Cabinet must resort to a little-used law to run the prisons, pay the Army and keep passenger trains running during the election campaign. All budgeted funds voted by Parliament expire a week from today at midnight: "A minister must report an expenditure is urgently required."
Liberals won as few as one or two votes at numerous polls in the last federal byelection, newly released records show. Elections Canada on Friday certified poll boxes from a December 16 byelection in what had been a Liberal-held riding in suburban British Columbia, Cloverdale-Langley City: "It has not been an easy day."
Taxpayers have no appetite for large increases in CBC funding as proposed by the Department of Canadian Heritage, says a Liberal Senate appointee. Senator Andrew Cardozo (Ont.), a longtime CBC supporter, recommended in a report that the Crown broadcaster be considered an essential service but without additional millions: "There does not appear to be a public appetite as such for a significant increase."
Cabinet in its last act of office Saturday enacted new regulations to slow or effectively freeze cash transfers to Russia. Bank and wire transfers are now subject to meticulous background checks regardless of the amount, said the Department of Finance: 'Treat every transaction, regardless of the amount, as high risk.'
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “Lo! A bureaucrat alights upon the scene, the power to redact and enact with countenance so serene…”
Canadians like to think of our judiciary as a meritocracy, in the same manner we have a naïve faith that oncoming motorists will stay on their side of the white line. Of course, car wrecks happen all the time.
Professor Dale Brawn examines who’s behind the wheel in Canadian courts. The result is a beautifully-researched and entertaining study of 80 years of judicial appointments in a single province, Manitoba, from 1870 to 1950. Brawn chooses his subject well. Manitoba was for years the lone outpost of the judiciary on the Prairie frontier.
Judges were by degrees brilliant and mediocre, studious and alcoholic, a grab bag of “pretty fair lawyers” and political fixers. One appointee was rated as having “but a small amount of brains and knows absolutely no law.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday said he needs a “strong and clear mandate” from voters. Carney is expected to call a snap vote this weekend rather than face Parliament Monday: "You can see the action."
Canadians should expect weaker growth, higher costs and more uncertainty due to Trump tariffs, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. His remarks coincided with new Canadian Federation of Independent Business data indicating 19 percent of small business owners plan summer layoffs: "We now face a new economic crisis."
The Canada Revenue Agency yesterday would not explain why it was keeping hundreds of employees in its carbon tax unit since Prime Minister Mark Carney announced he was “eliminating” the consumer charge. A battalion of clerks was hired to process revenues and rebate cheques: "What were the annual costs?"
Growing subsidies will turn much of Canadian media into a federally controlled Crown corporation “if not a department of government,” an Ottawa think tank said yesterday. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute in a report by a former Calgary Herald publisher warned media reliance on taxpayers’ aid was corrosive and self-defeating: "This is no way to maintain public trust in journalism."
Four Liberal-appointed senators yesterday signed an anti-Israel petition accusing Jews of genocide. The petition singled out soldiers and air crew of the Israeli Defence Forces with allegations of atrocities: "This will not soon be forgotten."
Cabinet in a secret internal memo last June 18 acknowledged it could not meet its housing target despite repeated promises to the public. The memo is dated two months after cabinet promised its housing plan was “unlocking the door to the middle class for millions.”
A federally-sponsored advocacy group yesterday admitted to contacting a convention hall over its rental of space to a group critical of the Liberal Party. The taxpayer-subsidized Canadian Anti-Hate Network acknowledged making the call but denied acting at the government’s direction: "We are a completely independent organization."
Anti-Israel street protestors should not be called Nazis per se, a national press ombudsman has ruled. Likening street demonstrators to members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was “overly broad,” said the National News Media Council: "Thinkers have argued the term ‘Nazi’ should only be reserved for those responsible for the Holocaust."
Automakers yesterday petitioned British Columbia to repeal its electric vehicle mandate, first in the nation. The B.C. program set the pattern for a federal mandate that proposes to outlaw the new sale of gas or diesel powered cars by 2035: 'Sales targets will not be achieved.'
