Government Corruption
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday said it “would be just wrong for me to comment” on a Parliament Hill protest celebrating the October 7 killing and kidnapping of Jews in Israel including eight Canadians. A police investigation of the demonstration is underway.
Minister Freeland, speaking with reporters, declined to discuss the protest. Freeland hours later posted a Twitter message stating: “Having seen video from this weekend I can only express shock and disgust.”
A group Canadians for Palestine in a Saturday protest paraded past Parliament chanting, “Long live October 7th, long live the resistance, long live the intifada, long live every form of resistance.” Participants were masked. One speaker told marchers, “When I say ‘from the river to the sea,’ you reply with ‘Palestine is almost free,’ because our resistance attacks are proof that we are almost free.”
…
Read MoreAn April 21 update indicates that if an election were held today, the Conservative Party of Canada is projected to win somewhere between 176 – 231 seats.
…
Read MoreEdmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi’s official campaign agent’s company signed an agreement with the City of Edmonton to create one of Canada’s first industrial scale waste-to-energy facilities, the Western Standard has learned.
The City of Edmonton and Varme Energy reached an agreement in January that will enable green electricity and industrial heat generation while diverting about 150,000 tonnes of residential garbage per year effective 2027. While Varme reached this agreement, no one acknowledged the ties CEO Sean Collins had to Sohi.
“This is a major milestone toward the development of this new facility and an enormous step forward for waste diversion and climate change mitigation in Canada,” said Collins in a press release.
…
Read MoreIn an April 21 video interview with U.K. member of Parliament George Galloway, Macgregor gave a blunt and shocking answer.
“We have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists – and that’s why we have the policies we have.”
His full remarks open the video with a searing assessment of the level of corruption in the United States government:
I would currently say that we have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists as opposed to representatives – people who are all busy lobbying for money with which they can line their pockets. Now some of them are just ignorant … some are destructive … but all of them, I’m afraid, with very few exceptions, are bought men.
…
Read MoreThe Public Health Agency broke its own rules in auctioning brand new $22,000 ventilators as $6 scrap, records show. Agency directives forbid the sale of licensed medical devices as scrap metal.
“They were sold for parts as the possible divestment option for unlicensed medical devices,” the Agency said in a statement. “The medical devices were no longer authorized.”
However documents show the ventilators were auctioned as scrap as late as February 8, 2023 while still licensed by the Department of Health. Licenses were revoked weeks later on March 22 after dozens of units were sold.
StarFish Medical of Toronto, the manufacturer of the Canadian Emergency Ventilators, in 2020 was awarded a $169.5 million sole-sourced contract to deliver up to 7,500 devices, the equivalent of $22,600 apiece. The company has declined comment.
…
Read MoreThe newspaper chain that successfully led the national campaign for press subsidies, FP Newspapers Inc., lost more than $6 million last year, new records show. The publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, Brandon Sun and other Manitoba titles received $989,000 in payroll rebates at taxpayers’ expense.
“We will have to save ourselves,” then-publisher Bob Cox, chair of News Media Canada, testified at 2019 hearings of the Commons finance committee. “All of us are engaged in transforming our business models so we can continue to fulfill the key role that a free press must play in a healthy democracy.”
FP Newspapers reported a $6,258,000 operating loss last year despite ongoing subsidies that have averaged a million annually. Print advertising revenue fell $3.5 million or 15 percent year over year, from $24,147,000 to $20,630,000. Circulation revenue fell three percent
…
Read MoreA 74-year old tax expert with a passion for civic involvement, community affairs, and empowering local youth has bewilderingly become the most notorious woman in the small city of Quesnel, B.C.
“I’m really afraid to go out right now,” Pat Morton said in an exclusive interview with True North.
“When I come to work in the morning, I used
…
Read MoreThe ability of the United States to intercept and store Americans’ text messages, calls, and emails in pursuit of foreign intelligence was not only extended but enhanced over the weekend in ways likely to remain enigmatic to the public for years to come.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, allows the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), among other agencies, to eavesdrop on calls, texts, and emails traveling through US networks, so long as one side of the communication is foreign.
“Section 702 is supposed to be used only for spying on foreigners abroad,” says Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Instead, sadly, it has enabled warrantless access to vast databases of Americans’ private phone calls, text messages, and emails.”
…
Read MoreThe Treasury Board’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate that suspended employees who refused to be vaccinated was an “administrative measure” to ensure the health and safety of federal employees, and not “disguised discipline,” according to the Federal Labour Relations Board.
Two federal employees suspended without pay for refusing to comply with the vaccination policy in 2021 filed a complaint, alleging their suspension was “disguised discipline that sought to correct their behaviour and induce them to become vaccinated.”
One of the employees worked onsite, while the other worked from home under a telework agreement. According to the ruling, the two employees alleged their suspension without pay was a violation of their rights protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights.
…
Read MoreHealth Canada says it can’t find records on the purchase of new $22,000 ventilators later sold as scrap metal for $6 apiece, leading to a Conservative MP’s allegations that the omission is either “incompetence or corruption.”
“I don’t understand why they would do this,” Tory MP Cheryl Gallant told Blacklock’s Reporter, adding, “It sounds like a shotgun approach to procurement.”
“Was it incompetence or corruption? Did the Public Health Agency lose track of these units? Were they unsuitable for use?”
One of Ms. Gallant’s constituents, paramedic Luke Halstead of Petawawa, Ont., bought dozens of the ventilators licensed for use in 2020 when they were later auctioned as scrap metal by Public Services and Procurement Canada.
…
Read More