Canada is short about 90,000 doctors, nurses and other front line health care workers, says a Department of Health memo. The document for the Deputy Minister warned of a “health worker crisis.”
Parliament must end all subsidies earmarked for “diversity," says People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier. Campaigning in an Ontario byelection, Bernier said his Party would “abolish all federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies in the public service and federal institutions such as the Armed Forces.”
Tobacco smuggling is now worth $2.5 billion a year in lost tax revenue, the highest estimate to date, says one of Canada’s largest cigarette makers. Imperial Tobacco Canada in a submission to senators said smuggled cigarettes are worth nearly 40 percent of the market in some provinces: 'Organized crime groups use it as a cash cow.'
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “Police officer stops a city councilor who had slowed down his vehicle in an area known for prostitutes…”
In the village of Authie, France, population 1,500, it’s still possible to score a $56 hotel room with a nearby McDonald’s rated “catastrophique” on TripAdvisor. There is also a Rue des Canadiens “where the bodies of two murdered soldiers were placed on the street so that a tank could repeatedly run over them,” explains Canadian Battlefields Of The Second World War. In Authie in 1944 “wildly excited Hitler Youth began murdering Canadians while the battle still raged and continued killing prisoners systematically after the fighting ceased.” Murder victims numbered 37.
Authors Terry Copp and Matt Baker lead readers on an intriguing tour of the Normandy countryside that witnessed gallantry and atrocity. Take a drive down Highway D170, “one of the prettiest roads you will explore in Normandy,” they write. “This is one of the roads the Regina Rifles used in their advance inland on D-Day.” Names of the dead are immortalized in a village church.
Final costs of the ArriveCan program were ten times the original budget, two former managers yesterday told the Commons government operations committee. “I delivered a detailed costing of $6.3 million,” testified Cameron MacDonald (pictured right), former director general with the Canada Border Services Agency: "We are not responsible for the $60 million."
A majority of Canadians are confused and anxious about climate change while 20 percent are uninterested, says in-house Privy Council “behavioural science research.” The federal study obtained through Access To Information showed worriers and skeptics alike were found in all regions and walks of life: "Canadians are a diverse group."
Costs of federal employee salaries and benefits topped $67 billion last year, a record, Budget Officer Yves Giroux said yesterday. Giroux earlier described growth in payroll expenses as “worrisome.”
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue yesterday pleaded with immigrant groups to testify without fear of retaliation at the Commission on Federal Interference. Hogue promised extraordinary precautions for anyone with evidence against foreign agents: "They fear reprisals if they provide information."
CBC’s Ombudsman yesterday dismissed viewer complaints of bias over a TV show on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mormon viewers called it a “hit piece."
Housing Minister Sean Fraser has launched national fundraising but yesterday would not comment on whether he is campaigning to lead the Liberal Party. “Hopeful about the future!” wrote one Fraser fundraiser: "While many are counting the federal Liberals as being dead on arrival in the next election I think the outcome of this is far from clear."
The Department of Public Works has “sufficient suspicion” of wrongdoing in ArriveCan contracting, a manager testified yesterday. Assistant Deputy Minister Catherine Poulin made the admission under questioning at the Commons public accounts committee: "People would be fired for this."
Federal contracting is “lacklustre and faulty,” the Liberal parliamentary secretary for revenue said yesterday. MP Iqra Khalid (Mississauga-Erin Mills, Ont.) said all taxpayers suffered under mismanagement of the $59.5 million ArriveCan program: "We did not take care of taxpayer dollars."
The Commons transport committee yesterday by unanimous 11-0 vote summoned Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault for questioning over his remarks that Canada doesn’t need more roads. Conservative MP Mark Strahl (Chilliwack-Hope, B.C.), sponsor of the motion, called it “a radical policy.”
A labour board has dismissed a complaint against the largest federal employees’ union that it failed to speak up for Jewish members amid ongoing war protests. “Internal affairs” of the Public Service Alliance of Canada were not the board's business, wrote an adjudicator: "Public statements have nothing to do with the Act."
