Elections Canada this year will introduce first-ever electronic voting lists, says Stéphane Perrault, chief electoral officer. Perrault in a report to Parliament said he also intended to store more information on foreign computer servers but detailed no new security measures to counter election fraud: "Considering the status of cybersecurity, your entire election could be hacked."
Compensation for federal employees shortchanged by bungled payroll software has cost taxpayers more than two-thirds of a billion so far, records show. Cabinet is still calculating the total cost of the 2016 Phoenix Pay System failure: "We saw how that didn’t work."
A federal paid holiday in memory of Indian Residential School children draws “mixed feelings” among First Nations, says in-house research by the Privy Council Office. Indigenous people said they were more concerned about crime and clean drinking water: "Very few believed the Government of Canada had made much in the way of tangible progress towards addressing the most pressing concerns."
The Department of Transport is demanding advanced reports on more than 100 million air cargo shipments a year into Canada. The mandate is not for tax collection but security, regulators said in a legal notice Saturday: "Half of all cargo that is transported by air travels on passenger flights."
Sledding is a riskier winter pastime than snowboarding, new Public Health Agency data show. A federal review of six years’ worth of emergency room admissions documented a higher accident rate involving sledding and tobogganing: "Risks highlight the importance of personal safety."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “The Commissioner of the Canadian Football League sees no evidence to connect game-time head injuries with long-term neurological disorder…”
Forty years after the Titanic sank, newspaperman Walter Lord tracked down survivors to ask what they took as they headed for the lifeboats. Lord recited the grab bag of mementos in his 1955 bestseller A Night To Remember. One brought a Bible, another a pistol. There were pocketfuls of cigars or cookies, fur coats, a sapphire necklace and a music box that played the Portuguese tango. One Toronto passenger retrieved three oranges but left behind a tin box containing $200,000 in bonds.
Author Therese Greenwood calls this “telescoping,” a phenomenon experienced by people under stress when their vision tunnels to objects literally in front of them. Greenwood’s What You Take With You explores this intriguing theme in the million-acre Fort McMurray fire, a near-disaster of Titanic proportions.
A Liberal-appointed Senator yesterday told reporters it was “deeply insulting” to ask if he had contacts with Beijing. “I don’t like getting these attacks,” said Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.): "People are claiming that I am some kind of a foreign agent."
Cabinet is rejecting a proposal to extend early Canada Pension Plan benefits to aging coal miners facing unwanted retirement due to climate regulations. Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson in a letter to MPs said the proposal “would create inequities.”
VIA Rail breached the Canada Labour Code in firing a locomotive engineer over his vaccination status, a federal arbitrator has ruled. Cabinet to date has not disclosed how many Crown employees were fired or suspended without pay for declining to show proof they took a Covid shot: "The policy was unreasonable."
All-white, all-female Canadian Human Rights Commissioners yesterday would not comment after being cited for mistreating Black employees. A union representing staff lawyers confirmed the Commission breached a clause in its own contract stating: “There shall be no discrimination.”
The underground economy is at risk of widening even further without constant federal surveillance, says a Canada Revenue Agency report. The value of all-cash dealings and other tax avoidance measures grew 50 percent in five years, according to Statistics Canada data: "Without intervention there is a risk that changes in the social and economic environment can progressively add to the growth of the underground economy."
CBC managers refuse to testify at a Senate hearing on Islamophobia, claiming it would undermine “journalistic independence.” It follows a 2022 Ombudsman’s report that the network breached its own ethics code with a website article that depicted elderly white Canadians and Conservative Party voters as bigots: 'Senators questioning news leaders about their editorial decisions and practices undermines journalistic independence.'
David Johnston, 81, cabinet’s “independent special rapporteur” on alleged vote fraud, in his last appearances at parliamentary hearings admitted failure in managing campaign debates and gave a rambling speech in praise of We Charity. The former governor general turns 82 in June: "If you haven’t been to a We Day, do yourself a favour and go to a We Day."
Allegations of corrupt election practices are a deliberate campaign of disinformation, claims a Liberal MP. “It is not based on facts,” MP Ya’ara Saks (York Centre, Ont.) told the House affairs committee: "We are moving down into a rabbit hole."
