Parliament should expropriate apartment buildings owned by landlords who “violate human rights,” says a Canadian Human Rights Commission report. Federal law should also ban private lending to landlords who “contravene human rights including the right to adequate housing,” it said.
Nearly a thousand CBC employees are paid $100,000 or more, according to Access To Information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The number of six-figure staffers was up 117 percent in six years: “What value are taxpayers getting?”
The House affairs committee yesterday voted for a deeper investigation of alleged Chinese interference in federal elections. One Liberal MP dismissed the ongoing probe as a “Trump-like tactic to question election results.”
Most young Canadians are frightened of climate change and tell federal pollsters they feel sad and helpless. Almost three quarters of young adults surveyed, 74 percent, said they were “afraid of the impacts of climate change on their friends and loved ones’ lives.”
The federal bank superintendent is compiling 15 years’ worth of aggregated credit reports to plot “trends and vulnerabilities,” an official said. Superintendent Peter Routledge last year warned that rising interest rates and falling home prices posed a threat not seen in decades: “Financial institutions need to ensure they are prepared.”
A federal report warns casualties of climate change policy may include families that cannot afford higher fuel costs, oil and gas workers and Indigenous people. There was no evidence federal agencies were aware of the consequences, it said: “A sizeable workforce will need to transition out.”
Cabinet has awarded a retroactive 10.3 percent pay raise to CBC chief executive Hubert Lacroix though he left the Crown corporation five years ago. The Department of Canadian Heritage yesterday would not comment on the backdated pay raise, typically awarded to boost pension payments: “Unfortunately we cannot help you.”
Members of the Commons human resources committee seek CMHC records to determine if a director recused herself under a conflict of interest code. Director Janice Abbott of Vancouver is CEO of a building society that received millions in federal aid: “It would be difficult for me to comment specifically on that.”
The underground economy grew 50 percent in five years, Statistics Canada data show. The increase of billions in undeclared transactions followed a Canada Revenue Agency threat to begin fingerprinting tax evaders: “A significant number of Canadians are active in the underground economy without giving much thought to its consequences.”
An advocate who challenged bylaw enforcement against the homeless by the City of Victoria has lost her case in court. Municipal lawyers called it an “extraordinary” test of authority to clear parks of tent cities: “It could impact the City’s ability to enforce certain bylaws.”
Cabinet is demanding MPs take an oath of secrecy as a condition of seeing terms of its $5 billion contracts with vaccine manufacturers. Members of the Commons public accounts committee called it a dangerous precedent to limit scrutiny of federal spending: “It makes you ask, what’s next?”
A last legal challenge of cabinet’s use of emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy goes to Federal Court April 3. Lawyers for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms said they will press their claim that use of the Emergencies Act was unconstitutional: “That is the job of the courts.”
Canada “had a better pandemic” than other Western countries, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Speaking to reporters, Trudeau selectively quoted statistics in crediting his cabinet with strong Covid management: ‘We had greater social cohesion than many other places.’
Parliamentarians’ freedom of speech should be monitored to prevent anti-Muslim sentiment, the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council says in a Senate submission. The group claimed MPs and senators have used their protection from libel suits to “spread hate.”
Banks, currency dealers, realtors and others face a yearly toll to finance enforcement of anti-terror regulations. The Department of Finance in a notice Saturday said the multi-million dollar cost of enforcement should be carried by business, not taxpayers; ‘The scheme is predictable and simple to administer.’
