A Crown agency, Farm Credit Canada, loaned $64,000 on depreciating farm equipment worth about $50,000 according to documents in a Regina lawsuit. The details follow a warning from the Parliamentary Budget Office over lack of oversight on lending practices by Crown corporations: "We emphasize risk management".
Greenpeace is expressing alarm over Canada’s participation in a forum to develop a regulated commercial fishery in the Arctic. The “exploratory” initiative by the U.S. State Department saw endorsements from Russia, China and other states: 'All industrial extraction should be prevented'.
Auditor General Michael Ferguson is being petitioned to probe undisclosed payments to losing bidders on federal contracts. The New Democratic caucus in a letter to Ferguson alleged payments worth millions have been made as “compensation” since 2005: "Why some bidders and not others?"
An Ottawa lobbyist has paid $16,281 by Court order for copying Blacklock’s news content in breach of the Copyright Act. Dan Paszkowski, president and CEO of the Canadian Vintners Association, had declined a pre-litigation settlement of $314. “I don’t have a lot of time to spend in court,” he said at trial.
The Senate is expected to complete a landmark study of obesity rates amid a cabinet pledge to ban marketing of processed foods to children. Senators are due to continue a committee investigation begun in 2014 that also heard demands for a sugar tax: "The sooner we deal with it the better".
Canada Revenue Agency for the third time in two years has lost a tax appeal after being unable to prove it mailed a letter. Records show the Agency repeatedly sent assessment notices to an incorrect address even after the mail was returned as undeliverable: "What is the point?"
Senators propose to strip cabinet of unchecked powers to run up the national debt without consulting Parliament. Liberals reintroduced a Senate bill to repeal amendments to the Financial Administration Act passed in 2007: "This goes to the whole idea of accountability".
A bill banning animal testing in cosmetics has been introduced in the Senate, in an initiative the industry described as disingenuous and “bizarre”. The private Conservative bill would outlaw safety testing on any “live, non-human vertebrate” by manufacturers: "The Senator posed with Mrs. Harper with stuffed bunnies, that somehow they’re saving little bunnies. It’s not true".
The anti-trust Competition Bureau is applying for a court order for confidential documents involving the sale of Canada’s largest independent gas station chain. Bureau lawyers asked Federal Court for access to price surveys, sales volumes and other industry data from companies not even involved in the acquisition: 'Consumers are likely to face less choice'.
A Senate bill to appoint an inspector general with oversight of the Canada Border Services Agency has been introduced anew. Cabinet pledged careful examination of the measure, which lapsed as a private Liberal bill in the last Parliament: 'Currently if you have an issue it’s processed internally; that’s like asking me to mark my own math exam'.
The public works department is buying only Canadian-made flags to celebrate the nation’s 150th birthday in 2017. Authorities disqualified bids to manufacture more than four million flags from companies without Canadian printing and assembly plants: ' I love to see this'.
Canadians have told the finance department they fear a housing bubble. The in-house research preceded a federal notice that banks must set aside more cash for “severe but plausible losses” on residential mortgages: "Buying a new home is becoming difficult due to the high cost".
They say cemeteries are full of indispensable people, but some deaths are more far-reaching than others.
On October 19, 1984 a Piper Navajo commuter plane operated by Wapiti Airlines Ltd. crashed in a freezing rainstorm near Lesser Slave Lake, Alta. An inquiry would cite human error. The pilot, 24, suffered from “cumulative fatigue” and had 11 hours’ sleep in the past two days. Six perished in the crash including New Democrat MLA Grant Notley, Alberta’s Opposition Leader, flying home for the weekend.
He died in anticipation of an election “in which he sensed the party would finally make the breakthrough,” a reporter wrote at the time. For years afterward the words were heard at the Alberta legislature: “If only Notley had lived….” If.
Three years into its rebranding as a “concierge” for business, executives have told the National Research Council its new motto is boring, and that dealing with the federal agency is a “hassle”. The Council would not say how much it spent on its new corporate slogan, cnrcsolutions: 'It reminded many of a consulting firm'.
The Salvation Army will not comment on a lawsuit against its Governing Council alleging financial irregularities. An Ontario Superior Court judge declined to dismiss the suit, saying though the allegation “may seem outrageous at first blush, that does not make it untrue”.
