Federal compensation for Covid vaccine-related deaths and injuries has nearly tripled in two years, new figures showed yesterday. Managers of a Vaccine Injury Support Program had withheld scheduled reporting of payments for an undisclosed reason: 'It is still a drug and there are potential risks even if they’re rare.'
A labour board has dismissed allegations by a former Teamsters business agent that his union failed to properly disclose use of members’ dues for “non-core” activities like political campaigns. Cabinet 10 years ago revoked an Act of Parliament that would have forced all unions to publish confidential financial records: "I’ve often wondered whether or not Bill C-377 would have passed if we had a secret ballot."
Cabinet’s $393,000-a year science advisor Dr. Mona Nemer in a draft memo proposed to examine the feasibility of contacting alien civilizations. Nemer assigned seven employees to her Sky Canada Project at an undisclosed cost: "There are the problems of distances and timing. Two civilizations might not exist at the same time."
An internal ArriveCan investigators’ report long sought by MPs has been sealed by Federal Court order. A judge blocked distribution of the findings at the request of Cameron MacDonald, a former Canada Border Services Agency director briefly suspended over the $63 million program: "The allegations each side makes against the other are most serious."
The cost of keeping an inmate in federal prison averages $436 a day, a new record, according to Correctional Service figures. Inmates at women’s prisons were the most expensive at an average $779 per day: "The Correctional Service of Canada is among the highest resourced correctional systems in the world."
Québec residents surveyed in a federal focus group say they’ve never heard of the Order of Canada. The civil honour has been awarded nearly 8,000 times since it was introduced 58 years ago: "None had any specific candidates in mind."
A landmark human rights complaint involving schoolchildren with Down Syndrome was stalled 13 years by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, records show. The Tribunal said it was overworked: "Future delay will have far more of a negative impact in this case."
The Department of Immigration in a briefing note admits it never sought “comprehensive security screening” of suspected Egyptian terrorists arrested a year ago for plotting an attack on Toronto. Then-Immigration Minister Marc Miller at the time defended his department’s handling of the case: "What the hell is going on?"
Canadians in Privy Council focus groups questioned cabinet’s rationale for record high immigration quotas. A pollsters’ report on the findings was delivered only weeks before then-Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney announced “the system isn’t working.”
The Commons transport committee yesterday voted to investigate taxpayers’ financing of shipyard jobs in China. Members approved a motion by Conservative MP Dan Albas (Okanagan Lake West-South Kelowna, B.C.) to find who approved the use of “scarce public taxpayer dollars” to benefit a Chinese state-run company: "Remember the government that said ‘elbows up,’ ‘Canada strong,’ ‘we can build it together'?"
Blacklock’s legal challenge of theft of its work by federal managers is a test of passwords used by all publishers in Canada, says a secret memo to Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault. A pending appeal in Blacklock’s Reporter v. Canada was being monitored closely, said the memo disclosed yesterday through Access To Information: “Use of passwords to limit access to copyright protected content is a common business practice among online platforms including news sites, streaming services and video game digital distribution services.”
The Northwest Mounted Police, once hailed for saving the West from U.S. annexation, were in fact paramilitary colonialists insensitive to Indigenous “political structures,” says a federal board. Parks Canada consultants who approved the revision included a cabinet appointee who deleted federal web pages celebrating the Mounted Police: "I feel very strongly."
Main themes of the Liberal Party’s “elbows up” re-election campaign were tested in confidential federal focus groups months before the U.S. announced tariffs, documents show. Pollsters hired by the Privy Council found many Canadians were unsettled by Donald Trump and feared “mass layoffs” from tariffs.
Parks Canada privately complained of “persistent emails” from activists seeking to rewrite commemoration of the Canadian Pacific Railway from a racial perspective, Access To Information records show. Calls for revision followed a 2019 cabinet directive that Canadian history reflect “colonialism, patriarchy and racism.”
The next federal Census for the first time will ask Canadians if they had to sleep in their car. It follows complaints of inadequate estimates of Canada’s homeless population: "Over the past 12 months has this person stayed in a shelter, on the street or in parks, in a makeshift shelter, in a vehicle or in an abandoned building?"
