The Parliamentary Budget Office yesterday estimated a New Democrat wealth tax on multi-millionaires would raise $5.6 billion a year beginning in 2020. The Party requested the costing of its campaign proposal: “Our plan is simple.”
The Canada Border Services Agency’s mammoth internal IT system is so dysfunctional it should be replaced, says a report. No cost was detailed. The research follows a United Nations study that ranked Canada behind Estonia in promoting e-government: “They have given up.”
The $92 million National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls paid millions in fees to lawyers and management consultants, according to Access To Information records. Data show advisers were hired at $300 an hour: “Can anything be done more efficiently?”
Farmers blame media, animal rights groups and one burger chain for promoting “misinformation” about their industry, say in-house surveys by the Department of Agriculture. The research follows a Commons committee proposal that Parliament use hate crimes provisions of the Criminal Code against farm critics: “You’re being attacked.”
A billion-dollar federal climate change program cut greenhouse gas emissions less than one percent a year, says an Environment Canada report. Companies that received taxpayers’ subsidies have denied it was a failure: “There is no consensus.”
Cabinet today will detail cash payments to Métis survivors of WWII and the Korean War though few veterans are alive to collect. The Department of Veterans Affairs in an Access To Information memo said it found no evidence Métis were denied their fair share of billion-dollar benefits, but noted the historical record was “unclear”.
Federal staff in Access To Information emails expressed astonishment at exorbitant fees paid to government-approved media. Operators of two websites received “huge, crazy” contracts totaling nearly a million dollars. “Yowzers,” wrote one Department of Public Works manager. “Yikes,” replied another: “I’m not sure what you guys are willing to pay or what the source is worth.”
Federal employees working overseas billed the equivalent of nearly $18,000 a day in mobile roaming fees, according to monthly accounts. Disclosure of billing records follows a federal IT survey that employees typically email each other up to a hundred times a day: “It is quite a hefty sum of money.”
Federal attempts to regulate the nation’s private drone fleet have fallen flat, says in-house research by Transport Canada. Only nine percent of flyers surveyed said they had a Drone Pilot Certificate as required under Canadian Aviation Regulations: ‘It’s a cash grab.’
A national radio ombudsman has been inundated with complaints over comments by a Vancouver host who criticized pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The pundit earlier told a Commons committee China is “an open-minded country” where “the press has ninety percent freedom”.
The UN report
on climate change
warns of widespread floods and fires,
food shortage and global famine.
“People need to burn fewer fossil fuels,”
says one of the authors.
That could spell trouble
for Alberta.
Its oil and gas industry
wants to move more crude to refineries,
build more pipelines,
allow for more tankers
in the northern Pacific coast.
Premier Kenney has already
promised to fight anyone
who criticizes the province’s energy sector.
That could spell trouble
for the United Nations.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna describes as a “must read” an apocalyptic novel by a former Green Party organizer. The book depicts climate change chaos that reduces Canadian society to an encampment on the Pacific coast: “They have blood on their hands.”
Fewer than half of voters support the carbon tax in 64 federal ridings nationwide including seven Liberal seats, according to academic research detailed yesterday. Authors of the study noted most anti-tax ridings are already held by Conservative MPs: “Carbon taxation is more divisive.”
Veterans are skeptical a promised Pension For Life program is a “dressed up” election offer, says in-house research by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Cabinet launched the program April 1. Veterans surveyed said even the name appeared misleading: “What is meant by ‘for life’?”
Spending on prescription medicines by public insurers rose a “considerable” 7.4 percent last year compared to 1.7 percent in 2017, a federal agency reported yesterday. The Patented Medicine Prices Review Board found only “limited savings” from use of generic drugs: “Notable growth in 2018 was primarily driven by increases in the patented medicine market.”
