Blacklock's Reporter

The thing about Joey Smallwood is he often failed, and not in a character building way. It was repetitive, fruitless failure. He made a career of mismanagement.

Smallwood failed as a movie promoter and union organizer. Three times he tried and failed to run a newspaper. The stumbles left his family in poverty.

Smallwood’s daughter Clara, in the last interview before her death in 2011, told me: “There just wasn’t any money. One particular Christmas I can remember we were up in bed waiting for Santa Claus when mum called up the stairs and told us, ‘Santa didn’t come.’” It is a beaten man who cannot whittle a doll or buy a penny’s worth of peppermint for his daughter at Christmas.

In profiling this character who led Newfoundland and Labrador into Confederation in 1949, biographer Ray Argyle marvels at Smallwood’s inability “to distinguish between the bogus and the genuine, between bravado and reality.”

Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly yesterday said she was aware of at least one Chinese Communist Party agent who attempted to enter Canada on a diplomatic visa. “I have instructed my department to never shy away from denying a visa if it is for a political operative linked to the Communist Party of China,” Joly told the House affairs committee.

Newly-declassified cabinet minutes show Prime Minister Brian Mulroney scanned Access To Information disclosures on his own ministers’ expenses. Mulroney complained cabinet members had a reputation “for the good life.”

Bell Canada in 1985 lobbied to buy all federal telecom interests, newly-declassified cabinet minutes show. Cabinet was warned to beware of any appearance of “sweetheart deals” in selling Crown corporations: "Treasury Board seeks an extension of the Bell offer."

Cabinet should expand a federal migrant labour program to dedicate workers for restaurants and building trades, the Commons industry committee said yesterday. MPs complained of chronic labour shortages in the sectors: "Job vacancies have grown."

Prices on property listings are not the last word on true value, the British Columbia Court of Appeals ruled yesterday. The Court found one municipality, North Vancouver, lowballed an expropriation offer by 45 percent after arguing the property went unsold at a listed price: "Owners not infrequently list a property for sale at an attractively low asking price to prompt a bidding war."

Canadians will suspect past elections were corrupt “no matter what I say,” the Prime Minister yesterday told reporters. Justin Trudeau was repeatedly called a liar in Parliament as MPs prepared for a Commons vote forcing him to call a public inquiry: "No matter what I say, Canadians continue to have questions."

Conservatives should expect “attitude” from a hostile press, then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney warned cabinet in 1985. Secret minutes obtained through Access To Information disclose cabinet members were instructed to “think carefully before speaking” and tape every interaction with reporters: "Have a press aide with a tape recorder to produce transcripts of everything Ministers say."

A Senate Liberal majority posed a threat so serious the “future of the government was at stake,” say confidential minutes of a 1985 cabinet meeting. Records obtained through Access To Information show then-Deputy Prime Minister Erik Nielsen was author of a proposal to permanently throttle Senate proceedings: "The Senate threat is most serious."

Cabinet last night said it was “just shy of the finish line” in passing the first bill in Canadian history to put legal internet content under federal regulation. Cabinet rejected eight of 26 Senate amendments to Bill C-11 An Act To Amend The Broadcasting Act: "Now is the time to move forward."

Canadians are skeptical a federal freeze on new handgun sales will curb crime, says in-house research by the Privy Council Office. Focus group respondents questioned the point of the freeze if handguns used in the commission of crimes are smuggled from the United States: "It was largely felt the majority of handgun related crimes were caused by those who had obtained their firearms illegally."

A House affairs committee report demanding an independent inquiry into elections is expected to be tabled today in the Commons. The tabling would trigger an inevitable showdown between Parliament and the Prime Minister over control of the investigation of foreign agents: "We’re straying into banana republic territory here."

Liberal MPs on the House affairs committee yesterday filibustered a vote to question political aides and party organizers regarding foreign election interference. MP Jennifer O’Connell (Pickering-Uxbridge, Ont.) dismissed critics as “spy kids” angling for editorial approval in the Toronto Sun: "You got a tweet out of it, right?"

More than a third of households have difficulty paying grocery bills, Statistics Canada data showed yesterday. MPs on the Commons agriculture committee blamed a lack of competition among grocers: "It’s a painful experience every time they are going to the grocery store."

CMHC is hiring publicists to plot “tactics” in promoting a statutory right to housing. It follows a recommendation from the National Housing Advocate that Parliament expropriate properties of bad landlords and “prevent the sale of housing to financial firms.”