TV typos including innocent mistakes are a breach of newsroom ethics, a national broadcast regulator ruled yesterday. A St. John’s TV station was censured for garbling a handful of facts in a local story: “These facts were not factual.”
CMHC in a mammoth data scoop compiled personal financial records on nearly nine million mortgage holders, according to Access To Information files. Data obtained without borrowers’ informed consent included personal income, municipal addresses, credit scores and household debts even for homeowners who were not CMHC customers: “No, we shouldn’t need a privacy impact assessment.”
The Department of Public Works plans to install cafés and lounge seating in federal offices so employees can “zone out, relax or stretch,” according to Access To Information records. Staff also proposed special seating near windows called “reflection areas” where employees might look outside: “Shouldn’t we?”
A Commons committee last night rejected compulsory vaccination for MPs. Proof of a negative Covid test will do just as well, Speaker Anthony Rota said in a statement: ‘Details with respect to implementation are being developed.’
Federal investigators accuse Canadian National Railway Co. of hampering an investigation into a collision that shut down a CN main line. The Transportation Safety Board asked that a federal judge order CN to cooperate under threat of “imprisonment or a fine.”
A federal labour board has upheld the firing of an archives clerk who didn’t show up for work for six months, then spent three years delaying hearings on his settlement agreement. “Astonishing,” wrote a labour adjudicator.
The Privy Council Office yesterday expressed regret after Access To Information censors concealed as a state secret a 1959 speech by then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. His Commons speech has been on the public record for 62 years but was stored in a file marked “TOP SECRET.”
Actual checkout prices on select foods at the grocery store far exceed the overall inflation rate, Statistics Canada said yesterday. Average yearly retail price increases for meats, produce and dairy items run as high as twenty to thirty percent in some provinces: “This affects Canadians’ pocketbooks.”
Rigid discipline in an “independent” Senate caucus of Liberal appointees sees members reprimanded for speaking out of turn, Senator Marilou McPhedran said yesterday. The Manitoba lawyer quit the Independent Senators Group after describing the caucus code as “work together, think together, stay together.”
A Manitoba court has agreed to strip the license of a lawyer who opposed the Canada Revenue Agency and compared income tax to a scheme by Hitler. The solicitor was found guilty of tax evasion after failing to report more than a half-million in income: “What kind of country do you want to live in?”
The Department of Public Works in internal emails says it considered ordering copper pandemic masks but worried over the additional expense compared to cotton masks. Staff looked into the purchase after learning of a Chinese program to distribute free copper fabric masks to schoolchildren: “This is something we can do in Canada?”
Federal management of office buildings is so “unreliable” taxpayers face billions a year in unfunded maintenance costs, says an internal audit. The Government of Canada is the biggest landlord in the country, the report noted: “It is no longer sustainable.”
A Facebook group of thousands of unvaccinated federal employees is petitioning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to permit them to remain on the job. The 3,200-member group Feds For Freedom cited the Department of Health’s own legal opinion that compulsory immunization is unlawful: “This vaccine mandate is unconstitutional.”
Québec for the first time in more than a half century faces diminishing representation in the Commons. Redistricting will see British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario gain seats in a new 342-member House: “This is the first time since 1966 that a province has lost a seat in the House.”
Cabinet under House rules cannot unilaterally deny any unvaccinated MPs their seat in the Commons. The last MP refused entry to the House was Soviet spy Fred Rose (Cartier, Que.), expelled in 1947. Only two others since Confederation were denied their right to sit in the Commons, none for medical reasons: “Maybe it’s something better asked of the Prime Minister.”
