Cabinet has no count of dual Canadian citizens. The Department of Immigration in a Senate tabling said it has no estimate of how many residents carry two passports, or live abroad: "We want to make that information public."
The Department of Natural Resources is commissioning an $85,000 survey of how many electric cars are on the road. Testimony at the Senate energy committee indicated Canada will not meet greenhouse gas emission targets even if sales quadrupled: "If there’s demand for plug-ins, there will be plug-ins."
Commodity prices and not foreign speculators are the cause of rising farmland values, the Senate agriculture committee has been told. Legislators are reviewing whether to monitor foreign farm purchases nationwide: "The agriculture market as an industry became a lot sexier."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklocks tradition each and every Sunday: “I’ve heard Jim Crow is still dancing to amuse the Whites…”
The Red Cross is being hired on a $1.8 million federal contract to monitor human rights in Canada Border Services Agency detention facilities. The Agency detains more than 6,000 people a year. The Red Cross will ensure federal employees are complying with the law: "We should be doing our own job, really."
Corporations cannot invoke Charter rights to evade administrative penalties, says the Federal Court of Appeal. The ruling came in the case of a small Québec trucking company fined $9,000 for shipping injured livestock: "I apply the law."
A Senate bill banning the capture and display of whales, dolphins and porpoises could damage marine research, says the Department of Fisheries. Legislators cited intense lobbying over the bill; one Senator said he’d received nearly 1,000 emails: "What is driving this?"
A monetary theorist has lost a legal bid to pay off old debts with a promissory note. Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta blamed the failed scheme on a U.K. website and “preposterous” reading of a Library of Parliament report: "As Milton Friedman observed, There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch."
Cabinet will table by June its plan to permit the RCMP to unionize. The initiative comes more than two years after the Supreme Court struck down a Mountie union ban as unconstitutional: ‘The proposed response will be tabled by the spring.’
Any federal bill to legalize cannabis would breach three international treaties, admits Health Minister Dr. Jane Philpott. The Minister’s remarks yesterday in Senate Question Period confirmed a 2016 parliamentary report that legalizing marijuana violates global treaties dating from 1961: "We would not want to put Canadians' travel in jeopardy."
A third of Canadians say the country is letting in too many immigrants, according to in-house polling by Citizenship Canada. The research was done as cabinet proposed to raise immigration quotas to 300,000 this year: "Do you feel there are too many?"
A federal labour board has upheld the firing of a government employee who lied about her father’s death to spend paid bereavement leave on a Mexican beach. The complainant was sunk by Facebook postings of her sun holiday: "Gonna be a tequila sunrise."
Canada is weak in enforcing intellectual property rights, a Senate Liberal forum was told yesterday. The remarks echoed 2016 criticism by Apple Inc. that Canada trails the U.S. and European Union in protecting trademarks, patents and copyrights: "We are doing a poorer job than a banana republic."
Senators are seeking internal audits of Canada Student Loan losses following another large write-off of uncollectable debts. Write-offs cost taxpayers $178.4 million this year, following $176 million in losses the previous year: "We're looking at performance and results."
Legislation to end an old rivalry over which city can claim rights as the cradle of Confederation is bound for Senate committee hearings. The bill would write Charlottetown’s claim into federal law: "We can have a lot of pride in this."
