Blacklock's Reporter

Cabinet’s $90 billion regional high speed rail venture will “change life as we know it,” Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon yesterday told MPs. MacKinnon acknowledged the service will be inaccessible to most Canadians, but said it would create “new worlds of intercity travel” for some Ontarians and Québecers: "You’re a businessperson, someone who wants to go to a hockey game or a baseball game and come back the same evening."

Canadians’ faith in public institutions is in decline, a Treasury Board executive yesterday told the Commons ethics committee. The remarks during a statutory review of the Lobbying Act followed disclosure that several individuals in breach of the law escaped prosecution: "There are a lot of challenges in maintaining the public’s trust."

A Canada Post experiment to save rural post offices by turning them into "community hubs" had mixed results, says a management report. The post office would not say how much it earned or lost on the venture: "Currently there are no plans to launch additional locations using the ‘community hub’ format."

The Senate yesterday by a 41 to 32 vote quashed a proposal to criminalize Indian Residential School “denialism” under threat of two years’ jailing. The vote came moments after cabinet announced it opposed the amendment: "Senators may have already noticed the online backlash to the amendment has begun."

Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday in his first Question Period appearance in a week sat silently as Conservative MPs recited stories of jobless workers. Carney repeatedly wished Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre a happy 47th birthday in an attempt to be lighthearted: "Will the Prime Minister stop being so flippant about the suffering he has caused?"

Heritage Minister Marc Miller yesterday in an abrupt reversal suspended a CRTC order tripling fees on Netflix and other video streaming services. The decision came 48 hours after Miller voted with 192 other MPs to sustain the fee hike: "Does this have anything to do with the United States threatening a tariff investigation?"

Repealing local development charges would boost housing starts by up to 14 percent in the costliest markets, CMHC said yesterday. A wide range of advocates from the Senate banking committee to the Canadian Human Rights Commission have criticized mandatory fees as a drag on construction: "Reducing development charges increases the viability of housing construction projects in all cases."

Forty-eight hours after cabinet appointed a new panel on anti-Jewish discrimination, Liberal-appointed Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) yesterday asked in Question Period whether it was anti-Semitic to depict Israelis as sex criminals: "Is this why the government has been so silent on the United Nations’ inclusion of Israel on the blacklist of countries that engages in sexual violence in conflicts?"

Cabinet shelved as too costly a plan to develop a new index to raise seniors’ pensions, Access To Information records show. The Liberal Party 11 years ago promised to raise payments using a customized Seniors Price Index: 'It would have resulted in small individual benefit increases at a high overall cost.'

Prime Minister Mark Carney in his first comment on the made-in-Canada recession yesterday acknowledged “choppiness” in the economy but again declined to attend Question Period to defend his record. “Data is going to be uneven,” he told reporters.

One of the nation’s largest Jewish groups yesterday dismissed as ineffectual the appointment of a Department of Heritage committee to investigate anti-Semitism. Heritage Minister Marc Miller acknowledged the committee was merely “a first step.”

Canadians remain skeptical of electric cars’ reliability despite years of federal promotions including $5,000 rebates, says in-house Department of Natural Resources research. “Uncertainty persists around issues such as charging capacity, maintenance costs and resale value,” wrote federal pollsters.

Floor crossing in the Commons is an odious practice that infuriates voters, New Democrat MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) said yesterday. Davies sponsored a private bill that would require all MPs who quit one caucus for another to face home electors in a byelection: "Political opportunism has gotten to such a point in this place that it’s overriding fundamental respect for democracy."

The Senate human rights committee last night voted 7 to 1 to criminalize Indian Residential School “denialism.” Public statements intended to promote hatred by downplaying the impacts of Residential Schools would be outlawed under threat of two years in jail: "It can involve denying, minimizing or justifying the documented abuses, deaths, forced assimilation and intergenerational harms."

Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday skipped Commons questions over the recession to take a 15-minute tour of a construction site in his Nepean, Ont. riding. The Prime Minister would only let media “take a picture of him wearing a hard hat and carrying a hammer around pretending he’s a carpenter” but would not discuss his management of the economy, said Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.