Payday loans are ungodly, the Liberal chair of the Commons finance committee said yesterday. The remarks followed new data that eight percent of single parents in Canada borrow money at criminal interest rates: “That’s usury.”
The Department of Health in internal memos boasted it was completely prepared for Covid-19 and “working exactly as it should”. Records show Health Minister Patricia Hajdu believed the risk to Canadians was low as late as March 9, two days before the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic: “This is difficult work as you can imagine.”
Twelve percent of Canadians wouldn’t take a Covid-19 vaccination even if it was available, Statistics Canada said yesterday. Two thirds of people, 68 percent, said they were very likely to get immunized: ‘How large a threat is the anti-vaxer movement in Canada?’
The Transportation Safety Board says poor driving habits, not shorter daylight hours, are likely to blame for a statistical spike in rail crossing accidents in winter months. The Board yesterday called train-car collisions “one of the most serious types of rail accidents” with 26 deaths last year: “We need to do more work.”
People cannot be forced to hand over their health cards for ordinary ID, says Saskatchewan’s privacy commissioner. “It is personal health information,” wrote Commissioner Ronald Kruzeniski.
The Commons industry committee yesterday opened hearings on whether Canada’s three largest supermarket chains breached anti-trust law. Executives “should be ashamed” for the simultaneous rollback of $2 an hour pandemic bonuses for employees, said Unifor president Jerry Dias: “You would think people would have some integrity.”
The RCMP Veterans’ Association yesterday accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of “humiliating us” by kneeling at a Black Lives Matter protest. The reaction followed remarks by a Liberal-appointed Senator lamenting a “wave of hatred and disrespect” against police: “Our renowned organization has served our country with honour, integrity and devotion for the last 147 years.”
Mismanagement of pandemic supplies by the Public Health Agency of Canada was “my worst nightmare”, a senior advisor to a 2003 SARS Commission said yesterday. Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam failed in her legal duty to stockpile masks, the Commons health committee was told: “They weren’t ready.”
A federal audit has uncovered sweetheart contracting in the Department of Fisheries, including cases where “winning bidders and evaluators were former colleagues”. Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic cited numerous irregularities in the department that awarded more than half a billion in contracts over the past two years: “There were six cases where the department appears to have manipulated the number of bidders invited to bid.”
The Department of Environment says mills and factories in East Asia – it would not identify China by name – account for most airborne mercury pollution in Canada. Chinese mines, mills and factories were blamed for high mercury deposits at remote Canadian lakes and mountains: “97% of mercury deposited in Canada as a result of human activities originates outside the country.”
Two cabinet advisors hired to vet press applications for millions in federal subsidies made anti-Opposition remarks and publicly ridiculed editorial standards at a newspaper that endorsed Conservatives in past elections. One appointee, Professor Karim Karim of Ottawa, in a Twitter comment said Stephen Harper played the “politics of hate.”
The Canada Revenue Agency did not comment. Cabinet last March 24 named the five-member Independent Advisory Board on Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures to process applications from publishers seeking $595 million in subsidies.
“Our government remains committed to supporting a vibrant journalism industry while respecting the core principle of journalistic independence,” Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier said at the time. “The members of the Independent Advisory Board are all highly respected in their fields. I thank them for agreeing to help deliver unprecedented support for Canadian journalism organizations and to ensure the vitality of our democracy.”
The part-time job pays $450 a day plus expenses. Minister Lebouthillier has final say on which newspapers are “qualified” to receive payroll rebates of up to $13,750 per newsroom employee and a fifteen percent tax credit for digital subscribers.
Professor Karim of Carleton University’s School of Journalism in separate 2015 comments on his Twitter account criticized Postmedia Network and then-Prime Minister Harper. “It shouldn’t, but the National Post and Postmedia have had a long history of owner interference,” he wrote in one. “Stephen Harper plays the politics of hate against Muslims,” he wrote in the other.
“Yes, I did write the tweets,” said Professor Karim. “No, I do not see a problem regarding my advisory role. If there is the slightest issue of bias against any media applicant, I will discuss it with the Board and recuse myself in the cases of conflict of interest.”
Another panelist described Conservatives as “bullies” and expressed enthusiastic support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Margo Goodhand of Victoria, a former Winnipeg Free Press editor, made the remarks in an April 18, 2013 Free Press column headlined, “We Need Justin To Silence Bullies”.
“I am not a member of the Liberal Party…but I’m watching new Liberal leader Justin Trudeau these days as he goes up against Team Harper, and I have to admit that I wish him well,” wrote Goodhand: “I need him to stand up to the bullies.”
“Canadian politics needs to take a new tack,” wrote Goodhand. “And Trudeau has the power and the momentum right now to show us the way.”
“The real Trudeau appears to be earnest and forthright enough, an open book compared to Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” wrote Goodhand. “He’s not intellectual like his father, Pierre. He is possibly more like his mother Margaret, more emotional and empathetic…”
The Department of Canadian Heritage declined comment on the appointees.
Parliament approved press subsidies after a publishers’ group News Media Canada hired lobbyist Isabel Metcalfe, a Liberal Party donor, ex-candidate and campaign worker for Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna. Records show Metcalfe had seventy-nine separate meetings with federal officials.
Metcalfe’s husband Herbert was an adviser to then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion in 2008 and a longtime Party organizer until 2015, when he pled guilty to evading $396,259 in taxes. He was sentenced to a year’s house arrest in Ottawa. “I’m a large-L, hard core Liberal,” Mrs. Metcalfe earlier told a reporter.
By Staff 
Federally-funded research says the World Health Organization was too quick to praise China and “created confusion” over the true peril of Covid-19. The study was financed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research: “China’s actions were praised on multiple occasions by the WHO without scientific background.”
Taking the Lord’s name in vain is not Parliament’s business, says a justice department Access To Information memo. Parliament in 2018 repealed a law on criminal blasphemy last used to prosecute distributors of a 1979 Monty Python film: “It stems from an antiquated perception that an attack on Christianity was an attack on government.”
McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada has won $500 in costs from a customer who claimed he was poisoned by an Egg McMuffin. Evidence included data on McMuffin sales from clients who did not become violently ill: “Symptoms may have been triggered by dehydration related to gastroenteritis or food poisoning.”
People seeking casual sex should avoid bars and consider meeting outdoors, says the Public Health Agency of Canada. Federal epidemiologists made the remarks under questioning by a women’s magazine at a Parliament Hill briefing on the pandemic: “Is there any way for single people hoping to have sex this summer to do so safely?”
