Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem's staff disclosed the agency runs a press enemies' list in contravention of cabinet orders. Macklem's director of communications said blacklisted media outlets like Blacklock's were prohibited from questioning bankers while friendly reporters may call for tips on how to cover the news: "Oh, is this on the record?"
Covid infection rates nationwide are much higher than the Public Health Agency expected, admits Dr. Theresa Tam, chief public health officer. The Agency for the first time acknowledged the entire basis of its pandemic planning, that fewer than one in ten Canadians would become infected, was wrong: "That’s a fact."
People are “going nuts” over Covid, exasperated MPs told the Commons health committee. Legislators summoned Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos for questioning this week on pandemic relief, lockdowns and quarantine measures: "It goes on and on."
Carbon taxes may slow economic growth for decades, says a Bank of Canada report. The outlook follows a Budget Office forecast that taxing fuel to lower emissions would cut workers’ net income: 'Canada has unique needs as a vast northern country for heating and transportation.'
Teamsters Canada has lost a challenge of a workplace vaccination order. The union appealed on behalf of an employee at the Toronto Maple Leafs’ home arena who was suspended without pay after declining to reveal his medical status: 'Personal medical information should not be the subject of disclosure.'
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, writes for Blacklock’s each and every Sunday: “Inside the building, signs in English and French direct me to First Aid stations, fire extinguishers, defibrillators…”
Canada’s last military conscription was popular. Resisters were scorned as weaklings who failed the tests of manhood and citizenship. Perceptions of the draft today are coloured by unpopular American wars – even deserters are treated as heroes – but facts are facts. Our conscription experience is a uniquely Canadian story, and Professor Daniel Byers of Laurentian University tells it well.
“The impacts of conscription and the National Resources Mobilization Act were largely forgotten in almost every way after the Second World War,” writes Byers. “For almost five full years the country had been mobilized to an extent that Canadians had not experienced before, nor have they since. Dozens of training centres and military camps stretched across the country. More than a million men and women served in the armed forces, over 150,000 of them as conscripts.”
Canadians homeowners could be forced to buy climate change insurance, says a federal report to Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair. “We welcome and support the core findings,” Blair said yesterday in a statement: "There’s important work to be done."
The Commons ethics committee yesterday voted 10-0 to examine federal monitoring of 33 million Canadian cellphone users in the name of lockdown enforcement. Conservative MP John Brassard (Barrie-Innisfil, Ont.) accused cabinet of using Covid as cover for “massive overreach.”
A British Columbia labour adjudicator has rejected firefighters' appeal to suspend a mandatory vaccination order. A firefighters' union local in Richmond, B.C. challenged the program as intrusive and heavy-handed: 'They must choose between getting a vaccine they do not want or giving up on their careers as firefighters.'
The Bible is no documentary, Ontario Superior Court has ruled. A judge rejected a filmmakers’ claim for an 85 percent "documentary" tax credit for a TV series depicting readings of Scripture with images of the Rocky Mountains: 'This is just a Christian thing.'
Most Canadians surveyed want more representation of Indigenous cultures on Parliament Hill, says a Department of Public Works survey. It follows a cabinet proposal to address “colonialism, patriarchy and racism” in historical commemorations: 'Parliament Hill should reflect the values and aspirations of all Canadians.'
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday was summoned by the Commons finance committee for questioning on the cost of living. The committee voted unanimously to conduct lengthy hearings on inflation and rising house prices one MP likened to a big balloon: "Our economy has become a gigantic inflated balloon."
A B.C. senator has resigned his longstanding membership in a pro-Beijing group, the University of British Columbia China Council. Senator Yuen Pau Woo as a Council member once complained of the “sour attitudes many Canadians have about Beijing.”
Taxing unvaccinated Canadians is no substitute for education in raising immunization rates, the federal New Democrat health critic said yesterday. A Québec proposal to impose a medicare surcharge raised unsettling questions, MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) told reporters: "We believe passionately in universal access to our health care system without financial barriers."
