Blacklock's Reporter

Poet W.N. Branson writes: “Lo! A bureaucrat alights upon the scene, the power to redact and enact with countenance so serene…”

Canadians like to think of our judiciary as a meritocracy, in the same manner we have a naïve faith that oncoming motorists will stay on their side of the white line. Of course, car wrecks happen all the time.

Professor Dale Brawn examines who’s behind the wheel in Canadian courts. The result is a beautifully-researched and entertaining study of 80 years of judicial appointments in a single province, Manitoba, from 1870 to 1950. Brawn chooses his subject well. Manitoba was for years the lone outpost of the judiciary on the Prairie frontier.

Judges were by degrees brilliant and mediocre, studious and alcoholic, a grab bag of “pretty fair lawyers” and political fixers. One appointee was rated as having “but a small amount of brains and knows absolutely no law.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday said he needs a “strong and clear mandate” from voters. Carney is expected to call a snap vote this weekend rather than face Parliament Monday: "You can see the action."

Canadians should expect weaker growth, higher costs and more uncertainty due to Trump tariffs, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. His remarks coincided with new Canadian Federation of Independent Business data indicating 19 percent of small business owners plan summer layoffs: "We now face a new economic crisis."

The Canada Revenue Agency yesterday would not explain why it was keeping hundreds of employees in its carbon tax unit since Prime Minister Mark Carney announced he was “eliminating” the consumer charge. A battalion of clerks was hired to process revenues and rebate cheques: "What were the annual costs?"

Growing subsidies will turn much of Canadian media into a federally controlled Crown corporation “if not a department of government,” an Ottawa think tank said yesterday. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute in a report by a former Calgary Herald publisher warned media reliance on taxpayers’ aid was corrosive and self-defeating: "This is no way to maintain public trust in journalism."

Four Liberal-appointed senators yesterday signed an anti-Israel petition accusing Jews of genocide. The petition singled out soldiers and air crew of the Israeli Defence Forces with allegations of atrocities: "This will not soon be forgotten."

Cabinet in a secret internal memo last June 18 acknowledged it could not meet its housing target despite repeated promises to the public. The memo is dated two months after cabinet promised its housing plan was “unlocking the door to the middle class for millions.”

A federally-sponsored advocacy group yesterday admitted to contacting a convention hall over its rental of space to a group critical of the Liberal Party. The taxpayer-subsidized Canadian Anti-Hate Network acknowledged making the call but denied acting at the government’s direction: "We are a completely independent organization."

Anti-Israel street protestors should not be called Nazis per se, a national press ombudsman has ruled. Likening street demonstrators to members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was “overly broad,” said the National News Media Council: "Thinkers have argued the term ‘Nazi’ should only be reserved for those responsible for the Holocaust."

Automakers yesterday petitioned British Columbia to repeal its electric vehicle mandate, first in the nation. The B.C. program set the pattern for a federal mandate that proposes to outlaw the new sale of gas or diesel powered cars by 2035: 'Sales targets will not be achieved.'

Federal inspectors yesterday disclosed a steep penalty for breach of migrant labour regulations. An Alberta gas station operator was fined $164,000 and banned from the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for five years: 'The department previously conducted few on-site inspections.'

Military reserves are now 25 percent short of their targeted minimum strength, records show. The Department of National Defence in an in-house report said reserves were so poorly managed they did not spend more than a billion approved by Parliament to get them up to strength: 'Lack of coherence has repercussions.'

Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday said he will recuse himself from any dealings with Brookfield Asset Management, the New York-based conglomerate that paid him the equivalent of $9.8 million in stock options last December 31. The Opposition said Carney’s conflict was so glaring he should immediately dump all stock holdings: "Let’s say there’s a decision that will have a major impact on Brookfield."

Donors to a defamation fund for Birju Dattani, ex-Liberal appointee to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, urge that he “free the world from Zionism” and “take them all down.” The comments were posted by donors to a crowdfunding site where Dattani is attempting to finance a libel suit against three Jewish defendants: "Bring them down!"