Internal Privy Council polling shows most Canadians are weary of federal pandemic management. “Several felt the federal approach at present lacked direction,” cabinet was told: "More participants felt the federal government was performing worse."
Cabinet will not name federal officials that approved funding for an anti-Semite who fantasized on Twitter about shooting Jews. Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen told the Commons heritage committee he was not personally to blame: "We trusted at that time that adequate vetting had been completed."
A change in immigration rules will see half a million foreign students eligible to work full time in Canada. "It's good for our economy," Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told the Commons: "It is a great day for international students."
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Hitler’s publicist once spent the winter in Red Rock, Ont., humming the Horst Wessel Song and cursing his fate. In the carnival of Canadian oddities, none is more curious than The Little Third Reich On Lake Superior. Historian Ernest Zimmerman of Lakehead University chronicles the strange events that saw 1,150 men and boys – Jews and Nazis alike – herded into bunkhouses northeast of Thunder Bay in the winter of 1940.
It was a “third-rate jungle prison,” one inmate recalled. Another complained it was like being kidnapped and dragged into the wilderness. “They deeply resented the treatment,” Zimmerman writes. “They resented being in foreign surroundings, away from home, and being treated as prisoners of war rather than refugees.”
Peter Sloly, former Ottawa police chief, last night said Freedom Convoy demonstrators were told by local law enforcement they could park outside Parliament. Testifying at committee, Sloly said it was only when truckers declined to leave after a few days that the protest became what he called a “national security crisis.”
Inflation in Canada is now home grown, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. Macklem and others for months had blamed rising costs on global developments: "Increasingly the inflation we’re seeing in Canada reflects what’s going on in Canada."
Big publishers and TV networks including the CBC are up for more than a third of a billion a year under cabinet’s Bill C-18, the Parliamentary Budget Office said yesterday. Independent publishers opposed to the bill have called it another federal subsidy for distrusted media: "We expect news businesses to receive total compensation around $329.2 million per year."
The Department of Fisheries yesterday said it has no plans for an Atlantic seal cull despite repeated appeals from MPs and senators. Legislators from Atlantic Canada have sought a cull over complaints predatory seals eat too many fish: "The department is not looking at a seal population control program at this time."
There is no guarantee a cabinet bill expanding bilingual mandates to the private sector will halt the decline in French, Languages Commissioner Raymond Théberge said yesterday. MPs at the Commons languages committee questioned how the mandate would apply in cities like Regina where francophones are outnumbered 200 to 1: "If we don’t do anything the decline will continue."
Records show the head of the federal public service, then-Privy Council Clerk Ian Shugart, certified a copy of an "April 31" website notice used to mislead a federal judge in a trademarks dispute. The notice included a “date modified” entry of April 31, 2017. April does not have 31 days: "There appears to have been a misunderstanding."
A member of the Commons ethics committee yesterday questioned censorship of records detailing attempts by now-Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to backdate documents in a Federal Court case. “We don’t know whether it’s obfuscation, whether it’s abdication or whether it’s a cover-up,” Conservative MP James Bezan (Selkirk-Interlake, Man.) told the committee: "The question was about Minister Mendicino’s involvement with the potential falsification of records."
Air passengers filing federal complaints over poor service can expect to wait nearly two years, says the Canadian Transportation Agency. One consumers’ advocate called the backlog predictable: "There’s always room to improve."
The Canada Revenue Agency “could have done some sort of screening” before paying out claims under the costliest pandemic relief program, says Auditor General Karen Hogan. The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy cost taxpayers $100.6 billion including payments to companies in tax default: "The Agency had information where they could have vetted the eligibility of businesses."
The Commons yesterday voted unanimously to endorse Taiwan’s bid for membership in the World Health Organization. The House passed a motion sponsored by Conservative MP Michael Barrett (Leeds-Grenville, Ont.) that it concur with a recommendation of the health committee to lift a China ban on Taiwanese participation: "Taiwan deserves a seat at the table."
