A proposal under “initial discussion” would see federal quarantine inspectors gain police powers to ticket scofflaws, the Public Health Agency said yesterday. Managers complained they had to rely on local police to issue tickets for breach of the Quarantine Act: “The Agency could not issue contravention tickets across the country.”
MPs are seeking air rescue flight logs following allegations Reid Sirrs, Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, fled the country with staff aboard a half-empty military plane. Cabinet revealed Ambassador Sirrs received military help in Kabul months before fleeing: “They left in a pretty big hurry.”
The CBC is the largest beneficiary of a cabinet bill yesterday introduced to exempt news corporations from the federal Competition Act. Bill C-18 the Online News Act allows Canada’s largest subsidized media conglomerates to seek mandatory shares of ad revenues from Google and Facebook: “Monopolies have their thumb on the scale.”
Employees used government-issue credit cards to buy personality tests on the internet, Department of Canadian Heritage accounts show. The department defended the practice as team building: “It is to support the training and development activities.”
Pandemic wage subsidies to large corporations averaged a quarter million, according to Canada Revenue Agency records. Applicants had a 99 percent chance of being approved under a program Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland called essential to recovery: “That has been one of the most important measures.”
Most provinces, six out of ten, failed to increase their number of intensive care unit hospital beds from the outbreak of the pandemic, according to the Department of Health. Figures show provinces either cut capacity or left it unchanged despite billions in federal transfers: ‘Funding was committed to address capacity and backlogs.’
A federal agency yesterday declined comment on a project manager who publicly boasted of joining counter protests against the Freedom Convoy and called truckers anti-Trudeau roughnecks. Federal guides state employees must be politically neutral: ‘As a sturdily built white male I could blend in.’
Military spending will increase in Thursday’s budget, Defence Minister Anita Anand yesterday told the Senate national security committee. The pledge came despite a cabinet promise to cut billions from the deficit: “We are increasing our defence spending.”
Cabinet must stop deficit spending, the Commons finance committee yesterday wrote in a report. MPs recommended cabinet “present as soon as possible a plan to return to a balanced budget” as the first of 222 recommendations on finances: “What are we looking at as a country?”
The image of policing is so poor applications to the RCMP have plummeted, the Commons human resources committee was told yesterday. Almost a third of those who do apply and are accepted never bother to finish training, said the National Police Federation: “Policing is no longer considered as attractive a career as it used to be.”
Hurried Covid contracting and outright theft of Public Health Agency supplies cost taxpayers more than $106 million, records show. The Agency said it did its best: “We are moving as quickly as possible to wire transfer money now.”
The Canadian Journalism Foundation is nominating for an “excellence award” disputed accounts of an anti-pipeline protest. A federal memo contradicts media versions of the 2021 arrest of a reporter for The Narwhal, a subsidized environmental advocacy website: “My arrest actually makes me a big part of a national reckoning with press freedoms.”
A majority of Canadians support cuts to the number of mail delivery days to three a week if it saves money at the post office, says in-house Privy Council Office research. Cabinet in the past six years has spent $4.5 million polling questions about Canada Post, records show: “We were not aware of the polling.”
The Department of Canadian Heritage denies contract splitting in a case of $42,000 divvied into 22 separate payments to a favoured supplier. The limit on contracts that may be issued without public notice is $40,000: “The vendor submitted individual invoices per days worked.”
The Department of Industry acknowledges higher risks of default under a proposal to issue taxpayer-guaranteed lines of credit for small business. “Lines of credit are assumed to have a higher loss rate than term loans,” about 50 percent higher, the department said: “Small businesses have evolved.”
