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.’
An expected September general election must focus on repayment of Covid expenses, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh yesterday told reporters. Unprecedented spending raised the federal debt ceiling 56 percent: “Who is going to pay for this? It’s a legitimate question.”
The Department of Public Works hired offshore consultants to check if federal agencies bought slave-made goods from Asian contractors. The $70,531 study by the University of Nottingham was completed in May but not made public: “I take this situation very seriously.”
Canadians are confused by a Department of Finance proposal for “open banking,” do not understand the concept and are skeptical even once it’s explained, says in-house research. The department detailed findings of online focus groups following the release last Thursday of an advisory panel report: “Who are these people?”
The federal Leaders’ Debates Commission will monitor Twitter traffic for real-time voter reaction to televised exchanges as part of a $99,412 research project. Twitter posts will help the Commission understand what voters like and why, it said: “This study will analyze how debates are covered and discussed via social media.”
A legal activist who lamented the “shameful history” of John A. Macdonald and opposed citizenship tests is now a federal judge. Avvy Yao-Yao Go had been director of a Toronto law clinic that criticized Canadians for “anti-China sentiment and white supremacy.”
Opposition MPs propose a federal law endorsed in principle by all parties to ban imports of slave-made goods. Two similar private Liberal bills lapsed in the last Parliament and Senate banking committee: “I’m really shocked.”
The Supreme Court says there was no need for Justice Rosalie Abella to recuse herself from a case in which her husband worked for the appellant. The Canadian Judicial Council cautions all judges should avoid “reasonable suspicion” of conflict: “Judges should be attentive to both actual conflicts between their self-interest and their duty of impartial adjudication.”
