sound of trumpets and drums. No MP ever gave a speech entitled “Canadian Exceptionalism” and if somebody tried, a voice in the back of the room would say: “In fairness, Belgium makes pretty good chocolates.”

Yet we enjoy an extraordinariness most dramatically illustrated in the immigrant experience, and none more unusual than the story documented in Reflections On Malcolm Forsyth. The composer in his dying days devoted his last breaths to a national tribute.

“His last major work was A Ballad For Canada written for the National Arts Centre Orchestra,” recalls Robin Elliot, Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College: “By the time of the premiere, Forsyth had been hospitalized with pancreatic cancer and knew he did not have long to live. He was released from hospital on oxygen tanks, a flight to Ottawa was arranged, and he was in the National Arts Centre to receive a standing ovation after the first performance of the work on June 9, 2011. He then returned to Edmonton and died less than a month later.”

Canadians should expect “permanent effects” of the tariff war that may outlast tariffs themselves, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. “Trust has been broken,” he said.

Most mortgage holders are struggling to pay household expenses, says a federal report. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada noted more people are relying on credit card debt at 19 and 20 percent interest to get by: "Two thirds of mortgage holders are struggling to meet their financial commitments."

Federal jobseekers who claim to be Indigenous are not required to prove it, says a Public Service Commission memo. The agency said it was reviewing the practice to ensure claimants were actually First Nations, Métis or Inuit: "There is no policy requirement for additional proof of Indigenous identity."

A Canadian blogger faces arrest for defying a Court order to remove offending posts. “False information has consequences,” said the British Columbia judge in the case: "The spreading of misinformation or lies is not in the public interest.”

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress yesterday said it awarded commemorative medals to families of 11 Canadian war casualties who volunteered to fight in defence of the motherland. Volunteers who join Ukraine’s foreign legion are disqualified from Canadian veterans’ benefits: "Our community is eternally grateful."

Parks Canada yesterday disclosed it left more than a half million acres of dead pine standing as a known fire hazard in a national park prior to a wildfire that burned Jasper, Alta. last July. The agency did not undertake any controlled burns in the park a year prior to the disaster, according to Access To Information records, then blamed losses on climate change: "In 2023 there were zero prescribed burns."

The Department of Canadian Heritage paid $68,640 for research that asked CBC journalists if they were the subject of hurtful remarks by conservative politicians or rival media, according to Access To Information records. The study did not name names: "50 percent said that opposition political parties were a source."

New Democrat interim leader MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) yesterday said his caucus “will strategically use the balance of power it holds” to pass reforms in the 45th Parliament. Davies in his maiden speech to the Commons 17 years ago advocated for proportional representation: "Respect the fact Canadians have chosen a minority Parliament."

Liberal-appointed Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) yesterday had no comment after endorsing a Gaza fundraiser with an anti-Israel protest group that picketed MPs’ offices and swarmed a fellow senator’s car. “Desperate times,” Woo wrote on his Twitter account.

Banks owe customers a duty of care to save them from fraud but not the consequences of their own mistakes, a British Columbia tribunal has ruled. The decision came in the case of a depositor who mistakenly transferred $2,000 to the wrong account: "What the Banks’ duty of care was for mistaken e-transfers is outside common knowledge."

U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday said Canada will “have to be able to take care of itself economically” without free trade. Trump made the remarks after bantering with visiting Prime Minister Mark Carney about statehood: "That's just the way it is."

Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre yesterday said he is “very eager” to return to Parliament. Caucus members expressed no support for selecting a new Conservative leader for the fifth time in 10 years: "If you told me we would get 41 percent of the vote and still not win, I would have said you’re crazy."

First Nations utilities are so inadequate more than a third of Indigenous people on-reserve use bottled water to brush their teeth, says a report by Indigenous Services Minister Patricia Hajdu’s department. Cabinet had promised to eliminate all boiled water advisories by 2021: "One in five judge the water to be less safe to drink than it was five years ago."