CBC News coverage of the Middle East is systemically pro-Palestinian with omissions, "emotional language" and selective facts that skew the audience's perception of Israel, a B’nai Brith Canada report said yesterday. The network has denied its coverage is biased: "My perception is we are working very hard."
Canada Student Loan write-offs cost taxpayers more than $200 million in 2024 despite a permanent waiver on interest for borrowers, says a federal briefing note. Individual student debts average $15,578 on graduation, according to the Department of Social Development: "The value of unpaid student loans will continue to grow."
An employer cannot be faulted for following public health advice even if it’s unsound, the British Columbia Court of Appeal has ruled. The decision followed four years of hearings into a vaccine mandate enforced by taxpayer-owned Purolator Inc.: "It continued to be reasonable for Purolator to rely on public health authority statements about effectiveness even if, as a matter of objective fact, vaccination had ceased to be effective."
The Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force is hiring a consultant to work as her private secretary at an undisclosed cost despite cabinet's promise to cut spending on consultants, records show. The military did not say why none of its current 93,000 armed forces and civilian employees were incapable of filling the post: 'We are cutting management consultants by 20 percent.'
Friends of Israel are asking Parliament to reject a petition by New Democrat leadership contender MP Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona) as discriminatory against Jews. McPherson declined comment on the petition that proposes mandatory background checks of all visitors from Israel, including Canadian citizens, and an investigation of charitable works by Indigo Books CEO Heather Reisman: 'Reject this in its entirety.'
Cabinet is commissioning million-dollar research into impacts of its National School Food Program after admitting previous claims were guesswork. The Department of Social Development in a briefing note said it needed “evidence” to support the $1 billion program: "This is a game changer."
Cabinet has approved a six percent budget hike for a government think tank famed for bleak forecasts of societal collapse. It was a “centre of excellence,” said a briefing note.
It remains the only Parliament Hill structure to be razed by cabinet order, a magnificent colonial landmark, Canada’s first Supreme Court building. Here a Laval tax lawyer, Louis St. Laurent, pleaded his first federal case in 1911. As prime minister in 1956 he had it demolished to make way for a parking lot.
Parliament for 90 years enforced a White Canada immigration policy intended to create an all-Caucasian society, literally a Great White North. It was built on crude and false assumptions of racial characteristics. Lawmakers and educators rarely speak of it today though the painful topic has inspired excellent academic research like White Settler Reserve, an exposé of attempts to create a Nordic master race on the Prairies.
It was a “special experiment of immigrant colonization,” newspapermen wrote in 1875. Cabinet subsidized Icelandic immigrants to colonize the southwest shore of Lake Winnipeg on territorial lands of the Cree, Ojibwe and Métis. Among the 19th century settlers were the great-great-grandparents of Professor Ryan Eyford of the University of Winnipeg, who chronicles the experiment in a crisp narrative.
New Democrat leadership contender MP Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona) yesterday had no comment after sponsoring a Commons petition targeting a Jewish charity co-founded by Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books. The petition also asked Parliament to screen all Canadians returning from Israel for complicity in alleged war crimes: "I have to feel in my heart that I’ve done what I can."
Federal agencies yesterday outlined payroll cuts that were half the 10 percent stated by Prime Minister Mark Carney. The Budget Office had sought the figures for months: "There is a lack of detail."
A labour arbitrator has overturned Canada Post’s firing of a mail carrier who kept thousands of undelivered letters in his vehicle for months at a time. Inspectors found 6,000 pieces of mail including urgent notices: "This can only be seen as very abnormal behaviour."
Repeal of U.S. climate mandates set the industry back “at least 15 years,” says a Department of Environment briefing note. Cabinet to date has yet to report on its review of Canada’s electric auto mandate though it was due December 31: "Why the mandate?"
A federal agency is shopping for artificial intelligence software to replace a "specialized team" of bilingual employees paid to translate weather bulletins. The proposal by the Meteorological Service of Canada is the first of its kind in the federal use of AI: 'It would rely solely on machine to machine communication.'
Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale, Ont.) will quit Parliament tomorrow in an abrupt departure that averts any Commons ethics committee questioning over conflicts of interest. Freeland’s announcement came only hours after the committee chair expressed outrage over her conduct: "When did we become a country where laws, ethics and morality don’t matter anymore?"
