The cost of keeping an inmate in federal prison averages $436 a day, a new record, according to Correctional Service figures. Inmates at women’s prisons were the most expensive at an average $779 per day: "The Correctional Service of Canada is among the highest resourced correctional systems in the world."
Québec residents surveyed in a federal focus group say they’ve never heard of the Order of Canada. The civil honour has been awarded nearly 8,000 times since it was introduced 58 years ago: "None had any specific candidates in mind."
A landmark human rights complaint involving schoolchildren with Down Syndrome was stalled 13 years by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, records show. The Tribunal said it was overworked: "Future delay will have far more of a negative impact in this case."
The Department of Immigration in a briefing note admits it never sought “comprehensive security screening” of suspected Egyptian terrorists arrested a year ago for plotting an attack on Toronto. Then-Immigration Minister Marc Miller at the time defended his department’s handling of the case: "What the hell is going on?"
Canadians in Privy Council focus groups questioned cabinet’s rationale for record high immigration quotas. A pollsters’ report on the findings was delivered only weeks before then-Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney announced “the system isn’t working.”
The Commons transport committee yesterday voted to investigate taxpayers’ financing of shipyard jobs in China. Members approved a motion by Conservative MP Dan Albas (Okanagan Lake West-South Kelowna, B.C.) to find who approved the use of “scarce public taxpayer dollars” to benefit a Chinese state-run company: "Remember the government that said ‘elbows up,’ ‘Canada strong,’ ‘we can build it together'?"
Blacklock’s legal challenge of theft of its work by federal managers is a test of passwords used by all publishers in Canada, says a secret memo to Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault. A pending appeal in Blacklock’s Reporter v. Canada was being monitored closely, said the memo disclosed yesterday through Access To Information: “Use of passwords to limit access to copyright protected content is a common business practice among online platforms including news sites, streaming services and video game digital distribution services.”
The Northwest Mounted Police, once hailed for saving the West from U.S. annexation, were in fact paramilitary colonialists insensitive to Indigenous “political structures,” says a federal board. Parks Canada consultants who approved the revision included a cabinet appointee who deleted federal web pages celebrating the Mounted Police: "I feel very strongly."
Main themes of the Liberal Party’s “elbows up” re-election campaign were tested in confidential federal focus groups months before the U.S. announced tariffs, documents show. Pollsters hired by the Privy Council found many Canadians were unsettled by Donald Trump and feared “mass layoffs” from tariffs.
Parks Canada privately complained of “persistent emails” from activists seeking to rewrite commemoration of the Canadian Pacific Railway from a racial perspective, Access To Information records show. Calls for revision followed a 2019 cabinet directive that Canadian history reflect “colonialism, patriarchy and racism.”
The next federal Census for the first time will ask Canadians if they had to sleep in their car. It follows complaints of inadequate estimates of Canada’s homeless population: "Over the past 12 months has this person stayed in a shelter, on the street or in parks, in a makeshift shelter, in a vehicle or in an abandoned building?"
Cabinet will not publicly discuss industrial projects for fast-tracked approval until they’re finalized, says Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. “I never did a deal with the press,” he told reporters.
The Canada Revenue Agency in a legal notice Saturday quietly marked the end of a sports era with the wind-up of the Bobby Hull Foundation for Children in Winnipeg. Completion of the Foundation’s work came two years after the Hockey Hall of Famer died at 84: "I miss Bobby."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “It’s election time. Posters of candidates along the road, under the bridge, across from the gas station. I see them perfectly nestled…”
From 1949 to 1955 cabinet created two Royal Commissions on culture, one on arts and literature, the other on broadcasting. After beating Hitler and mastering hydro dams, the country for the first time was affluent enough to ask what it meant to be Canadian. Ordinary people subscribed to the Book Of The Month Club and their children read W.O. Mitchell at school. Canadian writers – Morley Callaghan, Mordecai Richler, Farley Mowat, Al Purdy – were genuine celebrities and dailies like the Winnipeg Free Press ran a weekly Young Authors contest.
The University of Alberta Press documents the era through the warm, nostalgic filter of private letters between one of the country’s most acclaimed novelists and her publisher. It is a sweet book, funny and angry by turn, and a delight to read.
