The National Research Council yesterday placed a five-year order for lab rabbits. It followed a long-running campaign by advocates including Laureen Harper and the Humane Society to curb animal testing in labs: "All animals must be delivered in good health."
Federal managers have created yet more loopholes to avoid complying with cabinet’s “Buy Canadian” policy, Access To Information records show. The Department of Agriculture in an internal memo said it would only comply if it did not cost extra time or money and was “in the public interest.”
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne yesterday disclosed another Canada Post bailout, the third in 16 months to a total $2.72 billion. Terms of the latest line of credit were concealed though previous financing was interest-free without any repayment deadline: 'Revenues will not be sufficient pay all its operating and income charges.'
The Mounties will not assure MPs a confidential partnership agreement with Chinese police signed by the Prime Minister excludes “transfer of personal information of Canadians or permanent residents,” records show. Pro-democracy activists cite Chinese police for atrocities including torture: "Police routinely arrest, detain and harass leaders and members of various ‘illegal’ religious groups."
Canadian companies absorbed most of the cost of cabinet’s counter-tariffs on U.S. goods, the Bank of Canada said yesterday. Researchers called the short-lived policy a rare test of how much tariffs cost consumers in real time: "Tariff pass-through is significant but partial."
Indigenous prisoners are about twice as likely to be gang members as other federal inmates, says the Correctional Service. The agency said Indigenous gang members also tended to be younger and more violent than other prisoners: "Family fragmentation, foster care, etcetera, all play a role."
Staff in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Privy Council Office attended a closed-door March 10 meeting to discuss which reporters would be blacklisted or “accredited,” Access To Information records show. Carney weeks later commemorated World Press Freedom Day by announcing: “A strong, independent and free press both defines and defends our values."
Cabinet will maintain “advancement of religion” as a charitable purpose under the Income Tax Act, says Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne. The pledge followed a Commons finance committee report recommending an end to religious charities: "Canada is not considering amending the Act to remove the advancement of religion."
Benefits for seniors now account for $1 of every $6 in federal spending, says the Budget Office. Pensioners have outnumbered children in Canada since 2023: "Old Age Security is currently the largest federal program."
Liberal MP Lori Idlout (Nunavut) remains a major shareholder in a company that received nearly $600,000 in federal contracts in the past five years, newly-released records show. The company runs Indigenous training workshops for federal employees: "This is a highly specialized training program."
The Department of Foreign Affairs called police after bomb threats targeted a pro-democracy Chinese dance troupe, records show. An RCMP investigation is underway into threats by suspected Chinese Communist Party agents: "The department is aware of the very troubling bombing and mass shooting threats that targeted Shen Yun dance performances."
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “Soft tones and the patina of civility, a people avoiding hardness in a land, where the weather accommodated them…”
Mississauga, like Winnebago or Pontiac, is a vaguely colorful name popularized to describe the bland and conformist without much thought as to what it means or who it represents. Business reporters call this “branding.” In 1967 voters in a Toronto suburb chose “Mississauga” as the name of their city. Few knew then or now who the Mississauga were, or why they vanished.
Mississauga Portraits is a rich, vibrant account of a people who thrived for generations on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Their whole history is erased from the landscape in the same way that revisionists would retouch a painting.
Historian Donald B. Smith recalls that, as a student finalizing his 1975 doctoral thesis, he looked up a 19th century portrait of the Mississauga’s Joseph Sawyer in the art collection of the Toronto Reference Library: “In the oil painting, the head chief of the Mississauga of the Credit appears strong and resolute, neither happy nor sad, without any apparent attitude.”
Investigators uncovered more than a dozen individuals who breached the Lobbying Act and were neither charged nor named publicly, Lobbying Commissioner Nancy Bélanger disclosed yesterday. “What am I supposed to do with that?” Bélanger asked the Commons ethics committee: "Some were former designated public office holders who should not have been lobbying."
A secretary yesterday described as “historic” an attempt by Governor General Mary Simon and her husband Whit Fraser to build a multi-million dollar skating pavilion at Rideau Hall. Corporate fundraising collapsed after Access To Information records exposed the scheme: "Cost estimates range between $4 million to $8 million."
