Google Canada yesterday joined Facebook in confirming it will halt all links to Canadian news content in protest over cabinet’s Bill C-18 the Online News Act. The announcement came only days after Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said the Canadian market was too “important to them” to retaliate: ‘You have to understand they make a lot of money in Canada.’
A $133,822 grant application by anti-Semitic activist Laith Marouf raised “no flags” at the Department of Canadian Heritage since paperwork was submitted in his wife’s name, records show. MPs protested funding for Marouf after he was banned from Twitter for fantasizing about shooting Jews: “If the individual’s views had been discovered the project would not have been funded.”
Federal grain workers were not entitled to a day off with pay when the Queen died, a labour arbitrator has ruled. The Prime Minister’s declaration of a National Day of Mourning last September 19 generally benefited only public employees: “There is no federal or provincial legislation which recognizes the Day of Mourning as a holiday.”
A Québec court has fined a homeowner $200 for cussing police with a common vulgarity. Other tribunals have concluded the f-word does not have the same raw connotation in French as in English: “He put forward an explanation, namely that he was not insulting the police but rather he was pointing out the lack of service rendered by the police.”
Inflation has overtaken the Canada Food Guide, says the federal department responsible for benchmark guidance on healthy eating. Less than a third of Canadians can afford minimum daily servings of fruit and vegetables, it said: “The Food Guide was released prior to the recent rising cost of food due to inflation and does not currently acknowledge the growing issues of food availability and affordability.”
Michael Wernick, former chief clerk of the federal public service, yesterday joined a Liberal-affiliated think tank. Wernick abruptly resigned in 2019 following disclosures of cabinet’s failed attempt to quash a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.: “I worry about the reputations of honourable people who have served their country being besmirched.”
A quarter million federal employees working from home may have been eligible for tax credits at $400 to $500 each, says the Canada Revenue Agency. It did not estimate the cost of “home office expense” credits: “Can you tell us what the cost ramifications are to the treasury?”
Cabinet approved millions in climate subsidies to one of Canada’s most profitable corporations, records show. Canadian National Railways Company received the $4.4 million subsidy last November 28 to install electric charging stations: “Our overall estimate for public charging infrastructure needs across Canada would represent a total investment of approximately $20 billion.”
Federal subsidies of Canadian newsrooms should be a ballot question for voters in the next general election, a Conservative MP said yesterday. Millions in cabinet-approved aid compromised media with “little corporate incentive to bite the hand that feeds them,” said MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill): “Journalism is far weaker than ever.”
The Privy Council Office is conducting secret “behavioural science” research and concealing the findings in breach of an Act of Parliament, Access To Information records show. Federal law requires that all publicly-funded opinion research be promptly disclosed to taxpayers and other political parties: “The rich dataset can support immediate policy objectives such as more precisely targeting government messaging.”
Staff in a briefing note to Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly complained media coverage of misconduct by Chinese agents has been “very negative.” The analysis noted the Prime Minister was openly criticized “for appearing to be weak.”
Federal departments and agencies spent millions advertising on the CBC even as private sponsors fled the network, records show. English television ad sales fell 25 percent with the loss of Hockey Night In Canada licensing: “It’s all an illusion.”
The Public Health Agency six years after promising to eliminate tuberculosis says it is nowhere near meeting its target. “Rates have not decreased,” said an Agency audit: “In comparison the United States tuberculosis rate has been decreasing continuously since the early 1990s.”
The Competition Bureau yesterday in a mea culpa acknowledged its approval of corporate mergers in the grocery trade did not benefit consumers. Lack of competition let grocers hike profit margins by “modest yet meaningful” amounts, up to a billion a year, said the federal anti-trust agency: “There is some truth to that.”
A senator who threatened to sue Canadian media over China coverage took more state-sponsored trips to the People’s Republic than any other parliamentarian, records show. Senator Victor Oh (Ont.), a Mississauga developer, accepted six junkets at China’s expense to promote trade and “cultural exchanges.”
