A juror who was mentally “paralyzed” by a gruesome murder trial has been cleared of alleged workplace fraud. The Toronto man was guilty only of failing to tell employers of his mental state, a labour arbitrator ruled: “The experience was horrific.”
The Public Health Agency of Canada is calling barbecue cleaning brushes a health risk though reported injuries are rare. “Brush injuries don’t just happen in the summer,” wrote staff. “They happen throughout the year.”
A federal advisory panel yesterday recommended permanent removal of a plaque celebrating the “white race”. The tribute to Samuel de Champlain was unveiled in Orillia, Ont. in 1925 before a crowd of 10,000: “Originally the monument was about reconciliation between the French and the English.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs in 2017 spent more than $12.3 million commemorating old battles, according to a newly-released internal audit. The spending topped annual funding for the Veterans Ombudsman or Veterans Review and Appeal Board: “Consider the price they paid, the burden they bore, the country they made.”
Marijuana-impaired driving remains more “socially acceptable” than drunkenness, according to focus group research by the Department of Public Safety. Federal regulators recommend cannabis users wait up to 24 hours before driving: “The stigma of driving high is definitely not like drunk driving.”
The federal prison service has completed an Action Plan to prevent the mistaken release of inmates, according to an internal audit. The initiative follows the accidental 2017 release of a convicted British Columbia cocaine dealer with sixteen months left in his sentence: “The scheduled release date was incorrectly calculated.”
The Department of Fisheries paid hundreds of thousands to fly private sales reps from Tokyo to Milan to boost the dying seal hunt, according to Access To Information records. Funding was to promote “general acceptance for seal hunting” including seal meat recipes: “We have an obligation.”
An ex-employee who received insulting emails from his former supervisor has been awarded $20,000 in damages by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. “The emails are vulgar, hurtful and vicious,” the Tribunal ruled.
A national press ombudsman has upheld a complaint against a British Columbia paper over a headline deemed patronizing. The publisher pledged to provide guidance to newsroom staff on “appropriate use of language”.
Canadians are ambivalent about a national pharmacare program, according to Department of Finance research. Focus groups polled by the department said any program should be income tested to serve only those who can’t afford out-of-pocket expenses for medication: ‘There were concerns about how much it might cost.’
MPs’ protests spoiled a costly project by the Department of Finance, newly-released records show. The department paid researchers to gauge the real-time response of focus groups to a budget speech they couldn’t hear: “There was a significant amount of skepticism around the speech related to credibility.”
A federal judge yesterday upheld a 2014 law on tax data sharing by the Canada Revenue Agency. American-born residents living in Canada challenged the Act as a breach of Charter and privacy rights: “There is nothing this Court can do.”
An Alberta court has reduced the balance owing on a payday loan. The court called the interest charges unconscionable, equal to more than 50 percent a year: “I was not sophisticated or knowledgeable in the ways of business.”
Any re-elected Liberal cabinet will reintroduce a bill to ban junk food advertising to children, Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor said yesterday. A ban estimated to cost advertisers nearly a billion a year was promised by cabinet in 2015 but never passed: ‘It will absolutely be a priority.’
Liberal ridings in Ontario and Atlantic Canada received the largest share of military spending outside the Ottawa region last year, according to Department of National Defence economists. Access To Information data show 15 of the top 20 ridings voted Liberal: “This is not to be construed as an economic analysis.”
