The Department of Health lost track of thousands of computers under haphazard IT management, say auditors. The department’s Public Health Agency was earlier cited for keeping inventory by hand at nine warehouses leased to stockpile emergency pandemic supplies: “With hindsight would I have liked it to have been different?”
Saving the French language is fundamental to preserving the nation, says a federal briefing note. A cabinet bill pending in the Commons promotes use of French-language computers and French-speaking managers in the federally regulated private sector: “The French language is threatened.”
Election time
in the City of Ottawa.
I check the list of candidates.
They all promise the same
as others before them:
more jobs, better roads, low taxes.
But
who will confess
they have no solution
to homeless shelters
who will disclose
there’s no definitive deadline
for the Light Rail Transit project
who will admit
they cannot reroute trucks
away from the downtown core
who will acknowledge
organic garbage recycling program
doesn’t meet its goals
who will confirm
the city’s $2 billion debt
is here to stay
who will remove
the dead squirrel
from Alta Vista Drive
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, writes for Blacklock’s each and every Sunday)
Claims of economic damage from Freedom Convoy protests were so inflated cabinet couldn’t give away half the millions it budgeted to compensate businesses, records show. One compensation fund saw 82 percent of grant money go unclaimed: “Up to 1,900 businesses in Ottawa could potentially receive support.”
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino yesterday said he was careful to avoid any interference in the federal appointment of a personal friend as a judge. “I recused myself,” said Mendicino.
The Commons foreign affairs committee today convenes rare July hearings into cabinet waivers on sanctions against Russia. Opposition MPs demanded the committee meet ahead of Sunday protests on Parliament Hill: “Canada has failed to step up.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday said she will rewrite portions of a luxury tax that lobbyists called a job killer. The ten percent tax on private aircraft over $100,000 was to take effect September 1: “If you’re selling fewer aircraft you’re manufacturing fewer aircraft, you have fewer jobs.”
Cabinet members’ Speaking Points must avoid jargon and acronyms especially in Question Period, says an Access To Information guide for political ghostwriters. Staff are also instructed to deflect questions by reciting past achievements or finding an “alternate angle.”
Canadian health care workers, especially nurses and paramedics, have had high rates of vaccine hesitancy, according to data cited in a peer-reviewed periodical. Findings were drawn from a survey of more than 15,000 people nationwide: “Our finding of high vaccine hesitancy among health care workers is consistent with other studies both within and outside of Canada.”
Pandemic relief payments to school-age teenagers averaged $5000 each, Statistics Canada said yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of high schoolers received Covid relief cheques intended to aid jobless taxpayers facing eviction or foreclosure: “God love the 15-year old who got a $2,000-a month CERB cheque courtesy of taxpayers.”
Canadians should expect an economic slowdown by winter with continued high costs of living, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. “That does imply some pain,” Macklem told reporters: “Yes, the economy is going to slow.”
The Canadian Dairy Commission awarded its staff pandemic bonuses and pay increases as the industry dumped milk and stockpiled butter to keep up prices. Payments were detailed yesterday in Access To Information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation: “It’s tone deaf for the Dairy Commission to hand out pay raises and bonuses while making milk more expensive.”
A credit union that decided to call a farmer’s loans but kept the fact a secret for a month at spring seeding time was dishonest, Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench has ruled. Financial institutions have a duty to be straightforward with customers, said a Winnipeg judge: “The way the client was dealt with in this case was dishonest and unnecessary.”
We Charity for years received piecemeal contracts and grants that ran to $1.4 million from the Department of Foreign Affairs, according to newly-released briefing notes. Staff paid We Charity organizers from Nairobi to Los Angeles: ‘Nine small initiatives totaling $1.3 million included activities in Kenya, India, Sri Lanka and Canada.’
Joe Volpe, former Liberal cabinet minister, has been ordered to pay nearly $384,000 in costs over a failed defamation suit. Volpe’s troubles started with a series of articles in his newspaper Corriere Canadese, the nation’s only Italian-language daily: “Parties are not free to abuse the judicial system without the threat of costs.”
