The Department of Health in internal emails cautioned political aides to tone down claims by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that a vaccine was “the best bet to end the pandemic.” Staff warned it was unclear whether a Covid booster shot had to be “reinvented every year.”
Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday confirmed he is in tax arrears with Revenu Québec. Guilbeault would not say if a portion of his $274,500 cabinet salary was being deducted to settle the five figure debt: “Anyone who profits from the system must contribute to it.”
The Income Tax Act should prohibit Canadian corporations from transferring pre-tax profits out of the country, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh said yesterday. “We would end that,” said Singh: “Working people, they don’t have an offshore tax haven.”
The Conservative Party yesterday said it would revive a 2015 Senate bill to ban animal testing by the cosmetics industry. Lobbyists opposed the bill after it was endorsed by Laureen Harper posing with an armful of toy rabbits: “Somehow they’re saving little bunnies. It’s not true.”
Preventing maskless shoppers from visiting retail stores is not discriminatory, a Human Rights Tribunal has ruled. An Edmonton adjudicator dismissed two separate complaints by shoppers who claimed in-store mask rules were a breach of the Human Rights Act, including one who was escorted from a Costco outlet by police: “Limitations to the right to be free from discrimination may be justified.”
Canada’s ambassador to Kabul boasted diplomats were prepared for any emergency in “high-risk missions, for example Afghanistan.” Ambassador Reid Sirrs closed the embassy August 15 and left the country though thousands of Canadian citizens and local supporters remained trapped in Kabul: “You can make mistakes and learn.”
The Prime Minister’s policy director in an internal email referred to an Indigenous group as “a friendly” and urged staff to answer their complaints to prevent them “from popping off at us.” The remarks concerned a confidential text from the Métis Nation of Alberta: “This is completely unacceptable.”
Public Works Minister Anita Anand’s department awarded the first of $81 million in sole-sourced Covid contracts to a Québec supplier one day after exchanging emails with the company, according to court records. The vendor was later sued for alleged breach of contract: “Time was of the essence.”
A final audit of foreign aid to Afghanistan says money was spent unwisely without achieving demonstrable results. International Development Minister Karina Gould made no mention of the findings in praising Canada’s efforts: “There was a pressure to spend, and it was too much and too fast.”
More than a quarter-century of litigation by lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber has ended in an Edmonton courtroom. The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench dismissed Schreiber’s last appeal in long-running Charter challenges in the Airbus case: “Courts have repeatedly dealt with Mr. Schreiber’s Charter claims.”
Hundreds and possibly thousands of Canadian citizens and local supporters remain trapped in Afghanistan after the military ended a rescue airlift, federal officials said yesterday. The Department of Foreign Affairs recommended they go into hiding: “Use your judgment.”
The Liberal Party yesterday had no comment on one of its candidates who questioned the Prime Minister’s “lack of judgment” on ethics. Candidate Martin Francoeur is running in Trois-Rivière, Que., a riding the Liberals last won 37 years ago: “Therein lies the problem with Justin Trudeau.”
Legal internet content, even the offensive kind, cannot be censored since the web is “not subject to the same controls that exist in traditional media,” a Québec judge has ruled. The decision came in the case of a Facebook user falsely accused of harassment: “It would have the effect of granting everyone the power to censor the comments of others on the sole basis that this content could be considered disagreeable.”
Canadians’ support for trade with China fell by more than a tenth from the outbreak of the pandemic, says in-house research by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Reliance on China contractors for medical supplies also prompted Canadians to worry about “pandemic planning” in trade policy: ‘It should ensure preparedness to a great extent.’
More than a hundred thousand student votes are in doubt after Elections Canada cancelled special campus polls at 109 universities and colleges nationwide. One students’ group said the decision would have a clear impact: “We are purely non-partisan.”
