A dramatic increase in RCMP disability claims is due in part to tinnitus, says federal research. Mounties’ disability benefits will cost nearly a half-billion dollars a year by 2023: “Hearing loss is the most prominent medical condition among released members.”
Federal regulators yesterday rejected a request from airlines for a blanket exemption from a decades-old rule that they calculate basic fares on all routes. “The fare, in Canadian dollars, must be identified,” wrote the Canadian Transportation Agency.
Liberals yesterday were stripped of party status in the Senate for the first time in 152 years. The loss of committee assignments and $410,000 in research funding came as another Liberal appointee crossed the floor: “We are embracing the future.”
Federally-sponsored Syrian families had higher unemployment and were more likely to rely on welfare than refugees sponsored by private charities, churches and community groups, says a Department of Immigration report. Current funding of Parliament’s $859 million Syrian resettlement program expires next fiscal year: “Some challenges remain.”
A federal judge has dismissed the latest “natural persons” challenge of the Income Tax Act. Auditors estimate thousands of Canadians have filed false tax returns as “natural persons” and claimed more than a half-billion dollars in refunds: “It’s in the dictionary.”
Federal consultants are being hired to monitor a $4.5 million-a year program to invite French-speaking immigrants to settle in cities where only one percent of residents speak French. Researchers are to interview neighbours with questions like: “Do community members and newcomers trust and understand each other?”
The Bandy Federation of Canada has wound up as a federally-registered charity just two years after winning a world championship. “It just didn’t take off,” said the retired president of the sports group.
First there was a railway
connecting downtown Ottawa
to surrounding communities.
Then came the rapid transit system.
Articulated buses. Double-deckers. Express lines.
Now Light Rail Transit,
plagued with jammed doors,
faulty switches,
computer failures.
Trains get stuck for hours
and
winter is coming.
Meanwhile
buses are deemed redundant.
The City takes them off the road.
Sarah lives near Billings Bridge
and works at the Experimental Farm.
“It used to take me 40 minutes
before they cancelled the buses,”
she says.
“Now I need an hour-and-a-half
to get to my office.”
After blaming the riders
for meddling with the doors,
the Mayor is quick
to condemn the LRT builder.
“I am furious, angry, and frustrated,”
he announces.
“We are bringing back the buses.”
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
The Canada Revenue Agency yesterday said it is expanding an employee informant program introduced under the previous Conservative cabinet. One union executive earlier described the tip line as Frankenstein-esque: “Does it protect the informants or does it protect the government?”
A House of Commons staffer yesterday contradicted a Federal Court affidavit claiming the Parliamentary Press Gallery set criteria that banned two media outlets from attending national TV election debates. Records indicate Gallery directors were never consulted and had not even met for months before the ban was imposed by a handful of federal employees: “The wording of these decisions indicates they were made by the Press Gallery.”
A federal promotion of carbon tax rebates fell flat, according to in-house Canada Revenue Agency research. The Agency repeatedly cited the so-called Climate Action Incentive Payments in a pre-election ad blitz: “Heard anything lately?”
A St. John’s judge has dismissed obstruction of justice charges against a patrolman for mistakenly ticketing a motorcyclist. The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary called it the first case of its kind involving a routine traffic stop: “The mistake does not have to be proved. It only has to raise a reasonable defence.”
The Department of Labour says it will introduce fines on employers in breach of the Canada Labour Code by March 31, 2020. Scofflaws will be publicly named and shamed for the first time since the Code was introduced in 1958: “Current enforcement measures are not strong enough.”
The Secretary to the Governor General and her assistant billed almost $65,000 in flights and other expenses in eighteen months, nearly fifty times more than her predecessor, according to federal accounts. Expenses by Assunta Di Lorenzo included a $97 lunch and travel to a climate change conference: ‘Can you believe we’re still debating whether humans have a role in the Earth warming up?’
The Bank of Canada in a research paper says only a third of people it surveyed, 37 percent, correctly answered three multiple-choice questions on financial literacy. Parliament passed a financial literacy bill six years ago: ‘It may seem low.’
