Handgun imports will be banned in Canada under the same law used to block American dairy products at the border, cabinet said Friday. “We will use every single tool at our disposal,” Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told reporters: "The number of handguns in Canada will only go down."
Young Canadians are pragmatic but “more individualized” than past generations, says a Department of Heritage report. Staff compiled a personality profile of Canadians under 25 as part of an audit of youth program spending: "The world has changed."
Taxpayers should not directly pay cash prizes to Canadian Olympic and Paralympic athletes who win international competitions, says the Department of Canadian Heritage. Paralympians have complained they do not receive $20,000 prizes awarded to Olympic gold medalists through organizing committees: 'The sport support program does not permit use of federal funds for prize money.'
It was a sumptuous apartment building, home to a famed leader, then lost to the wreckers. How many Occupy Movement protesters who gathered in Ottawa’s Confederation Park in 2011 realized they’d camped at what was once among the most prestigious addresses in the capital?
Alberta does not have a provincial sales tax because Albertans do not want one. They tried it 86 years ago. It was not successful. Robert Ascah, former director of the University of Alberta’s Institute for Public Economics, recounts the little-known experiment. “An unpopular and misunderstood tax is something to avoid if you are gunning for re-election,” Ascah wryly observes.
In the teeth of the Dust Bowl and facing insolvency, the Social Credit cabinet introduced a two percent sales tax on May 1, 1936. Ascah recounts the dreadful circumstances. Four hundred school districts were in default, wheat was down to 32 cents a bushel – a price not seen since the Middle Ages – and ratepayers were reduced to eating rodents.
A 1933 Alberta Taxation Inquiry Board endorsed a sales tax in bloodless terms strikingly similar to those used by advocates today. It was “simple,” “easily understood,” “flexible,” “easily modified.” The legislature repealed the tax a year later on September 1, 1937 and never mentioned it again.
A federal contractor hired to manage airport Covid test kits yesterday was cited for keeping 147,000 travelers’ email addresses for sales pitches. Quarantine Act regulations had forced travelers to surrender their emails to receive test results: 'Travelers had no choice but to comply with the Public Health Agency rules.'
Canadian Armed Forces members continue to be discharged under vaccine rules weeks after other federal employers suspended mandates, Federal Court records show. One corporal who challenged her dismissal noted provinces and most employers also lifted Covid mandates: "She takes issue with the manner in which her religious exemption was considered."
Cabinet will not detail millions of dollars in Canadian assets they claim to have frozen under sanctions against Russia. Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly yesterday said she had no more information than what the RCMP gave reporters two months ago: "I think your questions are extremely valid."
Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada yesterday pleaded with MPs to overrule cabinet’s waiver of Russian sanctions. “This appeasement has already failed,” Ambassador Yuliia Kovaliv told the Commons foreign affairs committee: "Just Google the history."
The Department of Public Works promises to disclose what if anything it did to verify the credibility of federal Covid suppliers. Hurried contracting and outright theft cost taxpayers more than $100 million, records show: "Processes can always be improved."
The labour department days before Freedom Convoy protests against vaccine mandates complained of “significant” labour shortages in a trucking industry that could not afford to lose drivers, according to records. A cabinet proposal that interprovincial truckers show proof of vaccination was dropped a week after the protest ended: "Science changes. Lots of things are changing."
The Public Health Agency plans a 2023 earthquake drill. An earlier pandemic drill was interrupted by Covid: "If there is a significant seismic event in either British Columbia or in the Ottawa-Montréal-Québec City corridor we would be looking for an all-of-society approach."
A federal judge has quashed an order granting three U.S. citizens from Michigan “refugee status” in Canada. The case spent six years on appeal: "There is no such thing in people’s minds, mine included, as a refugee from the United States."
Hundreds of thousands of records are at “serious risk” at Library and Archives Canada after managers stored material on obsolete tape cartridges, says an in-house report. “Some of the material is on media so old Library and Archives Canada does not have the hardware to open it,” wrote auditors.
Shouting an obscenity in public is not a crime, the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal has ruled. The decision came in the case of a St. John’s motorist who hollered a drive-by vulgarity at a TV reporter and was charged with disturbing the peace: "Business in a public place may be distracted for any number of reasons including someone shouting an obscenity."
