The transport department is hiring private sector consultants to monitor spending on a multi-billion dollar high-speed rail venture. Cabinet said it needed “financial analysis” of the project that has been announced and re-announced for years: "This is real now."
Prime Minister Arthur Meighen lived for years on tree-lined Cooper Street in Ottawa. He owned a rambling Georgian Revival-style home. Meighen raised a family, sent his three children to Ottawa public schools and crafted the most momentous legislation of his era. Today the house is gone, replaced with an ugly apartment block.
Twenty-six percent of all new federal prisoners have already served time, which begs the question: Whatever happened to the other 74 percent who served time and never returned? On The Outside looks for answers. The result is fresh and compelling research on life after prison.
The authors interview longtime inmates including those jailed for serious violent crimes that once earned the death penalty. One hides his past from his children and “aspires to a simple life filled with laughter.” Another complains he must learn how to buy groceries: “People have been cooking my meals for twenty-two years and all of a sudden I gotta cook my breakfast.” A third ex-convict is upset by the loss of civility in polite society: “Personal rudeness in the prison system is not tolerated under any circumstances, at least in the old days when I was there.”
On The Outside is no celebration of rehabilitation. Former inmates interviewed by the authors appear broken men, some guilt-ridden, some unapologetic.
Canadians are indifferent to claims of labour shortages by businesses that rely on foreign workers, says Department of Immigration research. Even people with mild views on immigration were “unpersuaded” by complaints from employers: 'Some suggested they may depress wages and used foreign workers to drive down costs.'
Tax appeals that should take 120 days may take years based on a federal redefinition of time. The disclosure came in a labour board hearing for a Canada Revenue Agency appeals officer demoted for working too slowly: "On occasion it takes years."
Canadians traveling to Cuba should expect to be stranded without electricity, food or fresh water, the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Diplomats updated a federal travel advisory warning conditions were so poor, drivers were fighting in gas station lineups: "Traveling across the island is extremely challenging."
Cabinet yesterday said it will spend $248,600 for a study on how much it would take to upgrade Canada’s most northerly deepwater port. The Port of Churchill, Man. has been the subject of numerous postwar studies that questioned its commercial potential: "What is the viability of the Port of Churchill?"
Air Canada complains it is being singled out for French fines under draft regulations requiring bilingual service by federally regulated transport employers. Maximum fines are $25,000: "Other air carriers do not have the same obligations as Air Canada."
The number of landed immigrants let into Canada last year totaled 393,500, Immigration Minister Lena Diab said yesterday. The figure was almost a quarter less than the 500,000 quota set prior to 2024 cuts: "My job has been made quite easy."
Cabinet’s bid to engineer majority control of Parliament rests in a looming byelection in a Montréal suburb, Terrebonne, where Liberals won by a single vote over the Bloc Québécois in 2025. “We have a certain weight,” Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet earlier told reporters.
The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops, B.C. yesterday confirmed it has not attempted to exhume the purported graves of 215 children at the site of an Indian Residential School despite receiving $12.1 million in federal funding for field work. The admission comes ahead of the scheduled release of Access To Information documents regarding the First Nation’s requests for funding for “exhumation of remains.”
The CBC is entitled to conceal internal details of corporate spending under the Access To Information Act, says a federal judge. The ruling came on a legal challenge by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to find how much the CBC spent on advertising while executives pled financial hardship: 'Disclosure could result in political interference and pressure to modify its spending.'
The Canada Revenue Agency is revising the scope of audits to target the largest multinational corporations with offshore accounts. The initiative follows internal complaints that auditors misspent time chasing smaller corporations: "There have to be decisions about the fairness of the regime."
Pay and benefits averaged more than $143,000 per federal employee last year, the Budget Office said yesterday. It was “historically high,” wrote analysts: "An employee can have seven levels of management above them."
Refugee claims by travelers passing through Canadian airports fell 73 percent after cabinet reintroduced a Mexican visa requirement, records show. Inland claims also declined as cabinet cut foreign study permits at colleges and universities: "Ineligibility measures are about protecting the asylum system."
