There is no chance of a housing crash in Canada despite spiralling prices, the Prime Minister’s Office forecast in a confidential 2014 memo. More recent federal reports have cited concerns of a housing bubble: "This is not the case".
Alberta has the worst air in the country in terms of dust and coarse particulate matter, says new Health Canada research. The department based its data on air samples from test sites in Edmonton, Calgary and cities nationwide: "This is irritating".
All Crown corporations would be required to appoint women to at least half their directorships under a New Democrat bill introduced in the Commons. Currently 27 percent of Crown directors are women, and two agencies have no women board members whatsoever: "It's a start".
Canada Revenue Agency has tallied another conviction – the 20th in eight years – involving an internet-fueled tax evasion scheme blamed for more than half a billion dollars in false claims. The Agency in earlier confidential memos lamented the “multitude of fraudsters” adhering to the so-called natural person movement: "The true size of the problem was never known".
Lawmakers' failure to pass a DNA privacy bill has let more employers and insurers discriminate against Canadians using their own genetic data, says the Huntington Society of Canada. Senators reopen hearings tomorrow on a first-ever bill protecting DNA as confidential: "Where is this going?"
The government wants to ‘simplify’ the payment of millions it spends each year on taxi fares for employees in Ottawa – but won’t say if staff should use bootleg Uber cabs. The initiative follows a Competition Bureau proposal for deregulation of the entire taxi industry: "The government wishes to modernize".
The fisheries department is spending $2.5 million a year monitoring an Atlantic seal hunt worth barely $500,000, according to confidential memos. Draft minutes of a censored Intradepartmental Discussion On Seals blamed the industry’s collapse on a gullible public: “People are stupid”.
Rising rent increases are running at more than five times the inflation rate, says a new report. Costs for renters jumped 10.7 percent in 2014, the most recent data available. The typical Canadian now spends 29 percent of household income on shelter: "You're starting to make sacrifices".
Official figures grossly misrepresent the actual number of poor seniors in Canada, says a confidential Department of Finance memo. The true number is about half, and possibly as little as a fifth of what Statistics Canada claims, according to the memo obtained through Access To Information: "Statistics overestimate the actual number of seniors living in low income".
Canadian National Railway Co. seeks to waive federal caps on certain freight revenues in British Columbia. The railway has been fined six times in the past 10 years for excess profits on grain shipments under the Canada Transportation Act: "We have no comment".
MPs for the second time in two years will consider a bill to federalize shipwrecks. The proposal would see the Canadian Coast Guard assume costs of salvage and clean-up of wrecked and abandoned vessels nationwide: "They can act fast".
Municipalities nationwide seek tighter federal scrutiny of telecom providers in local property disputes, according to submissions to the CRTC. The appeal follows long-running feuds over placement of cellphone towers: 'They don't know conditions on the ground'.
Poverty is called a trap, though millions of Canadians have escaped it using subtle and very human methods. The Department of Employment, an anti-poverty agency, is not good at this. “The welfare state, which imposes order from above and requires specific outcomes, fails on many levels,” write Joe and Stephanie Mancini. “Access to basic necessities of life is often denied because someone does not fit into bureaucratic categories, or because they cannot navigate complex rule-based systems.”
The Mancinis’ Transition To Common Work is a crisp critique of the welfare state written by a devoutly Catholic husband and wife committed to aiding the poor. This is not a rant about the dole. It is an eloquent account of the subtle, human remedies for despair.
The Department of Public Works says it’s prepared to fingerprint federal contractors under a so-called “integrity regime”. Officials also maintain a confidential database of subcontractors without individuals’ consent, according to documents obtained through Access To Information: "It was gut-wrenching when I saw that letter".
The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a class action lawsuit over hip replacements. The case follows the 2013 lapse of a Senate bill to create a national registry of medical devices: "Anybody who has an artificial implant would like to know".
