More than 200,000 mail-in ballots sent to voters in the last federal election were not counted, Elections Canada disclosed yesterday. The number of ballot kits that were late, cancelled or marked as lost in the mail was greater than the margin of victory: "We are deeply sorry."
The Canada Revenue Agency falsely accused Freedom Convoy protesters of ransacking office buildings. The Agency yesterday would not comment after spreading fake news that angry truck drivers had run amok in downtown Ottawa. The report was among several that falsely claimed protests had turned violent: "The biggest challenges facing our future will be the restoration of public confidence in institutions such as the media and government."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday said Freedom Convoy protesters must go home after days of demonstrations at Parliament Hill. Trudeau made the comment after describing truckers as “tin foil hats” deserving of public disgust: "What is needed is for people to go home."
Canada’s chief public health officer is refusing to appear for questioning at the Commons ethics committee. MPs had asked Dr. Theresa Tam to explain a data scoop that saw the Public Health Agency collect information on 33 million cellphone users: "That’s not a small thing."
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department confirms more exemptions from renewable fuel regulations that would hike the price of gasoline and diesel. Exemptions were meant to “address affordability concerns,” said a briefing note: "The Clean Fuel Standard has been narrowed."
The Freedom Convoy truck drivers’ protest rally today prompted Transport Minister Omar Alghabra to abruptly cancel a scheduled personal appearance on Parliament Hill. It followed attendance at the rally of one speaker who'd called Alghabra a terrorist: "The hysteria gripping our society is reaching new heights."
Federal employees who declined vaccination say they have been ridiculed, harassed and threatened. Workers in a lawyers’ letter to the Treasury Board said suspending unimmunized staff without pay amounted to wrongful dismissal: "There are many reasonable and practical alternatives."
Cabinet will enact an animal cruelty prevention bill to abolish cosmetic testing on live mammals like albino rabbits, says the Department of Health. A Senate bill to ban the practice lapsed in 2019: "In this day and age we have to find alternatives."
Truckers and cabinet members alike are “all in the same convoy,” says Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos. The Minister declined to speak with protesters demonstrating on Parliament Hill against his vaccine orders, but told reporters: "We're all tired."
Federal call centres still cannot keep up with Employment Insurance claims despite spending more than $620 million on a promise of better service, say MPs. Members of the Commons human resources committee said they would investigate complaints of lengthy wait times: "There is nothing that can explain why."
If you accept money is the great divider in life – not race, gender or religion – any history of money should expose the core of the Canadian story. It is, and this does. Financial historians Christopher Kobrak and Joe Martin of the Rotman School of Management chronicle 300 years of money in Canada with an account rich in anecdotes and telling in its findings.
Canada today is one of the few English-speaking countries with a central bank that is taxpayer-owned. It was money that smashed the two-party system in Parliament a century ago, and regulation that saved Canadians from a sub-Arctic version of the 2008 panic.
MPs yesterday accused media of vilifying protesters attending a Freedom Convoy truckers' rally on Parliament Hill. Reporters at a press briefing described various demonstrators as bigots: "Establishment media have been looking for controversies with some of these truckers."
About a tenth of federal historical designations approved since 1919 will be purged or rewritten including numerous tributes to John A. Macdonald, records show. Revisionism follows a cabinet order to delete history deemed to celebrate colonialism: "Nothing can be immune from review."
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department said it has not yet finalized definitions to fulfill a promised ban on “inefficient” oil and gas subsidies. The work has been ongoing for seven years: "There is no simple set of words."
A Workers’ Compensation Board has been ordered to reconsider suicide as a workplace fatality. The ruling came in the case of a Saskatchewan policeman distraught after attending so many grisly crimes and accident scenes colleagues nicknamed him “Captain Death.”
