The Department of Finance says a Conservative bill offering tax credits to restore heritage buildings would merely subsidize corporations and wealthy homeowners. The bill, endorsed in principle by MPs, would cost $55 million a year: "Their default position is always 'no'."
The Canada Revenue Agency is seeking confidential records as part of an international probe of alleged tax evasion through Israel’s largest bank. Auditors filed Federal Court applications seeking client information at the Royal Bank, the Bank of Montreal and Toronto Dominion: 'The Minister seeks verification.'
Cabinet yesterday defended spending $212,234 on photos and artistic themes for its 2017 budget. The Department of Finance said the work was intended as a fresh, creative way of explaining its annual spending plans: “We are taking a much more focused approach.”
RCMP fear drug impaired driving will “increase steadily” if cannabis is legalized. Police expressed the worry in an in-house publication: "We don’t have the same body of research on drug impairment."
A historic RCMP union drive is delayed after Québec organizers opposed being absorbed into a single national bargaining agent. A bill passed by Parliament June 6 decreed only one union should represent regular members across the country: "They have the right to vote against it."
A private bill introduced in the Commons would create a new statutory federal holiday, National Indigenous People Day. A current symbolic observance is little known by most Canadians, according to government research: 'There are ramifications.'
Cabinet yesterday re-announced a cut in corporate tax rates for small business. The rate will decline to 9 percent by January 1, 2019, a target set by the previous Conservative cabinet two years ago: "Well, that's in our election platform."
Health Canada says it has no advice for motorists on how to comply with new drug-impaired driving regulations. Understanding legal limits will be “challenging”, staff wrote in a regulatory notice: "This is really unprecedented."
A hospital has been faulted for breach of the Privacy Act for repeatedly faxing confidential patient records to strangers. It is the third serious privacy breach by health authorities in Saskatchewan in the past five months, including one case that ended in a recommendation that patients consider a class action lawsuit: "I told them to go to hell."
A federal judge has threatened a bookkeeper with jail for refusing to comply with an audit. Jailing is uncommon in civil court: "A person who is ordered by a court to pay money may be imprisoned for contempt."
A federal tax credit once described by tax analysts as an “open bar” for corporations cost taxpayers $2.7 billion last year, according to a Department of Natural Resources report tabled in the Commons. Payments peaked at $4 billion before the previous Conservative cabinet cut the subsidy: "It is one of the most generous systems in the world."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday: “Ottawa marks 150 in a year-long festivity. I see it in my morning paper. Arriving from France, La Machine is marching…”
A federal judge has ruled the Department of Citizenship breached the Charter of Rights in refusing to grant a Canadian citizen a passport. The Federal Court described staff conduct as severe and unwarranted: "This could happen to other people."
A U.S. company has sold the first genetically-modified animal protein in Canada, according to data uncovered by advocacy groups. The engineered Atlantic salmon was unlabeled, and believed sold in Québec at the same time MPs defeated a private bill mandating labels on genetically-altered foods: "No one knows where this is in the marketplace."
Canadians are worried about rising food prices, according to research by the Department of Agriculture. The cost of groceries was repeatedly cited as a concern in a department survey, though pollsters didn’t ask the question.
