The Commons finance committee by a 6-5 vote has prohibited wage subsidies for publicly-traded companies that pay shareholder dividends. The late reform comes after the program already paid almost $98 billion in corporate aid: "The challenge is with someone gaming the system."
Canadians distrust federal regulation of the internet, says in-house research by the Privy Council Office. Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez yesterday said regulation remains a priority for cabinet: "Who would make the decisions as to what is or is not allowed?"
A Liberal lobbyist, Susan Smith, received secret copies of federal audits months before they were tabled in Parliament to “help us carry out our work,” the Auditor General said yesterday. MPs on the Commons finance committee questioned the arrangement: "This Liberal lobbyist got access to your federal audits before Members of Parliament."
Auditors will not examine billions in payouts under the now-disbanded Canada Emergency Response Benefit program until 2023 at the earliest, Auditor General Karen Hogan said yesterday. MPs on the Commons finance committee challenged Hogan to “do your job” and find where the money went: "We now know some of it went to criminals, scammers, people not living in Canada."
The Commons ethics committee yesterday by a 6-4 vote rejected an investigation of Covid contracts for lobbyists. “It would just be stirring the pot,” said Liberal MP Greg Fergus (Hull-Aylmer, Que.), parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister: "I think we should move on to something else."
Settling claims over systemic underfunding of First Nations child welfare programs will cost taxpayers $40 billion and counting, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller yesterday told reporters. “Again, we’re not done,” said Miller: "This is 30 years of the cost of failure and that cost is high."
Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan last night said he welcomed Senate amendments to his own bill on paid sick days. Members of the Senate social affairs committee complained terms of the bill were too restrictive: "Yes I would say we are looking at ways to making the bill better."
Defence Minister Anita Anand’s husband is director of a company that received millions in Covid contracts while Anand served in cabinet, records show. There was no insider dealing, said Anand's office: "We have awarded contracts to private companies."
Federal tax collectors have yet to audit multi-billion dollar Canada Emergency Response Benefit payments though the Canada Revenue Agency has known of suspected fraud since June 2020. MPs on the Commons finance committee expressed surprise at the slow pace of investigations: "This has been going on since 2020 and nobody’s investigated anything?"
Senators are being reprimanded for misusing anonymous Zoom chat privileges when debating legislation. “I’m a Zoom Gal,” announced Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) after other legislators complained of electronic back chatter by users with pseudonyms during Senate business: "Is an honourable senator in the chamber using tablet Zoom 12?"
Parents of four-fifths of elementary school age children newly eligible for Covid shots have declined vaccination to date. The Public Health Agency said the coronavirus posed little serious risk to young children, adding school outbreaks were not significant: "If your objective is to reduce serious outcomes, the key focus remains the old age groups."
No change in the Criminal Code is necessary to deal with Covid protesters, a Senate committee was told Friday. Cabinet proposes maximum ten year prison sentences for some demonstrators: "I’m not sure the police will actually do anything differently."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, writes for Blacklock’s each and every Sunday: “Canadian astronauts point to mental health as the most important aspect of maintaining humans in space. Everything is the same every day, they say…”
It’s the fact that never fails to provoke nostalgia, anger or simple disbelief. For one magic generation from about 1952 to 1972, Canadians lived in a workers’ paradise. A single wage earner made enough to support a whole family. Most everyone could buy a home even if it was only 1100 square feet, and a typical Canadian had steady work with one, maybe two employers on the promise of a gold watch and pension.
Historian Graham Broad of Western University argues we have this all wrong: the golden years actually started a decade earlier. If the 1940s are cast as a gaunt era of wartime sacrifice, Broad notes that for the 99 percent of Canadians who were not in combat those years were frankly wonderful. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but I hope the war goes on for a long time,” as one Depression survivor told a newspaperman.
If the government rationed coffee in 1942, the quota was a none-too-dire 12 cups a week, and even that was lifted by 1944. If cabinet slapped a 25 percent luxury tax on jewelry, retailers reported it had no apparent impact on sales. Butter was rationed but only to stop hoarding. Wartime farm production actually doubled nationwide. If 1944 was the year Canadians fought their way up the boot of Italy, it was the same year Maclean’s reported that “night life in Montréal is booming like Big Ben on Armistice Day.”
Cabinet budgeted more than $81 million to enforce Covid rules for employees though fewer than 5,000 are unvaccinated. Treasury Board President Mona Fortier under Commons questioning could not explain over-budgeting for test kits: "How does the government justify this?"
