Parliament must deploy the Army and Customs agents to intercept U.S. gun runners at the border, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. “Let’s stop the gangsters and gun smugglers,” he told reporters. “I want to protect Canadians from criminals.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Chief Science Advisor spent more than $300,000 on travel from Tokyo to Oslo, records show. “Science can be everywhere,” Dr. Mona Nemer earlier told MPs: "I believe in science diplomacy."
Federal archivists face a Federal Court challenge from B’nai Brith over their concealment of a decades-old blacklist of Nazi fugitives let into Canada after the Second World War. “History still needs to be fully told,” the group wrote a federal judge.
Cabinet in a briefing note says plans to introduce digital ID for Canadians in contact with federal agencies would be strictly optional. A program to have pensioners, Employment Insurance claimants and tax filers use digital identification has been under development for six years at a cost of more than $6.4 million: 'It would be offered on an optional basis.'
Managers of the Canada Pension Plan, largest in the nation, yesterday would not comment on whether they'll follow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s directive to buy Canadian. Almost half the fund’s $675.1 billion is invested in the United States, from shares in American fast food chains to ownership of Dallas apartment buildings, San Diego shopping malls and industrial parks in Florida: "Now is the time to choose Canada."
Parliament will not be recalled to manage a multi-billion dollar U.S. trade war, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Commons trade committee members including Liberal MPs had rated parliamentary hearings a priority in a 2019 tariff dispute: "It is insane that in this great crisis, Parliament is shut down."
The cost of the federal payroll is nearly $85 billion a year including police and military, says the Treasury Board. The agency in a briefing note calculated 1,700,000 current and former public employees are now enrolled in the federal Public Service Health Care Plan: "Yes, it is worrisome."
Cabinet must repeal its signature climate program, the consumer carbon tax, says former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney. Campaigning for the March 9 Liberal Party leadership, Carney said the tax was not working: "We have to win this election."
Parliament must curb the Canada Revenue Agency’s practice of enforcing tax measures never passed into law, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. The appeal follows the Agency's collection of tax, interest and penalties on capital gains amendments that Parliament never approved: "This experience highlights the need for Canada to introduce rules."
Labour and cultural groups are asking that Canadians sign a public pledge to “reduce our dependence on the United States.” New Democrat MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.), the only Commons member to sign the Pledge For Canada to date, called it a “plan of resistance.”
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “Cracks were there at the beginning, parged and buttressed, for centuries. But the edifice held…”
My grandfather survived Bolshevism and civil war, hyperinflation and the Depression, but was confounded by lawns. Why would anyone seed arable land to inedible grass? His yard produced garlic by the pound. He outlived two wives.
Nearly a quarter-million Ukrainians settled the West before the First World War. Their affinity for garlic was renowned. In the flu epidemic of 1918 many Ukrainian households hung garlic on the walls in the belief it would ward off infection. In the 1920s, when John Diefenbaker began his long climb up Conservative Party ranks as a Prairie populist, biographer Denis Smith noted “garlic eaters” remained an Eastern Tory epithet for Western immigrants.
Garlic was not merely delicious. It was used to treat colds and congestion, ringworm and fever, toothaches and headaches. Men ate it raw. Children had it crushed in warm milk. “We may yet see the time when household ‘kitchen medicine’ is revived as a desirable and widespread practice to be used with self-sufficient pride and not naïve embarrassment,” writes author Michael Mucz, a University of Alberta biologist.
Dr. Mona Nemer, cabinet’s $393,000-a year science advisor, spent tens of thousands on questionnaires asking Canadians if they’d ever seen a UFO. Records indicate Nemer, a biochemist, expressed a personal interest in the subject though her survey showed most Canadians considered it pointless: "Unidentified aerial phenomenon is not an issue of high concern."
New Democrats yesterday proposed a Buy Canadian program to “produce things we need in our own country” with union labour, said leader Jagmeet Singh. The Party did not comment when asked if its MPs would be compelled to sell shares privately held in U.S. corporations including non-union Amazon: 'We need to change the rules to favour companies with unionized workers.'
New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh yesterday reneged on his Christmas pledge to “bring this government down” and allow a winter election campaign. Singh said New Democrats instead will support any cabinet bill tabled in response to U.S. tariffs: "Your position has been moving on this issue."
