Legislators must press cabinet to roll pandemic relief programs into a permanent guaranteed income plan, members of an Anti-Poverty Caucus said yesterday. “We still have to aim for it in the budget,” said Senator Kim Pate (Ont.), a Liberal appointee: “We’re certainly well on our way.”
Cabinet has assigned fifty-three sedans and chauffeurs to federal executives not including cabinet members and the Governor General. Managers with cars and drivers include the deputy at the Department of Environment that proclaimed a climate crisis: “We need to work very quickly to address that.”
Elections Canada on Saturday named returning officers in all federal ridings nationwide. And cabinet in a Ministerial Mandate letter said it will speed a bill to enforce pandemic rules in a vote: “What happens when a province unfortunately goes through a very severe outbreak and has stay-in orders for its population?”
The Canada Revenue Agency says it will offer free credit protection to any 2021 tax filer who discovers they were victimized by identity thieves claiming $2,000 Canada Emergency Response Benefit cheques. The Agency to date has not disclosed the scope of fraud under the program that went 240 percent over budget: “Many Canadians had their identities stolen.”
Canadians should expect more intensive pandemic controls, says the Public Health Agency. Measures to date including lockdowns and curfews are insufficient, it said: “Do I absolutely need to go out today?”
Cabinet in a Ministerial Mandate letter proposes to “foster a vision for the Prairies.” The Liberal Party did not elect any candidates west of Winnipeg to the Rocky Mountains in the 2019 campaign: ‘It can get tough.’
The Department of Transport says it will “ensure” airlines refund billions in cash to customers whose prepaid flights were cancelled due to the pandemic. Federal regulators say they have logged more than 11,000 complaints from passengers who received vouchers as compensation: “Is the Government of Canada willing to back those tickets?”
The $675 million-a year Public Health Agency is hiring private contractors by the hour to manage its pandemic response. The plea for outside help follows the Prime Minister’s boast that Canada was “among the best prepared countries in the world” when Covid struck.
The Department of Health will spend more than $90,000 to encourage Canadians to eat more ‘culturally diverse’ foods. Staff awarded a contract to a Canada Food Guide consultant who complained too many white people run restaurants: “The wine industry is overwhelmingly white.”
The Public Health Agency in a briefing note denies blacklisting a federal grant application by a scientist who criticized its work. Professor Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa’s School of Epidemiology told MPs he was asked to remove his name from a funding request because “I was negative.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday rejected any scheme to require that Canadians prove whether they’ve been vaccinated for Covid-19. The issue is too divisive, he said: “There are a broad range of reasons why someone might not get vaccinated.”
A federal proposal to tax “extreme wealth” would raise one million dollars next year, the Parliamentary Budget Office said yesterday. It would take more than a decade to see more serious revenues, analysts said: “Revenues generated by this new measure will gradually increase over the next few years.”
Jesse Moore, millionaire CEO of a company in Africa that received taxpayers’ funding in the name of Third World development, has a six-figure salary and $633,000 in stock options, according to accounts. The federal agency that bought shares in Moore’s company yesterday refused comment: “I could do whatever I wanted to do.”
Not even a pandemic dimmed “March Madness” spending by federal agencies last year, records show. Managers approved millions in expenses marked “miscellaneous” in the dying hours of the fiscal year last March 31: “That’s a problem.”
Cabinet will introduce 2021 regulations to curb Twitter and Facebook posts deemed hurtful or offensive, says Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department. Hate speech is already forbidden under 1970 amendments to the Criminal Code: “We want to protect Canadians online.”
