Cabinet yesterday tabled a bill to impose sweeping curbs on strikes and circumvent Federal Court challenges on its repeated use of executive powers to quash legal walkouts. Labour Minister Patty Hajdu said she did not like “people fighting with people.”
The Commons science committee yesterday tabled a report on political conflicts at Canadian universities without any mention of anti-Semitism. It was a striking omission, said Opposition MPs: "It is an important topic within the study that should have received more attention."
Swearing-in ceremonies for Governor General Louise Arbour cost $388,733 and counting, cabinet disclosed yesterday. The expense exceeded those run up by Arbour’s predecessor, but compared to $330,000 in talent fees paid by a Crown bank to hire CBC comic Rick Mercer as pitchman: "These are tough times. We have to make tough choices."
The military tolerates too many off-colour jokes despite a decade-long campaign of culture change, says a Department of National Defence report. Investigators said while progress had been made, “sexualized jokes and microaggressions are often overlooked.”
Most renters have not given up on home ownership despite the housing crisis, CMHC said yesterday. Findings of a Canadian Housing Survey showed renters were counting on home equity to help their children and provide security in retirement: "Canadians continue to aspire to housing that better meets their needs yet many still face challenges in doing so."
Cabinet will press ahead with a bill to regulate the internet, says Prime Minister Mark Carney. Bill C-34 is a third attempt to regulate political speech in the name of social stability: "This fall we will press ahead with the Act to protect Canadians online."
Any decision on whether to mandate face and fingerprint scanning of air passengers on domestic flights is up to cabinet, says the federal agency responsible for airport security. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) proposes to introduce biometric scanning on local flights by 2031: "CATSA will not be the authority to determine whether biometrics should be mandatory."
Then-Finance Minister Paul Martin in a secret 1995 cabinet session warned “compound interest is killing us” after decades of deficit spending, newly-declassified records show. Ministers were told to promptly cut billions in spending “come hell or high water.”
A federal manager who called racism a “Canadian reality” has been appointed chair of the Canadian Museum of Immigration. Daniel Quan-Watson’s appointment followed complaints from Museum curators of a “shift in Canadian attitudes towards immigration.”
A simple but serious error affecting the outcome of an election should count as an irregularity under the Canada Elections Act, the Supreme Court of Canada wrote in an explanation Friday of its landmark decision to void the outcome in a lone Québec constituency. Incumbent Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné (Terrebonne, Que.) lost the riding but set the legal precedent: "I think this is an issue that goes beyond party politics."
Poet W.N. Branson writes: The old Company wound down and out of the ashes, rises the Phoenix. A people put on clearance, a pelt for a skin, the Phoenix arises anew…”
Membership in hate groups has long been linked to economic failure. Few millionaires joined the Aryan Nations. More contentious is a theory that all human beings are prone to irrational impulses that pit Catholic versus Protestant, English versus French, white versus Black. “We are hardwired to be ethnocentric,” writes Kenneth Stern, director of New York’s Bard Centre for the Study of Hate.
Stern argues we are programmed through millennia to instincts that long ago meant survival but today make no sense whatsoever. Consider the story of the spider and the sedan. He quotes social psychologist James Waller: “Automobiles kill far more people today than do spiders or snakes. But people are far more averse to spiders and snakes than they are to automobiles. Why? Because for most of our ancestral history, spiders and snakes were a serious threat to our survival and reproduction, whereas automobiles did not exist.”
Confidential 1995 cabinet records declassified yesterday indicate then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien threatened the President of France not to act if Québec voted for independence. France would “find itself isolated in the United Nations,” Chretien said.
A cabinet bill to penalize taxpayers slow to comply with Canada Revenue Agency demands for documents is needlessly harsh and likely unconstitutional, tax experts have told the Commons finance committee. One group, Tax Executives Institute Inc. of Toronto, said under Bill C-31 a single parent in a $750 tax dispute with auditors could be charged $1,500 in penalties: 'It is grossly disproportionate.'
Benefits for seniors and children will cost more than $140 billion annually by 2030, the equivalent of a quarter of the current federal budget, data show. The Budget Office yesterday calculated payouts of children’s benefits grew 16 percent in the past three years: "This is all tied to debt growth."
