Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland hosted a dinner party at her Toronto home with a former federal contractor, the Commons government operations committee learned yesterday. “She actually convened a dinner at her house,” testified Dominic Barton, now-retired managing director of McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm: "I knew her from before. I did know her."
Québec has a “fixation on religious minorities” while Black Muslim women live in fear “out West,” cabinet’s inclusion advisor said in public remarks last spring. Amira Elghawaby, the $191,000-a year Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, said she herself was targeted by a truck driver while walking in her Ottawa neighbourhood: "I too was almost hit by a truck that was deliberately and very dangerously swerving toward me."
Attorney General David Lametti has lost a key Federal Court ruling on his use of emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy. A judge ordered that internal emails contradicting cabinet claims of a national crisis must be admitted into evidence: 'It was not disclosed despite repeated requests.'
The Commons yesterday for the second time in two years unanimously passed a motion condemning China for crimes against humanity. MPs by a 322-0 vote said Uyghur Muslims “face pressure and intimidation by the Chinese state.”
Customs agents did not seize any contraband by rail over a four-year period, records show. The disclosure follows cabinet’s admission it has no estimate on the number of guns smuggled into Canada: "The CBSA did not seize any illegal items from train cars for the years 2018 to 2021."
A Calgary hotel last year was paid the equivalent of $452,714 per guest to feed and shelter quarantined travelers, records show. MPs expressed astonishment at millions paid to the Westin Calgary Airport hotel by the Public Health Agency of Canada: "Has anybody been fired for this?"
A Conservative MP yesterday was told to “watch the language” after accusing cabinet members of corrupt practices. MP Michael Barrett (Leeds-Grenville, Ont.) repeated his charge outside the Commons, then served notice of committee cross-examination for one minister caught rewarding a friend with sole-sourced contracts: "What is it going to take for one of these corrupt ministers to resign?"
A cabinet bill to regulate YouTube is an Orwellian attempt to have Canadian creators comply with government-approved messaging, a Liberal-appointed Senator said yesterday. “In Germany it was called the Ministry of National Enlightenment,” said Senator David Richards, a novelist and screenwriter: 'I don’t know who would be able to tell me what Canadian content is but it won’t be the Minister of Heritage.'
Taxpayers lost a half million on contractors’ cancellation fees paid by federal department and agencies, records show. The figure did not include estimates from the Department of Public Works that declined to release all numbers: "This information is not systematically available."
New Democrat MPs and the Canadian Union of Public Employees yesterday pressed cabinet to introduce a promised federal ban on replacement workers. The Liberal Party two years ago pledged to introduce the bill: "I have long been frustrated."
Eight years after Parliament passed the Veterans Hiring Act the Department of Veterans Affairs yesterday said it had no figures on how many veterans were actually hired. “We absolutely believe in hiring veterans,” Steven Harris, assistant deputy minister, testified at the Commons veterans affairs committee: "We do make efforts."
Emergency powers invoked against the Freedom Convoy were no excuse for privacy breaches, the federal privacy commissioner said yesterday. “Privacy protection is not just a set of technical rules,” Commissioner Philippe Dufresne wrote a parliamentary committee: "Even in an emergency, public institutions must continue to operate under lawful authority."
Billions spent on consultants have created a “shadow public service” unaccountable to taxpayers, a union executive yesterday told the Commons government operations committee. Federal departments and agencies spend $16.7 billion a year on consultants, by Treasury Board estimate: "This shadow public service plays by an entirely different set of rules."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday rejected demands that he withdraw the appointment of his “inclusion” advisor for inflammatory comments. One cabinet minister described remarks by Amira Elghawaby as “really inappropriate.”
Cabinet has successfully opposed a Federal Court petition that it formally sanction Communist China as genocidal. A judge rejected the petition by lawyers acting on behalf of minority Uyghur Muslims held in Chinese slave camps: 'Canada has decided not to act.'
