Governments mean well in considering compulsory vaccination, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said yesterday. “On vaccine mandates, the key word here is benevolence,” said Duclos.
Cabinet yesterday extended by one full year a payment holiday for small business borrowers who received more than $48 billion in emergency loans. Small Business Minister Mary Ng called it “the best thing for our economy.”
A deputy minister who called climate change a “massive issue facing humanity” billed nearly $11,000 in first-class airfare to attend a climate conference, records show. Cabinet has yet to detail all expenses for Canada’s 277-member delegation to the October 31 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Glasgow: “It is important to make a positive contribution to what I think is a massive issue facing humanity, climate change.”
A $300 million national stockpile of pandemic supplies should be privatized, says a subsidized federal contractor 3M Company. The submission to the Commons finance committee follows a similar 2020 proposal by the Canadian Medical Association Journal: “These types of events will continue to happen.”
Québec Premier François Legault yesterday said he is “working on” the legality of imposing the nation’s first medicare surcharge on unvaccinated residents. Federal law states all residents of a province are entitled to health care on the same terms: “We are working on the legal part of it.”
Cabinet within 18 months will begin “phasing out fossil fuels,” says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Opposition MPs yesterday demanded an explanation of Guilbeault’s remarks to a subsidized environmental advocacy website: “Phasing out fossil fuels, all of these things must be in place in the coming eighteen months.”
A Customs agent who described supervisors as “a bunch of Nazis” has lost an appeal over denial of promotion. Nazi quips are no joke, ruled a federal labour board: “The fact it may have been used by others does not excuse it.”
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki yesterday urged Canadians to report suspicious internet activity including comments by people who express “anti-government, anti-law enforcement” opinions. The Mounties earlier praised federal proposals to censor legal web content deemed offensive: “When in doubt, report it.”
Half of businesses surveyed that were shuttered in 2021 lockdowns remained closed five months later, says a Bank of Canada study. Researchers said it was critical to calculate the scope of insolvencies and so-called “zombie” businesses: ‘They are essentially dead but haven’t finalized the closure process altogether.’
The Commons finance committee tomorrow opens hearings on housing prices. Urban Canada runs a risk of a “massive financial collapse,” said the Conservative MP who requested hearings: “We risk the possibility of a major housing crash.”
Banks can afford billions in new taxes, the Superintendent of Financial Institutions said yesterday. Peter Routledge told a teleconference of Toronto bankers that taxes proposed in the Liberal Party’s election campaign platform were worth a fraction of the industry’s net income: “From our perspective this issue is rather minor.”
Opposition MPs yesterday ordered Commons ethics committee hearings into federal monitoring of cellphone users. It follows admissions by the Public Health Agency it tracked 33 million mobile devices using cell tower locators to monitor compliance with lockdown orders: “This was done in secret.”
Attorney General David Lametti in a letter to senators questioned whether police were “less aggressive” with white protesters opposed to vaccine mandates than Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Lametti cited in evidence a single CBC election commentary that complained Covid protesters were “mostly white.”
Parliament must show “fiscal discipline” after running up the biggest deficits in Canadian history, say accountants. The Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada in a submission to the Commons finance committee said Parliament must stop the spending: “It is not an appropriate time to increase personal or corporate taxes.”
Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos under questioning by reporters Friday said he personally considered compulsory vaccination inevitable, but that it was up to provinces to introduce such a measure. No province has: “I personally believe it’s going to come to that one day, mandatory vaccination.”
