The CBC will use record funding this year to “combat disinformation,” says a Department of Heritage briefing note. Broadcast executives to date have declined to tell the Budget Office or the public specifically what measures it contemplates: “The government is exploring options.”
Canada could “dismantle the United States if we wanted to,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said yesterday in denouncing $28 billion in new White House tariffs. “They need to feel the pain,” he told reporters.
A Commons petition asks that cabinet conduct a national naming contest to commemorate a proposed $35 billion West Coast pipeline. The petition was submitted by a Toronto comedian and climate activist, Aaron Hagey-Mackey: “Any citizen or resident of Canada may submit and vote on proposed names online, the winning name to be adopted as the project’s official name.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney last night acknowledged new U.S. tariffs will cost Canadians but proposed no new initiatives. Under current law it would take an Act of Parliament to enter negotiations with the United States over dairy quotas: “This trade dispute has raised costs for families.”
The cost of living is now “a critical issue,” says a Department of Agriculture briefing note. New federal data yesterday showed the rising price of food continues to outpace the general inflation rate as it has since 2024: “Affordability remains a critical issue.”
A tenth of employers inspected by the labour department over migrant hiring are in breach of regulations, says a federal memo. Inspectors documented complaints from below-market wages to “possible situations of mistreatment.”
The Canada Revenue Agency broke federal law in attempting to force a Christian employee to take a Covid shot, a federal labour board has ruled. The adjudicator in the case awarded $5,000 in damages to an Agency manager suspended without pay: “The employer violated the collective agreement and the Canadian Human Rights Act.”
A Senate bill to regulate gaming ads is unsafe, say online bookies and casino operators. The gaming lobby appealed to MPs not to pass the bill as adopted by the Senate last October 21: “Restricting gambling advertising is unlikely to prevent people from betting.”
Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez’s department is the first to delete all departmental Twitter accounts. An Access To Information memo said hurtful remarks by the public on social media “created significant mental strain for employees.”
Nearly 13,000 people sleep in cars, alleys or abandoned buildings nationwide according to new data by Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s department. The count of homeless people, the most comprehensive to date, found another 4,700 slept in tent cities: ‘Unsheltered locations included streets, alleys, parks, transit stations, abandoned buildings, vehicles, ravines and other outdoor locations.’
Liberal MP Lori Idlout (Nunavut) cannot act as a federal contractor, the Ethics Commissioner has ruled. Idlout was major shareholder in a company that received hundreds of thousands to conduct Indigenous workshops for federal employees: “I am ordered by the Ethics Commissioner.”
Edmonton grain millers, Winnipeg telecom providers and bankers in Yarmouth, N.S. must speak French under draft federal regulations detailed Saturday by Heritage Minister Marc Miller. The first-ever requirements follow complaints of “the decline of French in Canada.”
The Department of Transport is hiring consultants to assess the impact of “a transborder joint venture between two airlines,” it said. The country’s largest carriers already have joint venture agreements with U.S. airlines dating back eight years: “This requirement is conditional to the launch of a public interest assessment.”
At Walmart,
passed on the self-checkout
and stood in line for the cashier.
Followed her red-and-purple nail polish
as she placed my socks, toothbrush, and cat food
in the plastic bag.
At the Royal Bank,
skipped the ATM and
asked the teller for my balance.
She circled the number on the printout,
inquiring about my experience with
online banking.
At Pearson International,
ignored the check-in kiosk and
handed my papers to the attendant.
Nodded as he showed me
how to do it myself
next time.
Saved three jobs today.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
For anyone who’s driven the Trans-Canada Highway from Winnipeg to Toronto by the north shore of Lake Superior, where your only companions are 2,000 kilometres of rocks and trees, an arresting thought: “Canada and Europe rank among the most urbanized areas in the world.”
So Governing Cities Through Regions draws readers into a compelling conflict that’s escaped the attention of most pundits and politicians. “There are now increasing tensions between the demands of more complex urban cities and economies, and the political constitutions and institutions of national affairs,” editors write.
Canada has no Minister of Urban Development. Alberta in 1994 shut down its regional planning commissions as an austerity measure. Planning was strictly voluntary. As Professor Pierre Hamel of the Université de Montréal puts it, “This standpoint is anything but awkward to observers of the urban scene, as Canadians are increasingly living in cities and have never been more concentrated in city-regions.”
Governing Cities Through Regions spies the land. In Vancouver, municipal authorities run their own railway, SkyTrain, and their own navy, the SeaBus ferry system. The Greater Vancouver Regional Board manages its own dam and water reservoirs and a bureaucracy of 1,300.
In Toronto, the Community Housing Corporation manages $6 billion in property with 164,000 tenants, a bigger constituency than the City of Moncton. In Markham, Ont., where the city did not even exist in 1969, the district is home to 400 corporate head offices.
“Institutional reform of metropolitan areas has remained elusive,” note editors of Governing Cities Through Regions. “In spite of various national and regional state efforts since the 1960s, most major North American and European metropolitan areas by the end of the twentieth century did not have true metropolitan governments.”
Editors compare Toronto and Montréal, Paris and Frankfurt, Winnipeg and another “typical slow-growth city,” post-Soviet Katowice, Poland. The contrasts are not flattering.
Montréal has the highest rate of low-income households in any major Canadian city, 29 percent. Winnipeg estimates 20 percent of inner-city streets are in such poor shape they must be rebuilt. Toronto’s dysfunction is legendary.
“One of the arguments of why regions matter is because the image that somehow the region consists of Toronto, which has pockets of poverty surrounded by a whole bunch of suburbs which are relatively middle class, is in fact not true,” a housing official tells editors. “The issues and needs are very similar across the region.”
Governing Cities Through Regions examines the problem, and identifies solutions. We are so much more than 2,000 kilometres of rocks and trees.
By Holly Doan
Governing Cities Through Regions: Canadian and European Perspectives, edited by Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Julie-Anne Boudreau and Stefan Kipfer; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 416 pages; ISBN 9781-77112-771; $39.99
