Cabinet will lay off about 500 federal executives in each of the next two years as an austerity measure, says a Treasury Board memo. Departments and agencies hired nearly 3,000 new appointees in the past decade to a total 10,077, doubling the executive payroll to $1.9 billion a year: "Will there be tough choices to make? Definitely."
Tom Pitfield, a Liberal campaign organizer named to the Senate two months ago, has yet to take up his official duties. Cabinet aides and family declined comment on the peculiar lapse. Senate Administration still lists Pitfield's seat as "vacant."
The Privy Council has declined comment on why it hired the wife of a heavily-subsidized publisher to act as a “senior advisor.” David Skok, editor of The Logic, said he would play no role in coverage of the Liberal government that hired his spouse and paid his news site millions: "We don’t make editorial decisions based on whether it will secure us such funding."
All federal scientific research should be Indigenous focused, says a Department of Natural Resources report. “How can we as public servants be actors in reconciliation?” it asked: "Ideally, the decolonization of research implies full Indigenous ownership of research. However it is still hard."
Canadians widely support a cabinet bill to restrict social media access for children under 16, according to federal focus groups. A minority questioned enforceability and whether “this type of policy could ultimately lead to increased censorship of the internet.”
Blacklock's Reporter pauses today for the 132nd observance of Labour Day in tribute to Canadian workers nationwide. We will be back tomorrow -- The Editor
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “Bluster and energetic, apoplexy, burn brightly in the polity. Mustered against the shore, signs and wonders, manifest…”
It’s unfashionable today to recall the settlement of the West as a romantic era. Yet not every sodbuster was an agent of genocide, and very many sincere people dedicated their lives to building up a young country with genuine affection for the land and its people. When Sam Steele lay on his deathbed in England in 1919, he asked that they bury him in Winnipeg where he started his career as a $1.25-a day constable with the North-West Mounted Police.
Well into the 1950s, generations of Canadian schoolchildren remembered Sam Steele as the most famous policeman in the country. He was renowned not for any extraordinary crime-busting exploit but as an honest lawman in an era of hornswogglers. Steele was famous enough that he published his 1914 memoirs Forty Years In Canada, and his son Harwood in 1956 recounted Steele’s life in The Morning Call, “a truly wretched book” filled with many factual errors, writes historian Rod Macleod, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.
The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations says it doesn’t believe any managers meant to steal paintings, jewelry, sculptures or other works that vanished from a $14.4 million Indigenous art collection. It is not known what happened to scores of artworks used to decorate the department's regional offices: "This went on for decades."
Canadians nationwide have “strong interest” in a proposed $90 billion regional high speed railway in Eastern Ontario and Québec, Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday. In-house cabinet research shows taxpayers are wary of the venture managed by publicly-owned Alto Corporation: "I’m speaking to all Canadians."
A federal judge yesterday ordered Heritage Minister Marc Miller to release portions of censored files on Nazi fugitives in Canada. The Federal Court dismissed a range of excuses invoked by Miller’s department and Library and Archives Canada in refusing to name names: "What could possibly be in it that still needs to be declassified so many decades later?"
Two Maritime casino operators yesterday were fined a total $631,538 for breach of the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act. The latest penalties follow a series of checks on the gaming industry by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre: "Violations were found during the course of a compliance investigation."
Home bakers yesterday launched a federal petition drive to have Parliament proclaim National Butter Tart Day. The all-Canadian pastry is an indelible part of the country’s “culinary and cultural heritage,” wrote petitioners: "The butter tart is a cherished Canadian dessert."
A widening tariff war with the United States including a 50 percent Canadian surcharge on smartphones will not have “a big ongoing impact” on the economy, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem yesterday predicted. Macklem said workers and businesses alike were taking higher costs in stride: "Businesses, workers, they’re adjusting."
Canadians are divided over aid to Cuba, according to in-house Privy Council research. Federal focus groups said that, while some were sympathetic with Cubans facing food shortages, Canada should first aid working poor at home: "Canada should primarily be focused on providing assistance to those living in Canada."
