A government-approved Local News Directory is paying researchers to list media deemed trustworthy and reliable, according to Access To Information records released yesterday. The initiative follows disclosures federal managers circulated blacklists of reporters who met with government disapproval: ‘It will help people struggling to find news they can trust.’
Prime Minister Mark Carney effective yesterday repealed a requirement that new interprovincial pipelines be subject to the Impact Assessment Act. First Nations opposed the change: “I am from Alberta. I am direct and I do things.”
The growth of tent cities dampened a Parks Canada program to promote camping skills for immigrant families, says an internal report. Overnight camping parties in public parks had to be cancelled due to conflicts and criticism, it said: “The emergence of this issue created a challenge.”
Ex-cabinet advisor Amira Elghawaby yesterday described 9/11 observances as marking “a difficult 25 years” for Muslims. The former Toronto Star columnist told reporters the decades following the terrorist attacks have seen “dangerous narratives about who we are.”
The Competition Bureau has dropped any investigation into whether cabinet breached its own law against false advertising. An MP who filed a formal complaint yesterday said the decision left “an absurd double standard.”
The Department of Agriculture in a rare admission has cited unnamed employees for scientific malpractice. Government-wide, no federal agency to date has attempted to document instances of plagiarism in federal science: “Examples of breaches may include but are not limited to fabrication, falsification or misrepresentation of research data.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday urged Canadians to join in “sending a message” by holidaying at home. The Prime Minister’s Office would not explain why Carney vacationed in Italy in August: “Every time we choose to buy Canadian and travel in Canada we’re sending a message.”
Lawyers in five months filed more than 2,300 constitutional challenges of an immigration law intended to speed deportations, according to figures detailed yesterday by the Federal Court. All applications were ordered into case management: “The Court has experienced an increase in urgent applications and constitutional challenges.”
Few high schoolers have any interest in trades despite labour shortages industry-wide, says a Department of Employment survey. The figures follow earlier research that found teenagers considered the work too hard, boring and undervalued: “Certain groups are more likely to plan for a trades career.”
Preferential in-house hiring that excludes white heterosexuals does not breach anti-discrimination clauses in federal contracts, the Public Prosecution Service said yesterday. The Service acknowledged issuing job postings that told white applicants they would not be hired “before others.”
Cabinet will lay off about 500 federal executives in each of the next two years as an austerity measure, says a Treasury Board memo. Departments and agencies hired nearly 3,000 new appointees in the past decade to a total 10,077, doubling the executive payroll to $1.9 billion a year: “Will there be tough choices to make? Definitely.”
Tom Pitfield, a Liberal campaign organizer named to the Senate two months ago, has yet to take up his official duties. Cabinet aides and family declined comment on the peculiar lapse. Senate Administration still lists Pitfield’s seat as “vacant.”
The Privy Council has declined comment on why it hired the wife of a heavily-subsidized publisher to act as a “senior advisor.” David Skok, editor of The Logic, said he would play no role in coverage of the Liberal government that hired his spouse and paid his news site millions: “We don’t make editorial decisions based on whether it will secure us such funding.”
All federal scientific research should be Indigenous focused, says a Department of Natural Resources report. “How can we as public servants be actors in reconciliation?” it asked: “Ideally, the decolonization of research implies full Indigenous ownership of research. However it is still hard.”
Canadians widely support a cabinet bill to restrict social media access for children under 16, according to federal focus groups. A minority questioned enforceability and whether “this type of policy could ultimately lead to increased censorship of the internet.”
