Ottawa goes after the far right Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Ottawa has officially designated the Proud Boys and a dozen other groups as terrorist entities. Less than two weeks ago, the House of Commons had unanimously passed a motion in favour of slapping the label on the far-right men's-only organization. Yesterday, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair followed through—and also added three other white-supremacist groups to the list, along with a spate of Islamist extremist groups. "This is our victory," NDP leader Jagmeet Singh tweeted to "young people, working people, Black, Brown and Indigenous people." Designating the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization is a mistake: Adnan R. Khan writes in Maclean's that he's met some of the men who've formed "prepper" militias in rural Idaho—disgruntled Americans who are waiting for a new civil war. The Proud Boys are not that, writes Khan. We should not confuse what is merely a group of criminal chauvinists for a disciplined and determined organization willing to commit mass casualties for their cause. The Proud Boys hold up a mirror to our society. They show us what happens when masculine white privilege crashes headlong into an economy that no longer values them. If we want to address the problem, we must resist the urge to tuck them away in a box labelled “terrorism” and hope the appropriate authorities will deal with it. The Liberal government's vaccine procurement strategy took another blow when federal planning documents revealed that Moderna shipments in February are currently unallocated—that is, the feds don't know how many doses will be in the company's next shipment. Also yesterday, the global vaccine-sharing initiative known as the COVAX Facility published a list of countries that would receive doses. Canada was the only G7 nation on the list. Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will jump on a call with Canada's premiers. Think vaccines will come up? Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer is the ninth parliamentary poet laureate and the first Indigenous appointee. Halfe was born on Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta, and attended Blue Quills Residential School. She later served as Saskatchewan's second poet laureate. "My dream is that poetry will be given the same stature as that of the novel," she said. "It is a privilege to bring the First Peoples’ voices and stories, poetry and whatever genre they are bringing to life to the forefront. Thank you for this gift." Regular readers know your newsletter correspondent regularly digs into parliamentary documents known as responses to questions on the order paper—OPQs, as they're known colloquially. When the House of Commons returned from the holiday break, Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux—the parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader—dutifully dropped dozens of responses onto the official record. Some are published in Hansard. Others, typically the longest or most complex, are tabled as "sessional papers" available upon request. Maclean's asked for some from the most recent batch. Some highlights: Conservative MP Jeremy Patzer asked Mona Fortier, the minister for middle class prosperity, how many middle-class Canadians have seen their prosperity increase and decrease since her appointment. And by what metrics does Fortier measure those results? A cheeky question from the backbench. Fortier's response parroted government talking points on the pandemic response. Fortier's title has long puzzled many in the nation's capital. NDP MP Taylor Bachrach wondered if the federal government had signed any contracts with SNC-Lavalin on the "design and implementation of COVID-19 programs and spending measures." Every single department and agency responded, and almost all of them said no contracts were on the books. The only exception was Public Services and Procurement Canada, which doled out a $150-million contract on April 8, 2020 that asked the infamous engineering and construction firm to "design and deliver mobile health units." Conservative MP David Sweet was curious about the locations and costs of federally installed electric vehicle charging stations across Canada. The feds responded with a list of 36 locations and 114 stations. The most expensive spot to put in place? Les Terrasses de la Chaudière in Gatineau, which came with a price tag of $245,857.47. Conservative MP Kelly Block queried the Department of National Defence on how many dossiers bureaucrats had created for various and sundry journalists. Last November, the Ottawa Citizen's David Pugliese first revealed the existence of those dossiers, which built character profiles of reporters. DND's response to Block says the dossiers contain a "brief description of the journalist, background information on previous coverage, topics of interest, and type of questions anticipated." The number of profiles? 55. (Your newsletter correspondent, who reports on military matters , wonders if he made the cut.) PSA on hand sanitizer: A pandemic-induced spike in demand for the stuff that keeps our palms clean was always going to result in some sketchy stuff hitting the market. Yesterday, Health Canada beefed up its lengthy list of recalled sanitizers with another 15 products. The products were cited for a range of faults, including improper directions for use in children, missing expiry dates, improper safety testing and unauthorized ingredients. The National Post's Adrian Humphreys dug up two high-profile Canadian connections for the two men leading Donald Trump's defence team as he fights conviction in the U.S. Senate for inciting the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. David Schoen once defended the late Montreal mob boss, Vito Rizzuto. Bruce L. Castor, Jr. once declined to prosecute Bill Cosby after a Canadian woman, Andrea Constand, alleged the comedian had sexually assaulted her at his home. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
