Housing Minister Gregor Robertson is directing a Crown bank to finance “sports infrastructure,” Access To Information records show. Use of public money in sports was a priority, he said: "Investment areas of interest will emerge over time." READ MORE
Complaints over federal secrecy are running at a record pace, the Commons ethics committee learned yesterday. Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard told MPs there was no substitute for a “genuine commitment to openness.” READ MORE
Newly-declassified records show the RCMP in 1955 secretly microfilmed private mail at an international union in a hunt for Communist agitators. Access To Information records did not indicate whether Mounties burgled offices or relied on an informant with a spy camera: "It is through manipulation and control of labour that the Communists intend to bring about an economic crisis." READ MORE
A cabinet bill to quash lawful strikes does not go far enough, Liberal-appointed Senator Jim Quinn (N.B.) said yesterday. Quinn sought a blanket ban on strikes in key sectors like marine ports: "Our reputation as a trading nation internationally is not strong." READ MORE
A final hunt is underway to recover billions in pandemic relief cheques pocketed by 432,000 people nationwide, says the Canada Revenue Agency. Fraudulent and mistaken applications for Covid relief cost taxpayers the equivalent of more than $12,000 per claimant, records showed: 'Any individual who receives something they were not entitled to should pay it back.' READ MORE
Indigenous dialects should be recited aloud at Remembrance Day observances, according to a First Nations recommendation to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Assembly of First Nations also urged the definition of “veteran” be expanded to include Indigenous fighters in pre-Confederation Canada: "First Nations Veterans Council members advised that ceremonial readings should be specifically noted as commemorative." READ MORE
The finance department polled Canadians’ views on the national debt ahead of Thursday’s budget by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, documents show. Federal focus group participants described the 13-figure debt as almost incomprehensible and “just a number.” READ MORE
My mother was a brilliant, beautiful woman, a woman with a passion for great literature, high fashion and duplicate bridge. She was a woman who disliked sentimentality of any kind, so I hope somewhere she’ll forgive me if I say I’m still haunted by the memory of the day I took her for that fateful neurocognitive exam, the day the specialist delivered the bleak diagnosis: Alzheimer’s. I failed my mother when she needed me most.
