Prime Minister Mark Carney in his first comment on the made-in-Canada recession yesterday acknowledged “choppiness” in the economy but again declined to attend Question Period to defend his record. “Data is going to be uneven,” he told reporters.
One of the nation’s largest Jewish groups yesterday dismissed as ineffectual the appointment of a Department of Heritage committee to investigate anti-Semitism. Heritage Minister Marc Miller acknowledged the committee was merely “a first step.”
Canadians remain skeptical of electric cars’ reliability despite years of federal promotions including $5,000 rebates, says in-house Department of Natural Resources research. “Uncertainty persists around issues such as charging capacity, maintenance costs and resale value,” wrote federal pollsters.
Floor crossing in the Commons is an odious practice that infuriates voters, New Democrat MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) said yesterday. Davies sponsored a private bill that would require all MPs who quit one caucus for another to face home electors in a byelection: “Political opportunism has gotten to such a point in this place that it’s overriding fundamental respect for democracy.”
The Senate human rights committee last night voted 7 to 1 to criminalize Indian Residential School “denialism.” Public statements intended to promote hatred by downplaying the impacts of Residential Schools would be outlawed under threat of two years in jail: “It can involve denying, minimizing or justifying the documented abuses, deaths, forced assimilation and intergenerational harms.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday skipped Commons questions over the recession to take a 15-minute tour of a construction site in his Nepean, Ont. riding. The Prime Minister would only let media “take a picture of him wearing a hard hat and carrying a hammer around pretending he’s a carpenter” but would not discuss his management of the economy, said Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.
The Commons yesterday by a 193 to 134 vote rejected an Opposition motion to freeze mandatory fees charged video streaming services. Companies like Netflix and Disney Plus face a tripling of rates, from 5 to 15 percent of their yearly Canadian revenues, under a May 21 CRTC order: “Who will pay for this?”
The CBC was flooded with angry emails after former TV host Travis Dhanraj told MPs he was instructed to keep Conservatives off the air, Access To Information records show. “We don’t hit the mark in every story,” one manager acknowledged in discussing Dhanraj’s March 10 testimony at a parliamentary committee hearing: “Perceptions of bias, whatever direction they take, are of great concern.”
Federal managers yesterday testified they never authorized a $10 million charge by Indigenous Languages Commissioner Ronald Ignace to host a four-day conference in Ottawa. An internal audit is underway: “How many Indigenous people could have learned their language with $10 million?”
The Department of Immigration says there is “high interest” in foreigners applying to become Canadians under 2025 changes to the Citizenship Act. Conservative MP Brad Redekopp (Saskatoon West) in Commons debate on budget Main Estimates pressed for a number: “Does the Minister stand by her estimate?”
Prime Minister Mark Carney has yet to comment on federal data showing Canada fell into recession for the first time since the pandemic. Figures were confirmed Friday, one day after Carney mistakenly told New York business leaders that Canada would “have the second-fastest growth in the G7 this year.”
Attorney General Sean Fraser says as a former Catholic schoolboy he would never enact legislation restricting freedom of religion. Fraser spoke in defence of his Bill C-9, opposed by Catholic Bishops, that would permit prosecution of hate speech “based on a belief in a religious text” in specific circumstances: “I read Scripture in church every week.”
Labour inspectors must ensure no illegal immigrants are working on federal public works, says Conservative MP Kyle Seeback (Dufferin-Caledon, Ont.). Cabinet has admitted it does not know how many, if any, of an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants in Canada are drawing wages in subsidized construction: “Can the Minister cite one investigation?”
Federal figures confirm cabinet granted Beijing the equivalent of half the battery electric car market in Canada through 2031. The Minister of Industry had downplayed the China concession as “a small quota.”
Civilian trades at Department of National Defence shipyards have lost a key labour ruling. Federal judges ordered a new hearing into whether unions’ expression of support for picket lines during a 2023 dispute breached an Act of Parliament: “Strikes and lockouts pose challenges.”
