Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne yesterday would not answer the Commons finance committee when asked if he would cap spending on cabinet’s regional high speed rail venture at $90 billion. The Budget Office has predicted costs are already 26 percent over budget: "Are you uneasy with this?"
The Department of Heritage yesterday would not explain why it approved thousand in foreign travel expenses by an advisor after cabinet promised to cut unnecessary travel. Taxpayers were billed more than $46,000 in five months for business-class junkets abroad by Amira Elghawaby, former Toronto Star columnist and Special Representative on Combating Islamophobia: "It's really important to be a fiscally responsible government."
Governor General Louise Arbour’s son-in-law in a rare political commentary by a Rideau Hall family member has publicly denounced Rebel News Network. “My mother-in-law has nothing, directly or indirectly, to do with it,” said Michael Spratt, an Ottawa lawyer.
MPs yesterday took up Second Reading of a private bill mandating compensation for damage to religious properties by arsonists or vandals. It follows federal data documenting numerous arson attacks on churches: 'Compensation to the property owner is novel.'
Ex-cabinet advisor and Toronto Star columnist Amira Elghawaby billed taxpayers nearly $18,000 for a business-class junket to England to ‘define Islamophobia,’ newly-released expense accounts show. Expenses included a $2,947 stay at a four-star hotel in Piccadilly: "Personal attendance was required."
Cabinet is now censoring internal audits at the passport office after successive investigations documented mismanagement that cost taxpayers millions. The latest Audit Of Passport Delivery Service redacted its findings: "I wouldn’t be surprised if they claim some sort of success despite the disaster we’ve seen."
Provinces were to blame for homelessness by emptying the mental hospitals, then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s cabinet agreed in confidential 1999 meetings. Newly-declassified records show ministers in private conversation said homelessness also appeared to be an issue with the “native population.”
The Department of Transport’s electric car rebate program paid millions to affluent drivers with six-figure incomes who planned to buy a zero emission vehicle anyway, new records show. A fraction of electric car buyers, 5 percent, made under $50,000 a year: "It’s a fair question to ask whether regular Canadian taxpayers should be subsidizing the purchase of luxury vehicles for people who are prepared to pay full price for them."
Fewer than half of “assault style” firearms banned by federal order were surrendered to police under a now-suspended amnesty program, records show. The roundup was deferred until 2027 at the earliest due to a pending Supreme Court of Canada challenge by gun owners: 'Most did not see themselves or their peers as a major factor in gun crimes in Canada.'
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “When the summer warmth fades to winter’s chill, my heart seeks the sentimental to its detriment. And the memories fall with the snow: a Thursday night in St John’s, icons, scoundrels and minstrels. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you…”
Those who live long enough reach a point where all regrets and anxieties simply vanish. No one on their 100th birthday recites a century’s worth of petty gibes. Perhaps it’s the distraction of arthritis, or the comfort of knowing there are no surviving witnesses to our most embarrassing incidents.
Cherie Dimaline, Governor General’s Award-winning author, is only in her 40s and not there yet. Dimaline vividly recalls all her regrets and anxieties, like the time she got drunk on Jägermeister.
“Remember there was that party you went to in your early twenties, when they were giving out free Jägermeister and you were still broke enough to think you needed to drink the hell out of that Jägermeister because, well, it was free, and then you got so drunk you started an argument with that group of strangers who said you were an idiot?” writes Dimaline. “Oh, man, you really were an idiot. Wait, let me play that back in detail for you.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs says it didn’t have time to invite Afghan War veterans to speak at the ceremonial groundbreaking for a National Monument to Afghan War dead. The 40-minute ceremony did hear from non-combatants including Veterans Affairs Minister Jill McKnight: "Why?"
Owners of a heavy duty Russian cargo plane grounded in Toronto by cabinet order are appealing to the Federal Court of Appeal to remove the airline from a federal blacklist. Volga-Dnepr Airlines LLC told judges it played no role in the Ukrainian war, and had freighted cargo in the past for Canada’s Department of National Defence: 'It transported military cargo for countries around the world including NATO support.'
Building a single high speed railway tunnel to the Island of Montréal will cost taxpayers more than $2.5 billion, the Budget Office said yesterday. The calculation was included among figures showing cabinet underestimated the cost of its regional electrified rail project by billions: 'Tunnels are major construction cost drivers.'
Cabinet must uphold criminal sanctions on drug trafficking following a Charter Of Rights ruling by a Vancouver judge, Opposition members said yesterday. Conservative MP Frank Caputo (Kamloops-Thompson, B.C.), former Crown prosecutor, predicted greater public disorder if cabinet does not act: "There is no constitutional right to sell heroin."
