Cabinet yesterday exempted a quarter-million truck drivers, marine shippers and other federally-regulated private sector employees from new “work-life balance” regulations. Parliament three years ago passed a bill regulating shift changes and rest breaks for the sector: “Employer and employee groups expressed diverging views.”
Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller’s department spent billions on new water plants without ensuring First Nations had properly-trained managers to run them, says an audit. “We are working on a cascade of priorities,” Miller earlier told reporters.
An estimated 1,250 Canadian citizens and residents are trapped in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said yesterday. Garneau’s department in a Travel Advisory warned they are at risk of kidnapping and terrorist bombings: “Shelter in a safe place.”
Small business debts now total at least $139 billion nationwide, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said yesterday. Some operators are so desperate they have resorted to credit cards for last-chance financing, wrote researchers: “They may never be able to pay it off.”
Green Party leader Annamie Paul yesterday claimed she was victimized by a lying press. Paul’s predecessor also complained of media coverage: “This headline is a lie.”
Pandemic losses mount at VIA Rail. The Crown railway yesterday said operating losses ran to another $241.9 million in the first half of the year: ‘Work continues to minimize operating costs with measures such as temporary layoffs.’
The Department of Health in internal emails cautioned political aides to tone down claims by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that a vaccine was “the best bet to end the pandemic.” Staff warned it was unclear whether a Covid booster shot had to be “reinvented every year.”
Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday confirmed he is in tax arrears with Revenu Québec. Guilbeault would not say if a portion of his $274,500 cabinet salary was being deducted to settle the five figure debt: “Anyone who profits from the system must contribute to it.”
The Income Tax Act should prohibit Canadian corporations from transferring pre-tax profits out of the country, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh said yesterday. “We would end that,” said Singh: “Working people, they don’t have an offshore tax haven.”
The Conservative Party yesterday said it would revive a 2015 Senate bill to ban animal testing by the cosmetics industry. Lobbyists opposed the bill after it was endorsed by Laureen Harper posing with an armful of toy rabbits: “Somehow they’re saving little bunnies. It’s not true.”
Preventing maskless shoppers from visiting retail stores is not discriminatory, a Human Rights Tribunal has ruled. An Edmonton adjudicator dismissed two separate complaints by shoppers who claimed in-store mask rules were a breach of the Human Rights Act, including one who was escorted from a Costco outlet by police: “Limitations to the right to be free from discrimination may be justified.”
Canada’s ambassador to Kabul boasted diplomats were prepared for any emergency in “high-risk missions, for example Afghanistan.” Ambassador Reid Sirrs closed the embassy August 15 and left the country though thousands of Canadian citizens and local supporters remained trapped in Kabul: “You can make mistakes and learn.”
The Prime Minister’s policy director in an internal email referred to an Indigenous group as “a friendly” and urged staff to answer their complaints to prevent them “from popping off at us.” The remarks concerned a confidential text from the Métis Nation of Alberta: “This is completely unacceptable.”
Public Works Minister Anita Anand’s department awarded the first of $81 million in sole-sourced Covid contracts to a Québec supplier one day after exchanging emails with the company, according to court records. The vendor was later sued for alleged breach of contract: “Time was of the essence.”
A final audit of foreign aid to Afghanistan says money was spent unwisely without achieving demonstrable results. International Development Minister Karina Gould made no mention of the findings in praising Canada’s efforts: “There was a pressure to spend, and it was too much and too fast.”
