CMHC is hiring publicists to plot “tactics” in promoting a statutory right to housing. It follows a recommendation from the National Housing Advocate that Parliament expropriate properties of bad landlords and “prevent the sale of housing to financial firms.”
The United States would never tolerate a seal cull in Atlantic Canada, Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray said yesterday. Any cull in the name of conservation would likely breach a 1972 U.S. law, she said: "We cannot take measures that risk that market."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last night rejected a House affairs committee motion that he immediately call a public inquiry into foreign meddling in federal elections. His refusal set cabinet in conflict with Members of Parliament over control of the investigation into alleged criminal breaches of the Canada Elections Act: "Unbelievable."
Cabinet yesterday called on consultants to help it create a long-promised Financial Crimes Agency. The Department of Public Safety said work will continue into 2024: "It will establish Canada’s first ever nationwide agency whose sole purpose is to investigate these highly complex crimes."
A federal agency saw more than a tenth of its annual operations budget spent through employees’ use of government-issue credit cards. Auditors uncovered “purchases from unusual vendors” at the National Research Council: "We reviewed a sample of high risk transactions."
Federal prisoners allowed to serve time at Indigenous healing lodges have a higher recidivism rate than those held in regular cells, says a federal report. Healing lodges feature arts and crafts, skating and book clubs, said the Correctional Service: "Emphasis for hobby crafts would be on traditional Indigenous arts and crafts such as rattle making or beadwork."
Federal regulators yesterday fined a Toronto-based bank $676,500 for breach of regulations under the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act. The penalty for Wealth One Bank of Canada was the steepest levied in two years: "We will be firm."
A federal panel recommends another Covid booster shot for retirees beginning this month. It follows disclosures the Public Health Agency ordered delivery of 91 million vaccine doses: "We will never be fully vaccinated against Covid-19."
Federal spending on consultants will jump 13 percent this year, says a Budget Office report. “It has shown consistent growth year over year,” wrote analysts: "More than half of spending on professional and special services is consistently comprised of five departments alone."
The Senate human rights committee outspent all other committees combined last year with a detailed study of Islamophobia. Hearings resume this week after the panel heard from 135 witnesses in five cities: "How does the Senate human rights committee define the term Islamophobia?"
Conventional TV is on a “downward trajectory” that will see networks fight over an ever-dwindling pool of revenue, says a CRTC report. All television programming with the exception of sports is now a money loser, it said: "Each year a larger share of ad spending in Canada is flowing to the internet."
An Iqaluit judge has sent to trial a landmark Charter case, first of its kind, on whether Inuit schoolchildren have a constitutional right to public education in their own language. “The action must proceed to trial,” wrote Justice Paul Bychok of Nunavut Territorial Court.
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “In Paris, cartoonists killed in the line of duty just one day after Canada had announced its support for freedom of expression, transparency, and access to global information…”
On April 11, 2000 a supermarket employee in Williams Lake, B.C. called police after spotting a drunk passed out at a storefront picnic table. A constable arrived and threw the man, Paul Alphonse of the Williams Lake Indian Band, into a police vehicle. Hold that image for a moment: the hopeless drunk, a peevish clerk, an angry cop. It was a very ordinary incident
Except Alphonse was mysteriously dead in police custody within a week. He suffered broken ribs and had a purple bruise on his chest the size of a boot, Alphonse’s boot. The man could not have stomped himself to death. At the inquest, Constable Bob Irwin testified Alphonse was so violent he’d slapped him around and pinned him against a wall at police headquarters. None of this was corroborated by precinct video cameras. They weren’t operating that day.
Alphonse was 67, weighed 120 pounds, and had been arrested for drunkenness more than 70 times. He was a small, sick old man. Constable Irwin stood over 6’, weighed 240 pounds and enjoyed martial arts. “The pathologist believed the stomping had probably occurred just prior to Alphonse’s arrest and may not have been due to the actions of police,” writes Professor Sherene Razack, a sociologist at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Studies In Education. “There remained only the sinister possibility that someone deliberately stomped on Alphonse while wearing his own boot.”
The House affairs committee yesterday by a vote of 6 to 5 ruled Parliament must order a public inquiry into claims of foreign election interference. Liberal MPs opposed the motion now expected to be endorsed by the entire Commons following its return from recess Monday: "This is just taking cheap shots at the Prime Minister."
