Jerry Dias, 63, founding president of the nation’s largest private sector union, is under investigation over dealings in Unifor finances. The union’s national treasurer ordered an outside inquiry, officials said yesterday. Unifor’s constitution states: “The financial practices of the union shall at all times meet the highest available standard of accounting.”
The federal debt clock is back on nationwide tour after clicking over to a trillion. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation yesterday said it will drive the clock from Victoria to the Atlantic shore “to show Canadians from coast to coast what it’s like to watch Canada’s trillion dollar debt go up in real time.”
Federal consultants compiled a list of 25 reliable journalists to be instructed on correct ways to cover general elections, according to Access To Information records. The consultants led by a former Toronto Star executive would not comment: “One way or another it falls to government to ensure the new media ecosystem does not operate in ways contrary to the Canadian principles of peace, order and good government.”
Canada has proven it can collect a carbon tax that “keeps life affordable,” says the Department of Environment. The federal tax rises again April 1 to the equivalent of 12¢ a litre on gasoline: “There is a clear cost from a changing climate so it can’t be free.”
A costly federal ban on six types of single use plastics will do little to save the environment, say independent researchers. The most commonly discarded plastic is not covered by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s ban, data show: “This ban fails to target litter categories that appear to make up most single use plastic litter found in Canada.”
The Department of Health almost four years after legalizing marijuana has identified “knowledge gaps” on health risks. The department on Saturday proposed to rewrite regulations to promote more cannabis research: “I worry about the discussion around legalization because it insinuates that this is a healthy thing to do.”
Recruitment of new Mounties continues to be a fraction of needs, an RCMP union has told the Commons public safety committee. The National Police Federation counted only 380 graduates from the RCMP police academy in Regina last year, about a third of requirements: “The backlog it has created will be felt for years.”
Minimum wage goes up.
Tim Hortons
sends a letter to employees,
cancelling paid breaks,
cutting health benefits.
Some say
that’s not the Canadian way.
I read the letter carefully.
It starts with
“It is with great regret”;
a different way of saying
“We are sorry”.
What’s more Canadian?
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, writes for Blacklock’s each and every Sunday)
Cabinet’s $327,000-a year chief science advisor has not published an annual report in two years despite a requirement to account for the “state of federal government science.” Records show Dr. Mona Nemer, an Ottawa chemist, instead spent nearly a quarter million flying from Yokohama to Paris since her appointment: “Science is everywhere.”
The CBC has retracted another false Freedom Convoy story that suggested foreigners played a large role in the protest. The claim was made on a radio broadcast of The World This Hour, self-described as “Canada’s most trusted audio newscast.”
“On February 10 in a report about the protest convoy CBC Radio’s The World This Hour incorrectly said GoFundMe ended a fundraiser for the protesters over questionable donations to the group,” the network said in a statement. No explanation was given.
CBC News at the time claimed to have completed an exclusive analysis of Freedom Convoy donations and found suspicious contributions from foreigners. “The donations identified by CBC News are likely only a fraction of all the donations made by people outside of Canada,” read a February 10 website story headlined “Convoy Protest Received Hundreds Of Donations That Appeared To Be From Abroad.”
“In recent days questions have emerged about how the protesters raised so much money so quickly and where it came from,” said the article. “Before GoFundMe shut down the protest convoy’s crowdfunding page and announced donors would be refunded it had attracted more than 120,000 donations amounting to more than $10 million.”
A second story that same day went further in questioning Freedom Convoy contributions. “An analysis of GoFundMe donations by CBC News has revealed at least one third of them had been made by donors who chose to remain anonymous or who listed names that were obviously fictitious or political commentary.”
Both stories were by Elizabeth Thompson, a CBC reporter who spoke negatively of protesting truckers at a public meeting of the Parliamentary Press Gallery on February 15. “Personally I felt a little uncomfortable because there were all these guys roaming around the street,” said Thompson.
GoFundMe executives in March 3 testimony at the Commons public safety committee confirmed foreigners comprised a small portion of convoy donors, that most contributions were small, and that a check of credit card records found no evidence of involvement by terrorist groups, neo-Nazis or other known criminals. “Our records show 88 percent of donated funds originated in Canada,” said Juan Benitez, president of GoFundMe.
Canada’s top anti-terror financing regulator also described convoy fundraising as harmless. “There were people around the world who were fed up with Covid and were upset and saw the demonstrations,” Barry McKillop, deputy director of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, testified February 24 at the Commons finance committee. “I believe they just wanted to support the cause.”
The CBC on February 3 corrected an earlier television story suggesting Russians were behind the Freedom Convoy. Television host Nil Koksal in a January 28 broadcast of Power And Politics claimed “there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows or perhaps even instigating it from the outside.”
The claim was false. “A clarification note was added,” the CBC said in a statement.
By Staff
The Department of Transport that regulates national airports does an inadequate job of managing its own, says an internal audit. Investigators found favouritism in contracting, misuse of government credit cards and unexplained spending at seven small, federally-owned airfields: “Employees have side jobs, family relations work together and business partners are friends.”
A Parliament Hill ban on lobbyist-paid interns is unfair, says the corporate-sponsored Canadian Political Science Association. The practice was prohibited four years ago by Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion as a clear conflict of interest: “They are not volunteers because they are paid by the organization that places them.”
Children’s participation in sports has declined so sharply it could affect future Olympic programs, says the Department of Canadian Heritage. Staff blamed high costs but made no mention of cabinet’s 2017 repeal of a fitness tax credit: “This could result in a gap in the number of high performance athletes competing in a decade or so.”
MPs have quietly dropped a committee investigation into a mystery woman who jumped on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during Freedom Convoy protests. Cabinet blamed convoy truckers for the incident though the woman was never identified nor arrested and Ottawa police would not testify: “We describe this as a unique demonstration.”
Statistics Canada for the first time is collecting data on the number of stolen and smuggled firearms used in gun crimes. However it “may take a few years” to compile figures from police nationwide, it said: ‘Who owned it? How it was stored? Was the owner licensed?’
