Federal researchers will spend three years and $12.6 million attempting to substantiate claimed benefits of a Trudeau-era venture, the $1 billion National School Food Program. “More data are needed,” the Canadian Institutes of Health Research said in an internal memo.
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “When did it all fall apart? A bill given Royal assent? A memo sent on some Friday in November? A million bad decisions?…”
Canadians of a certain vintage can still recall when DDT was found in every kitchen cupboard and it was considered eccentric not to throw candy wrappings out the car window. The Ontario Department of Highways used to spend $1 million a year clearing roadside litter.
This did not change by osmosis. It took years of litigation and dramatic protest by a comparatively few people. “It was a burn-out job but you loved it,” one organizer tells author Ryan O’Connor. “It was what needed to be done so you did it.”
O’Connor’s First Green Wave chronicles the birth of environmental activism in Canada. It is a fresh account of Pollution Probe, a citizens’ committee that grew from the University of Toronto to include chapters from Halifax to Regina. Pollution Probe was never a mass movement; its membership peaked at some 1,500. The Kinsmen Club had 16,000. Yet its impact was far-reaching.
Federal employees who witness criminality at work are now required to report it under a revised Code Of Conduct, says a Department of Public Works report. It follows in-house government research showing few employees were eager to “rock the boat.”
A federal program to name newsrooms deemed reliable and trustworthy is not an attempt to profile Liberal Party-friendly media, says a lead researcher. “There is no role for government oversight,” said Professor Colette Brin of Laval University: 'Criteria are not related to editorial opinions, political perspectives or relationships with government.'
MPs yesterday at a public hearing wept over Canadians who suffered death or injury from Covid shots, including a Conservative parliamentary aide. “I don’t think we have properly acknowledged the harm that was done to many people,” said Conservative MP Blaine Calkins (Ponoka-Didsbury, Alta.).
There is no chance based on current projections that cabinet’s housing targets will be met, new CMHC figures showed yesterday. Data contradicted claims by Housing Minister Gregor Robertson that cabinet was “building big.”
A second Liberal MP yesterday sponsored a petition to end decades of free trade with Israel. The action by MP Pat Weiler (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast) followed a Department of Foreign Affairs announcement Tuesday that Canada would boycott Jewish imports from West Bank territories: "Suffering in Gaza has gone on too long."
A government-approved Local News Directory is paying researchers to list media deemed trustworthy and reliable, according to Access To Information records released yesterday. The initiative follows disclosures federal managers circulated blacklists of reporters who met with government disapproval: 'It will help people struggling to find news they can trust.'
Prime Minister Mark Carney effective yesterday repealed a requirement that new interprovincial pipelines be subject to the Impact Assessment Act. First Nations opposed the change: "I am from Alberta. I am direct and I do things."
The growth of tent cities dampened a Parks Canada program to promote camping skills for immigrant families, says an internal report. Overnight camping parties in public parks had to be cancelled due to conflicts and criticism, it said: "The emergence of this issue created a challenge."
Ex-cabinet advisor Amira Elghawaby yesterday described 9/11 observances as marking “a difficult 25 years” for Muslims. The former Toronto Star columnist told reporters the decades following the terrorist attacks have seen “dangerous narratives about who we are.”
The Competition Bureau has dropped any investigation into whether cabinet breached its own law against false advertising. An MP who filed a formal complaint yesterday said the decision left “an absurd double standard.”
The Department of Agriculture in a rare admission has cited unnamed employees for scientific malpractice. Government-wide, no federal agency to date has attempted to document instances of plagiarism in federal science: "Examples of breaches may include but are not limited to fabrication, falsification or misrepresentation of research data."
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday urged Canadians to join in “sending a message” by holidaying at home. The Prime Minister’s Office would not explain why Carney vacationed in Italy in August: "Every time we choose to buy Canadian and travel in Canada we’re sending a message."
