RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme assigned a total seven officers to policing hate crimes in seven provinces, records show. Most were part-timers. The disclosure followed complaints of weak protection of Jews, the leading target of hate crimes in Canada, by official estimate: "What are the risks?" READ MORE
Cabinet acknowledges a “moral obligation” to recover Indigenous artworks that vanished from government offices, the Commons heritage committee was told. One MP said federal managers appeared determined to downplay the loss of paintings, jewelry, sculptures and other art that went missing from a multi-million dollar collection: "I do believe there is a moral obligation." READ MORE
Liberal MP Tatiane Auguste (Terrebonne, Que.) has lost her Commons seat after the Supreme Court invalidated her election by a single ballot in 2025. It was the closest federal campaign in 62 years: "I think this is an issue that goes beyond party politics." READ MORE
Extraordinary pandemic-era infringements of Canadians’ rights were justified in the name of public safety, says the Supreme Court of Canada. Judges by a 5-4 decision upheld a Newfoundland and Labrador order that prohibited outsiders from entering the province: "These were difficult times." READ MORE
A former campaign manager and longtime political aide to Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Beaches-East York, Ont.) has been cited for multiple violations of the Elections Act. Breaches included falsifying records: 'He was the official agent.' READ MORE
The political heart of Ottawa spans a ten-square block area of the old city stretching from Wellington to Somerset Streets. Here on Somerset lived Prime Minister John Thompson, a workaholic who wrote Canada’s first Criminal Code, created Labour Day in 1893 and was an early supporter of votes for women: "About all the exercise I can get is the walk from my house up to the Hill and back." READ MORE
Lost to history is the state funeral of Generalissimo Trujillo, strongman of the Dominican Republic, shot by assassins in 1961. Canadian diplomat John Graham attended the mass. “The only people in the entire church without guns were the clergy and the diplomatic corps,” he recalls. Fearful that rebels would seize the corpse for public display, Trujillo’s henchmen hoisted it from the church by helicopter winch. “The Generalissimo’s coffin swinging in the air was a moment of unbearable, transcendent mystery for the dazed and credulous mourners below,” writes Graham. Only later did diplomats learn Trujillo wasn’t in the coffin. They’d stuffed it with an unknown corpse while preserving El Presidente in a freezer for quiet burial. READ MORE
I will never forget the 1993 campaign. It was electric. There was a cry for change and tempers ran high. I got into a fight with one voter on his own front porch. And I learned never to campaign in bars. Alcohol brings out cynicism in the electorate. When we almost killed the Conservative Party, the hunger for change was genuine. We won 2,559,245 votes from Canadians who sought to reform forever the way Ottawa worked. It’s a shame we failed to do it. There’s a proverb that reform movements are like bees: They sting and then they die.
