Cabinet’s electric car mandate is flexible, says Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin. Federal regulations have mandated a ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles by 2035: "Is the target mandatory or optional?"
Federal managers may have breached an Act of Parliament in awarding sweetheart contracts to a millionaire ArriveCan supplier, Auditor General Karen Hogan said yesterday. The contractor, GC Strategies Inc. of Woodlawn, Ont., is already under RCMP investigation for alleged fraudulent billing: "At any time we could have been stopped."
Cabinet is relying on illegal immigrants to leave Canada on their own, Immigration Minister Lena Diab last night told the Commons. Diab would not comment on departmental figures indicating deportees who remain here number up to 500,000 or more: "Does she not understand if you don’t remove people who do not have a legal right to be here, that the system is meaningless?"
Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin last night accused critics of manufacturing controversy over a mandate that new oil and gas projects will only be built with 100 percent consensus. “The most important part is that we work in unity in this moment,” Dabrusin told the Commons.
Cabinet would like to see the “overall cost of housing come down,” Housing Minister Gregor Robertson said yesterday. His remarks followed data showing shelter costs now take up more than half of household incomes on average: "We want to see the overall cost of housing come down."
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday promised an immediate 27 percent increase in defence spending. One member of Carney’s caucus said a spring budget was out of the question since “numbers are changing rapidly.”
U.S. based Door Dash Inc. yesterday accused Canadian anti-trust lawyers of “an overly punitive attempt” to challenge its business model. The federal Competition Bureau accused the delivery company of pocketing millions through misleading advertising: "This application is an overly punitive attempt to make an example of an industry leader."
Prime Minister Mark Carney abruptly cut short a visit with a Muslim group Friday amid protestors' chants of “Free Palestine.” Carney did not comment on remarks by the chair of the Canadian Muslim Association who accused Jews of genocide: "These are Muslim values. These are Canadian values."
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree pleaded inexperience following a Commons grilling in which MPs challenged his unfamiliarity with public safety issues. Anandasangaree is the sixth safety minister in six years: "He doesn't even know."
The federal cabinet will decide which energy projects are deemed “nation-building,” says Prime Minister Mark Carney. However cabinet would not override objections from any premier under a bill tabled in the Commons, he told reporters: "Why did you decide to make this a political decision?"
Canadians choose private sector weather forecasts over Environment Canada, says in-house federal research. The finding followed 2022 disclosures the department scooped data on hundreds of thousands of users who downloaded a government weather app: "The most common apps cited included The Weather Network, AccuWeather and ‘the app that comes on my phone.'"
Housing costs will average 52 percent of household income this year, says a federal memo. The figure in 2015 was 38 percent. “Canada is facing a housing crisis,” said the housing department document: "The cost to construct a residential building in Canada has increased by 58 percent since 2020."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “Guns in the U.S. are getting out of hand. Stricter regulations must be set, enforced…”
It took an advertising copywriter, Walter Lord, to discover the Titanic in 1955. Of course everyone knew of the big ship that hit an iceberg, but it was Lord who fashioned the story into a narrative he called A Night To Remember. The non-fiction bestseller was a modest 208 pages yet inspired generations of Titanic-themed novels, films and stage plays based on Lord’s simple premise: There is nothing more interesting than interesting people in trouble.
Similarly ex-newspaperman Joe Scanlon and historian Roger Sarty of Wilfrid Laurier University discover the Halifax Explosion and fashion it into a compelling tale of humanity in Catastrophe: Stories And Lessons From The Halifax Explosion. Everyone knows about the 1917 harbour collision of a munitions ship that blew the city sky high. The drama is not in the unsafe transportation of dangerous goods any more than Titanic is illustrative of bad seamanship. It’s the people who make it an indelible story.
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday named a third of Liberal backbenchers as parliamentary secretaries. The appointments pay a $20,200-a year bonus: 'It's a mandate for change.'
