Cabinet’s bid to engineer majority control of Parliament rests in a looming byelection in a Montréal suburb, Terrebonne, where Liberals won by a single vote over the Bloc Québécois in 2025. “We have a certain weight,” Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet earlier told reporters.
The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops, B.C. yesterday confirmed it has not attempted to exhume the purported graves of 215 children at the site of an Indian Residential School despite receiving $12.1 million in federal funding for field work. The admission comes ahead of the scheduled release of Access To Information documents regarding the First Nation’s requests for funding for “exhumation of remains.”
The CBC is entitled to conceal internal details of corporate spending under the Access To Information Act, says a federal judge. The ruling came on a legal challenge by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to find how much the CBC spent on advertising while executives pled financial hardship: ‘Disclosure could result in political interference and pressure to modify its spending.’
The Canada Revenue Agency is revising the scope of audits to target the largest multinational corporations with offshore accounts. The initiative follows internal complaints that auditors misspent time chasing smaller corporations: “There have to be decisions about the fairness of the regime.”
Pay and benefits averaged more than $143,000 per federal employee last year, the Budget Office said yesterday. It was “historically high,” wrote analysts: “An employee can have seven levels of management above them.”
Refugee claims by travelers passing through Canadian airports fell 73 percent after cabinet reintroduced a Mexican visa requirement, records show. Inland claims also declined as cabinet cut foreign study permits at colleges and universities: “Ineligibility measures are about protecting the asylum system.”
Federal regulators have suspended thousands of marijuana distributors’ licenses “for reasons of public health and public safety” including illegal diversion of cannabis into the black market, says a Department of Health memo. It follows widespread bankruptcies in the marijuana trade: “Health Canada has refused or revoked over 4,100 registrations.”
Canadians will be expected to make sacrifices to build up national defence, Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday. Carney reiterated a pledge he reneged on last year to spend 2 percent of GDP on military preparedness: “Can you outline what sacrifices?”
The Alberta Human Rights Tribunal will allow a hearing on whether mandatory medical tests for older drivers are discriminatory. The case involved an octogenarian motorist who complained he had to pay out of pocket for needless exams: “He has no medical issues.”
Federal agencies last year mailed more than a million government cheques that were never cashed, records show. Payments totaling $609.4 million ranged from Old Age Security to unclaimed carbon rebates: “How many cheques?”
The Department of National Defence in three years spent nearly $300 million hiring transport contractors due to its inadequate vehicle fleet, say auditors. A total 203 separate contracts were approved: “Armed Forces transport capability cannot satisfy the transportation requirements.”
A federal climate program to install clean energy in First Nations cost the equivalent of more then $9,000 per person, records show. The disclosure follows a 2023 report acknowledging a multi-million dollar program to phase out diesel generators in Arctic Canada was nowhere near to reaching its target: “Projects can take more than 10 years to develop.”
Talk radio is a lucrative medium for white bigotry, says Liberal appointee Senator Charles Adler (Man.). Speaking in a podcast, Adler said his radio career was impacted by his refusal to “play that game.”
CMCH yesterday cautioned Canadians against celebrating temporary gains in housing starts amid a longer term construction decline. Housing Minister Gregor Robertson repeatedly pointed to a temporary increase in housing starts last summer as proof that “our plan is working.”
RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme assigned a total seven officers to policing hate crimes in seven provinces, records show. Most were part-timers. The disclosure followed complaints of weak protection of Jews, the leading target of hate crimes in Canada, by official estimate: “What are the risks?”
