Parliament must tax the “ultra-rich” to pay for the pandemic, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh yesterday told reporters. Data show fewer than 365,000 tax filers pay the top federal income tax rate of 33 percent: “You know who didn’t sacrifice?”
Most hotels in Canada will be insolvent by year’s end without ongoing federal aid, a hotel lobbyist says in a submission to the Senate national finance committee. As many as 70 percent of operators face collapse even once the Canada-U.S. border reopens, senators were told: “The world is changed.”
Most pandemic victims in Canada were over age 85, had dementia or Alzheimer’s and “may have been at a high risk of dying over this period regardless of the pandemic,” says a federal report. The impact of Covid lockdowns, business failures and school closures on younger Canadians remains unknown, wrote researchers: ‘The pandemic profoundly altered many other aspects of our lives.’
Cabinet yesterday announced $19 million in subsidies for café patios and shrubbery in empty parking lots in Toronto. “This is the love being returned,” said Liberal MP Adam Vaughan (Spadina-Fort York, Ont.). Toronto returned 25 Liberal MPs in the last election with an average 54 percent of the popular vote: ‘It starts with loving Toronto more than you’ve ever loved it before.’
Canadians are twice as likely to be fully vaccinated if they live in a federal prison, data show. “We’ve prioritized them,” Public Safety Minister Bill Blair earlier told reporters: “We have a duty of care for those who are in our custody, to ensure they are treated fairly and that they are kept safe.”
Tens of thousands of veterans remain on waiting lists for disability benefits nearly a year after the Parliamentary Budget Office warned of growing backlogs. The Department of Veterans Affairs in a briefing note said it will “work faster” next year: “The thing is you need the people that know how to fill out the forms.”
An Ontario “tax expert” who failed to pay more than $600,000 in federal taxes yesterday was given a federal prison term. Tax evasion is not a victimless crime, ruled the Ontario Court of Appeal: “The victims were the taxpayers of Canada.”
The Department of National Defence is billing taxpayers for millions in money-losing golf and curling clubs to “help foster esprit de corps” for members. Auditors questioned why the military was competing with local sports clubs in the first place: ‘They provide an opportunity to socialize.’
The Commons ethics committee by a 6-5 vote yesterday blocked an investigation into spending of public funds on a Liberal-affiliated data research company. Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs opposed further hearings into contracts awarded Data Sciences Inc. of Montréal: “This is a fake scandal.”
The Public Health Agency’s multi-million dollar pandemic early warning system is so poorly run it should be privatized at least in part, a federal report said yesterday. Health Minister Patricia Hajdu did not comment on findings that staff spent most of their time compiling news clippings: “It is not always clear who is responsible.”
Google searches are subject to censorship through federal privacy law, a federal judge has ruled. The decision came in a case Google lawyers warned threatens Charter rights in Canada: “An interpretation of the Act that required it to delist lawful public content is contrary to freedom of expression.”
Applicants for federal grants typically call the Department of Employment more than three times, and as many as ten times, says in-house research. The findings follow the department’s admission it improved service standards by not answering the phone: “People would get in and the call would never get dropped, it was just never answered.”
The Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, says she played no role in the federal appointment of a Liberal Party friend as a judge. It was Telford’s first comment on the appointment of a Toronto lawyer whose lobbyist husband previously employed Telford: “We’re not perfect.”
There are no valid statistical studies confirming the number of green jobs in Canada, says the Department of Natural Resources. The admission followed cabinet claims of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and Minister Seamus O’Regan’s pledge to subsidize any green project, “anything really.”
Cabinet polled Prairie focus groups on Western alienation just days before appointing Winnipeg Liberal MP Jim Carr as the Prime Minister’s “voice in the West,” records show. Research indicated perceptions ranged from indifference in Manitoba to anger in Alberta: “Provide three words that would best describe the current relationship.”
