Cabinet shelved as too costly a plan to develop a new index to raise seniors’ pensions, Access To Information records show. The Liberal Party 11 years ago promised to raise payments using a customized Seniors Price Index: 'It would have resulted in small individual benefit increases at a high overall cost.' READ MORE
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. READ MORE
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.” READ MORE
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. READ MORE
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." READ MORE
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." READ MORE
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. READ MORE
On February 15, 1996 then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien attended a Flag Day ceremony at a park in Gatineau, Que. Dozens of us had arranged to demonstrate. It was a peculiar moment, seeing and hearing the Prime Minister lose control and behaving in an erratic manner. It was a powerful image. Here was the head of government attacking a protestor. There was symbolism here that went beyond the event itself.
