The Department of Finance yesterday declined to spell out $14.2 billion in unidentified spending outlined in its Fall Economic Statement. “$14.2 billion, that’s a big chunk of change,” said Conservative MP Marty Morantz (Charleswood-St. James, Man.): "It’s an awfully large sum of money."
Green Party leader Elizabeth May privately circulated unsubstantiated media allegations of Kremlin involvement in the Freedom Convoy, records show. “Hair raising,” she wrote in a confidential email to cabinet: "We have to wake up and take on this cancerous growth in our democracy."
The parent company that runs Global News is lobbying Parliament for direct cash grants to subsidize employees’ pay. The Commons finance committee yesterday released a petition by Corus Entertainment Inc. seeking 25 percent payroll rebates: "It remains unclear why Canadian broadcast journalists should be entitled to any less."
Air passengers face a two-year wait on service complaints filed with the Canadian Transportation Agency. The federal regulator yesterday acknowledged only 1 in 5,000 Canadians will file a complaint over delayed flights, denial of boarding or damaged luggage: "Our current backlog is 30,000 complaints."
The Department of Finance privately ridiculed its own inflated claims of economic hardship blamed on the Freedom Convoy, records show. Bloomberg News figures repeatedly cited by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland were “too cute,” wrote the department’s director general of economic analysis: "Seems large to me?!"
Storage of mobile field hospitals will cost taxpayers more than $135 million this year, records show. “This is something I was completely unaware of,” said Public Works Minister Helena Jaczek. The storage costs follow a sole-sourced $150 million contract to SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. for field hospitals: "That is not exactly directed to preventing or treating Covid."
Liberal political aides were angry over the number of soldiers, sailors and air crew who sympathized with the Freedom Convoy, records show. The RCMP had so many members support protesters it issued a 35-page guide “regarding the participation of current or prior employees” in street demonstrations: "How the f—k many?"
Credit union depositors who made Freedom Convoy protest signs were reported to police, records show. Desjardins Group, one of the country’s largest credit unions, also reported customers who made “suspicious” purchases of fuel: "We are waiting for more instructions."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act sets a precedent for future leaders in confronting divisive protests, civil rights advocates warned at the close of the Freedom Convoy inquiry. Trudeau defended his actions on the 43rd day of hearings: 'This invocation of the Act will then open the floodgates to the Act being used again and again and again.'
A poem: “The news channel brings stories from the storm into my living room. My eyes to the screen; my heart skips a beat…”
1968 is so layered in mythology it takes a surgeon’s scalpel to cut to the facts. Historian Paul Litt of Carleton University deftly slices and trims until the truth emerges in Trudeaumania. Even in death Pierre Trudeau remains a polarizing figure. Professor Litt traces the phenomenon to that long-ago campaign.
Yes, Trudeaumania was invented by media, writes Litt: “Yet the media could not have made Trudeau without a complicit audience.” Most strikingly, it could never happen exactly the same way again. The ’68 phenomenon was a collision at the intersection of time and place. Many political fixers have schemed to recreate the experience, and many have failed.
“For those caught up in the mania, 1968 was a historic turning point in which Canada left its dowdy colonial past behind and assumed a new autonomous identity as a model modern liberal democracy,” writes Litt. “They may have been deluding themselves, but since nations are fictions with real-world effects, Trudeaumania had lasting influence.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in a confidential videoconference with bankers said she “couldn’t agree more” with a recommendation that cabinet deploy armed soldiers against the Freedom Convoy. “It is a threat to our democracy,” said Freeland: "All options are on the table."
Cabinet’s “central concern” in freezing Freedom Convoy accounts was that angry depositors might yell at bankers, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday. Freeland elaborated on worries she raised at a secret February 19 cabinet meeting about bank employees’ well-being: "My central concern was, you know, that some poor teller not get yelled at."
Perrin Beatty, a former Conservative minister who wrote the Emergencies Act, privately warned cabinet “lots of long term issues” would follow its use of the law against the Freedom Convoy. “I am worried,” Beatty texted the finance minister: "I am particularly concerned about the radicalization of people who would normally be law-abiding."
Small business confidence is falling amid fears of a Christmas recession, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said yesterday. A members’ questionnaire found “the 12-month index is the lowest recorded since 2009 outside of recessions.”
