MPs have given quick Second Reading to a cabinet bill that would ban bitcoin financing of political campaigns. Approval in principle came Friday, just a month after the bill’s introduction: "There is a high sense of collaboration on this." READ MORE
$3.2B Internet Plan Falls Short
A $3.2 billion telecom subsidy launched on a promise of high-speed internet for every home in Canada is not close to meeting its target, Department of Industry figures show. Auditors blamed cost overruns and slow processing of paperwork: "These projects target areas where there is currently no business case for the private sector." READ MORE
Call Egg Quotas Nt’l Security
Protecting egg quotas is a matter of “national security,” says a farmers’ lobby. The Egg Farmers of Canada in a Senate submission said defence of their quota “is critical.” READ MORE
A Poem: “News Online”
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: "You caught me surfing the web. I only wanted to read the top stories..." READ MORE
Review: The Trek
There were two Franklin Expeditions. One is acclaimed by Parks Canada which spent millions scanning the floor of the Arctic Ocean in search of 19th century English shipwrecks. The other is documented through the passion and extraordinary research of a lone anthropologist, Alison Brown of the University of Aberdeen. The resulting First Nations, Museums, Narrations is intriguing and profound. In June 1929 a band of researchers left Winnipeg to document what they believed were the vanishing First Nations of the Prairies. Canada’s Indigenous population had been decimated by disease and misfortune and numbered some 107,000 people. “Now or never is the time in which to collect from the natives what is still available for study,” noted a director of the Geological Survey of Canada. Anthropologists believed the end was near. “Indigenous people were thought to be assimilating or dying out,” writes Brown. READ MORE
‘Do Your GD Job,’ Says Chair
The chair of the Commons ethics committee yesterday told reporters to “do your goddamn job” as cabinet moved to quash committee scrutiny of spending and appointments. Conservative MP John Brassard (Barrie South-Innisfil, Ont.) said media were so Liberal-friendly the “Opposition party is held to a greater account than the government.” READ MORE
Calls Debt Trends Worrisome
Many Canadians are resigned to high household debts and increasingly borrow more to cover basic expenses, a bankruptcy trustee yesterday told the Commons finance committee. Household debt is $3.2 trillion nationwide including more than $2 trillion worth of mortgages, according to Statistics Canada: "Many Canadians have no margin for error." READ MORE
Guest Commentary
I often wonder what became of Dennis. He was known to neighbours in the North Park district of Victoria where I lived in 1997. It was a rough-and-tumble neighbourhood. Dennis had a wife and baby. I had seen them going to the welfare office down the corner. He was violent, and he could get very drunk. I don’t think he ever finished high school. I can’t say if restorative justice would have done Dennis much good. Afterward I wondered, what brought Dennis to the point in his life that he was so hateful, so angry, he would shave his head and wear a “White Power” t-shirt and look for someone to hurt?
