The Northwest Mounted Police, once hailed for saving the West from U.S. annexation, were in fact paramilitary colonialists insensitive to Indigenous “political structures,” says a federal board. Parks Canada consultants who approved the revision included a cabinet appointee who deleted federal web pages celebrating the Mounted Police: "I feel very strongly."
Main themes of the Liberal Party’s “elbows up” re-election campaign were tested in confidential federal focus groups months before the U.S. announced tariffs, documents show. Pollsters hired by the Privy Council found many Canadians were unsettled by Donald Trump and feared “mass layoffs” from tariffs.
Parks Canada privately complained of “persistent emails” from activists seeking to rewrite commemoration of the Canadian Pacific Railway from a racial perspective, Access To Information records show. Calls for revision followed a 2019 cabinet directive that Canadian history reflect “colonialism, patriarchy and racism.”
The next federal Census for the first time will ask Canadians if they had to sleep in their car. It follows complaints of inadequate estimates of Canada’s homeless population: "Over the past 12 months has this person stayed in a shelter, on the street or in parks, in a makeshift shelter, in a vehicle or in an abandoned building?"
Cabinet will not publicly discuss industrial projects for fast-tracked approval until they’re finalized, says Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. “I never did a deal with the press,” he told reporters.
The Canada Revenue Agency in a legal notice Saturday quietly marked the end of a sports era with the wind-up of the Bobby Hull Foundation for Children in Winnipeg. Completion of the Foundation’s work came two years after the Hockey Hall of Famer died at 84: "I miss Bobby."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “It’s election time. Posters of candidates along the road, under the bridge, across from the gas station. I see them perfectly nestled…”
From 1949 to 1955 cabinet created two Royal Commissions on culture, one on arts and literature, the other on broadcasting. After beating Hitler and mastering hydro dams, the country for the first time was affluent enough to ask what it meant to be Canadian. Ordinary people subscribed to the Book Of The Month Club and their children read W.O. Mitchell at school. Canadian writers – Morley Callaghan, Mordecai Richler, Farley Mowat, Al Purdy – were genuine celebrities and dailies like the Winnipeg Free Press ran a weekly Young Authors contest.
The University of Alberta Press documents the era through the warm, nostalgic filter of private letters between one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists and her publisher. It is a sweet book, funny and angry by turn, and a delight to read.
Housing in Canada is so unaffordable CMHC yesterday changed its definition of affordability. Canadians realistically should not expect a return to market conditions of 20 years ago, said the federal mortgage insurer: "Restoring affordability to levels last seen two decades ago is not realistic."
Parks Canada in confidential staff emails as early as 2023 questioned First Nation claims that 215 children were buried on the grounds of an Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C. No public statement was made since then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had visited the site to “pay my respects to the graves.”
A federal agency boasts in a briefing note its jobs program cost taxpayers the equivalent of more than $13,000 per employee on average. Individual grants approved by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario ranged as high as $62,500 per job: "We would have liked more money of course."
The labour department says it is finalizing new climate change regulations for 1.3 million workers in the federally regulated private sector. New rules would protect workers “affected by very hot or very cold temperatures” on the job: "How are you preparing for this?"
The Department of Foreign Affairs in a 2024 briefing note expressed unease with war protestors who likened Israel to Russia or condemned every Israeli military strike as a breach of international law. "Alleged double standards likening Israel-Gaza to Russia-Ukraine" were disingenuous, wrote diplomats.
Managers of a federal Covid vaccine compensation fund are concealing the number of injury and death claims paid at taxpayers’ expense. It follow a 2021 Privy Council memo that urged staff to downplay vaccine-related impacts: "News reports of adverse events following immunization and the government’s response to them have strong potential to influence public confidence in vaccines."
A federal board in a closed-door ruling vetoed any new historic plaques honouring John A. Macdonald as too "polarizing and controversial.” The Historic Sites and Monuments Board noted in part that Macdonald opposed Chinese immigration: 'The Board recommended no plaque.'
