About a fifth of businesses anticipate a continued slowdown over the next 12 months, the Bank of Canada said yesterday in its first Business Outlook Survey since the economy fell into recession. The latest data were issued ahead of the next interest rate announcement due July 15: "Business sentiment has deteriorated." READ MORE
Cabinet yesterday said it expected to wring another 9 to 10 years’ worth of service out of its aging fleet of diesel-powered submarines at an undisclosed cost. The subs commissioned circa 1976 were bought second hand from the United Kingdom and are rarely deployed: "It will take as long as it takes but no longer." READ MORE
The Public Health Agency in an internal memo confirms it lost millions’ worth of medical equipment in a 2024 flood. The newly-disclosed incident is the latest in a string of mishaps and mismanagement at the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile: "We are doing sort of some interim course corrections as we go." READ MORE
Newly-declassified records show Canadian diplomats 50 years ago this summer were so fearful of anti-Semitic violence at the Montréal Summer Olympics they pleaded with Israeli VIPs to keep their travel plans confidential. The Montréal Games were the first since the 1972 murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics: "On each occasion the visit was treated privately and no mention of it was made in the press." READ MORE
Canadians should trade their cars for bicycles, says an advocacy group co-founded by former environment minister Steven Guilbeault. The group Équiterre of Montréal petitioned MPs to approve millions in rebates to get commuters on their bike: "Équiterre suggests rewarding Canadians who choose low carbon ways to travel." READ MORE
Farm Credit Canada CEO Justine Hendricks booked a $44,000 out-of-town cocktail party for directors of the Crown bank after cabinet ordered cuts in federal travel expenses, Access To Information records show. “If you’re asking me, ‘Justine, is there a plan to cut travel?’ No,” Hendricks told a staff meeting. READ MORE
Liberal appointee Senator Yuen Pau Woo (B.C.) says he is personally embarrassed by Canadians’ refusal to publicly criticize Israel. “This is not the Canada I am proud of,” Woo told reporters. “This is not the Canada I believe in.” READ MORE
Robert Peary’s wife had given him a handmade flag to carry on his last expedition in 1906 when he claimed to discover the North Pole. Peary died in 1920 but left a written account of the map’s location in a cairn at Cape Columbia overlooking the Arctic Ocean. Hidden in the cairn was a rusted tin with a perfectly preserved remnant of the flag the size of a handkerchief. Later we gave it to Peary’s widow. We made other finds that year: tins of fruitcake from an 1875 British expedition, and letters addressed to Amundsen left behind by a Danish team in 1920. And we began the work of mapping the Canadian Arctic.
