Police cited 4,883 children for breaching the Quarantine Act, new figures show. Youngsters warned by police were among 58,760 children caught up in quarantine enforcement: ‘It is in regard to minors being warned of fines if they broke quarantine.’
Public debt charges jumped about $2.3 billion overnight with the latest increase in the Bank of Canada prime interest rate. Debt costs are the fastest growing line item in the federal budget: “The party is now over.”
VIA Rail spread Facebook rumours the Freedom Convoy planned to “put blocks on the train tracks” to disrupt the economy, say internal records. The rumour upset cabinet aides until Canadian National Railway noted it appeared on a single Facebook post with six “likes.”
Cabinet is quietly finalizing terms of its own internal pandemic management review, Senator Marc Gold (Que.), Government Representative in the Senate, said yesterday. Opposition MPs have sought a judicial inquiry including investigations of Covid contracting: “Work is in fact already underway through internal reviews.”
Taxing home equity would be “your political funeral,” a real estate lobbyist yesterday told the Senate national finance committee. It followed testimony from a CMHC tax consultant who complained housing made widows rich in Vancouver: “Those who do suggest it would probably preside at your political funeral.”
Political aides knew to be false a cabinet claim the Freedom Convoy received suspicious foreign donations, internal records show. Rumours spread by the Prime Minister and others went uncorrected because the issue was “a hot potato,” wrote one press secretary: “We’ve tried to avoid questions about the foreign funding angle.”
Anxious depositors lit up credit union hotlines within hours of cabinet’s freeze on accounts held by Freedom Convoy sympathizers, records show. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland acknowledged she was unsure of the reach of her own orders under the Emergencies Act: “What have the banks actually been doing?”
Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier yesterday dismissed an auditor’s warning taxpayers are unlikely to recover billions wasted on pandemic relief programs. At least $32 billion was paid to underserving claimants after the Canada Revenue Agency failed to make cursory background checks: ‘I want to tell them how proud I am.’
The health department wasted about 20 percent of the $5 billion it spent on Covid vaccines, auditors said yesterday. It included millions of doses that were thrown away: ‘They were unsuccessful in efforts to minimize wastage.’
A federal anti-terror agency in an internal memo said it saw no evidence millions raised by the Freedom Convoy were intended to bankroll terrorism. “Seems unlikely,” wrote experts three weeks before cabinet froze accounts of convoy sympathizers under the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act: “It wasn’t cash that funded terrorism.”
Cabinet is “figuring out how we can improve the system” that sees air passengers wait two years for federal regulators to review complaints, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said yesterday. The current backlog at the Canadian Transportation Agency is 30,000 complaints: “I know the Agency is doing their best.”
The failed Covid Alert app saw as few as 12,600 downloads a month before it was cancelled by the Department of Health, new data show. The figures follow in-house research that showed the program failed in part because Canadians didn’t trust the government: “There are certain segments of the population who do not trust the government.”
The typical smoker is spending $170 a month on cigarettes, says Department of Health research. The department has targeted a reduction in smoking rates from about 18 percent of Canadians to five percent by 2036: “One third of Canadian smokers, 35 percent, say the cigarettes they smoke are unaffordable.”
The nation’s largest grocer Loblaw Companies Ltd. yesterday denied profiteering. An executive told the Commons agriculture committee Loblaw’s profit margin is no greater than it was before food inflation averaged 11 percent: “It’s been flat since inflation took off.”
Parliamentary Press Gallery executives accompanied by armed police on Friday evicted Blacklock’s. All questions were referred to a House of Commons employee. Blacklock’s said the eviction, first of its kind in the history of the National Press Building, was clear reprisal over its continued protests against media subsidies.
Eviction followed Gallery president Guillaume St-Pierre’s threat to “terminate” Blacklock’s membership. The eviction letter stated Blacklock’s managing editor Tom Korski was “impolite,” “disturbs the journalists around him” and “streams parliamentary committee hearings on his computer.”
The complaints were made by three reporters: Emilie Bergeron and Michel Saba of Canadian Press and freelancer Hélène Buzzetti, a former Gallery president. Fourteen other reporters assigned desks in the National Press Building did not sign the complaint.
“Failure to observe these prohibitions could result in further and potentially more serious sanctions including further and potentially permanent prohibitions,” wrote President St-Pierre, correspondent for the Journal de Montréal.
The Gallery refused to permit Blacklock’s to speak to the board of directors regarding reprisal complaints. “The executive did not invite oral representations,” said the eviction notice.
“We will now see the Press Gallery in court,” Blacklock’s shareholders said in a statement. “Our subsidized competitors met in secret, plotted punitive measures over petty grievances and served an eviction notice accompanied by armed police. Their conduct is outrageous.”
Blacklock’s is the only Press Gallery member eligible for federal subsidies that neither solicits nor accepts government funding. The eviction came one day after Blacklock’s published Access To Information records detailing a private meeting between 35 unnamed publishers and the Canada Revenue Agency on distribution of $595 million in subsidies.
Blacklock’s in 2020 also reported Canadian Press unsuccessfully petitioned the Commons finance committee for federal grants to cover 100 percent of revenues, the equivalent of $500,000 a week. CP President Malcolm Kirk asked for subsidies “to fully offset subscription fees paid by CP’s media clients.”
Blacklock’s at a 2021 Press Gallery meeting sponsored a motion that “all Gallery members disclose all applications for grants, rebates or subsidies to any branch of the Government of Canada” and publish the disclosures on its website. The motion was defeated. “That’s cleared up,” said then-Gallery president Catherine Levesque of Canadian Press.
“The Press Gallery action is clearly reprisal,” wrote Blacklock’s shareholders. “We will fight.”
By Staff 
