Blacklock's Reporter

Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “Gas rates sharply drop. Radio says rising supplies of North American crude are pushing prices down…”

In the 1950s any Soviet paratrooper who attempted to land in the Northwest Territories would have faced the Canadian Rangers, a crack team of marksmen assigned to wage guerrilla-style “hit and run” operations on the tundra.

The Russians never landed. By the laws of inertia, the Rangers remained. Historian P. Whitney Lackenbauer celebrates these Cold Warriors who never fired a shot in anger. Instead, they became a caricature.

“Clad in their red sweatshirts, they appeared regularly in media photographs,” Lackenbauer writes without irony. “Rangers greeted Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip when they arrived in Iqaluit to begin their Golden Jubilee visit. The Queen made particular note of the Rangers’ presence and told them how much she liked their uniforms.”

Cabinet claimed a right to censor charities from making statements deemed “false or misleading” under threat of losing their tax status, then-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote in a 2023 email. The document was disclosed yesterday under Access To Information: "It frightens me."

The Department of Health spent more than $200 million on a pandemic program with untrained staff and little oversight, says an internal report. Auditors relied on grant recipients to explain if they used the money wisely: "Most of the original staff members had left and those who replaced them had no previous experience."

The federal cabinet must make “more effort in a more urgent fashion” to lift Chinese tariffs on 40,000 canola farmers, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said yesterday. Only Prime Minister Mark Carney can speak for the nation in a trade war, he said: "It's very, very serious."

Cabinet should cut billions in seniors’ benefits, says a federally-funded research group. A total $13.9 billion in cuts are detailed in a budget submission by Generation Squeeze, a University of British Columbia group that previously lobbied cabinet for a home equity tax: "It’s appropriate to ask retirees with six-figure incomes to accept fewer taxpayer dollars."

Parliament must permit free debate on immigration quotas without “emotionally driven objections,” an Ottawa think tank said yesterday. Conservatives and Bloc Québecois MPs have sought significant reductions including curbs on 3,049,277 temporary permit holders: "I’m not going to accept that every proposal that immigration should be reduced is racist."

A costly green subsidy program will not come close to achieving promised greenhouse gas emission reductions though the Department of Environment twice lowered its targets, says an in-house report. The failed Low Carbon Economy Fund was a “good example” of climate leadership, then-Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in 2022.

A federal agency yesterday warned “costs remain uncertain” in a federal program to subsidize small, experimental modular nuclear reactors. Aid to date includes $27.2 million for a prototype by Westinghouse Electric Canada that counts Prime Minister Mark Carney among its shareholders: 'Costs can be relatively high.'

A federal agency is hiring a U.S. consultant for tips on “how Washington works” at a taxpayers' charge of more than $170,000. It did not explain why it bypassed the Department of Foreign Affairs that has 13,235 employees including a fully-staffed Embassy in Washington: 'It requires specialized knowledge.'

Mark Carney must consult Parliament before recognizing Palestine as a country, B’nai Brith petitioners yesterday wrote the Prime Minister. The historic concession was so “profoundly troubling” and lacking in “moral clarity” it warrants parliamentary debate, wrote petitioners including rabbis and CEOs: "The Canadian public must have a say."

The Department of Indigenous Service is committed to finding “pretendians” in a federal directory of Indigenous contractors, says a briefing note. Managers have yet to disclose the findings of an audit into how many federal suppliers faked First Nations, Inuit or Métis ownership to qualify for billions in contracts set aside for Indigenous firms: "This is huge."

The Canadian Embassy in Washington hired a US$2,000-an hour consultant for tips on how to talk to Americans, records show. It followed then-Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly’s boast that Canadian diplomats had expertise that “goes deep at different levels of American society.”

The Canadian Union of Public Employees is asking that a federal judge cite Labour Minister Patty Hajdu for unlawful misuse of her powers to  quash a legal strike by 10,500 Air Canada flight attendants. Hajdu yesterday did not comment but earlier told reporters she did not like strikes: "Is your government anti-union?"

The number of homeless veterans has declined steadily, by at least 17 percent in the past two years, says a Department of Veterans Affairs memo. Managers credited in part a program that pays tax-free emergency grants in hardship cases: "I could literally save their life."