Cabinet’s $2.7 billion Christmas GST holiday was a bad idea, Liberal leadership candidate Frank Baylis said last night. Speaking in a French-language candidates’ debate in Montréal, the former one-term MP (Pierrefonds-Dollard, Que.) said the Party must be “honest with Canadians.”
Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney yesterday adopted a Conservative proposal to eliminate GST charges on new residential construction under $1 million. Carney’s campaign also released figures confirming cabinet cannot meet its promise of restoring housing affordability by building 3,870,000 homes by 2031: “Canada faces an urgent housing crisis.”
CBC reporters must fight climate change by riding to assignments on bicycles, says a corporate report. The document did not mention what action would be taken by managers who take overseas junkets overseas: ‘Bikes are a new and sustainable way to gather news.’
Health Minister Mark Holland yesterday said he is “worried about our country” and suspects most Canadians have mental health challenges. Holland’s remarks followed his 2022 admission he attempted suicide after losing re-election in Ajax-Pickering, Ont.: “I don’t know how you could be a human being in this world right now and not be having a mental health challenge.”
A federal judge has dismissed the last pre-election challenge of new electoral boundaries. Voters in the next national campaign will elect a record 343 MPs including many in new ridings redrawn to reflect population change: “The Boundaries Commission was aware of the issues.”
Global Health Imports Corp., an Alberta medical supply firm co-founded by Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault (Edmonton Centre), is blacklisted from bidding on any federal contracts for five years. The Department of Public Works put the firm on its Ineligibility And Suspension List: “Information brought to our attention recently concerning an Edmonton Police Service investigation kind of put us at the right threshold to take action.”
U.S. tariffs would drive the Canadian economy into the worst recession in a generation, says Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem. Recovery would take at least two years, the steepest decline since 1992: “There won’t be a bounce-back.”
New Democrats in preparation for a snap election have launched a $500,000 video campaign depicting leader Jagmeet Singh as a middleweight boxer. The ads represent a significant expense for the Party that trails other national rivals in fundraising: “I won’t stop fighting.”
A federal judge has reprimanded regulators for slipshod scientific review of one of Canada’s bestselling pesticides. The key ruling came on a petition by four environmental groups opposed to the continued sale of glyphosate: “I cannot connect the dots when there are none.”
A federal labour board has upheld a one-day suspension without pay for a Canada Revenue Agency clerk who called her supervisor a “dictator.” Strong language against management is disrespectful, ruled the Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board: “Name-calling in the workplace is never appropriate.”
The clinic is under
renovation.
Paint cans
in the waiting room,
tarp on the floor.
Sign says
“We are improving the facility to serve you better.”
In the magazine rack,
last year’s American Scientist;
a six-year-old Canadian Geographic;
and a thirteen-year-old
Guinness Book of World Records.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
If the Supreme Court is “one of the country’s most important governing bodies,” as author Emmett Macfarlane notes, it’s also true Canadians know little about it. The irony is noted. It’s the only court in the country to televise hearings, the only one with a chief justice who grants interviews, the only one to hold media lock-ups where complex cases are explained to the public.
Yet not one of the justices is recognizable in a Walmart parking lot. And the inner workings of the Supreme Court remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery.
“People wonder, are they completely isolated?” as retired justice Jack Major once put it. “Do they even read the newspaper? Do they know what’s going in the ‘real world’?”
Professor Macfarlane of the University of Waterloo opens the door to the secret chamber. “The Supreme Court is one of Canada’s most important – and least understood – governing institutions,” he writes.
Governing From The Bench is intriguing and oddly reassuring. In candid, anonymous interviews the judges emerge as very human. One justice complains law professors are smart alecks who make “terrible” court appointees. Another admits to asking “devil’s advocate” questions to stir up the courtroom. A third confesses to disliking orders: “I think that chief justices would like to think they could have a court marching to the same tune, but it just doesn’t happen.”
Are judges liberal or reactionary? Humbug, reports Macfarlane: “All the justices I interviewed responded to those attempts to label them in ideological terms in dismissive or amused tones.”
Do arguments ever change a judge’s mind? Yes, “10 to 25 percent of the time.”
Does the Court agonize over decisions and their impact on Canadians’ lives? Not really: “Give it your best…and you’re on to something else,” shrugged one justice.
Do they have long conferences on a case? Never. The only meetings attended by all justices can last as little as five minutes, and rarely more than 20.
Does the Court ever bicker? Sometimes, like the judge who described an irritating colleague assigned to draft an opinion: “One in particular said he was going to write for a unanimous Court, and he changed his mind writing. He didn’t tell anybody, and I’m reading the judgment, and I’m thinking ‘this doesn’t make sense, I thought we were going the other way.’ And I called him and he said, ‘Oh, well, I changed my mind as I was writing it.’ And I said, ‘Well, you might have told me, it would have saved me a lot of guessing.’ And he said, ‘Yes, I suppose I should have.’”
Governing From The Bench in rare instances even dissects why justices do what they do. When the Court ruled in 2004 that autistic children in British Columbia had no legal claim to mandatory medicare funding, it was mainly because “the Court’s pretty reluctant to tell the government how they should be spending their money,” one explained.
Professor Macfarlane reveals the Supreme Court as workmanlike, fallible and modest, where most try their best and some get on each other’s nerves. It is comforting to know it.
By Holly Doan
Governing From The Bench: The Supreme Court Of Canada And The Judicial Role by Emmett Macfarlane; UBC Press; 264 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-23500l; $34.95
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge yesterday complained cabinet has “no control” over free expression on the internet. Her remarks came six weeks after cabinet’s latest bill to censor legal content lapsed in Parliament: “Freedom of expression is currently being exploited.”
Haphazard reporting of suspicious bank transactions is a concern, says a federal regulator mandated to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Canadian banks had “foundational weaknesses,” said the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre: “Is there a non-compliance issue with Canadian banks?”
A guide for federal managers asks that executives avoid shaking hands with Muslim employees but set aside prayer rooms in government offices. Amira Elghawaby, cabinet’s Special Representative on Combating Islamophobia, endorsed concessions for Muslims as “one of the largest” employee networks in the federal public service: “There is only one god.”
