It’s never too hot to spill the tea. Federal immigration minister Ahmed Hussen called it “not Canadian” to imply that refugee claimants are "queue-jumpers." But staff at the refugee board are complaining of overload. Hussen’s new Ontario counterpart, Lisa MacLeod, fired back by asking for an apology over “a nice cup of tea.” Instead, he opted to pour for the folks in York South-Weston:

The continuing search for Canada’s champion of fake followers on Twitter. The social media platform's purge of fake accounts resulted in varying amounts of damage to the follower counts of Canadian politicians. But the methods used to find inactive Twitter users may not have flushed all the fakes. And there’s at least one person in the country who had even more ersatz fans than Frank D’Angelo: Calvin Helin lost nearly a million, but he claims to have paid little attention to his following.

PetSmart denies it let a dog die. Corey Dixon leveraged his Twitter following to draw attention to his claim that his four-year-old service dog, Aspen, wasn’t given needed veterinary assistance during a weeklong stay at the pet shop, which paid $5,000 toward treatment. After Aspen died, PetSmart claimed that her illness was due to a pre-existing autoimmune disease. Dixon maintains otherwise:

The other side of #MeToo. Jeramy Dodds, who lost his job with Coach House Books amidst claims of sexual exploitation, is suing four unidentified women alleged to have created a list of “shitty media men,” as well as media outlets that reported on it. Meanwhile, a Toronto Life feature on Albert Schultz reveals that settlements have been reached with the four women who filed civil lawsuits against him.

Steven Galloway finally explains what exactly he was accused of. A first-person account in the National Post allows the novelist to outline the circumstances that led to his exit from UBC amid much upheavel in the CanLit world. Galloway suggests that he’ll discuss more details in the future, rather than leaving friends to do it for him:

CHUM 104.5’s makeover now includes a guy named Jamar. The station's morning show, co-hosted by Roger Ashby with Marilyn Denis since 1986, has imported a new third wheel: Jamar McNeil, previously of Chicago station B96. McNeil made his debut by emphasizing the second “t” in Toronto, which might’ve just been a rookie mistake:

Gordon Chong dead at 74. The municipal fixture was recently a regular columnist for the Toronto Sun, even if he complained about editors subjecting his copy to “unilateral spineless meddling.” Chong was a former dentist whose politics leaned right, although left-wing councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam nonetheless always addressed him as “uncle.”