Trade Minister Mary Ng avoided any questioning by senators over sweetheart contracting in her first committee appearance since being censured in an ethics report. Members of the foreign affairs committee made no mention of Ng’s breach of an Act of Parliament though she invited senators to ask anything they liked: "Wonderful."
The Canadian Transportation Agency yesterday would not release raw data on complaints filed against the worst airlines. The regulator instead rated carriers based on complaints per flight with one discounter topping the grievance list: "They’re never going to get on top of this."
The runaway freight train that caused Canada’s deadliest postwar rail disaster passed four safety inspections on its final trip, records show. Details of the 2013 Lac-Mégantic wreck are cited in Québec Superior Court documents: "Defects were immediately corrected on site."
RCMP prepared for a costly month-long Freedom Convoy siege in Ottawa even after cabinet invoked the Emergencies Act, records show. Internal memos indicate police booked more than a million dollars’ worth of hotel rooms and cross-Canada charter flights: "We may have urgent, last-minute requirements."
Contracting at Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s department is haphazard, says an internal audit. Investigators said millions were spent with little oversight: "By its nature procurement is inherently exposed to certain fraud-related risks."
Federal subsidies continue to support the work of the Community Media Advocacy Centre, the Montréal consultancy cited for anti-Semitism. A taxpayer-funded academic journal published Centre research even after its senior consultant Laith Marouf fantasized on Twitter about shooting Jews: "Are you telling us then all of this took place in your ministry without you being aware of it?"
Cabinet does not know how many guns are smuggled into Canada, says a federal briefing note. The Department of Public Safety said it was at a loss to estimate the scope of gun running despite budgeting $312 million over five years to combat smuggling: "The total number of firearms successfully smuggled into Canada is unknown."
A British Columbia businessman has doubled his damages after being defamed in an online article. The more libel is spread on the internet, the more publishers should pay, said the B.C. Court of Appeal: "The extent of the circulation of a newspaper or newsletter may be taken into account."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “It’s mid-winter. Double-glass windows in the manager’s office tightly shut. Heater ON…”
When Powell River, B.C. marked its centennial in 2010 Powell River Living magazine in a special issue enthusiastically recalled the mill town’s first hotel, built in 1911, the first vaudeville theatre (1913), the first dial telephones (1921). There was culture, too, the founding of the annual music fest International Choral Kathaumixw. That’s Welsh, not Indian.
Elsie Paul read the articles in Powell River Living. Her great-uncle was last hereditary chief of the Sliammon people who thrived in the region for millennia. Paul did not enjoy the articles about vaudeville and dial phones. “They’re celebrating this and celebrating that, and how Powell River originated,” she said. “I’m thinking, we were here!”
Written As I Remember It is warm and honest, partly a memoir, part ethnography, part Farmer’s Almanac. It draws on a Sliammon Elder’s oral history of a skilled and prosperous people who lived and died here long before they built a company town and named it for an English surgeon.
The Department of Public Safety in internal memos acknowledged the Freedom Convoy was not a national security threat. The Access To Information documents contradict sworn testimony by Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and were withheld from Blacklock’s until Parliament adjourned for Christmas: "The RCMP is not aware of any national security criminal activity having taken place during the protest."
Senators yesterday endorsed another budget increase to almost $127 million a year. Figures show in six years the Senate payroll grew by a third while overall spending jumped 70 percent: "We are a publicly-funded monopoly. We don’t have an incentive to change."
Cabinet should act against “irresponsible speculation” by media that Chinese Communist agents targeted 11 candidates in the 2019 election, Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) said yesterday. Woo claimed allegations had turned into a witch hunt: "Why is the government not calling out this egregious example of disinformation?"
Millions in promised federal funding to retrain oil and gas workers has gone unspent, records show. The figures follow complaints cabinet was “very slow off the mark” in fulfilling its pledge to find jobs for energy workers through a Just Transition program: "It’s seven years since they’ve had notice they had to work on this."
Happy Days has escaped Canadian TV censorship. A national broadcasting panel yesterday upheld programmers’ right to rerun an old episode of the 1970s sitcom even if “it is highly unlikely it would be produced in today’s environment.”
