More than 17,000 Canadians have signed a petition demanding Parliament conduct a special investigation of Loblaw Companies Ltd. The nation’s largest grocer yesterday reported net yearly earnings of $1.9 billion with a 4.7 percent gain in same-store food sales: “Open a parliamentary investigation into Loblaw Companies for their pandemic profiteering.”
The once-thriving seal export business is reduced to shipping frozen mammal penises to two Asian markets, according to a Canadian Food Inspection Agency report. Exports of all seal products once worth millions a year are down to $275,000 annually: “We all know negative media reports and anti-sealing messaging from animal rights groups had major impacts.”
A site will be selected by year’s end as perpetual home of the nation’s nuclear waste, according to regulatory filings. Two of 22 rural communities are shortlisted: “Decisions made in the near future will have repercussions decades, centuries and even millennia from now.”
Data confirm middle class Canadians, especially young families, have seen inflation eat away at their standard of living, Statistics Canada data showed yesterday. “Most workers have seen their purchasing power decline,” wrote the agency: “Wages and earnings have not kept pace.”
The incidence of suspected “birth tourism” is about 2,500 a year, says a Department of Immigration report. Researchers used new data in estimating the number of births by foreign mothers on short term visits to Canada: “The issue of ‘birth tourism’ has drawn considerable public attention in recent years.”
Chiefs of police are endorsing a private Senate bill to permit DNA sampling of people convicted of non-violent crimes like drunk driving. The measure might have averted one of the country’s most notorious wrongful convictions, they said: “You should know there are hundreds of unsolved murders in Canada.”
A telecom industry consultant who exposed Laith Marouf as an anti-Semite sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage says “too many people in Ottawa knew about this” and did nothing. Mark Goldberg in a submission to the Commons heritage committee said he repeatedly warned officialdom of Marouf’s conduct: “I do want to see some real accountability.”
The fate of helmetless curling rests with Alberta Court of King’s Bench. A judge has ordered a local school district and curling club to face civil trial for failing to meet a “required standard of care” by allowing children to hit the ice without a helmet: “The ice was slippery and could cause students to fall and become injured. That risk was obvious.”
Parliament should expropriate apartment buildings owned by landlords who “violate human rights,” says a Canadian Human Rights Commission report. Federal law should also ban private lending to landlords who “contravene human rights including the right to adequate housing,” it said.
Nearly a thousand CBC employees are paid $100,000 or more, according to Access To Information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The number of six-figure staffers was up 117 percent in six years: “What value are taxpayers getting?”
The House affairs committee yesterday voted for a deeper investigation of alleged Chinese interference in federal elections. One Liberal MP dismissed the ongoing probe as a “Trump-like tactic to question election results.”
Most young Canadians are frightened of climate change and tell federal pollsters they feel sad and helpless. Almost three quarters of young adults surveyed, 74 percent, said they were “afraid of the impacts of climate change on their friends and loved ones’ lives.”
The federal bank superintendent is compiling 15 years’ worth of aggregated credit reports to plot “trends and vulnerabilities,” an official said. Superintendent Peter Routledge last year warned that rising interest rates and falling home prices posed a threat not seen in decades: “Financial institutions need to ensure they are prepared.”
A federal report warns casualties of climate change policy may include families that cannot afford higher fuel costs, oil and gas workers and Indigenous people. There was no evidence federal agencies were aware of the consequences, it said: “A sizeable workforce will need to transition out.”
Cabinet has awarded a retroactive 10.3 percent pay raise to CBC chief executive Hubert Lacroix though he left the Crown corporation five years ago. The Department of Canadian Heritage yesterday would not comment on the backdated pay raise, typically awarded to boost pension payments: “Unfortunately we cannot help you.”
