Cabinet faces a Charter challenge of its $225 million Covid hotel program. A media company Rebel News Network Ltd. seeks confidential documents used to justify mandatory quarantine at federally-approved hotels for all returning air travelers: “It is clear there were many other alternatives.”
Opposition MPs yesterday ordered Commons industry committee hearings into a proposed $26 billion buyout involving two of the nation’s four largest telecom corporations. “Frankly the status quo is unacceptable,” Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre (Carleton, Ont.) told reporters: “We have a protected, regulated oligarchy.”
Pierre Trudeau’s last finance minister Marc Lalonde warned cabinet that federal overspending was a looming disaster, like “keeping its finger in the dike,” according to declassified records. The Parliamentary Budget Office has calculated current deficits are running at the highest rate to GDP since Lalonde’s era: “Bad as it is, it could easily become even worse.”
A Liberal appointee in the Senate yesterday introduced a private bill promoting decriminalization of heroin. Senator Gwen Boniface (Ont.), a former Ontario Provincial Police commissioner, said simple possession for hard drugs should be a ticketing offence: “Substance use disorder is a public health issue.”
Protests over the Atlantic seal hunt prompted a bitter split in the 1984 federal cabinet, according to declassified records. Ministers cursed the International Fund for Animal Welfare while acknowledging the seal hunt was “relatively minor.”
We Charity’s Kielburger brothers yesterday admitted they were in contact with a political aide in the Prime Minister’s Office over a $43.5 million grant. The Commons ethics committee focused on a friendly June 27, 2020 exchange between the Kielburgers and Ben Chin, senior advisor to the Prime Minister: “That’s a private matter.”
The Department of Health just eleven days into the pandemic told doctors and nurses they must recycle rationed masks until Covid-19 ran its course, according to an internal briefing note. “The document is for internal use by Health Canada,” wrote staff.
Then-Justice Minister Mark MacGuigan in 1982 wanted to sue child killer Clifford Olson to recover federal cash payments but dropped the idea for fear of political embarrassment, say declassified records. Cabinet at a confidential meeting complained it only learned after that fact the RCMP paid Olson $100,000 to disclose where he buried his victims in the British Columbia woods: “Mr. MacGuigan stressed the decision was his alone.”
Then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet opposed compensation for Japanese-Canadians interned during World War II since they did not appear unhappy, according to declassified Cabinet Minutes. Ministers said compensating those whose property was seized would set a precedent: “All minorities will feel they should have a right to redress.”
A private bill to outlaw exports of plastic garbage will damage cross-border trade in waste, industry lobbyists yesterday told the Commons environment committee. MPs gave Second Reading to the bill February 3 by a vote of 179-148: “Out of sight, out of mind is not a solution.”
Cabinet considered seizing factory production and imposing a cap on corporate profits in early days of the pandemic, according to internal emails. “What are next steps to advance this?” wrote one political aide in discussing extraordinary measures under the Emergencies Act: “Is there another Act where we could make these amendments?”
Then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet in secret 1983 meetings dismissed Brian Mulroney as a “new boy” easily ridiculed for “glibness and flippancy,” according to declassified records obtained by Blacklock’s. The Liberal cabinet expressed confidence it would beat Mulroney in a 1984 election: ‘Ministers should be seen to be giving the ‘new boy’ a chance.”
Then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau planned to combat 1981 recession protests with pro-Liberal federal advertising and tips for cabinet on how to “appear to listen,” say declassified records. Trudeau cautioned: “Nothing would be more harmful than to communicate a sense of not knowing what we are doing.”
Fewer than a third of small business owners, 32 percent, say they get respect from the Canada Revenue Agency, according to in-house research. Just 28 percent said they think the Agency treats taxpayers fairly: “Answers vary according to their experience.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s family farm is auctioning all equipment in a retirement sale organized by Freeland’s father Donald, 76. The finance minister, a millionaire Rhodes Scholar, frequently invoked the farm as proof her family was not part of the “Upper Canada elite.”
