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Thursday, July 31, 2025

BONOKOSKI: If only Trudeau did think about monetary policy

By
Mark Bonokoski
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Justin Trudeau wasn’t kidding in 2021 when he said, “you’ll forgive me if I don’t think about monetary policy”— despite former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge suggesting it was a stupid enough quote for the prime minister to walk back.

Trudeau’s words turned into campaign fodder, as they came a few hours after new data from Statistics Canada showed inflation jumped 3.7% year-over-year that July, marking the biggest climb for the consumer price index in a decade.

If any more proof were needed that Dodge was correct, Auditor General Karen Hogan’s fall report released Tuesday should remove any remaining  doubt.

The federal government succeeded in quickly securing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines and rolling out pandemic benefits to help people and backstop the economy, said Hogan, but it wasted millions of doses and gave billions of dollars in benefits to ineligible recipients.

The audit of benefits “found that overpayments of $4.6 billion were made to ineligible individuals, and we estimated that at least $27.4 billion of payments to individuals and employers should be investigated further,” she said.

As if that will ever happen. The Liberals were raining billions of dollars on the unintended.

This, of course, forced the Tories into press release mode in which they accused the Trudeau Liberals of even more fiscal malfeasance after the Auditor General found billions in Liberal inflationary waste that “Canadians will be stuck paying for.”

“Canadians are struggling with 40-year highs in inflation and unprecedented labour shortages,” said Tory leader Pierre Poilievre. “One in five Canadians are skipping meals, 1.5 million Canadians are visiting food banks in a single month – half of which are children.

“Credit card debt is at a record high. It takes 67% of income to service a traditional mortgage, and average rent across Canada is nearly $2000 a month. Inflationary waste is driving up the cost of living. And yet, the Liberals are determined to double down on this failed inflationary approach with current and future programs.

“Canadians are out of money,” Poilievre said in the release,  “and this government is out of touch.”

Hogan capsulized the situation as follows:

“In 2020, the government decided to rely on information provided by applicants and limit pre-payment controls to expedite helping people and employers affected by the pandemic,” said Ms. Hogan.

“In doing so, it recognized that there was a risk that some payments would go to ineligible recipients. We found that overpayments of $4.6 billion were made to ineligible individuals, and we estimated that at least $27.4 billion of payments to individuals and employers should be investigated further.”

“I am concerned about the lack of rigour on post-payment verifications and collection activities,” said Ms. Hogan. “The Canada Revenue Agency and Employment and Social Development Canada need to act now to expand their post-payment verification plans to include all recipients identified as being at risk of being ineligible for benefits, then the department and agency need to carry out their plans and recover COVID-19 benefit amounts owed.”

Again, as if that will ever happen.

All in all it was a major-league cockup.

Everything you need to know about Alberta’s Sovereignty Act

By
Rachel Parker
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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s controversial proposed Sovereignty Act legislation is dominating discussion in the province and throughout political circles across the country. 

Smith first pitched an Alberta Sovereignty Act during the United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership race to bar federal legislation deemed harmful to the province and its interests. 

Smith tabled the proposed bill, now known as the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act or Bill 1, in the Alberta Legislature on November 29. It passed the first reading on division, with Alberta NDP MLAs voting against it. 

The government says the act would allow the province “to stand up to federal government overreach and interference in areas of provincial jurisdiction, including… private property, natural resources, agriculture, firearms, regulation of the economy and delivery of health, education and other social programs.”

It lays out a legislative framework for Alberta to formally defend its provincial jurisdiction while respecting Indigenous and treaty rights, Canada’s Constitution and the courts.

Smith said she hopes the province will “never have to use this bill.” 

“It begins the conversation with Ottawa so that they do not continue to pass aggressive policy targeted specifically at our industry and specifically at our development of our natural resources,” she said.

In a statement, the Opposition said the proposed legislation would create “investment uncertainty, jeopardize federal funding agreements and risk Alberta’s economic future.” 

NDP leader Rachel Notley also said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should revoke the bill. 

“I think if they [the federal government] revoke the Act, that would be the right thing to do.”

She was responding to Trudeau’s comment that while he’s “not looking for a fight” with Alberta, the federal government is not taking anything off the table when it comes to how it may respond to the Sovereignty Act.

Immediately after the tabling of Bill 1, the government was criticized for including sweeping powers for cabinet to rewrite laws outside the legislative process. The proposed act had authority for cabinet to “direct provincial entities to not enforce specific federal laws or policies with provincial resources.” 

While the government has since put forward amendments to remove those powers, Smith won’t say whether the wording was intentional.

“The sovereignty act wasn’t perfect in its wording. That’s why it’s being amended,” Smith told reporters Tuesday. “There are a couple of clarifications that we needed to make.”

Justice Minister Tyler Shandro declined to characterize the wording “as a mistake,” saying on Monday that the UCP government understood the bill. 

The minister said he gave legal advice to cabinet “about what the options are, and what the advantages and disadvantages are for the various different decision points.” He wouldn’t comment on the specifics of that advice, citing cabinet confidentiality. 

During question period on Tuesday, NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir told the Premier to waive cabinet confidentiality so Shandro could explain what legal advice he delivered.

“This bill was a poorly drafted attempt at giving extreme power to the cabinet at the expense of the democratic rights of Albertans,” Sabir said. “Albertans deserve to know how such a disaster was created.”

On Wednesday, new problems arose for the UCP government, with First Nations chiefs from Alberta and Saskatchewan calling for their respective provinces to toss sovereignty-style legislation. 

In November, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe introduced the Saskatchewan First Act to assert provincial autonomy over matters assigned to the provinces in the 1867 Constitution Act.

Chief Tony Alexis of the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation northwest of Edmonton said there’s been no consultation or dialogue with First Nations on the proposed Bill 1.

“We are not looking for change or amendments to the bill. We want it withdrawn,” he said Wednesday on behalf of Treaty 6.

Chiefs will put forward an emergency resolution at the Assembly of First Nations special assembly to reject sovereignty bills before both provincial legislatures. 

The calls come even though the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act stresses that the bill cannot infringe on First Nations rights. 

On Tuesday, the bill passed second reading and was referred to committee to be studied in detail.

The Andrew Lawton Show | “Honking for Freedom”: Convoy spokesperson Benjamin Dichter on new book

By
Andrew Lawton
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Longtime political activist Benjamin Dichter was one of the faces of the Freedom Convoy, adopting a strategy that eschewed legacy media and focused on telling the story of the convoy through social media and independent media outlets such as True North. He’s also been critical of some convoy figures in the months since the protests ended. Dichter has written about the convoy in a new book, Honking for Freedom: The Trucker Convoy that Gave Us Hope. He joins True North’s The Andrew Lawton Show live to talk about it.

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Quebec MP decries woke leftist “coup” at National Gallery of Canada

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
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Echoing the words of a former director of the National Gallery of Canada, Bloc Quebecois MP Martin Champoux decried the leftist ideological propaganda taking over the art world and the nation’s museums in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

The Ottawa gallery recently forced out four senior managers and replaced a top position with a curator who has no experience in the art sector. 

The new curator is Angela Cassie, who worked in a number of posts at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights before becoming the National Gallery’s vice-president of strategic transformation and inclusion.

“Art is being sacrificed to an ideological agenda that no longer has anything to do with the purpose of a museum,” said Champoux. 

“In the words of Marc Mayer, former director of the National Gallery of Canada, “it is literally a coup”. It has gotten to the point where Jean Paul Riopelle—Riopelle is no joke—is considered by the gallery’s new administration as an ‘old white man artist’.”

In an interview with Ottawa journalist Paul Wells, Meyer expressed his dismay at the ideological turn the museum has taken. 

“It’s just so heartbreaking for me to see this because it’s a bloody mess,” said Mayer. 

“It’s an absolute mess. To put someone in charge to reinvent the National Gallery of Canada who’s never worked in an art museum before … is unconscionable.”

Despite citing a new mandate of inclusivity and equity, the new museum management canned senior Indigenous curator Greg Hill. 

“From now on, art no longer serves art. From now on, art is a propaganda tool this government uses to impose its ideological vision. It is scary. It is a dangerous direction, falsely progressive, that gives off a vile whiff of disreputable regimes,” lamented Champoux. 

“The government and its Crown corporations need to get their act together.” 

Museums throughout Canada have seen similar purges according to the edicts of “decolonization” and progressivism held by a certain segment of the art world. 

Last year, the Royal BC Museum shuttered its doors to an entire floor of exhibits on Canada’s first peoples and pioneers so it could “decolonize” the displays. 

“This is necessary to begin the long-term work of creating new narratives that include under-represented voices and reflect the lived experiences and contemporary stories of the people in B.C,” said museum CEO Daniel Muzyka. 

“We will decant the collection and we will do it carefully and openly and inclusively. We will listen. We want to tell the stories from the lived experience.”

York Memorial high school students had “jump list” of teachers to target

By
Anthony Furey
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Students at a school that has been in the news recently for its problems with violence had a “jump list” of teachers to target, True North has learned.

York Memorial Collegiate Institute in Toronto has faced teacher work refusals and student protests and has spurred a board-wide safety meeting, all related to the ongoing havoc at the school that has surfaced in recent months.

An Ontario government Ministry of Labour report, obtained exclusively by True North, reveals the extent of the workplace safety concerns held by staff.

The document details the complaints of over a dozen staff members who refused to work due to safety concerns in late November. The summary of complaints shows teachers were regularly yelled at and harassed by students. They say they witnessed fights in the hallways, cash drug deals, and students driving electric scooters through the halls.

Almost all of the staff complain about the “several” students who wore full balaclavas covering their faces who then go on to enter other classrooms, silently stare down teachers, disrupt the class and physically bar teachers closing the door.

While several staff members complain about the ‘jump list’, when it comes to one member “the principal informed this worker that they were on a student’s ‘jump list’,” the report notes. The document does not indicate how many students were associated with the list.

The safety concerns grew so severe that, according to the ministry document, the board has now “instructed staff to use a ‘buddy system’ if they are walking into the school parking lots after school”.

While staff have since returned to work – and some appear to have been reassigned – late last month a number of them testified that they believed the school needed to temporarily close.

According to the report, one “refusing worker… believes that the workplace needs to be shut down while a school code of conduct is developed, more SBSMs (school-based safety monitors) are implemented, and training is provided regarding how to fill out appropriate documentation related to reporting violent incidents that occur.”

A number of the complaints also detail the general poor quality of the physical building, which echoes concerns also made by students.

The current student body is in fact a merger of two schools – George Harvey Collegiate Institute and York Memorial – after a 2019 fire gutted the latter’s building. Some of the havoc is believed to be caused by the integration of the two student bodies, which commenced this September.

Violence in Toronto schools in recent years has included stabbings and even shooting deaths. Last month, a 17-year-old was charged in connection with a fatal shooting that occurred in front of Woburn Collegiate, resulting in the death of an 18-year-old. 

These incidents have led to calls to bring back the School Resource Officer program, where police are assigned to work within schools. That program was disbanded in 2017 following an activist push that labeled the program racist.

A social media account belonging to a police constable who worked with students at what is now York Memorial details how, before the program was shelved, he helped organize lego club and took students to farmer’s markets, screenings of inspirational films and other field trips.

While the Ministry of Labour report says the Toronto Police Service are investigating the “jump list”, when True North reached out to ask whether there had been any interventions or other police responses, TPS said they would not comment on matters involving students.

Are you a teacher, student or parent with information to share about violence in schools? We want to hear from you. Email [email protected]

Bank of Canada hikes rate to highest levels since 2008

By
Harrison Faulkner
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The Bank of Canada announced another interest rate hike Wednesday, raising the rate by 50 basis points to 4.25%, the highest since 2008. 

This is the seventh rate hike of the year by the central bank in an effort to slow down inflation, which is at 40-year high levels.

In a statement the Bank said that the governing council would review its decision to continue raising rates next year.

“Looking ahead, Governing Council will be considering whether the policy interest rate needs to rise further to bring supply and demand back into balance and return inflation to target.”

The Bank justified its decision by noting high inflation numbers and the rising cost-of-living for Canadians.

“Inflation remained at 6.9% in October, with many of the goods and services Canadians regularly buy showing large price increases.”

On Monday, Canada’s Food Price Report produced by Dalhousie University revealed that on average the price of food spiked by 7% in all categories.

The average family of four spent around $15,200 on groceries this year with costs expected to rise in 2023 as inflation continues to put pressure on Canadians.

Throughout the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Bank maintained its policy of quantitative easing by continuing to print money in an effort to stimulate economic growth.

In October of 2021, the Bank announced an end to the policy and in April of this year fully reversed course and began the current policy of quantitative tightening in an effort to slow the supply of money entering the economy.

In the Wednesday statement the Bank reaffirmed its commitment to quantitative tightening and has committed to bringing inflation down to its 2% target.

“Quantitative tightening is complementing increases in the policy rate. We are resolute in our commitment to achieving the 2% inflation target and restoring price stability for Canadians.

This move from the central bank mirrors the previous rate hike in October when interest rates were also increased by 50 basis points. 

The Daily Brief | A-G finds billions in covid relief waste

By
Anthony Furey
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The federal Auditor General has found that billions of dollars in covid relief funding was sent out to “ineligible recipients.”

The report goes on to explain that some of this money went to people in prisons and to people who were deceased.

Meanwhile, an independent media outlet has been evicted from the National Press Building on Parliament – what’s really going on in this Ottawa media dispute?

And while most Canadians would give the thumbs up to freezing or reducing the pay of politicians, one politician makes the case for why rural politicians perhaps aren’t paid enough.

Tune into The Daily Brief with Anthony Furey and Rachel Emmanuel!

The Andrew Lawton Show | Grocery prices are out of control

By
Andrew Lawton
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After a record-setting year for inflation, there’s no immediate reprieve in sight. A new report into Canada’s food prices anticipates a five to seven per cent increase in food prices next year. For a family of four, grocery bills could rise by $1,000 to over $16,000. One of the report’s researchers, University of Saskatchewan professor Stuart Smyth, joins The Andrew Lawton Show live to discuss why it’s happening and what, if anything, can be done about it.

Also, the Liberals are promising to review their firearms ban to ensure it doesn’t capture hunting rifles, but the gun control activists are doubling down.

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Blacklock’s Reporter vows to fight eviction, while press gallery calls it “well-founded”

By
Andrew Kozak
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Independent news outlet Blacklock’s Reporter says they are retaining legal counsel with a plan to fight their recent eviction from the National Press Building, which houses outlets from Ottawa’s Parliamentary Press Gallery (PPG).

The eviction stems from complaints made to the PPG by Canadian Press journalists Emilie Bergeron and Michel Saba and freelance journalist Hélène Buzzetti, who claimed Blacklock’s managing editor Tom Korski created a “toxic environment.” 

The Press Gallery released a statement Tuesday saying the complaints were “well-founded” and that Korski’s behaviour had “constituted serious misconduct.” 

“Mr. Korski was given the opportunity to respond to the complaint, but the Executive did not receive any representations in that regard,” wrote the statement. However, Blacklock’s disputes the extent to which they were permitted to respond.

The Press Gallery confirmed that Korski is prohibited from accessing several shared spaces in the Gallery building for 90 days. Korski still holds his membership status at the PPG.

According to Blacklock’s, police officers accompanied by PPG executives evicted Korski from the building last Friday. Korski claims the eviction was due to their continued protests against media subsidies and was the “first of its kind in the history of the National Press Building.”

The Press Gallery says Korski was not escorted by a police officer.

Blacklock’s has drawn attention to the fact the eviction occurred one day after they published Access to Information records which revealed a private meeting between 35 publishers, who remained unknown, and the Canada Revenue Agency on how $595 million in subsidies were distributed. 

“Just to be clear. The complaint has nothing to do with subsidized media,” Buzzetti wrote on Twitter. “This reporter refuses to wear headphones in a collective work environment when he listens to tv/press conferences.”

“He calls his colleagues «idiots», tells them to «f— off», and threatens them with lawsuits.” she wrote. 

The Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery’s constitution states that membership may be terminated for “serious misconduct”.

Fourteen other reporters work in the Nation Press Building space and, according to Blacklock’s coverage of the issue, they did not sign off on the complaints made by the other three journalists.

PPG president Guillaume St-Pierre threatened Blacklock’s membership back in November if the appropriate measures were not taken to resolve the issues. Blacklock’s breached “the quiet and civil environment that members expect,” wrote St-Pierre in a formal letter reprimanding Korski. 

“We will fight these people. We are retaining counsel. We will vigorously enforce our lawful rights and the Gallery’s obligations under the Canada Corporations Act,” writes Blacklock’s representatives in a public statement.

“We will hold directors personally liable for their misconduct. We will compel disclosure of confidential Gallery correspondence and cross-examine executive members under oath. We will name names,” said the statement.

In April 2021, Blacklock’s sponsored a motion asking “that all Gallery members disclose all applications for grants, rebates, or subsidies to any branch of the Government of Canada and that disclosures be published on a Press Gallery Website.” This motion was defeated in a vote of 18-1.

A-G finds Covid relief waste included payments to the deceased, inmates

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

A new Auditor General report found that the federal government dished out tens of billions in Covid-19 relief to “ineligible recipients” including people who were already dead and inmates serving time in prison. 

In total, the Auditor General flagged $32 billion worth of payments sent out by the federal government under suspicious circumstances, $4.2 billion of which were overpayments to ineligible individuals. 

“We found $4.6 billion of overpayments made to ineligible recipients of benefits for individuals,” claimed the report.

Canadian Taxpayers Federation federal director Franco Terrazzano said Ottawa “was asleep at the wheel” while freely handing out an unprecedented amount of taxpayer funds. 

“Politicians were asleep at the wheel while the government sent billions of tax dollars to the wrong place,” said Terrazzano in a press release. 

“The $4.6 billion in overpayments are just the tip of the iceberg because the Auditor General flagged billions more in questionable payments.”

Auditor General Karen Hogan said that she has concerns about the lack of oversight and is calling for further investigations into the scheme. 

“I am concerned about the lack of rigour on post-payment verifications and collection activities,” said Hogan.

The Auditor General report also flagged millions in funds which were sent to the deceased and inmates serving time in prison. A total of $6.1 million was sent to incarcerated individuals while $1.2 million worth of taxpayer funds were sent to the dead. 

“The feds fired out a bunch of money without proper guardrails and now they have a massive mess,” said Terrazzano.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre blasted the Liberal government over the mismanagement on Tuesday. 

“This morning, the Auditor General confirmed BILLIONS were spent in ineligible COVID benefit payments. This waste of taxpayers dollars made Trudeau’s inflationary deficits billions higher than they needed to be. These Liberals created a mess & now Canadians are paying the price,” tweeted Poilievre.

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