Housing Minister Sean Fraser yesterday said he will not seek re-election and wanted to go home. Fraser’s abrupt announcement came amid Commons speculation more cabinet members will retire: “Rumours are there are two more cabinet ministers to resign. I wonder who.”
MPs yesterday ridiculed a promotional video by Social Development Minister Jenna Sudds celebrating the temporary repeal of a 75¢ GST charge on a bottle of wine. Millions of Canadians this Christmas “will be lucky if they get tap water,” said Conservative MP Larry Brock (Brantford-Brant, Ont.): “I was really shocked.”
A New Democrat MP said “we are reflecting on what we did” after cabinet forced an end to legal picketing in a Canada Labour Code dispute for the fifth time in four months, a postwar record. Party leader Jagmeet Singh had no comment on the unprecedented use of executive orders: “That’s wrong.”
Parliament must increase funding for the CBC in addition to its current $1.4 billon annual grant, says a Commons heritage committee report. The CBC said it could use another half billion a year: “We need in the $400 million to $500 million range.”
Growth in “alternative and far right ‘news sources’” reflects Canadians’ growing distrust of old media and not foreign interference, says a Department of Foreign Affairs memo. Analysts debunked stories by “far left media” suggesting Russian bots were amplifying dissent: “The move away from traditional news sources may indicate a decrease in trust among traditional outlets.”
Mandatory airport fees and taxes are costing Canadian travelers about $100 per ticket, WestJet Airlines Ltd. has told the Commons transport committee. Executives said profit taking by public agencies including the Department of Transport was to blame for high costs: ‘If we received the same subsidy as VIA Rail everyone could fly for free and we’d hand them cash as they boarded the plane.’
A federal agency has been fined $75,000 for breach of the Species At Risk Act. The charge targeted harm to habitat of the endangered Western Chorus Frog, a tiny amphibian that earlier blocked development of a multi-million dollar subdivision in Québec: ‘Suburban sprawl is threatening its survival in Canada.’
Canada is looking for ways
to reduce emissions
from its oilsands operations.
Perhaps European technologies
could help.
Like those developed
for Volkswagen diesel cars.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Arne Nielsen was a Petroleum Hall of Famer, “chief executive politician” of Mobil Oil Canada, as he put it, discoverer of the Pembina No. 1 field at Drayton Valley, Alta., twice chairman of the Canadian Petroleum Association, famed foe of the National Energy Program. His career spanned the biggest energy boom in history, a “golden age,” Nielsen called it.
Recollections in We Gambled Everything are unvarnished in the Scandinavian manner. Nielsen writes of one Alberta premier, “He left us alone.” Of another premier: “He was not considered to be really knowledgeable.” And Pierre Trudeau? “Scruffy-looking,” wrote Nielsen. They met as Trudeau was returning home from a camping trip.
Then there was the house: white, wood frame, 900 square feet. It was on the farm near Standard, Alta., so plain it had no electricity. Nielsen did his schoolwork by kerosene. Here he was raised. Here his mother and father, both Danish immigrants, lived and died. “It has always puzzled me how a house with two bedrooms could handle a family of nine,” he recalled.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s department will require that all citizenship applicants who lived in Canada more than 10 years be photographed and fingerprinted. Biometric screening is already mandatory for new arrivals in Canada including foreign students and visa applicants: “What we are looking to do is adopt biometric enrolment for citizenship.”
Cabinet is “doing really, really good compared to most other countries,” Public Works Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said yesterday. Duclos would not say if cabinet met its target of cutting billions in fees paid to private consultants: “You’re saying Canadians have never had it so good?”
The Senate last night by a 58 to 22 vote passed a GST holiday bill into law. The temporary $2.7 billion repeal of the federal sales tax on select goods takes effect Saturday: “Could you imagine the optics of not voting for this?”
Liberal MP Marco Mendicino (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) yesterday faced formal demands that he be censured for contempt of Parliament. Mendicino was accused of deliberately lying as Minister of Public Safety regarding his 2022 use of the Emergencies Act against peaceful demonstrators on Parliament Hill: ‘Mendicino blatantly misled us.’
Executives at Canadian utilities appealed to senators for tougher Criminal Code penalties to stem an epidemic of copper theft. Managers testifying at the Senate transport and communication committee detailed brazen thefts treated as petty crimes: “This is the same charge leveled against someone caught stealing a bicycle.”
Cabinet has approved a 25 percent hike in stamp rates to take effect January 13. The increase was proposed by Canada Post prior to disruption of its busiest season of Christmas mailings by a Canadian Union of Postal Workers strike, now in its 27th day: “Canadians are fed up.”
