Cabinet yesterday dismissed broadcaster Tom Clark as Canada’s $232,000-a year New York Consul midway through his term. Liberals had attempted to defend Clark following an outcry over his expenses: “We need you now more than ever.”
Elections Canada has approved a new logo for the Green Party. The “new look” needed federal approval as a legal requirement, said an Access To Information memo: “We hope Canadians notice how fundamentally different we are.”
A federal immigration museum faces years of operating deficits, according to management. The Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax earlier blamed losses in part on changing public opinion about foreigners: “Social cohesion in our country is threatened.”
Friends who help friends file their taxes for a few hundred dollars still owe a duty of care, a court has ruled. Even a “nominal fee” establishes a business relationship, wrote a British Columbia judge: “I accept that friends can become clients and clients can become friends.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand’s department last year fired 25 Canadian diplomats including one caught in secret contact with a foreign government. Neither the fired diplomat nor the foreign state were identified: “A report was received from a partner department that an employee was in contact inappropriately with foreign government officials.”
Cabinet yesterday would not release terms of a multi-billion dollar concession to the U.S. over the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed he agreed to share toll revenues with the United States, a breach of a 2012 agreement: “Carney has negotiated a terrible deal for Canada.”
Canada Post spent nearly $194 million on climate programs amid ever-increasing deficits, service cuts and a 46 percent hike in stamp rates, records show: “It’s a responsibility we embrace.”
The Senate Ethics Officer yesterday would not say whether a Liberal appointee’s vulgar Twitter posts breached a 2019 citation on appropriate conduct on the internet. Senator Charles Adler (Man.) in his official social media account posted a series of insults about the Official Opposition: “The minimum standard of conduct tolerated in the community is not necessarily the same standard of behaviour that a senator must adhere to.”
Airlines will receive $150 million jet fuel loans at below-market rates, says a federal briefing note. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne made no mention of the subsidy in announcing the program June 8: ‘Borrowing costs are favourable relative to market rates for affected companies.’
Canada Post managers last year pocketed nearly $31 million in bonuses even as CEO Doug Ettinger told Parliament the organization was “on the brink.” The disclosures were detailed in financial accounts requested by MPs: “One of the things I lose sleep about is keeping the good people who are with us.”
Eleven percent bonuses for federal executives are proportionate and fair, says a memo to Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali. Bonuses averaging $18,316 per executive were paid last year even as cabinet told Canadians “these are tough times.”
Federal agents cannot keep up with deportation of foreign fugitives, according to figures in a Privy Council briefing note. Current targets are thousands short, data showed: “I liken our inventories to a bathtub; we are constantly scooping water out of that bathtub but the bathtub is filling up.”
Cabinet members and political aides received dozens of free passes to attend the FIFA World Cup including four staff and a summer student in the office of Liberal MP Adam van Koeverden (Burlington North-Milton West, Ont.), Secretary of State for Sport. The tournament cost taxpayers $1.07 billion: ‘Memories will last a generation.’
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne must “restore fiscal credibility,” say investment bankers. A Toronto think tank in a submission to MPs expressed alarm over high deficits: ‘There is no path to balance the budget.’
Long before,
The vacant promises of the elected.
Long before,
The vacant seats in the House.
Indians on foot greeted every lake, river and ridge.
If it’s off, turn back,
If the land feels wrong, it is.
The land watches.
Deracinated, society fractured and dulled.
Organizational structure,
Dictates outcome,
Mob rule by poll.
Respect the routes of the ancestors.
The land remembers and keeps the score.
The Big Water whispers its intent with each ripple.
Heed naught and suffer as fools.
Bureaucracies replicate,
And rush towards singularity,
Insularity results,
And the land waits.
But as the sun awakes in the East and surely rests in the West,
The absence of nature eats at man,
And the land remembers what the traveler has forgotten,
In the land that watches.
By W.N. Branson 
