The Department of Transport yesterday approved a $2.87 million Covid grant to private shareholders operating the taxpayer-owned Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island. Bridge operators were already scheduled to receive billions in subsidies under a 35-year lease: “Here is a living, breathing example of risk-free investment for a corporation.”
Commissioner of Elections Yves Côté faces a Charter challenge on free speech after penalizing a book publisher for alleged campaign advertising. Rebel News Network Ltd. last January 22 was fined $3,000 for a book promotion the Commissioner said was too political: “Books are and have historically been critical instruments to express opinions.”
Cabinet yesterday said a bill legalizing bookmaking will take effect in two weeks’ time. “I can’t wait,” said the president of a Unifor local representing casino workers: “August 27 is the day. There is nothing else that has to be done.”
New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh yesterday proposed billions in new taxes on corporations and top one percent income earners. “No other party is willing to say those words,” Singh told reporters in detailing his election platform: “We are the only ones.”
The Department of Health yesterday would not discuss terms of a contract that saw it pay more than $138,000 apiece for Covid ventilators never used to treat pandemic patients. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland boasted the contractor that received the multi-million dollar order was in her home riding: “This is considered commercially confidential information.”
Elections Canada yesterday said it has purged thousands of foreigners from the national voters’ list and referred hundreds of cases of suspected illegal voting for further investigation. The clean-up of the National Register Of Electors follows checks on immigration records first undertaken prior to the 2019 campaign: “Elections Canada is confident it has the necessary tools.”
Paul Hellyer, 98, last surviving member of the Louis St. Laurent cabinet, will be buried Saturday. Hellyer in his last visit to Parliament Hill in 2019 warned of “Ponzi scheme” deficit spending: “You have to get the money somewhere.”
The Department of Transport yesterday proposed a new tax on boaters to pay for recovery of wrecks abandoned in the nation’s lakes and harbours. Taxpayers should not carry the cost, said staff: “It’s not fair to put that load on the taxpayer.”
An insurer’s cancellation of coverage for a homeowner who reported growing legal medical marijuana plants will go to a human rights hearing. A British Columbia woman complained cancellation of her longstanding policy by Canadian Northern Shield Insurance Co. was discriminatory: ‘When her mortgage holder learned she did not have home insurance her costs went up by $300 a month.’
Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department refuses to name publishers awarded nearly $61 million in pre-election “emergency relief.” The grants were to ensure readers receive “timely information they require from their government,” Guilbeault wrote in a letter to MPs: “Reliable news is perhaps more important than ever.”
You cannot ask jurors if they’re vaccinated, says a British Columbia Supreme Court judge. The ruling issued yesterday came as one MP protested any attempt to force public employees to take Covid shots: ‘It is private and personal.’
The Canada Revenue Agency in Federal Court documents admits it spent thirteen years making direct deposit payments to the wrong taxpayer’s account. The long-running error was only discovered when an Alberta mother wrote the Agency to complain she had not received her tax refund: “Credits had been paid into the account since 1997.”
The GST will be charged on top of a new federal luxury tax on six-figure autos, boats and aircraft, the Department of Finance said yesterday. Motor homes, hearses and crop dusters are exempt: “I’ve got an airplane and I’m called the rich guy.”
Cabinet yesterday abruptly reworked plans for an Indigenous funding announcement to avoid using the John A. Macdonald Building across the street from Parliament Hill. One cabinet member earlier said it was “uncomfortable coming into this building” because of a heritage plaque bearing Macdonald’s name: ‘He was complicit in this Residential School system.’
We Charity won a string of sweetheart contracts prior to cabinet’s 2020 approval of a $43.5 million pandemic grant that prompted a public uproar, records show. A year-long investigation by the Procurement Ombudsman yesterday revealed departments typically called We Charity with confidential contract offers, then worked out the price later: ‘It was an unfair advantage.’
