Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s department in confidential surveys is asking people if they’d accept the first-ever introduction of mandatory identification papers such as a passport for use within Canada. MPs have repeatedly opposed any national ID system as intrusive and costly: “Identification cards allow us to be identified when we have every right to remain anonymous.”
A federal agency created 14 years ago to streamline government IT services says it’s about two-thirds through its assignment. Progress was slow despite 10,000 employees and billions spent last year on contractors, said a Shared Services Canada briefing note: “To date Shared Services Canada has closed 490 out of 720 legacy data centres.”
Baltej Dhillon, a retired Surrey, B.C. policeman who as a 23-year old immigrant broke the RCMP barrier against observant Sikhs, has been named to the Senate. Dhillon in an earlier interview said he had no hard feelings against Canadians upset by his 1991 enlistment as the first bearded, turbaned Sikh to join the Mounties: “After I had graduated and met with my detachment commander he said to me, ‘I don’t agree with you what you did, but you’re a member of this detachment and I will back you 100 percent.’”
Compensation for federal employees affected by bungled payroll software has cost taxpayers $711 million and counting, records show. Payments are in addition to reimbursement for staff shortchanged by the Phoenix Pay System: “This is an estimate.”
If everyone in Heaven
unites with their high school crush,
it may not be Heaven
for their legal spouse.
Nor for their high school crush.
If everyone in Heaven
is debt-free, pain-free, worry-free,
it would hardly be Heaven
for bankers, doctors, therapists.
If every meal in Heaven
is crafted by Chef Ramsay
– served on a balcony overlooking Naples –
it may not be Heaven
for McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or IHOP.
Nor for Ramsay.
If my Heaven
is the ultimate perfection,
why is everyone
miserable?
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Treasure hunters strike it rich in the oddest places, but none stranger than a document vault at the University of Alberta. There, largely undisturbed for nearly 50 years, were cartons containing the life’s work of reporter Miriam Green Ellis. Inside, gold.
Ellis covered the Prairies for the Edmonton Bulletin and Family Herald and Weekly in pre-war years. Where other journalists sought the reflected glory of the big story – earthquakes, scandals, assassinations – Ellis covered extraordinary events in ordinary lives.
Here is her account of a 1922 steamboat journey through the Northwest Territories: “An Eskimo woman called Laura, since we could not pronounce her Eskimo name, was brought in by the police and is being taken into Edmonton to be committed for insanity. Imagine a woman who has been living along the shore of the Arctic Ocean all her life going into the asylum at Ponoka. The policeman who is accompanying her says that she beat her husband and I suggested that perhaps the husband needed a beating. She fought like a tiger when the boat started to leave Aklavik.”
A former Muslim Students Association organizer yesterday said he was personally scouted by the Department of Justice to apply for Liberal appointment as Canada’s $394,000-a year Human Rights Commissioner. The federal government “sought me out,” said Birju Dattani, whose appointment was suspended last August 8 amid protests over his past comments on Israel and terrorism: ‘They sought me out.’
A crucial error in cabinet’s 2015 climate plan has now put millions of homeowners at financial risk, says a manager with the Insurance Bureau of Canada. “We were aghast,” the executive told a conference of meteorologists: “The question within our industry is, who is going to insure those new homes?”
The co-chair of the Liberal Party’s national re-election campaign committee yesterday resigned. MP Soraya Martinez Ferrada (Hochelaga, Que.) also quit cabinet as tourism minister and said she is leaving Parliament: “I choose Montréal.”
CBC reporters must “exercise caution” in using silly or pointless adjectives to describe witnesses at court, the network’s ombudsman said yesterday. The guidance targeted one reporter who said he liked to write about witnesses’ clothing since “I’m a pretty big fashionista guy.”
The Department of Employment this year will begin sending letters notifying eligible families of automatic school savings accounts. Children born in 2024 are the first to qualify for $500 in automatic savings: “Many eligible families do not open an RESP.”
Birju Dattani, former appointee as Canadian Human Rights Commissioner, claims more than $2 million in damages in multiple libel lawsuits stemming from his abrupt suspension last August 8 over comments on Israel and terrorism. Lawyers in Ontario Superior Court claimed Dattani suffered “irreparable harm to his professional reputation.”
Federal crash investigators in an internal report complain road, rail and air accidents attract so much public attention they have to compete with so-called media “experts.” The Transportation Safety Board advised staff to anticipate scrutiny at accident scenes: “Accidents are news.”
New CMHC data yesterday confirmed cabinet will not achieve its target on housing affordability. Housing starts nationwide are hundreds of thousands short of minimum levels required with the federal insurer predicting 2025 construction will “slow down.”
Parks Canada yesterday rescinded a purchasing program with Amazon. The new directive came a day after management issued a staff email excitedly announcing the initiative despite cabinet’s appeal to have all Canadians buy local: “Its timing and substance was not sensitive.”
