Federal planners propose to downsize living quarters for the Governor General. Vice-regal appointees currently live in the palatial 95,000-square foot Rideau Hall, the biggest official residence in Canada: ‘It is a less than private space.’
The Department of Canadian Heritage in a confidential memo counts 10,000 media job cuts nationwide in the past twelve years. Canadians should be resigned to less news coverage, the memo said: “Trusted media outlets are shrinking.”
The judge in a federal $3.5 million bid rigging trial questioned the point of prosecutor’s questioning of casual 2009 meetings between contractors and Library & Archives Canada managers. Prosecutors allege three archives employees gave inside tips to a favoured consultant in breach of federal law: “Why do you say that?”
Costs to clean up contaminated federal lands across Canada are now estimated at $6.3 billion, the highest figure to date. Environment Canada said only a fraction of more than 23,000 abandoned military bases, factory yards and other sites have been assessed: “If a site has not been assessed they don’t have to include it.”
A judge has dismissed a legal challenge of millions in subsidies for Canada’s last federally-owned marine shipper. Grants to cover yearly losses by Marine Atlantic Inc. are a political decision, the Federal Court ruled: ‘The core of the complaint is subsidization is anti-competitive.’
In early February 2018
Ottawa marked its own
Groundhog Day.
The 2 billion dollar LRT project
– “On time and on budget” –
officially delayed.
Six more months of digging,
said the Mayor who, apparently,
saw his shadow.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
The Department of Public Works has fired two employees for using marijuana on the jobsite. Staff yesterday did not comment. Cabinet has no guidelines for enforcement of workplace drug bans under its bill to legalize recreational cannabis: “Employees had consumed marijuana within working hours.”
Crown prosecutors yesterday alleged a former Library & Archives Canada manager breached a federal ethics code by accepting a free lunch from a contractor. The testimony came in a $3.5 million bid rigging trial at Ontario Superior Court: “You didn’t see any conflict?”
Cabinet’s tax hike on family-owned businesses is worth about 90 percent more than the Department of Finance claimed, says the Parliamentary Budget Office. Analysts yesterday calculated an obscure tax rule that took effect January 1 will raise $356 million in new federal revenue this year, not the $190 million reported by the department: “We don’t know if, and how, the Department of Finance scaled its estimate.”
Three years after losing a Supreme Court judgment, a federal agency says it still wants lawyers to report on client transactions, according to Access To Information records. Staff at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) complained of “suspicious” dealings in the legal profession: ‘Large cash transactions are not being reported.’
The Canadian promoters of the Consumer Choice Award are in Federal Court alleging bootleg use of unauthorized prize ribbons. The company alleges one contractor improperly claimed it was a seven-year winner: ‘False representations undermine the credibility.’
MPs yesterday demanded cash penalties on Canada’s two largest railways over service complaints. The Commons agriculture committee postponed til March 19 a full hearing on grievances by grain shippers: “The only thing CN and CP react to is fines.”
Working conditions at Library & Archives Canada were “crazy” and uncoordinated, Ontario Superior Court was told yesterday. The remarks came in a second day of testimony by a former archives manager charged in a $3.5 million bid-rigging case: “The place was exploding, blowing up; morale was in the tubes.”
A federal money-laundering watchdog dropped more than a dozen prosecutions after being cited for misconduct in Federal Court, say Access To Information documents. Judges criticized the Financial Transactions & Reports Analysis Centre for arbitrary fines on small business over minor breaches of the law: “For all we know, the percentages might have been plucked out of the air.”
A federal computer surplus program recycled just over a third, 36 percent, of nearly a million devices collected at taxpayers’ expense, according to records. The Department of Industry said the program was intended to be environmentally friendly: “There is a continued need.”
