The Supreme Court has sidestepped a case of alleged unfair tax collections by Air Canada. A group of passengers had sought unsuccessfully to press class action claims the airline levied taxes that travellers did not have to pay: ‘The issue can be visited later’.
The Department of Agriculture is accused of skewing a multi-million dollar subsidy program to benefit large corporate farms over family-run operations. One Liberal Senator proposed that legislators investigate terms of grant programs under the Farm Income Protection Act: “Something is totally out of whack”.
The Department of Canadian Heritage is studying the viability of magazine publishers that received more than $55 million in federal grants last year. “Can the print magazine survive the digital age?” authorities asked in a federal notice. One periodical, Maclean’s, received $1.5 million in grants: “This is egregious”.
A fatal gun attack on Parliament Hill comes only days after lawmakers were assured of “successful” security precautions at the Commons and Senate. The Centre Block assault was the worst security breach in Parliament in 48 years.
Staff and eyewitnesses in the Centre Block reported hearing three separate bursts of automatic gunfire from the Hall of Honour, a central corridor leading from the Peace Tower to the Library of Parliament. More than 30 rounds were fired in total, “Bam-bam-bam,” one witness said.
Staff inside the building immediately locked doors and shut lights after the initial shots were heard at approximately 9:58 am yesterday. No shouts or cries were heard; after the last echoes of gunfire, witnesses in the Centre Block said the silence was broken only by the squawk of police radios.
Scores of people were trapped in the Centre Block at the time of the gun battle, including kitchen staff, postal workers, assistants from MP and Senate offices and reporters working in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Several fled by squeezing through a third floor window onto a Senate roof, then descending by construction scaffolding used for repairs to century-old stonework.
“Items in your pockets! Keep your hands free – move quickly!” said one contractor who ran to the scene to assist staffers attempting to flee the Centre Block. Witnesses said one distraught woman appeared ready to leap from a fourth floor window: “If you’re going to jump, jump on me!” said a construction worker. The woman was taken to safety down scaffolding by contractors.
Armed city police officers ringed the Senate, guns drawn, as employees sprinted behind the East Block; false police reports at the time suggested a lone gunman had fled inside the 90-metre Peace Tower to use as a sniper’s perch: “Keep down! Keep down!” police shouted as staff fled.
At 11:04 am the first electronic warnings were issued: “RCMP advises if you are in downtown Ottawa to stay away from windows”; and again at 11:29 am: “ALL BUILDINGS are currently in lockdown. Follow the instructions from Security Services. THIS MEANS stay in your office.”
A stonemason who led the rescue of dozens of people from the Centre Block declined to give his name. Pausing once behind police barricades, he called his wife and then unwrapped a stick of chewing gum: “I have fear mouth,” he said.
The gun attack was the worst breach of security on Parliament Hill since 1966, when a lone bomber killed himself by detonating homemade explosives in a Centre Block washroom near the House of Commons chamber.
‘We Literally Do A Risk Assessment’
The attack followed recent assurances to MPs that Parliament had adopted sophisticated security to protect legislators in what remains a public building. “We’ve been successful I guess in responding to increased security threats through a discreet and measured way,” Sergeant-At-Arms Kevin Vickers told the Commons’ House affairs committee October 9.
Hill security and police conduct daily briefings on “risk assessments”, Vickers said: “Each and every morning the RCMP, House of Commons Security Services, Canadian Security Establishment Service and Ottawa City Police have a conference call; in that conference call we go over everything.”
“We do literally a threat and risk assessment of any threats to the precinct and to members each and every day,” Vickers continued. “Then our security posture is either raised or lowered or maintained based on that threat and risk assessment.”
RCMP yesterday did not indicate Parliament heightened security following an October 20 incident in which a Québec jihadist ran down two Canadian soldiers outside a federal building in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, southeast of Montréal.
“Should there be a heightened incident going on somewhere that we’re concerned about, what we do is put more plainclothes armed officers out among the precinct,” Vickers testified. “That doesn’t interfere with everybody else, but the security posture is raised in congruence to that threat and risk assessment that’s done on a daily basis”.
RCMP are responsible for security on Parliament Hill grounds using armed constables; patrol cars; video surveillance cameras and auto barriers. Mounties screen all vehicles driving onto the Hill, including use of an electronic database with the names and photographs of all permitted staff. Police did not explain how a gunman was able to breach the Hill.
Security inside the building is managed by separate agencies mandated by the House and Senate, including armed guards, metal detectors, X-ray screeners and a mandatory ID badge system introduced in 1982. The Mounties and two parliamentary security services in 2009 established a Master Security Planning Office to coordinate protection measures.
The House of Commons’ annual budget is $413.7 million; total spending on security measures is not disclosed. The Senate Security Service only this past September 29 contracted for seven new X-ray baggage scanners, citing a list of “common prohibited items that the Senate Protective Service may encounter” including firearms, explosives, knives and pepper spray.
Follows September 25 Incident
MPs had begun reviewing Parliament security following a September 25 incident in which police blocked an MP from attending a vote in the House. Yvon Godin, New Democrat member for Acadie-Bathurst, said he was held back by the RCMP as a security precaution to make way for a motorcade by the visiting president of Germany.
“There was an RCMP officer on Bank Street,” Godin said. “I told him that I had to go up to Parliament. He answered me in English, ‘Get on the sidewalk’”; “Well, I am a member of Parliament and I have to go up,” Godin continued: “He answered in a very serious manner. He said, ‘I don’t care, and get on the sidewalk.’”
Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer was also blocked by RCMP from making his way to the Commons during the September 25 state visit. Conservative MP Ted Opitz, a former army reservist who served in Bosnia, described the police conduct at the time as “a failure of leadership”.
“In the parliamentary precinct where the RCMP have primacy, they are supposed to understand the standard operating procedures,” said Opitz, MP for Etobicoke Centre, Ont.; “The fault lies with the leadership.”
By Staff 
Canadians will be paying the second-highest drug prices outside the U.S. without changes to federal rules on costs, warns a federal regulator. Data show Canadians already pay from 10 to 30 percent more for comparable drugs than other countries: “We have been creeping up”.
Pesticides blamed for risking Canada’s $2 billion pollination industry are virtually harmless to bee colonies under normal conditions, a Senate committee has been told. The study was paid for by the chemical manufacturer Bayer: “It’s amazing”.
Conservative bills to create two more commemoration days on the calendar have moved closer to becoming law. The Commons heritage committee unanimously approved a bill to create Lincoln Alexander Day after just 30 minutes of hearings: ‘How many days are left in the year?’
Transport Canada will introduce new fines on unsafe railways nearly eight years after the penalties were proposed by a federal panel. The proposal mirrors fines already levied on civil aviation and federally-regulated marine shippers: ‘Prosecution is very cumbersome’.
Health Canada must curb non-medical prescriptions of pain killers and work to ban the unnecessary use of antibiotics in food production, says a Senate committee report. The study by the Senate science and technology committee warned of excessive use of pharmaceutical chemicals as a public health risk: “We have got to deal with this”.
Cash transactions of as little as $200 or less are being monitored by a federal agency mandated to monitor terror financing, a Senate committee has been told. The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada confirmed it monitors even trivial cash transactions deemed “suspicious” by banks: “It’s way overboard”.
Canada Post will proceed with plans to abolish home mail delivery despite a Federal Court challenge and protest petitions with 202,00 signatures to date, the corporation says. The first service cuts to some 100,000 homeowners were introduced this week in five cities: ‘We’re confident’.
A bill before the Commons would see Parliament enact a U.S.-style “stand by your ad” law on political advertising. MP Kevin Lamoureux, Deputy Liberal House Leader, said his bill is inspired by American practices upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003: “I’m — and I endorsed this message”.
The navy is struggling for ways to decontaminate aging, toxic warships following a failed attempt to turn one PCB-laced destroyer escort into an artificial reef. Four vessels are to be scrapped over the next five years: “The value proposition here doesn’t make sense”.
Raising the minimum wage has no impact on long-term hiring by Canadian employers, says a Unifor study. Research tracked wage data and employment rates over a thirty-year period in concluding that fears of rate hikes as a job-killer are misplaced: “There is no statistical relationship”.
Newly-released federal research points to dismal youth voter turnout in pending civic elections in five provinces. Polling for the Privy Council Office noted Canadians under 34 typically see little connection to civic government: “When was the last time you saw a municipal Twitter feed?”
