The Commons foreign affairs committee today convenes rare July hearings into cabinet waivers on sanctions against Russia. Opposition MPs demanded the committee meet ahead of Sunday protests on Parliament Hill: “Canada has failed to step up.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday said she will rewrite portions of a luxury tax that lobbyists called a job killer. The ten percent tax on private aircraft over $100,000 was to take effect September 1: “If you’re selling fewer aircraft you’re manufacturing fewer aircraft, you have fewer jobs.”
Cabinet members’ Speaking Points must avoid jargon and acronyms especially in Question Period, says an Access To Information guide for political ghostwriters. Staff are also instructed to deflect questions by reciting past achievements or finding an “alternate angle.”
Canadian health care workers, especially nurses and paramedics, have had high rates of vaccine hesitancy, according to data cited in a peer-reviewed periodical. Findings were drawn from a survey of more than 15,000 people nationwide: “Our finding of high vaccine hesitancy among health care workers is consistent with other studies both within and outside of Canada.”
Pandemic relief payments to school-age teenagers averaged $5000 each, Statistics Canada said yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of high schoolers received Covid relief cheques intended to aid jobless taxpayers facing eviction or foreclosure: “God love the 15-year old who got a $2,000-a month CERB cheque courtesy of taxpayers.”
Canadians should expect an economic slowdown by winter with continued high costs of living, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. “That does imply some pain,” Macklem told reporters: “Yes, the economy is going to slow.”
The Canadian Dairy Commission awarded its staff pandemic bonuses and pay increases as the industry dumped milk and stockpiled butter to keep up prices. Payments were detailed yesterday in Access To Information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation: “It’s tone deaf for the Dairy Commission to hand out pay raises and bonuses while making milk more expensive.”
A credit union that decided to call a farmer’s loans but kept the fact a secret for a month at spring seeding time was dishonest, Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench has ruled. Financial institutions have a duty to be straightforward with customers, said a Winnipeg judge: “The way the client was dealt with in this case was dishonest and unnecessary.”
We Charity for years received piecemeal contracts and grants that ran to $1.4 million from the Department of Foreign Affairs, according to newly-released briefing notes. Staff paid We Charity organizers from Nairobi to Los Angeles: ‘Nine small initiatives totaling $1.3 million included activities in Kenya, India, Sri Lanka and Canada.’
Joe Volpe, former Liberal cabinet minister, has been ordered to pay nearly $384,000 in costs over a failed defamation suit. Volpe’s troubles started with a series of articles in his newspaper Corriere Canadese, the nation’s only Italian-language daily: “Parties are not free to abuse the judicial system without the threat of costs.”
A public outcry yesterday prompted the Commons industry committee to convene emergency hearings on a Rogers Communications blackout that affected customers nationwide. The committee will meet Friday to schedule testimony on why service to some twelve million Rogers subscribers was disrupted for days: “This is deeply upsetting and unacceptable.”
Taxpayers have a “very low” probability of seeing millions used to finance a foreign loan program, records show. A total $64,292,000 was termed repayable though there is little chance it will be ever be repaid, officials admitted: “The likelihood of the department being reimbursed is very low.”
Transgender men have an unfair advantage in women’s competition, says a briefing note by the federal department that funds amateur sport. The Department of Canadian Heritage has sidestepped public comment on allowing biological men to compete as women: ‘Transwomen are physiologically stronger.’
CBC producers helped “carefully craft” questions posed by voters to then-Opposition Leader Erin O’Toole in an election campaign broadcast, an Ombudsman’s report said yesterday. “They worked with each of the four participants to make sure their questions were focused and phrased effectively,” wrote Ombudsman Jack Nagler.
Taxpayers have lost millions in benefits paid to undeserving claimants under a Canada Pension Plan program, says a federal audit. Management of payments appeared to be a “continuous shuffling of files,” wrote auditors: “Reassessment is very complex work.”
