Millions of Canadians still carry cash in their wallet and keep banknotes at home, Bank of Canada researchers said yesterday. The latest study followed new restrictions on cash by retail banks: “Cash holdings have increased.”
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne yesterday doubled down in a tariff war with China only hours after the People’s Republic announced punishing surcharges on Canadian canola. It was a question of “Canadian values,” said the finance department.
Only the private sector can solve Canada’s housing crisis, CMHC said yesterday in a report. It followed Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promise to revive a 1974 tax shelter for builders: “Governments do not have the resources to meet overwhelming demand.”
Hundreds of thousands of people who took out Liberal memberships during the Party’s March 9 leadership race were never counted as casting ballots, according to new figures released yesterday by Liberal headquarters. The Party did not explain the large discrepancy: “We have to be very realistic to the threats of foreign interference.”
Deportation of foreign criminals would be made easier under a Conservative bill to be introduced in the Commons, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill) yesterday told reporters. “Becoming a Canadian is a privilege, not a right,” said Rempel Garner, vice-chair of the Commons immigration committee.
Charities are entitled to compensation for libel that harms their reputation, says the Yukon Supreme Court. A judge awarded $50,000 in damages to a local charity that “has a reputation it seeks to maintain and uphold in the Yukon,” she said.
A federal agency in an internal memo admits it did no “due diligence” before sinking millions of taxpayer dollars into a money-losing Kenyan cellphone company. FinDev Canada, the agency that approved the spending without parliamentary scrutiny, withheld the memo for six years under the Access To Information Act: “We will need to ensure the rationale for our involvement is articulated clearly and convincingly.”
Immigration levels in the first third of the year outpaced Prime Minister Mark Carney promised cap on quotas. Figures released by the Department of Immigration for the first 120 days set a pace that would see nearly 400,000 new landed immigrants in 2025: “The system isn’t working.”
Canada must “source domestically for federal contracts,” Public Works Minister Joel Lightbound said yesterday after touring a British Columbia shipyard. He made no mention of outsourcing shipyard jobs to China through a billion-dollar contract currently under investigation by the Commons transport committee: ‘We’re creating a prosperous economy.’
Parks Canada yesterday without comment deleted all reference to “genocide” in its latest historic site designation of an Indian Residential School. The agency as recently as last February 12 called the schools “cultural genocide.”
Auditors are within their rights to estimate actual income of all-cash businesses, the Québec Court of Appeal has ruled. Judges upheld a reassessment of $30,031,393 in taxes and penalties against Sami Fruits, a retail chain that grew from a single fruit stand in Montréal: “Sami’s way of operating and accounting did not keep pace with the company’s growth.”
Canadians rate religious extremism a greater threat to public order than neo-Nazis, says in-house research by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It follows numerous anti-Semitic street protests and the 2023 assassination of a Sikh nationalist in Surrey, B.C.: “Overall six in ten, 57 percent, feel Canada is more dangerous.”
Up to a third of stock analysts predict a recession by year’s end, the Bank of Canada said yesterday. Its survey of market participants followed Governor Tiff Macklem’s assurance there will be no recession in 2025: “What is the probability of real GDP growth in Canada being below zero at the end of 2025?”
An Elections Canada report debunks cabinet claims a fixed date for balloting had to be delayed due to conflicts with the Hindu calendar. One day was as conflicted as another, says a newly-released report on the proposal Opposition MPs called a pension grab under the guise of cultural sensitivity: “The date was moved not for any cultural event.”
About a third of desk phones have been permanently disconnected at federal offices, says a memo by the government’s IT department Shared Services Canada. And more than 91,000 government-issue cellphones were found to be unused, figures show: “The average monthly cost of unused phone service plans was $253,832.”
