RCMP are preparing for a “large number of demonstrators” at a G7 summit in June, according to a briefing note. The Mounties initially budgeted more than $46 million for security at the two-day meeting, a sum expected to be a small fraction of the final cost: “The RCMP will be prepared to deal with a large number of demonstrators.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney fired or demoted two cabinet members who opposed him for the Liberal leadership. Carney praised former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland as an “exceptional minister, exceptional public servant” but demoted her to Minister of Transport, the 11th position in cabinet’s order of precedence: “We have new ministers with new ideas.”
Canadian book publishers face hard times without ongoing federal aid, says a Department of Canadian Heritage report. The industry is short of money for long term investments despite 46 years of subsidies, it said: “Costs reduced profit margins, forcing booksellers to offer free or discounted shipping to compete with major e-commerce players like Amazon.”
Cartoonists
taking aim at the White House
are making progress.
They figured out the
tailored suits,
facial expressions,
hair style.
Everything but the
thought bubble.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
On the job at the CBC, producer John Scully recalls a supervisor once reprimanded him for doing a crossword puzzle on company time. Scully ducked out for lunch with his wife and began to sob: “Not just a few drops, but waterfalls of howling public pain,” he writes. “People looked away in embarrassment, but I didn’t care where I was. I was grieving, grieving so passionately for the loss of my skills and the lack of understanding from my bosses. The crying lasted half an hour.”
The product of Scully’s torment is Am I Sane Yet? Clinically depressed for years – he consulted 40 doctors – Scully is also a skilled journalist with the concise eloquence you’d expect of someone who served 50 years in the newsroom. He is able to do what many other mentally ill Canadians cannot, document his own descent into self-agony.
There was the time he was speaking at a book launch when a lone heckler rattled him and Scully could barely finish his remarks: “Zip, I suddenly had a depression crash. The stress was too much. ‘Is that it? Is that all there is?’”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today leaves office with the prospect of $1 million to $2 million from the federal archives to buy his personal papers. Previous leaders also received seven-figure payments to “acquire, process, preserve and make accessible” their private records: “Documents deemed to have national importance are those that bear witness to the Canadian experience.”
There is “not a thing that we need” from Canada, U.S. President Donald Trump said yesterday. His remarks came as a Canadian cabinet delegation met with the U.S. Department of Commerce in a bid to avert a tariff-driven recession: “We don’t need anything that they give.”
The Treasury Board is hiring private tutors to coach Black federal employees on how to learn French, records show. Too few Black staff are passing bilingual proficiency tests required for promotion as executives, it said: “Language training has been identified as a barrier for Black employees’ advancement.”
The Federal Court has dismissed penalties against a construction company that paid foreign labour less than a posted rate. The judge cautioned the decision was narrowly based on facts in the case and must not be seen as “undermining strong worker protections.”
Bitcoin ownership in Canada is double pre-pandemic levels but remains low, Bank of Canada researchers said yesterday. Typical buyers were speculators under 34: “The primary reason for selling their holdings was cashing out for a profit.”
Worrying in-house Bank of Canada research points to a collapse in Canadians’ confidence in the economy, Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. A tariff war was entirely to blame, he told reporters as the Bank further reduced its key interest rate on interbank loans from 3 to 2.75 percent: “It could well mean layoffs.”
Cabinet yesterday confirmed it accepts U.S. President Donald Trump’s terms that Canada reopen a 2019 trade pact to resolve American grievances. A cabinet delegation is in Washington, D.C. today to show “Canada is ready,” said Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc: “The conversation will be around lowering the temperature.”
The Department of Health yesterday approved millions in regulatory relief for the cannabis industry amid rising insolvencies and tax defaults. The red tape reduction measures solely for marijuana distributers, wholesalers and retailers take effect April 1: “The cannabis industry is facing economic difficulties.”
Cabinet is searching for new investors to save a heavily subsidized Québec electric auto battery plant, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said yesterday. Northvolt, the original owner, filed for bankruptcy in its native Sweden: “What’s important is we managed to get Québec into the automobile industry.”
A federal cap on oil and gas emissions will cost many more thousands of jobs than originally feared, Budget Office data showed yesterday. The latest figures followed the release of in-house federal research indicating Canadians are divided over climate policies: “Costs are assumed to be borne by Canadians.”
