Tax appeals that should take 120 days may take years based on a federal redefinition of time. The disclosure came in a labour board hearing for a Canada Revenue Agency appeals officer demoted for working too slowly: “On occasion it takes years.”
Canadians traveling to Cuba should expect to be stranded without electricity, food or fresh water, the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Diplomats updated a federal travel advisory warning conditions were so poor, drivers were fighting in gas station lineups: “Traveling across the island is extremely challenging.”
Cabinet yesterday said it will spend $248,600 for a study on how much it would take to upgrade Canada’s most northerly deepwater port. The Port of Churchill, Man. has been the subject of numerous postwar studies that questioned its commercial potential: “What is the viability of the Port of Churchill?”
Air Canada complains it is being singled out for French fines under draft regulations requiring bilingual service by federally regulated transport employers. Maximum fines are $25,000: “Other air carriers do not have the same obligations as Air Canada.”
The number of landed immigrants let into Canada last year totaled 393,500, Immigration Minister Lena Diab said yesterday. The figure was almost a quarter less than the 500,000 quota set prior to 2024 cuts: “My job has been made quite easy.”
Cabinet’s bid to engineer majority control of Parliament rests in a looming byelection in a Montréal suburb, Terrebonne, where Liberals won by a single vote over the Bloc Québécois in 2025. “We have a certain weight,” Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet earlier told reporters.
The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops, B.C. yesterday confirmed it has not attempted to exhume the purported graves of 215 children at the site of an Indian Residential School despite receiving $12.1 million in federal funding for field work. The admission comes ahead of the scheduled release of Access To Information documents regarding the First Nation’s requests for funding for “exhumation of remains.”
The CBC is entitled to conceal internal details of corporate spending under the Access To Information Act, says a federal judge. The ruling came on a legal challenge by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to find how much the CBC spent on advertising while executives pled financial hardship: ‘Disclosure could result in political interference and pressure to modify its spending.’
The Canada Revenue Agency is revising the scope of audits to target the largest multinational corporations with offshore accounts. The initiative follows internal complaints that auditors misspent time chasing smaller corporations: “There have to be decisions about the fairness of the regime.”
Pay and benefits averaged more than $143,000 per federal employee last year, the Budget Office said yesterday. It was “historically high,” wrote analysts: “An employee can have seven levels of management above them.”
Refugee claims by travelers passing through Canadian airports fell 73 percent after cabinet reintroduced a Mexican visa requirement, records show. Inland claims also declined as cabinet cut foreign study permits at colleges and universities: “Ineligibility measures are about protecting the asylum system.”
Federal regulators have suspended thousands of marijuana distributors’ licenses “for reasons of public health and public safety” including illegal diversion of cannabis into the black market, says a Department of Health memo. It follows widespread bankruptcies in the marijuana trade: “Health Canada has refused or revoked over 4,100 registrations.”
Canadians will be expected to make sacrifices to build up national defence, Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday. Carney reiterated a pledge he reneged on last year to spend 2 percent of GDP on military preparedness: “Can you outline what sacrifices?”
The Alberta Human Rights Tribunal will allow a hearing on whether mandatory medical tests for older drivers are discriminatory. The case involved an octogenarian motorist who complained he had to pay out of pocket for needless exams: “He has no medical issues.”
Federal agencies last year mailed more than a million government cheques that were never cashed, records show. Payments totaling $609.4 million ranged from Old Age Security to unclaimed carbon rebates: “How many cheques?”
