MPs yesterday questioned how an SS member escaped scrutiny prior to being honoured on Parliament Hill. Cabinet said it played no role in any background check on Yaroslav Hunka, 98, of North Bay, Ont.: “A Nazi was honoured in this place; I cannot believe I am even uttering these words.”
Speaker Anthony Rota yesterday was called an international embarrassment after presenting an SS member to the House of Commons as a “Canadian hero.” MPs expressed astonishment the member of the 14 Waffen Grenadier Division was given VIP treatment on Parliament Hill: “Members of Parliament feel betrayed right now.”
Subsidies will not save money-losing news media, says a Department of Heritage memo. A $595 million bailout fund approved by Parliament in 2019 is up for renewal next March 31: “Supports alone cannot redress the structural decline of the current business model.”
Canadians face the “terrible job” of choosing between higher taxes or fewer services due to mounting federal debt, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge said yesterday. Testifying at the Commons finance committee, Dodge likened the financial outlook to the 1970s: “Governments cannot borrow their way out of these difficult choices.”
Enacting a GST holiday on new apartment construction is intended to benefit the middle class, Housing Minister Sean Fraser said yesterday. MPs took up Second Reading debate on the tax measure in Bill C-56 An Act To Amend The Excise Tax Act: “It is important that we advance measures that are going to increase the supply for middle class households.”
Members of the Commons environment committee say they must economize on travel to reduce their carbon footprint. One MP said the committee would not follow the lead of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, his staff and officials who ran up more than $700,000 in travel expenses in the past year: “I am very concerned with the environmental footprint.”
CMHC in eight years confirmed construction of 12 new homes under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to convert surplus Crown property into affordable housing, records show. The Department of Fisheries built one: “We are focused on building more houses.”
Most Canadians say they pay too much for what they get from governments and consider tax cheating commonplace. In-house research by the Canada Revenue Agency also found few think cheaters will ever get caught: “Rich people have an easier time tax cheating than middle class Canadians.”
Cabinet in a report to Parliament acknowledged it has not expropriated a penny in Russian assets in Canada despite 20 months of sanctions. The only property in Canadian custody, a Russian cargo plane, is still being ‘evaluated.’
Only one vessel in the navy’s costly submarine fleet has been to sea in years, records show. Maintenance and refit costs for submarines are more than $3 billion: “The government budgets approximately $325 million per year to conduct regular and cyclical maintenance.”
I open the cupboard,
reach for a mug.
My mind –
ahead of me –
sees coffee in it.
I hesitate.
In a moment of clarity
I return it to the shelf,
revoke its destiny,
choose another.
Because I can.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
The Commons public accounts committee yesterday by a unanimous 10-0 vote ordered the Auditor General to investigate the original taxpayers’ endowment used to bankroll the Trudeau Foundation. Parliament awarded the Foundation $125 million subsequently used in part to buy stocks in China: “We are asking for an investigation.”
One of the nation’s leading computer scientists says he refused a six-figure payoff from Chinese agents in what was an obvious “recruitment strategy” targeting Canadian academics. Professor Benjamin Fung of McGill University detailed the scheme in testimony at the Commons science committee: “I asked them, ‘What do you want me to do?”
Canadians consider federal anti-trust enforcement “lacklustre” and “ineffective,” says a Department of Industry report. The anti-trust Competition Bureau has acknowledged failures in permitting consolidation in key sectors like grocery retailing: “Large corporations are gaining too much control.”
Critics yesterday ridiculed a federal sales tax holiday on new rental construction as a “limousine Liberal measure.” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland introduced a GST holiday bill that dropped cabinet’s 2015 promise to link the tax break to construction of “affordable rental housing.”
