Communities targeted by public disorder have “lost confidence” in police, prosecutors and the courts, Toronto’s Deputy Chief of Police yesterday told the Senate human rights committee. The testimony followed complaints of repeated, violent attacks on Jews: 'When a Jewish school is shot at, social damage resonates widely.'
Cabinet has no plans to update a federal grant program for schoolchildren that's been unchanged for decades, says a report by the Department of Social Development. It follows complaints the Canada Education Savings Grant hasn’t kept pace with costs: "This is a way to help our grandchildren given that parents are struggling to make ends meet."
Taxpayers face Olympic-sized debts from hosting FIFA Men’s World Cup matches in Vancouver and Toronto, the Budget Office said yesterday. Thirteen games scheduled through June and July will cost the equivalent of $82 million apiece: "Federal support will be $473 million with the remainder of $593 million funded by other levels of government."
The Department of Foreign Affairs spent more than $32 million on an iceberg-themed pavilion at the Osaka World Fair, records show. Expenses included $164,279 for questionnaires and $50,000 on "creative concept options" even as Prime Minister Mark Carney appealed to Canadians to make sacrifices: "We won’t play games."
Statistics Canada yesterday said it’s revising how it calculates inflation for its benchmark Consumer Price Index but wouldn’t discuss what changes are contemplated. The agency in the past has removed or added check-out items to reflect changing spending patterns, it said: 'The Index can only reflect changes in consumer expenditures when basket weights are updated.'
An activist group is out of Department of Canadian Heritage funding for the first time since 2020 after being accused of anti-Catholic bias, Access To Information records show. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network received hundreds of thousands in taxpayer funding until MPs questioned its role in “spurring greater polarization.”
Billions in federal aid for Ukraine are an expression of Canadian values, Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday. “We’re going to be on the right side of history,” he told reporters.
Cabinet’s “Buy Canadian” policy is to be phased in over an indefinite period, says a memo by the Department of Public Works that manages most federal contracts. The announcement of the policy last September 5 did not imply Canadians would get immediate preferential treatment in contracting, it said: "Measures will be phased in."
Rideau Hall on Saturday stripped civil honours for a Canadian Business Hall of Famer. Jacques Lamarre, retired CEO of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., had his Order of Canada revoked: "Events of recent years have been trying for me."
Parliament should ban public display of the Soviet hammer and sickle as a hate symbol, says the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. A federal bill currently before the Senate would ban the swastika and Hamas banners: 'The Congress was disappointed the Communist hammer and sickle was not included.'
Prime Minister Mark Carney garbled Alberta history in reciting a scripted anecdote as a self-described “proud Albertan,” records show. Carney made the comments last Friday in announcing a pipeline pact with the Government of Alberta: "When I was born just north of the Alberta border in Fort Smith, the oil sands were just a concept."
A federal agency gave more than a million to a small Yukon school board to promote “Indigenous food systems,” records show. The funding was one of a string of grants awarded in the name of food security: 'It developed a traditional processing kitchen in Whitehorse.'
A federal judge has dismissed a request that Canada declare all foreigners in immigration proceedings including illegal border crossers have a right to counsel. Immigration lawyers had sought the declaration.
Blacklock's pauses for the Victoria Day observance with warmest wishes to friends and subscribers. We're back tomorrow -- The Editor.
Poet W.N. Branson writes: “Programmed from an early age to trust your life to the cold unblinking system, distracted, distanced, too weak to engage, when the need is a deep abiding wisdom…”
