The Canada Revenue Agency rates as a “success” an $18 million chatbot that gives taxpayers wrong answers 10 percent of the time, according to Access To Information records. The Agency’s own Taxpayer Bill Of Rights states all Canadians “have the right to complete, accurate, clear and timely information.”
Another stamp hike is near after cabinet on Saturday waived a requirement that it approve Canada Post rates. The post office has complained the regulation led to months-long delays in adjusting prices: "The stamp rate in Canada has not kept pace."
The Department of Immigration will speed processing of illegal immigrants and refugee claimants in a bid to clear a four-year backlog. Cabinet in a legal notice Saturday proposed strict new deadlines following a dramatic increase in claims: "How did we arrive at this point?"
A 2026 tax cut is a net benefit despite any corresponding reductions in credits for the poorest tax filers, says a Department of Finance report. Critics had warned of “unintended consequences” in lowering benefits for the elderly and disabled: "For nearly all Canadians who pay tax, savings from the middle class tax cut will outweigh the reduction."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “George W. Bush presents a collection of portraits: heads of state met in person. the sharp eye of the former president captures revealing views…”
Few authors possess the skill to take an everyday image and turn it just slightly, in Twilight Zone fashion, to reveal a startling and intriguing truth. Professor Joan Sangster of Trent University does just that in The Iconic North. To read Sangster’s account is to question every common media depiction of the Arctic.
“The North has been rendered exotic, romantic, terrifying, sublime, enigmatic, otherworldly and intrinsically Canadian, and some of these adjectives are equated not just with the landscape but with the original inhabitants of the North,” Sangster writes.
This is not ancient history. Parks Canada spent more than $21.5 million looking for an English shipwreck, “a salient reminder that we need an ongoing critical analysis of a romanticized North ‘discovered’ by white explorers,” says Sangster. The Franklin Expedition was a famous failure of no scientific or exploratory value whatsoever. Media’s fascination with the sailors’ deaths is striking.
Canada Post paid bonuses last year while losing a record $1.57 billion, CEO Doug Ettinger yesterday disclosed. Payments were made even as cabinet told the post office to “cut the fat.”
MPs yesterday demanded Public Works Minister Joel Lightbound release a confidential report on postal service cuts. Cabinet has withheld the 2025 document for months: "Parliamentarians, municipalities, workers, citizens still do not have a detailed plan of what is going to happen."
The Canada Border Services Agency yesterday said it will likely investigate whether imported China-made battery electric cars are assembled with slave-made parts. Conservative MP Michael Kram (Regina-Wascana) questioned why cabinet didn’t first check before approving the import of more than a quarter million Chinese vehicles: "Would you say it’s more than a little bit irresponsible?"
The Senate yesterday by a 58 to 4 vote passed into law a cryptocurrency ban in election financing. The bill is the first of its kind that prohibits use of bitcoin in ordinary transactions where traceable money is accepted: "Changes to prevent anonymous and hard-to-trace funding channels are welcome."
Environmental groups opposed to coal mining may petition cabinet to blacklist the rock as toxic, the Department of Health said yesterday. The remarks came in response to a Commons petition sponsored by the Green Party: "Regulate the mining, use, export and import of thermal coal in Canada."
Cabinet in a confidential order granted its Chief Science Advisor “blanket authority” to travel worldwide even as other federal managers were ordered to cut expenses, Access To Information records show. Dr. Mona Nemer, a University of Ottawa biochemist, was told to charge expenses “where a personal benefit exists or may appear to exist.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney has granted federal managers arbitrary powers to ignore his Buy Canadian policy, records show. New reasons to bypass Canadian contractors include “administrative burden.”
An Alberta senator yesterday said her personal safety was threatened by public disclosure of a provincial voters’ list. The incident was “very grave,” Senator Paula Simons of Edmonton told the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee: 'It is a threat to the safety of many Albertans, myself included.'
The Commons yesterday by a 189 to 128 vote passed into law new hate crimes legislation. The cabinet bill written to counter anti-Semitic public disorder drew contentious amendments unrelated to safety of Canadian Jews: "It is less sober second thought and more quick hot takes."
