CALGARY — Few Canadians believe Ottawa is getting housing right, with many saying relief is years away despite repeated federal claims of progress, according to internal research obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.
Privy Council Office focus groups found widespread skepticism that Housing Minister Gregor Robertson is making meaningful headway on affordability, with participants overwhelmingly concluding the government is either on the wrong track or failing to show results.
From $18 million being spent on international LGBT groups to $25 million for gender-responsive nature-based solutions for climate change, the Western Standard has once again sifted through Global Affairs’ most eyebrow-raising international assistance projects funded by taxpayers.
Though some may actually be contributing to the greater good, others are questionable in their contributions.
Spurred on by the so-called reckonings over racism in the United States and its legacy of slavery, many Canadian activists have attempted to import America’s divisive racial politics into Canada. However, examining slavery in Canada on its own terms and in good faith does not result in an identical discourse.
A report released Wednesday by the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy — titled, “Slavery in Canada: The Facts Rarely Told” — is a fascinating and grim study into the country’s dark history of trafficking in human beings.
In the coming weeks, the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to update Canadians on the state of federal finances.
It should be an interesting update.
You might have thought that the floor-crossing Liberal MP Michael Ma would have been political kryptonite after his March 26 performance at a parliamentary committee looking into the implications of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January invitation to China to annually export 49,000 electrical vehicles into Canada.
Ma had badgered the expert witness Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, impugned the credibility of the China Strategic Risk Institute where she serves as a senior advisor, demanded to know whether she had personally witnessed acts of forced labour in China and appeared to suggest that Beijing’s persecution of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang was merely “hearsay.”
The federal government would love Canadians to believe their monumental immigration screwup was a simple one — that they naively opened the floodgates too far, too fast, surging newcomer numbers past sustainable levels. This version of events both limits their political liability and allows for a band-aid solution of temporarily decreasing immigration targets.
Each year, tens of billions of dollars — more than 13% of the Canadian economy — are spent by Canadian governments on public procurement. An increase of just a few per cent in these expenditures could amount to several billion more on taxpayers’ shoulders.
In a context of rising American protectionism, governments are reinforcing preferential purchase clauses in public contracts. This approach is ill-advised and should be examined in light of the available economic data.
Heidi Rathjen has been calling for a ban on assault-style rifles since 1989, when a gunman opened fire on her classmates at Montreal’s École Polytechnique.
The shooting, in which 14 women were killed and more than a dozen injured, was a turning point for Canada, changing how the country viewed gun violence.
More than two decades later, after another deadly mass shooting in 2020, Ottawa did roll out a ban on some 2,500 models of such “assault-style” weapons.
OTTAWA — Canada is sending another $51-million aid package to Ukraine.
The money, announced Friday by Secretary of State for International Development Randeep Sarai, will go towards humanitarian relief, preparing Ukraine for post-war elections, and support for veterans of the war against the now four-year old Russian invasion.
Randeep who?
If it weren’t for this newspaper you’re reading right now, you wouldn’t know about a lot of absolutely bananas criminal-justice and immigration-related stories in this country. But even Toronto Star readers are getting a window into the madness this week, via its sister paper the Hamilton Spectator. Readers learned that one Erik Kalanyos, who is now 29, has been identified as the suspect in the murder of Daniel Musafiri, who was then 29, outside a Hamilton billiards parlour in December 2023.
Retired Lt. Colonel David Redman, former head of Alberta’s emergency management, has accused federal authorities of the intentional erosion of Canada’s national security apparatus over the past 11 years.
“To go from calling China the largest strategic threat to Canada one year ago and now calling it a very significant strategic partner is a completely intentional act. You can’t say it’s not. And so from my point of view, each of the steps in the degradation of Canada’s 10 elements of national security have been thought through and are intentional.”
(Incognito)
Pastor Derek Reimer is not liberal Canada’s favourite free-speech champion. The Bible-bashing leader of Calgary’s Mission 7 ministry has waged a one-man war on his government’s progressive, LGBTQ-friendly agenda – especially its promotion of transgender rights.
In 2023, he was arrested three times after protesting against “family-friendly” storytime events at Calgary’s public libraries, in which local drag queens read to children. He denounced it all as “pervert grooming sessions”, and told a librarian that if she carried on “corrupting kids”, he would post her details online. He also quoted from Deuteronomy 22:5, which states: “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak.”
So far, his protests have earned him a conviction for harassment, more than 100 days in jail, and limited sympathy from the wider public – who, whatever their views on transgender issues, often see his methods as extreme.
Yet in recent months, his name has frequently been cited in a growing row over freedom of speech – centred around a planned new law that would remove the right of religious activists to quote scripture as a defence against hate crime charges.
As gasoline prices keep ticking higher toward $2 a litre and diesel sits near $2.50, there is little relief for Canadian drivers as the global energy crisis grows with no end in sight to the Iran war.
The conflict continues to choke transit through the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off roughly 20 per cent of the world’s oil and natural gas supply from international buyers.
Countries around the world are feeling the strain. Governments have ordered staff to work from home, reduced the work week and closed universities to conserve fuel.
A report by an expert in extremist financing and money laundering says the Canada Revenue Agency’s approach to policing terrorist abuse “proved seriously deficient” in the case of a long-running audit of the Muslim Association of Canada.
The report by University of Manitoba professor Michelle Gallant is the latest study to recommend the revenue agency make changes to ensure its audits of charitable organizations are free of bias and discrimination.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says “it’s unacceptable” that Stellantis is reportedly in talks with a Chinese automobile manufacturer about the possibility of building Chinese electric vehicles in Canada at its idled Brampton assembly plant.
A report by Bloomberg News says the alleged talks are with Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology, a Chinese automobile manufacturer with headquarters in Hangzhou, China.
