Blacklock's Reporter

The city of Lens, in the most uninteresting part of France, is about the size of Moose Jaw. Lens has auto parts stores and townhouses. The city sits in “the bottom of a shallow saucer encircled by hills on three sides,” explains Capturing Hill 70. As homely as it is, Lens more than a hundred years ago was much worse, “ringed by slag heaps, coalfields and nearly a dozen industrial, red-brick suburbs that had been pulverized by shelling,” writes historian Mark Humphries of Wilfrid Laurier University.

Lens lays claim to an indelible part of Canadiana. Here in August 1917 Canadian soldiers fought for the first time under a Canadian general with Canadians in charge of nearly all the fighting formations. “A landmark battle,” says Capturing Hill 70. It was heroic and pointless, extraordinary and tragic. If the whole maddening story of the First World War could be summarized in 288 pages, this is it.

The former federal executive responsible for ArriveCan yesterday testified he was proud of the work despite the $59.5 million cost and ongoing audits and police investigations. John Ossowski, former $273,000-a year president of the Canada Border Services Agency, said others were to blame for wrongdoing: "It is shocking to me that would be your testimony."

The Canada Revenue Agency says it now knows of $10 billion in pandemic relief cheques paid to ineligible applicants, the highest figure disclosed to date. Only a fraction has been recovered with billions in additional losses anticipated through ongoing audits: "That was back in 2020 and it’s now 2024.”

Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard is petitioning cabinet for $700,000 to cover what she called a “structural deficit” in her annual $15.9 million budget. The shortfall spelled longer delays for Canadians filing Access To Information requests for public records, she said: "This reduction in my budget will spell longer delays."

Pandemic restrictions on outdoor gatherings were justified, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal has ruled. The Court rejected petitions by protesters fined $2,800 apiece for breaching a public health order limiting outdoor groups to 10 people: "The government needed to act."

Hitting cabinet’s target of an extra 3.9 million new housing starts will “require structural changes,” CMHC said yesterday. The comment followed Housing Minister Sean Fraser’s claim he would “be the person" to fix housing: "I am not asking anyone to believe promises."

Parks Canada on Saturday is reopening John A. Macdonald’s historic Kingston, Ont. home with “racism and sexism” tours. Admission is $9. “Bring an open mind,” the agency said.

Managers in Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s department yesterday dismissed an internal audit that found they breached contracting rules 26 percent of the time. “We generally do comply,” one executive told MPs: "We can do better."

Federal auditors yesterday detailed more costly irregularities in the hiring of consultants, this time at the Department of Agriculture. One MP questioned why federal managers spent millions more on consultants after hiring thousands more employees: "We have more public servants, so why use more consultants?"

Liberal MPs yesterday opposed disclosure of payments to pharmaceutical companies for “safe supply” opioids. Police confirm narcotics bought at taxpayers’ expense are being diverted to the black market at drug dealers' profit: "Is this true?"

Mandating vaccination of employees who worked exclusively at home during the pandemic was unreasonable, a federal arbitrator has ruled. The decision came in the case of 37 Canada Post employees suspended without pay: "These employees had no reasonable prospect of coming into physical contact with the workplace."

An ArriveCan executive yesterday admitted to drinking and dining with contractors in breach of ethics rules but said he never talked about money. Chulaka Ailapperuma, a Canada Border Services Agency director, was given a Public Service Award of Excellence for his work on the $59.5 million program now the subject of numerous audits and investigations: "So five people who only have ArriveCan in common sit down in a bar."

Minimum wage increases are an ineffective poverty reduction program, according to Canadian Federation of Independent Business data. Research follows a 2021 labour department report that links between minimum wages and poverty were “relatively weak.”

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge yesterday had no comment after stacking a CBC advisory panel with seven beneficiaries of federal funding including two subsidized publishers and a Trudeau Foundation scholar. “It’s not even a partisan issue,” St-Onge earlier told reporters: "I want to ensure the CBC is well positioned."

Few Canadians with legitimate grievances over poor airline service ever file a formal complaint though it could pay hundreds of dollars, says in-house research at the Canadian Transportation Agency. The current backlog of some 71,000 complaints represents a tiny fraction of unhappy customers, data show: "Roughly 1 in 5,000 passengers will issue a complaint."