Blacklock's Reporter

Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly privately praised the United States for taking “a hard stand on drugs” after President Donald Trump threatened 25 percent tariffs in the name of border security, records show. The comments were at odds with cabinet’s public statements and were scripted in notes for a Mar-a-Lago conference: "We are pleased the incoming U.S. administration also takes a hard stand on drugs."

Canadians should welcome illegal immigrants from the United States in the name of humanity, Amnesty International said yesterday. The U.S. counts nearly 11 million illegal immigrants including hundreds of thousands in border states: "We are calling on Canada to be a leader."

Judges have dismissed a defamation claim against CTV News over a 2022 exposé on the dog sled industry. One company sued after a W5 cameraman appeared on an owner's doorstep for an episode called “Dogs In Distress.”

The heritage department paid a consultant six figures to track Twitter and Facebook posts by friends of Israel, Access To Information records show. The surveillance followed Hamas terrorists’ October 7, 2023 killing and kidnapping of Jews in Israel including eight Canadians: "Several influential accounts particularly on Twitter have taken a staunch pro-Israel position."

Managers of an election fund that paid cash for news coverage will not disclose how much was given individual applicants or why. Known recipients include The Logic, a Toronto website whose publisher David Skok called subsidies “an insult to the audience” before soliciting more than $1.5 million in federal funding: "It will have a direct impact on the daily assigning and editing of a journalism product."

Liberals have no interest in reviving a vote pact with New Democrats, says Prime Minister Mark Carney. MPs were expected to “do what we need to do as a country,” he told reporters: "We received the highest number of votes in Canadian history."

Bloc Québécois MPs described as “strange” the Prime Minister's enthusiasm for having King Charles open Parliament as a symbolic act of sovereignty. Two other British monarchs have attended the Canadian Parliament: "In the time of Elizabeth II one could understand; she was an old lady."

An Alberta riding picked for a federal byelection has had one Liberal MP in 60 years. Three-term Conservative MP Damien Kurek (Battle River-Crowfoot, Alta.) resigned Friday and asked constituents to put Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre back in the Commons: "Hold the Liberal minority government to account."

Poet W.N. Branson writes: “A town grew around the store, Families grew around the store as a country emerged from the land and a people found their voice in the wilderness. Maps drawn, track laid and roads cut, The citizens working together, became a Nation…”

How do you destroy a centuries-old industry? We managed. Ottawa for decades tried and failed to save the Atlantic northern cod fishery from European poachers. There were fishing limits and quotas, scientific panels and studies, diplomatic protests and many, many transatlantic meetings. “There are no gunboat solutions,” Joe Clark once remarked. As an old German philosopher put it, pacifism is no virtue in the toothless. The results are still cursed in Newfoundland & Labrador as the biggest layoff in Canadian history.

The cod fishery was a heritage industry that thrived for 400 years and helped build the federation. As late as the 1980s the fishery accounted for one-tenth of Newfoundland’s economy.

Its decline is one of the nation’s great commercial collapses, more devastating than the Avro Arrow or wind-up of the Hudson’s Bay fur trade. “Canada was preoccupied with rebuilding fish stocks; the European Union was preoccupied with finding outlets for its fishing capacity,” authors note. “The stage was set for confrontation.”

Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam and dozens of other pandemic managers were required to sign a secret oath promising never to divulge information that “may result in embarrassment” for cabinet, Access To Information records show. “Quite a few” were required to sign the pledge, said a newly-released federal memo: "It makes me wonder, what is so damaging?"

The health department in its last memo to then-Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks cautioned that “changing laws alone is not sufficient” to reduce drug overdose deaths. The December 17 memo came nearly two years after cabinet changed federal law to decriminalize personal possession of narcotics in British Columbia: "If pressed on national decriminalization, there is no plan for national decriminalization."

There is no obvious public interest in Alberta’s proposed withdrawal from the Canada Pension Plan, Premier Danielle Smith said yesterday. The federal cabinet had opposed divvying up the $699.6 billion fund: "I am not seeing there is an appetite to put it to the people."

The national poverty rate is up again for a fourth consecutive year to 10.2 percent, Statistics Canada said yesterday. The rate was even higher, as much as 10.9 percent, using new calculations to be introduced this year: "Four million Canadians lived below the poverty line."

A public utility attempted a 70 percent excess charge for release of records on its handling of a 2023 strike, Ontario’s Office of the Information Commissioner has ruled. Hydro Ottawa tried to bill more than a half million dollars for what it claimed were thousands of hours needed to review and censor documents sought by Blacklock’s: 'The fee is excessive and not reasonable.'