Blacklock's Reporter

Every town has its own strain of a Chekhov short story. In northern Ontario, historian Stacey Zembrzycki revisits her hometown to interview oldtimers on the Ukrainian-Canadian experience. One elderly man in a wheelchair recounts his father’s death in 1932.

“‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘It was an accident,’ Paul began. ‘At the mine?’ I wondered. ‘No…He went with his friends to drink, and drinking some moonshine from Montreal, he caught on fire.’ ‘Oh God,’ Baba whispered. Paul fell silent. ‘Nobody found out who because they put him out on the sidewalk…They hushed it up,’ Paul muttered.”

A long-ago homicide in a small city still burns. It’s an arresting moment in According To Baba, a compelling oral history of working people in Sudbury before the war. Zembrzycki and her grandmother Olga journey from home to home, interviewing witnesses to an era now vanished.

It is “not an easy job” taking calls from taxpayers, Canada Revenue Agency Commissioner Bob Hamilton yesterday told the Commons public accounts committee. Hamilton praised the Agency despite two audits in eight years that concluded 1-800 call centres were costly, slow and incompetent: "We think we’re doing a pretty good job."

A federal wanted list of foreign fugitives numbers 32,000 people, the Canada Border Services Agency disclosed yesterday at the Commons public safety committee. Conservative MP Frank Caputo (Kamloops-Thompson, B.C.), a former Crown prosecutor, expressed astonishment at the figure: "I beg your pardon? There are 32,000 warrants?"

Taxpayers face more than a billion a year in compensation for uninsured property losses due to flooding, the Budget Office said yesterday. Cabinet since 2018 has considered a national program to transfer costs to owners of property at risk: "Floods are projected to be the costliest type of disaster."

Cabinet is showing political courage by abolishing doorstep mail delivery, Public Works Minister Joel Lightbound said yesterday. Cuts to Canada Post services “probably should have gone forward” when first proposed by management in 2013, he said: "That is not too much to ask, to go and get your mail."

A cabinet bill to restrict disruptive street protests outside synagogues will “curb the civil liberties of millions,” the legal director for the National Council of Canadian Muslims said yesterday. MPs on the Commons justice committee questioned counsel Nusaiba Al Azem on criminal limits to anti-Semitism: "Do you think it should be legal to fly a Hamas flag on a Canadian street?"

The Opposition is questioning Veterans Affairs Minister Jill McKnight’s fitness after she sat blankly under routine questioning at a committee hearing. Asked for details of a signature program in her own department, McKnight sat speechless until she was pointed to scripted remarks in a briefing binder: "Do you know?"

Cabinet is considering “structural reforms” at the post office in addition to sweeping service cuts announced September 25, says Public Works Minister Joel Lightbound. The Minister in a letter to MPs said a Charter that includes minimum service guarantees is under review: "We cannot go on, you know."

Canada should mandate security checks on Israeli visitors for evidence of complicity in war crimes, says Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi (Pierrefonds-Dollard, Que.). The former parliamentary secretary for diversity yesterday did not reply to questions regarding his proposal at the Commons immigration committee: "Are you presently satisfied that the safety and security of Canadians is intact?"

The Canada Border Services Agency responsible for enforcement of gun laws has “gaps” in management of its own firearms, says an internal audit. “We found no evidence of formal regional oversight activities related to the safeguarding and inventory tracking of firearms and ammunition across the Agency,” wrote auditors.

The Canadian Medical Association yesterday endorsed a Senate bill for mandatory health warnings on liquor, beer and wine. Alcohol-related deaths average 17,000 a year, according to the Department of Health: "As physicians, we witness the effects of alcohol use on our patients every day."

The Commons public accounts committee yesterday called Canada Revenue Agency managers for questioning over disclosures they spent $190 million on dysfunctional call centres. Auditors for the second time in eight years faulted the Agency’s 1-800 operations as slow and inept: "Why should Canadians tolerate this?"

Auditors yesterday faulted the Department of National Defence for creating its own housing crisis with long waiting lists and dilapidated structures unfit for military families. Defence Minister David McGuinty promised improvements: "Toilets weren’t working, or there was structural damage to the exterior walls of the building, the kind of conditions you and I wouldn’t want to live in."

The immigration department does not know how many foreigners are in Canada illegally, Deputy Minister Harpreet Kochhar yesterday told MPs. Managers in a report last April 24 said the number was as high as 500,000: "We would not have any estimation of those."

Cabinet is prepared to rewrite a security bill critics call a threat to civil liberties, says Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree. He acknowledged shortcomings in Bill C-2: "I will admit C-2 probably didn’t have that balance but my commitment is a revised version of it."