Political aides have misled Canadians on pandemic management, the Commons health committee was told. An MP cited internal emails by James Fitz-Morris, a former CBC reporter now working as director of communications to the Minister of Public Works: “Mostly true!”
Ballot boxes should not be placed in police stations, says the New Democratic Party. Elections Canada confirms electors in one riding were asked to cast their votes in a police station in the 2019 campaign: “It is hard to contemplate a greater threat to the voting franchise than to force electors to enter a police station.”
Cross-border drivers who fail to show proof of a Covid test may face criminal prosecution under pandemic controls introduced at midnight last night. “There may be substantial fines going up to as much as $3,000 or even a criminal prosecution,” said Public Safety Minister Bill Blair: “Cancel your vacation plans. Stay home.”
The newspaper promises
to put readers’ interest first
while making an impact
on people’s lives.
I turn to the Science section.
Here’s a study, four years old,
about phytoplankton;
said to release half the world’s oxygen
into the atmosphere.
The process requires iron;
the researcher speculates
where that might come from.
At the bottom of the page,
mystery solved:
feces of whales
10 million times richer in iron
than the ocean water.
I take a deep breath.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
The Senate will spend $150,000 on new desks for employees working from home. Critics questioned why staff could not use kitchen tables or other common household surfaces: “It sounds good in theory.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday said he fears some Canadians won’t take the Covid vaccine if they could get one. Internal research by the Public Health Agency shows 45 percent of Canadians will wait to see if the medicines are safe: “If I tell everyone the vaccine is safe, well, we know how people feel about politicians.”
The pandemic has claimed its first national airline. Cabinet last evening approved the sale of Air Transat with more than a half-billion owed customers holding pre-paid tickets on cancelled flights: “We can’t wait years until there’s a widely available vaccine to get back in the air.”
The taxpayer-owned Canada Infrastructure Bank faulted for failing to finish any projects spent more than $145,000 on marketing and “communications” last year, accounts show. Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna in a letter to the board said the Bank “must be open and transparent.”
The Senate will undertake “unconscious bias training,” the committee on internal economy agreed yesterday. It follows complaints from one senator of “racist micro-aggression” on Parliament Hill: “People don’t stop to think of how these acts impact on others.”
As many as 100,000,000 individual pandemic relief payments have been issued since the outbreak of Covid-19, says the Department of Public Works. Payments include relief for the jobless, business, parents with school-age children, students and retirees: “You don’t know precisely how much money is being spent.”
A federal executive defied Prime Ministerial orders by hosting an executive lunch at an upscale restaurant, records show. Francis McGuire, the $226,000-a year president of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, yesterday did not comment: “Limit the number of people you see to what is absolutely essential.”
The federal pandemic response has been so secretive, bureaucratic and haphazard “it is hard to have faith,” one Liberal MP emailed colleagues and staff. “I am sorry if the Party may be pissed off,” wrote MP Dr. Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay-Rainy River, Ont.), a former consultant to the World Health Organization: “It is hard now to accept reassurances that we are prepared, that we are doing all of the right things, when we can never, ever get any specifics.”
Thirteen percent of taxpayers refuse to surrender their bank account information to the government for direct deposit of refunds, data show. The rate of distrust is highest in Atlantic Canada and the Prairies: “I don’t want to share my banking information, and that’s just how it is.”
Drug impaired driving is up though federal researchers say data cannot confirm a direct link to legalization of marijuana. Parliament in 2018 allowed random roadside testing of suspected cannabis users under threat of $1,000 fines: “It is no surprise.”
The 3M Company won millions in pandemic subsidies after hiring a Liberal lobbyist who boasted of “navigating the government and getting things done,” according to internal emails. Kevin Bosch, former deputy director of the Liberal Research Bureau, yesterday did not comment: “Resolve an issue that Kevin Bosch urgently raised.”
