Senators last night questioned one clause in a 172-page budget bill that would see Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland spend $2 billion on shares of a company that doesn’t exist. The company would draw private investment in green technology, said Freeland: “The green transition will cost a good deal, really a lot, and we need money.”
Police cited 4,883 children for breaching the Quarantine Act, new figures show. Youngsters warned by police were among 58,760 children caught up in quarantine enforcement: ‘It is in regard to minors being warned of fines if they broke quarantine.’
Public debt charges jumped about $2.3 billion overnight with the latest increase in the Bank of Canada prime interest rate. Debt costs are the fastest growing line item in the federal budget: “The party is now over.”
VIA Rail spread Facebook rumours the Freedom Convoy planned to “put blocks on the train tracks” to disrupt the economy, say internal records. The rumour upset cabinet aides until Canadian National Railway noted it appeared on a single Facebook post with six “likes.”
Cabinet is quietly finalizing terms of its own internal pandemic management review, Senator Marc Gold (Que.), Government Representative in the Senate, said yesterday. Opposition MPs have sought a judicial inquiry including investigations of Covid contracting: “Work is in fact already underway through internal reviews.”
Taxing home equity would be “your political funeral,” a real estate lobbyist yesterday told the Senate national finance committee. It followed testimony from a CMHC tax consultant who complained housing made widows rich in Vancouver: “Those who do suggest it would probably preside at your political funeral.”
Political aides knew to be false a cabinet claim the Freedom Convoy received suspicious foreign donations, internal records show. Rumours spread by the Prime Minister and others went uncorrected because the issue was “a hot potato,” wrote one press secretary: “We’ve tried to avoid questions about the foreign funding angle.”
Anxious depositors lit up credit union hotlines within hours of cabinet’s freeze on accounts held by Freedom Convoy sympathizers, records show. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland acknowledged she was unsure of the reach of her own orders under the Emergencies Act: “What have the banks actually been doing?”
Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier yesterday dismissed an auditor’s warning taxpayers are unlikely to recover billions wasted on pandemic relief programs. At least $32 billion was paid to underserving claimants after the Canada Revenue Agency failed to make cursory background checks: ‘I want to tell them how proud I am.’
The health department wasted about 20 percent of the $5 billion it spent on Covid vaccines, auditors said yesterday. It included millions of doses that were thrown away: ‘They were unsuccessful in efforts to minimize wastage.’
A federal anti-terror agency in an internal memo said it saw no evidence millions raised by the Freedom Convoy were intended to bankroll terrorism. “Seems unlikely,” wrote experts three weeks before cabinet froze accounts of convoy sympathizers under the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act: “It wasn’t cash that funded terrorism.”
Cabinet is “figuring out how we can improve the system” that sees air passengers wait two years for federal regulators to review complaints, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said yesterday. The current backlog at the Canadian Transportation Agency is 30,000 complaints: “I know the Agency is doing their best.”
The failed Covid Alert app saw as few as 12,600 downloads a month before it was cancelled by the Department of Health, new data show. The figures follow in-house research that showed the program failed in part because Canadians didn’t trust the government: “There are certain segments of the population who do not trust the government.”
The typical smoker is spending $170 a month on cigarettes, says Department of Health research. The department has targeted a reduction in smoking rates from about 18 percent of Canadians to five percent by 2036: “One third of Canadian smokers, 35 percent, say the cigarettes they smoke are unaffordable.”
The nation’s largest grocer Loblaw Companies Ltd. yesterday denied profiteering. An executive told the Commons agriculture committee Loblaw’s profit margin is no greater than it was before food inflation averaged 11 percent: “It’s been flat since inflation took off.”
