Three Cities Take Biggest Hits

Calgary, Windsor and Saint John will take the heaviest initial hits in a U.S. trade war, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce warned yesterday. Analysts calculated the share of municipal GDP tied to U.S. exports in the 41 largest cities nationwide: "For some of Canada’s cities the threat is far more local and personal."

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Christmas Tax Break Fizzled

A 60-day GST holiday passed by Parliament at a $2.7 billion cost was not worth the trouble, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said yesterday. A majority of storekeepers impacted by the tax break said it had no real impact on sales: "The government’s GST holiday was a flop."

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Bracing For A 40% Price Hike

Steel and aluminum prices are expected to jump up to 40 percent under new tariffs invoked yesterday by U.S. President Donald Trump. Similar tariffs in 2018 were blamed for “killing Canadian businesses," the Commons industry committee was told at the time: "These reckless tariffs threaten tens of thousands of good-paying jobs."

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Offered Marouf A Settlement

Federal lawyers offered a low cash settlement to anti-Semite Laith Marouf over thousands he owed taxpayers as a Department of Canadian Heritage consultant, according to an internal memo. Marouf, a Montréal activist who once fantasized on Twitter about shooting Jews, left for Beirut after pocketing $122,661 to fund a national series of lectures on tolerance: "It was estimated that settling at this time would recover around $40,000."

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Promises Arctic Naval Base

Any future Conservative cabinet will build an army, navy and air base in Nunavut complete with icebreakers and fighter jets, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. Canada must “stand on our own two feet,” he said: "Canadians will decide."

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Forecast A P.E.I. Archipelago

The Department of Environment in an internal 1987 report predicted climate change would turn Prince Edward Island into a “cluster of four islands” and cut Canada’s hydroelectric output. The report was released yesterday under a federal program to digitize thousands of archived reports dating over a century: "The direction of the impact, whether it was a gain or a loss, was considered easier to predict than the magnitude."

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Upset On Gaza: “We Failed”

Canada failed Gazan refugees by refusing to let more into the country, Liberal Party leadership contender Frank Baylis said yesterday. The former MP (Pierrefonds-Dollard, Que.) and federal contractor said taxpayers should make it up by rebuilding Palestinian homes: "It's a form of discrimination we have done against the Palestinian people."

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Hire Lobbyist At US$85K/mo

A federal agency is paying a Washington lobbyist US$85,000 a month to manage “outreach to government officials," records show. The confidential contract signed last Wednesday followed Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly’s claim she had deep influence with the White House: 'All discussions will be kept confidential.'

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Miller Polling On National ID

Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s department in confidential surveys is asking people if they’d accept the first-ever introduction of mandatory identification papers such as a passport for use within Canada. MPs have repeatedly opposed any national ID system as intrusive and costly: "Identification cards allow us to be identified when we have every right to remain anonymous."

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14 Years & Two-Thirds Done

A federal agency created 14 years ago to streamline government IT services says it’s about two-thirds through its assignment. Progress was slow despite 10,000 employees and billions spent last year on contractors, said a Shared Services Canada briefing note: "To date Shared Services Canada has closed 490 out of 720 legacy data centres."

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Broke Barrier, Now A Senator

Baltej Dhillon, a retired Surrey, B.C. policeman who as a 23-year old immigrant broke the RCMP barrier against observant Sikhs, has been named to the Senate. Dhillon in an earlier interview said he had no hard feelings against Canadians upset by his 1991 enlistment as the first bearded, turbaned Sikh to join the Mounties: "After I had graduated and met with my detachment commander he said to me, ‘I don’t agree with you what you did, but you’re a member of this detachment and I will back you 100 percent.’"

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Bungled Payroll Now $711M

Compensation for federal employees affected by bungled payroll software has cost taxpayers $711 million and counting, records show. Payments are in addition to reimbursement for staff shortchanged by the Phoenix Pay System: "This is an estimate."

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A Sunday Poem: “Enigma”

Poet Shai Ben-Shalom writes: “If everyone in Heaven unites with their high school crush, it may not be Heaven for their legal spouse…”

Review: Treasure In The Archives

Treasure hunters strike it rich in the oddest places, but none stranger than a document vault at the University of Alberta. There, largely undisturbed for nearly 50 years, were cartons containing the life’s work of reporter Miriam Green Ellis. Inside, gold.

Ellis covered the Prairies for the Edmonton Bulletin and Family Herald and Weekly in pre-war years. Where other journalists sought the reflected glory of the big story – earthquakes, scandals, assassinations – Ellis covered extraordinary events in ordinary lives.

Here is her account of a 1922 steamboat journey through the Northwest Territories: “An Eskimo woman called Laura, since we could not pronounce her Eskimo name, was brought in by the police and is being taken into Edmonton to be committed for insanity. Imagine a woman who has been living along the shore of the Arctic Ocean all her life going into the asylum at Ponoka. The policeman who is accompanying her says that she beat her husband and I suggested that perhaps the husband needed a beating. She fought like a tiger when the boat started to leave Aklavik.”

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Says He Was Scouted By Feds

A former Muslim Students Association organizer yesterday said he was personally scouted by the Department of Justice to apply for Liberal appointment as Canada’s $394,000-a year Human Rights Commissioner. The federal government “sought me out,” said Birju Dattani, whose appointment was suspended last August 8 amid protests over his past comments on Israel and terrorism: 'They sought me out.'

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