The Department of Justice yesterday said giving legal advice to parliamentarians is not its job. The comment drew a rebuke from Senator Leo Housakos (Que.), chair of the Senate transport and communications committee: “Some have been in civil service for far too long.”
Parks Canada has approved numerous out of court settlements involving injuries or deaths in national parks, says a report. “Serious incident reports” included an average 11 fatalities a year excluding motor vehicle accidents: “Twenty-one visitor safety-related legal claims were made against the agency.”
A costly federal program to clear derelict vessels from the nation’s lakes and harbours will not achieve its 2022 clean-up target, says an internal audit. The program was budgeted at $107 million: “We want to stop the runaround and have rules and regulations in place.”
Executives at the Canadian Tourism Commission paid themselves five-figure quarantine bonuses even as tourism collapsed, records show. Access To Information documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation detailed Covid bonuses and pay raises approved at the same time the Commission publicly lamented tourism bankruptcies: “We are facing the spectre of an industry in deep crisis with many parts of it on the brink of collapse.”
Federal employees are increasingly unlikely to disclose corrupt practices out of fear of reprisal, says a report for the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. “The reality is the workplace culture is dominated by an attitude that no one should ‘rock the boat,’” it said: “Participants described themselves as having ‘become less naïve,’ ‘more pessimistic,’ ‘more cynical.’”
Inflation relief for lower income Canadians will cost about $4 billion, according to federal records. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday promised “a plan to deliver relief to millions,” mainly individuals earning under $49,000: “These will be the very first pieces of legislation we will introduce.”
Federal managers continue to resist an Act of Parliament that mandates priority hiring of medically-released veterans. A Public Service Commission report detailed numerous complaints from managers who would not hire ex-soldiers, sailors or air crew: “They were concerned about the impact on their flexibility.”
Some 283,000 federal employees are off work with pay Monday to mark the Queen’s funeral. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday encouraged provinces that regulate statutory holidays for most other Canadian workers to follow suit despite protests from small business: ‘It would be extremely costly.’
Only a third of Canadians surveyed, 35 percent, say they trust the RCMP’s national leadership, according to in-house research. The low approval rating for Commissioner Brenda Lucki follows a string of incidents that left a bare majority of Canadians, 51 percent, rating the Mounties as an honest police force: “They award lower marks when it comes to the calibre of its leadership.”
A Department of Health scientific panel warns pregnant and nursing mothers must avoid marijuana and that “the use of cannabidiol comes with a number of safety issues and unknowns” for young adults and other members of the general public. The regulatory advice comes four years after Parliament legalized marijuana: “There is little evidence on the safety.”
A Commons petition is demanding that Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez name names in his department’s award of a $133,822 grant to a group subsequently stripped of funding for anti-Semitism. The petition endorsed by the Canadian Anti-Semitism Education Foundation seeks an inquiry with powers to subpoena documents: “Who in the government knew about the consultant’s history of racism and hatred?”
A CRTC investigation has uncovered “shortcomings” in telecom companies’ compliance with a directive on low cost phone plans. Nearly half of sales agents never told customers of discounts, says a federal report: “Consumers perceived they may have faced misleading or aggressive sales practices.”
Parliament must regulate spyware following disclosures the RCMP used technology to hack phones, the Commons ethics committee has been told. A group of academics warned the practice is “cloaked in secrecy.”
New hiring by the Department of Immigration to process a chronic backlog of passport applications totaled 15 form checkers and 63 mail clerks, according to records. Cabinet withheld the figure while claiming to take extraordinary steps to clear three-month wait times for applications by mail: “We’re doing everything we can.”
The federal Conservative Party leadership contest was the biggest political fundraiser of the modern era, according to Elections Canada filings. Partial returns indicate all candidates combined raised $8.3 million from 55,000 donors under a federal law that caps individual contributions at $1,675. More than half was raised by Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.
