The Canadian Armed Forces yesterday dropped a standard IQ test for new recruits and promised speedier background checks on volunteers that currently take longer than six months. “Recruitment is my number one priority,” said Chief of Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan.
It will be up to future Parliaments to finance a long-promised high speed rail venture, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday. Trudeau’s latest pledge of bullet train service from Toronto to Québec City came 58 years after the Department of Transport first studied the concept: “This is real now.”
Mark Carney as a federal advisor and prospective prime minister should disclose assets including his stock portfolio, debts and income sources, the Opposition said yesterday. Carney, a multi-millionaire, has to date withheld disclosure of dealings with federally regulated firms: “Carney must come clean.”
Cabinet’s electric car program will take longer than expected and “may be adjusted,” says a Department of Industry briefing note. The document was written three days after Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne asked Canadians to rally around the industry: ‘There are delays and challenges.’
Former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould in a confidential interview with the RCMP urged police to widen their investigation of the SNC-Lavalin Group scandal, newly-disclosed records show. Access To Information files released yesterday by the group Democracy Watch noted Wilson-Raybould’s pleas were ignored: “I don’t know, we didn’t know, we don’t know.”
Small and medium sized businesses lost about $60 billion in the first year of pandemic lockdowns and travel bans, Statistics Canada figures showed yesterday. Data were drawn from firms that applied for interest-free loans at taxpayers’ expense: “We need to keep businesses going.”
A veterans’ petition still gathering signatures in the Commons asks that cabinet apologize for a botched war memorial that misidentified dead heroes. The memorial at Port Hope, Ont. was installed under a Highway of Heroes project that received $3 million in federal funding: “Issue a formal public apology.”
Canada must sharpy reduce immigration quotas due to a national housing shortage, Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale, Ont.) said yesterday. Freeland as finance minister had claimed record high immigration was essential to growth: “Tie the number of new immigrants to housing availability.”
Cabinet aides last September considered a federal investigation of “shrinkflation,” records show. No inquiry was held into food processors’ lawful practice of charging consumers the same or more for less: “Boxed macaroni and cheese has gone from 230 grams to 220 grams or 200 grams depending on the brand.”
A federal judge has approved a class action settlement with Canadian veterans who complained of racial discrimination over a 40-year period. Only a fraction of eligible veterans applied for the minimum $5,000 in cash compensation, Federal Court records show: “This is a complex claim.”
Canada is currently short nearly 69,000 doctors, nurses and other health care workers, says a Department of Health report. The figure is lower than 2023 estimates but still “substantial,” it said: “Canada clearly has urgent work to do.”
Expanding a municipal-style court system on First Nations is worthwhile but will take time, says a Department of Justice report. Researchers studied First Nations in four provinces that already enforce bylaws on traffic, waste management, retailing and landlord and tenant disputes: “Be patient.”
New Democrats are prepared for an election call in six weeks, says leader Jagmeet Singh. The Party has fewer than half its candidates nominated but will fill the slate for a March call, he said: “Mark Carney is going to call an early election.”
The Parliamentary Press Gallery is “highly undemocratic” and dominated by media reliant on federal subsidies, says Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre. His remarks followed a 2019 court ruling in which a federal judge faulted the Gallery and House of Commons administration for blacklisting two news organizations based on secretive “internal media accreditation guidelines.”
Tax filers may keep secrets from their spouses but not the Canada Revenue Agency, Tax Court has ruled. The decision came in the case of a husband who kept a secret Swiss bank account “to hide funds from his wife.”
