The Department of Environment says mills and factories in East Asia – it would not identify China by name – account for most airborne mercury pollution in Canada. Chinese mines, mills and factories were blamed for high mercury deposits at remote Canadian lakes and mountains: “97% of mercury deposited in Canada as a result of human activities originates outside the country.”
Two cabinet advisors hired to vet press applications for millions in federal subsidies made anti-Opposition remarks and publicly ridiculed editorial standards at a newspaper that endorsed Conservatives in past elections. One appointee, Professor Karim Karim of Ottawa, in a Twitter comment said Stephen Harper played the “politics of hate.”
The Canada Revenue Agency did not comment. Cabinet last March 24 named the five-member Independent Advisory Board on Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures to process applications from publishers seeking $595 million in subsidies.
“Our government remains committed to supporting a vibrant journalism industry while respecting the core principle of journalistic independence,” Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier said at the time. “The members of the Independent Advisory Board are all highly respected in their fields. I thank them for agreeing to help deliver unprecedented support for Canadian journalism organizations and to ensure the vitality of our democracy.”
The part-time job pays $450 a day plus expenses. Minister Lebouthillier has final say on which newspapers are “qualified” to receive payroll rebates of up to $13,750 per newsroom employee and a fifteen percent tax credit for digital subscribers.
Professor Karim of Carleton University’s School of Journalism in separate 2015 comments on his Twitter account criticized Postmedia Network and then-Prime Minister Harper. “It shouldn’t, but the National Post and Postmedia have had a long history of owner interference,” he wrote in one. “Stephen Harper plays the politics of hate against Muslims,” he wrote in the other.
“Yes, I did write the tweets,” said Professor Karim. “No, I do not see a problem regarding my advisory role. If there is the slightest issue of bias against any media applicant, I will discuss it with the Board and recuse myself in the cases of conflict of interest.”
Another panelist described Conservatives as “bullies” and expressed enthusiastic support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Margo Goodhand of Victoria, a former Winnipeg Free Press editor, made the remarks in an April 18, 2013 Free Press column headlined, “We Need Justin To Silence Bullies”.
“I am not a member of the Liberal Party…but I’m watching new Liberal leader Justin Trudeau these days as he goes up against Team Harper, and I have to admit that I wish him well,” wrote Goodhand: “I need him to stand up to the bullies.”
“Canadian politics needs to take a new tack,” wrote Goodhand. “And Trudeau has the power and the momentum right now to show us the way.”
“The real Trudeau appears to be earnest and forthright enough, an open book compared to Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” wrote Goodhand. “He’s not intellectual like his father, Pierre. He is possibly more like his mother Margaret, more emotional and empathetic…”
The Department of Canadian Heritage declined comment on the appointees.
Parliament approved press subsidies after a publishers’ group News Media Canada hired lobbyist Isabel Metcalfe, a Liberal Party donor, ex-candidate and campaign worker for Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna. Records show Metcalfe had seventy-nine separate meetings with federal officials.
Metcalfe’s husband Herbert was an adviser to then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion in 2008 and a longtime Party organizer until 2015, when he pled guilty to evading $396,259 in taxes. He was sentenced to a year’s house arrest in Ottawa. “I’m a large-L, hard core Liberal,” Mrs. Metcalfe earlier told a reporter.
By Staff 
Federally-funded research says the World Health Organization was too quick to praise China and “created confusion” over the true peril of Covid-19. The study was financed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research: “China’s actions were praised on multiple occasions by the WHO without scientific background.”
Taking the Lord’s name in vain is not Parliament’s business, says a justice department Access To Information memo. Parliament in 2018 repealed a law on criminal blasphemy last used to prosecute distributors of a 1979 Monty Python film: “It stems from an antiquated perception that an attack on Christianity was an attack on government.”
McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada has won $500 in costs from a customer who claimed he was poisoned by an Egg McMuffin. Evidence included data on McMuffin sales from clients who did not become violently ill: “Symptoms may have been triggered by dehydration related to gastroenteritis or food poisoning.”
People seeking casual sex should avoid bars and consider meeting outdoors, says the Public Health Agency of Canada. Federal epidemiologists made the remarks under questioning by a women’s magazine at a Parliament Hill briefing on the pandemic: “Is there any way for single people hoping to have sex this summer to do so safely?”
A federal prison manager billed more than $50,000 in travel expenses in the past year, according to records. Costs by Deputy Commissioner France Gratton included thousands to stay in a furnished suite on “temporary assignment” in Saskatoon even after cabinet ordered Canadians to stay home: “Enough is enough.”
Black Lives Matter demonstrators are wrongly stereotyping police who are “the finest people you will ever meet”, Senator Bev Busson (B.C.) said yesterday. The former RCMP Commissioner lamented what she called a “wave of hatred” against law enforcement: “I cannot stay silent any longer.”
A federal judge has struck a drug consumers’ protection regulation that was to take effect January 1. Seventeen pharmaceutical companies successfully challenged a cabinet order intended to lower costs of medication through the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board: “The Board does not regulate profits.”
Canada will rely on oil and gas for “years to come”, says the Department of Employment. Staff in a report said the oil industry remains “fundamental” even as cabinet subsidizes electric cars and taxes carbon: “You could try to stop using fossil fuel but that’s impossible.”
The Department of Health yesterday said pandemic funding for children’s counseling will “begin to flow shortly” three months after it was announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. No reason was given for the delay: “Kids tell us something they would not have told anyone else.”
A piece of Canadian naval history is being scrapped. HMCS Cormorant forty years ago was the first ship in the fleet with a co-ed crew, and is now designated a pollution risk after rotting at its moorings in Bridgewater, N.S.: “It’s still there.”
A Canadian Pacific Railway claim that it’s exempt from income tax is prompting the Federal Court to review reports on 140 years’ worth of tax records. A judge noted expert testimony will have to do since there are no surviving witnesses to an 1880 contract: “There are no fact witnesses to events that occurred nearly a century and a half ago.”
Federal grant agencies promise to “improve equity, diversity and inclusion” after a Canada Research Chair complained affirmative action discriminates against men. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council called the views of a Brock University professor deplorable: “Preferential treatment of one group leads to disadvantages for another.”
Cabinet’s signature ecological program remains little known though it was launched four years ago with a promised $1.5 billion in funding. “Relatively few Canadians have heard of the Oceans Protection Plan,” researchers wrote in a report for the Department of Transport.
