The continued attention to a Canadian official attending a party at the Russian Embassy has included questions about whether foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly stumbled by permitting attendance that her office had advance knowledge of. It’s also thrown another log on the fire regarding whether Justin Trudeau will soon start stepping aside.
Back and to the left again
An evening at the Quebec City Film Festival with Oliver Stone will focus on his recent documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. But this latest lionization of the filmmaker for his appearance has writer Fred Litwin wondering why Quebec is rolling out the red carpet for the guy whose prior project amounted to honouring Vladimir Putin.
“What would you do for some Klondike Papers?” Justin Ling’s newsletter, Bug-eyed and Shameless, dives into a confusing Canadian conspiracy theory gaining some ground with a centre-left crowd. David Wallace, a self-described “whistleblower” sowing this saga, also recently came up in a story involving Doug Ford and Russia.
The truly underground paper
Media Central, the now bankrupt company that owns Now magazine, claims to have printed 25,000 copies of a June issue that seems hard to find outside of a bundle of 50 dropped off at its Toronto address. But it continues as a downsized publication online, as a buyer is being sought to recoup losses from a badly orchestrated gamble on alt-weeklies:
Netflix goes “back to basics” at the Banff World Media Festival. “Are we the underdog now?” asked the company’s global TV head, Bela Bajaria—who added “this is a good place to be” as she unveiled plans for a $4.56 million Squid Game reality show. Netflix is also launching a development program for diverse Canadian writers called Advancing Voices.
Finally, not his rudest material
etalk recently made headlines due to a $1.25 million lawsuit filed by Danielle Graham, who alleges gender discrimination amidst casting changes at CTV’s entertainment news show. But it’s unmentioned in an 11-minute “roast” of current host Tyrone Edwards by Russell Peters, who’s really just making these rounds to promote pre-construction condo investment: