OTTAWA — Taxpayers will continue paying Julie Payette a generous pension and an even heftier expense account for the rest of her life, even though she served just three years as governor general and resigned under a cloud.
As a former governor general, she’s entitled to an annual pension of nearly $150,000.
And she’s entitled to claim up to $206,000 a year — for life and even six months after — to cover expenses incurred as a result of ongoing responsibilities related to her former office.
You just don’t get anything done in this town without bold reformers. Justin Trudeau agrees. Why, just take that mess at Rideau Hall, with Julie Payette and the claims of workplace harassment and all that. “When those reports came out in the summer, I knew right away that we needed to call on an independent professional,” the Prime Minister told the Toronto Star on Thursday.
OTTAWA — Representatives of Facebook Canada warned Ottawa against the hasty introduction of rules that would force social media giants to pay for news content shared on their platforms, after Australia took an overly “loud and aggressive” tack on the same issue.
See also – Canadian Heritage Minister, Top Bureaucrats Deny ‘Cozy’ Relationship Between Department And Facebook Canada
OTTAWA – The minister and top bureaucrats responsible for Canadian Heritage say there was nothing wrong with how Facebook Canada’s head of public policy reached out to an official at the department — which is co-leading efforts to regulate Internet giants — to share a job posting for a policy worker.
“We came to a conclusion that sharing publicly available information is not a reprehensible act. I would also add that we are taking at heart issues regarding values and ethics… and I am very confident that my staff are meeting the highest standard with respect to conflict of interest and values and ethics,” Canadian Heritage Deputy Minister Hélène Laurendeau told members of the Heritage committee Friday.
Julie Payette is unemployable.
The former governor-general’s resignation this week was prompted, of course, by a scathing review of the work environment she presided over at Rideau Hall, which was characterized by dozens of people as hostile and toxic. The government released some of the findings of the independent review on Wednesday.
Of course the employees would sue the government and tax payers would end up footing the bill all round.
OTTAWA — Former Gov. Gen. Julie Payette was frustrated that officers in her RCMP protective detail were offered the chance to give testimony in the third-party workplace review released in redacted form on Wednesday, sources have told the National Post.
COVID-19 scrutiny has stopped some women headed to Canada to give birth, documents allege
Greater scrutiny of travellers, prompted by COVID-19, has yielded new instances of women from other countries coming to Canada with what officials say is an unspoken plan to deliver their baby here, documents obtained by the Star show.
Some observers have repeatedly cautioned that the practice controversially dubbed “birth tourism” — which is legal — is being overblown and that focus on it has been driven as much by racism as real concern.
The federal government, meanwhile, has said it is studying the issue in an effort to understand the scope of what is happening.
Canada is so fecked up.
Opposition calls on Canadian government to stop contracting out visa applications to China-backed company
Opposition MPs are urging the Canadian government to stop contracting out the work of processing visa applications, saying they are concerned that one of China’s largest state-owned investment funds is among the biggest backers of a company the Canadian government currently entrusts with this task.
As The Globe and Mail first reported last December, VFS Global, which processes visa applications in dozens of countries for Canada, is majority-owned by EQT VII (No. 1) Limited Partnership, whose registered office is in Edinburgh.
An independent report examining the workplace culture at Rideau Hall found that former governor general Julie Payette and her deputy Assunta Di Lorenzo presided over a toxic work environment.
Released publicly under the Access to Information Act Wednesday night, the report details allegations from staff members of “yelling, screaming, aggressive conduct, demeaning comments and public humiliations.”
The report said that 43 staff members at Rideau Hall described the general work environment as “hostile or negative.”
Twenty-six people interviewed “used the words ‘toxic’ or ‘poisoned’ to describe the general work atmosphere” at Rideau Hall during Payette’s time there.
After U.S. President Joe Biden moved recently to revoke permits for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline project, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “disappointed.”
That was a fairly tepid reaction to losing an infrastructure project billed as a job-generator and an essential prop for a struggling Canadian energy sector.
But Trudeau doesn’t really have an incentive to take on the Biden administration over Keystone because — economic and environmental arguments for and against the project notwithstanding — there simply isn’t much of a political case for fighting for it any longer.
A couple of skewed self-selected online polls then the CBC produces a Liberal Policy trial balloon and calls it “analysis”. That’s how the MSM rolls in Canada.
Complainants who took part in an independent probe into claims of a toxic workplace culture at Rideau Hall claim former governor general Julie Payette’s verbal harassment of staff crossed over into instances of physical contact, CBC News has learned.
The claims of physical contact were reported in testimony given to Quintet Consulting during interviews and will be included in the final report, multiple sources said.
OTTAWA — Former finance minister Bill Morneau says he is dropping out of the race to become secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In a statement on Twitter today, Morneau says he did not have enough support from member countries to make it to the third round of the campaign.
Gov. Gen. Julie Payette departs office, we learn, with a pension of about $150,000 a year, for life, for doing a job not very well, and for not very long.
She is 57 years old. It will sting, but do a little math. If she lives for another 30 years, that’s $4.5 million. With indexing, of course, it would be a great deal more than that, but the point is made: this is a lifetime of financial security for an appointment that did not last three-and-a-half years.
Because…
Canada has a permanent political class. They work to insulate themselves from you, from justice, from scrutiny all at your expense. It is evolving into a Kleptocracy. There are rarely repercussions of any severity for bad or even illegal behavior.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly vowed he’d attempt to convince U.S. President Joe Biden to change his decision nuking the Keystone XL pipeline.
I didn’t believe him for a second.
Dutch police arrest Chinese-born Canadian national who allegedly runs multibillion-dollar drug syndicate
Dutch police said on Saturday they had arrested the alleged leader of a multibillion-dollar drug syndicate who is listed as one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives and has been compared to Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Tse Chi Lop, a Chinese-born Canadian national, was detained on Friday at the request of Australian police, who led an investigation that found his organization dominates the $70 billion-a-year Asia-Pacific drug trade, Dutch police spokesperson Thomas Aling said.
Tse is expected to be extradited after appearing before a judge, Aling said, adding that his arrest by national police took place without incident at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
I love how CBC describes him as a “Canadian national.” Like so many others his passport was likely purchased under a government investment scam making us complicit in his criminal activities.
