Blacklock's Reporter

Michael Maclear was the only Western TV correspondent in North Vietnam the day Ho Chi Minh died in 1969. Half a million mourners clad in white queued for hours to see Ho laying in state, his head resting on a soft pillow. It was “a great river of people,” Maclear recalls. The temperature hit 107° and kept climbing: “Every few seconds in the intense heat, even among the ranks of soldiers, someone would faint.”

Reading Guerrilla Nation is like opening a drawer to find a lapsed passport or faded yearbook. In an instant you are in a time and place once very important and now utterly forgotten, “the strangest of journeys in the most divisive of times, when ‘Nam confounded us all,’” writes Maclear.

Travel was expensive. Asia seemed distant. And a CBC-TV foreign correspondent like Maclear was assured fame and a mass audience. One of Maclear’s newsroom colleagues, Knowlton Nash, went into management and self-appointment as network anchor. Another, Roméo LeBlanc, became Governor General. Maclear remained a working reporter, still writing in his 84th year. He died in 2019.

A “fact-checking” program launched in 2019 by then-Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould paid researchers nearly $370,000 to discourage media and the public from questioning authority, Access To Information records show. Researchers stressed the importance of invoking Canadian values to avoid being seen as Liberal partisans: "Dissenting voices, in some cases even just one, can weaken the power of a normative belief."

Parliament should prosecute scrap metal thieves as saboteurs, says Rogers Communications. The telecom firm in a petition to senators complained theft of copper wiring was costing Rogers millions: 'It is threatening public safety nationwide.'

Canadians should honour John A. Macdonald as a national hero and be “unapologetic for our history,” Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre yesterday told reporters. Saturday marks the 210th anniversary of Macdonald’s birth: "We need to live out the dream that started with John A. Macdonald. Yes, I said John A. Macdonald."

The federal Historic Sites and Monuments Board has cited eight Catholic charities as being complicit in “cultural genocide.” All eight were previously honoured for nationally significant works including aid to the poor: "It did not include a critical consideration of their relationship with Indigenous peoples."

Many Canadian parents remain wary of Covid and flu shots for children despite ongoing immunization campaigns, says in-house Public Health Agency research. Pandemic mandates did not improve compliance rates, data show: "Have you ever been hesitant to vaccinate your child against Covid?"

The federal government paid researchers to develop attention-grabbing TikTok videos for 13-year olds, Access To Information records show. “A machine learning algorithm” targeting teenagers was financed under a program approved by then-Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould: "A machine learning algorithm will be coming out soon."

Four cabinet ministers yesterday said they are eyeing the federal Liberal leadership in the first Party contest of its kind in 12 years. Any ministers who run face a six-figure entry fee and loss of a cabinet bonus with car allowance: "We need to know the rules."

Violations of the Access To Information Act are so commonplace at the Department of Finance it routinely breaches its obligations more than half the time, says an internal audit. The poor compliance rate followed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s repeated promises of transparency: "Why haven’t you lived up to those promises?"

Cabinet yesterday did not comment on whether it will honour a promise to charities to extend the tax year despite the Prime Minister's prorogation of Parliament. One lobby group said it was privately assured by the Department of Finance the promise will be kept: "We are working with the department."

A Human Rights Tribunal in a rare ruling has ordered a complainant to pay $25,000 in costs for filing a frivolous claim against his former employer. The accusations were so outlandish they appeared “designed to obstruct the Tribunal’s process,” wrote an adjudicator: 'This has all the markings of a frivolous and vexatious complaint.'

Lawyers for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms yesterday challenged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s prorogation of Parliament. The Justice Centre in a Federal Court application said suspending parliamentary business for a Liberal Party leadership contest was “incorrect, unreasonable or both.”

Taxpayers stung by new capital gains rules never passed into law by Parliament will have no recourse but the courts, according to records of the Parliamentary Law Clerk. The Canada Revenue Agency yesterday warned effective March 3 it will begin collecting interest on unpaid capital gains taxes under amendments never passed into law: "What happens if the government provisionally collects a tax that ultimately never becomes law?"

Cabinet must release names of parliamentarians suspected of acting for foreign embassies prior to any Liberal Party leadership contest or general election, Opposition House Leader Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle) said yesterday. The identities of suspects were detailed in a confidential 2024 report: "Release those names."

Two-term MPs have lost automatic pension eligibility with the prorogation of Parliament. A bill guaranteeing payments worth an average $77,900 a year for dozens of MPs has now lapsed: "We can show Canadians that we hear them."