The National Energy Board is offering employees free driver training courses at taxpayers’ expense. Damage claims involving drivers of Crown vehicles across all federal departments and agencies last year cost more than $17 million: 'This includes awareness of traffic laws.'
Newly-appointed Attorney General David Lametti in a paper written as a McGill law professor defended blatant music piracy as ethical “whatever the law”: “Everyone is doing it,” he wrote. Lametti yesterday did not comment.
The federal Business Development Bank yesterday predicted a “weaker economic growth outlook” just seven weeks after cabinet upgraded its own forecast. Fewer businesses of all sizes are confident in the Canadian economy, wrote analysts: "Canada remains roughly flat."
Illegal immigration fell 6 percent last year, the Department of Immigration said yesterday. The improvement was due to a dramatic decline in unlawful border crossings in the last six months: "I won't take credit for that."
A federal agency that once promoted home equity lines of credit yesterday called them “risky”. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada last year praised credit lines as a way for homeowners to “achieve your long-term financial goals”.
A federal document for the first time is characterizing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre as an “incident”. The soft language follows years of revisionism by The People’s Daily and other Chinese publications to modify accounts of murders in Beijing: "China can never be allowed to rewrite history."
Rail regulators yesterday invoked new investigative powers to probe a service slowdown at Canada’s largest port. The initiative by the Canadian Transportation Agency is the first of its kind since Parliament passed 2018 amendments to the Transportation Act: "There are two railways and there are thousands of shippers."
A Court is moving to dismiss a claim that electrical smart meters are unsafe. An Ontario homeowner called a “conscientious objector” has tried since 2014 to block the hydro company from replacing her old analog meter: "No Canadian agency has certified smart meters as being safe."
Liberal MP Jody Wilson-Raybould (Vancouver Granville) yesterday was named Minister of Veterans Affairs, the fifth minister in four years. Four of the five never served in the military: "What would I say to veterans?"
New French language rules will cost $10 million a year, says the Treasury Board. Authorities propose to mandate French service at federal offices in cities with as few as 200 francophones, though the number of French speakers outside Québec is dwindling: "There is an urgent need."
Suicide remains “relatively rare” among veterans, says a federal report. The Department of Veterans Affairs examined records of 200,734 ex-military including reservists: 'Over 37 years of data, less than one percent of male veterans died by suicide.'
A national newspaper ombudsman has described as “newsworthy” a front-page story on sex dolls. The National News Media Council dismissed complaints after a British Columbia periodical published the item: "The unique nature of the subject matter made it newsworthy."
Health Canada says the nation’s most common weed killer is safe despite a 2015 World Health Organization warning that it's “probably carcinogenic”. The makers of glyphosate, sold under the brand name Roundup by Monsanto Co., face some 5,000 U.S. lawsuits alleging the herbicide poses a health risk: "The department's final decision will stand."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday: “Signs posted in Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg: ‘It’s Okay To Be White’. Why wouldn’t it be okay?…”
In a free, rich, peaceful, capitalist country like Canada there should never be any prolonged shortage of anything. Yet Canadians are told we face a crippling shortage of labour. How can that be?
CBC Radio’s Cross-Country Checkup in 2015 told the story of the Star Café of Maple Creek, Sask., population 2000, an uncommonly high-toned restaurant for a small Prairie town. It sells prawns and $22 jambalaya, though Maple Creek is 1,400 kilometres from the nearest live seafood market.
Owner Tina Creswell said she had to hire a chef from Guyana and would close if not for migrant labour. “We had to turn to foreign workers,” said Creswell. “We’ve been advertising continually”; “Was it because you offer such cheap wages?” asked host Rex Murphy. “We pay what we can,” replied Creswell. No figure was mentioned.
