Freedom Convoy truckers were rapists, claims Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino. Testifying at the Commons public safety committee, Mendicino said “threats of rape” by political protesters justified use of the Emergencies Act: “Will you undertake to provide this committee with proof of the allegation?”
Canadians are wary of cabinet’s climate change plan to ban the sale of gas and diesel-fueled cars, pickups and SUVs in the name of “personal choice and freedom,” says in-house Privy Council Office research. Cabinet is mandating that all sales be electric by 2035: “There was anxiety with many believing costs for consumers would go up.”
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says he personally contacted reporters and “urged them to be very careful” in dealing with the Freedom Convoy. MPs who voted to invoke the Emergencies Act repeatedly praised coverage of the political protests against vaccine mandates: “As for journalists, trust me, I reached out to some of them.”
A federal employee who fell in default on home loans due to the Phoenix Pay System fiasco has lost a court case with her banker. Québec Superior Court was told the employee was so distressed she quit her job to cash out pension funds to pay the debts she owed: “Its failures are well known.”
Canadians will be carrying Covid masks for months to come, says the nation’s chief public health officer. Dr. Theresa Tam said Canadians should think of mask wearing as a habit like checking the weather: “Be prepared to have your mask ready.”
Millions in donations to the Freedom Convoy appeared to be an honest outpouring of public support, a federal regulator said yesterday. “It wasn’t cash that funded terrorism,” the Commons finance committee was told: “These were people who supported the cause.”
CMHC compiled records on millions of mortgage holders to identify Canadians who owned more than one property, according to Access To Information records. The massive data scoop included details on loans and credit scores for homeowners who were never CMHC customers: “It will only be used for the purposes of identifying if a borrower has more than one uninsured loan.”
Banks that froze millions held in accounts belonging to suspected Freedom Convoy sympathizers have not yet released all funds, cabinet’s representative in the Senate said yesterday. The Emergencies Act order that allowed blacklisting was suspended Wednesday: “Customers have no access to due process.”
A TV announcer’s slip of the tongue on Indian Residential Schools has been censured by a national ombudsman. “The broadcaster demonstrated a lack of the necessary respect,” ruled the Canada Broadcast Standards Council: “Precision in language is what separates journalists from everyone else.”
Canada must ensure “Putin doesn’t win,” the chair of Parliament’s Canada-Ukraine Friendship Group said yesterday. Lawmakers of Ukrainian ancestry expressed horror over the Russian invasion of their grandparents’ homeland: “I can see the pain in your face.”
A federal bank, Farm Credit Canada of Regina, began blacklisting customers suspected of sympathizing with the Freedom Convoy. Critics of Emergencies Act orders targeting bank account holders yesterday called the measure punitive and unlawful: “Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.”
Cabinet’s abrupt suspension of Emergencies Act orders yesterday came so suddenly Liberal appointees in the Senate were continuing to warn of anarchist plots to topple Parliament even as the threat was downgraded to an ordinary police matter. “We need the full power of the state,” said Senator Bev Busson (B.C.), a former RCMP Commissioner: “It is a national crisis. I am at a loss to understand how we can play politics with our democracy.”
First-ever use of the Emergencies Act to quash the Freedom Convoy movement will set a federal precedent for years to come, legislators warned yesterday. Liberal and Conservative-appointed senators called it government overreach: “The country is deeply divided like I have never seen it.”
A $100 billion pandemic relief program originally intended to aid small business instead benefited large corporations, Statistics Canada data disclosed yesterday. Large corporations were three times as likely as small business to receive the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy: “One of the challenges the government has had is a profound misunderstanding of how small business works.”
The federal minimum wage will rise to a higher rate than any province effective April 1. The pay hike affects three percent of federally regulated employees in the private sector but “sends a strong signal” on wage rates, say unions: “The federal government believes in a reasonable wage floor.”
