The Canadian Medical Association yesterday endorsed a Senate bill for mandatory health warnings on liquor, beer and wine. Alcohol-related deaths average 17,000 a year, according to the Department of Health: “As physicians, we witness the effects of alcohol use on our patients every day.”
The Commons public accounts committee yesterday called Canada Revenue Agency managers for questioning over disclosures they spent $190 million on dysfunctional call centres. Auditors for the second time in eight years faulted the Agency’s 1-800 operations as slow and inept: “Why should Canadians tolerate this?”
Auditors yesterday faulted the Department of National Defence for creating its own housing crisis with long waiting lists and dilapidated structures unfit for military families. Defence Minister David McGuinty promised improvements: “Toilets weren’t working, or there was structural damage to the exterior walls of the building, the kind of conditions you and I wouldn’t want to live in.”
The immigration department does not know how many foreigners are in Canada illegally, Deputy Minister Harpreet Kochhar yesterday told MPs. Managers in a report last April 24 said the number was as high as 500,000: “We would not have any estimation of those.”
Cabinet is prepared to rewrite a security bill critics call a threat to civil liberties, says Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree. He acknowledged shortcomings in Bill C-2: “I will admit C-2 probably didn’t have that balance but my commitment is a revised version of it.”
Senate Liberal appointee Andrew Cardozo (Ont.) yesterday challenged CBC management to justify anti-Conservative bias by some newsroom employees. Network executives testifying at the Senate transport and communications committee denied political score-settling under the pretext of fact checking: “The notion that we are politically oriented is really against everything that we believe.”
MPs yesterday asked cabinet to undertake a sweeping investigation of costly real estate holdings by the Department of Foreign Affairs. it followed the purchase of an $8.8 million Manhattan penthouse for Tom Clark, Canada’s $232,000-a year Consul in New York: “He wanted to live like a king.”
The Commons government operations committee yesterday voted to compel disclosure of cabinet’s subsidy agreements with Stellantis. MPs have sought confidential terms since 2022 when cabinet committed ongoing subsidies totaling $15 billion for battery plants in Windsor and Brampton, Ont.: “Were there any assurances in that deal that jobs would stay in Canada?”
Cabinet does not expect to meet its housing targets until 2035 at the earliest, Housing Minister Gregor Robertson said yesterday. The admission came under questioning at the Commons finance committee: “We can only work with the facts we have in front of us.”
Canada since 2015 has awarded more than $100 million in foreign aid to China, figures show. The Department of Foreign Affairs said the funding promoted “sustainable development.”
Marie-Philippe Bouchard, $562,000-a year CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, yesterday acknowledged a network claim that millions subscribe to the CBC Gem video streaming service include many who signed up for free, one-time accounts. The CBC is in Federal Court attempting to block disclosure of the number who bought $72-a year subscriptions: “How much money have you put into Gem in the last five years?”
Canada has normalized anti-Semitism and made public spaces unsafe for Jews including children, the Senate human rights committee was told yesterday. Witnesses testifying at the start of hearings on anti-Semitism said public expression of hatred was so commonplace it had become “pervasive and casual, even fashionable.”
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne yesterday reannounced a 2021 proposal to create a Canadian Financial Crimes Agency but set no deadline on enforcement. “We have been consulting,” he told reporters.
Valuable paintings, sculptures and other artworks have vanished from a multi-million dollar federal collection managed by Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty’s department, say auditors. An internal report disclosed more than 130 works disappeared with security so lax there was “an increased risk of theft.”
Cabinet in a briefing note likened Chinese concentration camps to Canada’s Indian Residential School system. Diplomats privately told Chinese Communist Party officials “not to repeat Canada’s past mistakes,” said the document: “Canada continues to urge China not to repeat Canada’s past mistakes.”
