Cabinet says it was never told who gave a custom sculpture of Chief Justice Richard Wagner to the Supreme Court of Canada for display in its Grand Entrance Hall. The Court’s Registrar yesterday said it was “reviewing the relevant information.”
The post office promises to Buy Canadian in its seven-year program to replace all doorstep mail delivery with community mailboxes. Cabinet put conversion costs at over a billion: "What are the details of each contract?"
Old Age Security costs will top a record $92 billion this year, more than forecast by the Department of Finance, says the Chief Actuary. The number of Canadians over 65 is growing by a half million people annually in a country that statistically is becoming as grey as Japan or Italy, actuaries told Parliament: 'Examine historical short to long term trends and apply judgment.'
Green MP Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.), 72, in her final address to Parliament as Party leader said she felt foolish for siding with Liberals when it counted in past confidence votes. “I was a fool,” she said: "I see clear-eyed now."
Federal agents have not seized a single shipment of slave-made imports in Canada in the last 10 years, new records show. Cabinet in a 2021 Ministerial Mandate letter had promised to “eradicate forced labour from Canadian supply chains and ensure Canadian businesses operating abroad do not contribute to human rights abuses.”
Cabinet proposes to end homelessness by 2036 after abandoning an earlier target to end homelessness by 2030. Failure to achieve results showed it was “a hard problem,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters: 'Previous well-intentioned efforts have fallen short.'
Nearly a quarter million temporary foreign residents in Canada now eligible for permanent status are mainly Ukrainian war refugees and migrant workers, says Prime Minister Mark Carney. Cabinet announced the quota in its budget last Thursday without specifying whether it applied to illegal immigrants facing deportation: "Who are these people?"
The Department of Veterans Affairs will not recognize Indigenous fighters of pre-Confederation Canada as veterans. The honour was sought by the Assembly of First Nations: "Veterans Affairs Canada defines a veteran as ‘any former member of the Canadian Armed Forces who successfully completed basic training and was honourably discharged."
The Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to take over management of the largest private military cemetery in the nation at a $15.9 million cost. The National Field of Honour at Pointe-Claire, Que. was established in 1929 by private donors as a dignified resting place for impoverished veterans facing a pauper’s grave: "No man who has given his services in defence of his country should be buried as a pauper."
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “The geese flee south in the moonlight, a weird eerie sight. Silent dark shadows gliding in that putrefying light. The report of a rifle: a shock, a flash…”
“It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk,” wrote English author Rebecca West. This is enough to make you wary of history that smells like violets.
Winston Churchill & Mackenzie King casts these “two elderly statesmen” as wartime peers out to save democracy. Author Terry Reardon is struck by parallels. Both were Sagittarians born in 1874, both had blue eyes and “large egos,” both stood 5’6”.
In chronicling their fifty-year acquaintance Reardon sees two dynamos of the Second World War. Well, not exactly. Churchill’s own Foreign Office in 1940 described King as “lukewarm about any war measure which he cannot show to redound to Canada’s own advantage.”
Cabinet will add $182.4 billion in new borrowing over the next three years under a budget plan tabled yesterday. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne justified ongoing deficit spending as reasonable: "I stand by our projections."
The head of a federal anti-money laundering agency that failed an October 29 audit yesterday declared auditors were all wrong. “I do not agree,” Stéphane Sirard, interim CEO of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, told the Commons public accounts committee: "That is deeply disturbing."
Cabinet will grant permanent residency to nearly a quarter million foreigners in Canada on temporary permits, according to a budget document yesterday. The Department of Finance did not specify whether it would include amnesty for illegal immigrants subject to deportation: "Up to 200,000 temporary residents already in Canada would have the opportunity to become permanent residents."
Cabinet-approved media will gain another $539 million in federal subsidies including extension of pandemic payroll bonuses that were to expire in seven weeks, plus $300 million more for the CBC. Measures detailed in yesterday’s budget followed “terrific” praise from the chief lobbyist for paid publishers: "The Government of Canada, I have to say, has been terrific."
