A Québec consultant cited for breach of the Canada Elections Act received nearly a million dollars’ worth of federal contracts, records show. The company yesterday agreed to pay $447,876 in penalties and costs for illegal cash donations to Liberal and Conservative Party organizers: “Activities compromised the integrity of the political financing regime.”
Unifor sought restrictions on use of a $595 million federal bailout for “failing print media”, according to Access To Information records. The union told the Department of Finance that funding should neither reward “every basement blogger” nor pay for media executive bonuses, and recommended a retired Supreme Court judge administer payouts: “Canadians will have a natural trepidation about government assistance to news organizations.”
The popularity of tax evasion schemes is prompting the Canada Revenue Agency to ramp up anti-fraud initiatives. A third of taxpayers surveyed by the Agency, 36 percent, said they’d heard of dubious plans to “reduce the amount of federal tax you have to pay”.
Health Canada in Access To Information memos has warned staff working in cannabis regulation to avoid all investments with marijuana companies. “The possibility of post-employment conflict of interest for its employees, whether willful or accidental, is high,” said one memo.
The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a hearing into allegations a Muslim tenant and Jewish landlord exchanged insults in breach of the province’s Human Rights Code. The Tribunal noted both sides “have a difference of opinion as to who was the culprit”.
Newspaper publishers hired a Liberal lobbyist to negotiate a $595 million press bailout. Records including Access To Information documents detail the lobbying blitz by Isabel Metcalfe, ex-Liberal candidate for Parliament and campaign organizer for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.
Metcalfe was hired by News Media Canada, a publishers’ trade association. The group yesterday did not comment. Metcalfe held seventy-nine separate meetings with senior officials including staff at the Prime Minister’s Office as cabinet reversed a 2017 pledge not to subsidize money-losing dailies. No news media that are members of the association reported the fact.
Metcalfe in one January 11 email to staff at the Department of Canadian Heritage “attached some background materials” for terms of the bailout that later appeared in a cabinet bill submitted to Parliament, including criteria for applicants and disqualification of start-up media from receiving taxpayers’ aid.
Cabinet two years ago rejected subsidies for newspapers. “Our approach will not be to bail out industry models that are no longer viable,” said then-Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly. “Rather, we will focus our efforts in supporting innovation, experimentation and transition to digital.”
Cabinet subsequently reversed the policy in Bill C-97 the Budget Implementation Act passed by Parliament June 20 that awards 25 percent payroll rebates and 15 percent subscription tax credits to federally-approved media. Beneficiaries include Torstar Corporation that reported $31.5 million in losses last year, and Postmedia Network Canada Corp. that lost $33.9 million.
Lobbyist Registry records show Metcalfe met then-Minister Joly and her successor, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, among twelve separate sessions with department staff. Metcalfe also lobbied thirteen deputy and assistant deputy ministers; had five meetings with the Prime Minister’s Office; and lobbied the Department of Finance eight times including repeated meetings with Ben Chin, then-Chief of Staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau.
“I’m a large-L, hard core Liberal,” Metcalfe earlier told a reporter. The lobbyist was an unsuccessful Liberal candidate for the Commons in 2006 in Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Ont. and Ottawa City Council in 2010. Meetings by the lobbyist on newspapers’ behalf included:
Environment Minister McKenna in an earlier tweet described Metcalfe as “one of our awesome volunteers”. Metcalfe’s husband Herbert was an advisor to then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion in 2008 and a longtime Party organizer until 2015, when he pleaded guilty to evading $396,259 in taxes and was sentenced to one year’s house arrest.
By Staff 
Cabinet claims of 100,000 homebuyers benefiting from new equity loans are based on data that “could vary widely”, says CMHC. The federal insurer acknowledged actual take-up of the $1.25 billion program is unknown. Cabinet is to announce details next week: “The numbers just don’t add up.”
The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for discriminating against an Indigenous employee. A federal labour board called the department’s misconduct a serious breach of the Human Rights Act: “It was all taken away.”
Canadians should consider the “possibility of jobless growth” in future years, says a Privy Council think tank. The agency’s director general in a submission to a Singapore symposium cautioned that “jobs might disappear and not come back.”
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna yesterday revised a June 13 promise never to raise the fifty dollar carbon tax. “There are no shortcuts,” McKenna told reporters: “The reality is we’re in a transition.”
The federal media bailout will see taxpayers subsidize at least 32¢ of every dollar spent on news gathering by publishers, according to Access To Information records. Newspaper lobbyists petitioned the Department of Canadian Heritage for even more aid than was promised in the $595 million program: ‘It’s the best way to sustain journalism.’
Vancouver leads in cocaine use while marijuana consumption is higher in Halifax, federal statisticians said yesterday. A first-ever test of drug use in five cities using sewage samples shows promise in calculating the scope of the narcotics trade, said Statistics Canada: “That has never been done before.”
Consumers are wary of buying farmed fish and worry about the industry’s environmental impact, says in-house research by the Department of Fisheries. Nearly a third of Canadians surveyed, 29 percent, said they oppose aquaculture altogether.
“Those opposing aquaculture most often point to two main reasons: because of perceived irresponsible practices by the industry, or because of perceived negative effects aquaculture has on wild fish populations,” said a report Aquaculture In Canada 2019. The fisheries department paid Ekos Research Associates $99,934 for the survey of 2,015 consumers nationwide.
The findings follow a 2018 audit by then-Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand that regulators failed to monitor the use of pesticides in coastal aquaculture salmon pens, and failed to complete nine of ten promised risk assessments of disease in farmed fish. “There is no validation of industry self-reporting,” Gelfand said in November 22 testimony at the Senate fisheries committee.
In the department survey, 54 percent of consumers said they prefer to buy wild fish “because it is more environmentally friendly”, “healthier”, or “because it is seen as being higher quality”. Only five percent said they preferred to eat farmed fish.
Asked, “When you think about fish farming, what is the first thing that comes to mind?” the most common responses were fish grown for food (11 percent); “negative effects” on the environment (7 percent); diseased fish (7 percent); “irresponsible practices” (7 percent); “poor living conditions for fish” (6 percent); and genetic engineering (4 percent).
“Most Canadians, 42 percent, trust a scientist employed by a university to provide accurate, reliable and unbiased information about aquaculture,” wrote Ekos. “In comparison, ten percent of Canadians trust a scientist with the Government of Canada to provide that information.”
A majority, 62 percent, said news and information they’d heard about aquaculture was negative. And fifty percent of respondents said the fisheries department’s most important consideration should be “protecting biodiversity and sustainability of wild fish populations”. Only six percent named support for aquaculture companies as most important.
Commissioner Gelfand in testimony said the department appeared too close to fish farm operators. “Where there’s long-term funding for research, that’s to help promote the industry,” said Gelfand. “So, that just puts the department at risk. One of the big concerns we have is, is the department at risk to be seen to be promoting aquaculture to the detriment of wild salmon?”
“They’re not monitoring the health of wild fish,” said Gelfand. “So, really, if they’re not monitoring the health of wild fish, how can they really know what the impacts are of aquaculture?”
By Staff
Cabinet proposes to levy thousands of dollars in new fines and name and shame employers for breach of the Canada Labour Code. The labour department complained of widespread noncompliance of workplace safety and wage regulations: “It is important that offenders and violators be publicly named.”
Children as young as 13 are twice as likely to illegally smoke cannabis than tobacco, says a Health Canada study. The research was conducted after Parliament legalized recreational marijuana for adults last October 17: “There is a type of normalization.”
