It's the Stupid Government

 ... and it exists only to gorge itself:

The Canada Revenue Agency has fired 120 of its employees for illegally claiming the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) while working for the tax authority.

**

That is coming from a position of weakness:

India’s envoy to Canada says Ottawa has tapped the brakes on trade negotiations, just before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heads to New Delhi.

Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma said Ottawa sought a pause “within the last month” to ongoing talks for an Early Progress Trade Agreement.

Article content

“The Canadian side has requested that, let’s take a pause; let’s see what can be done further, and then we’ll restart,” Verma said, in a wide-ranging interview ahead of next week’s G20 summit in New Delhi.

**

The shakedown has collapsed:

The Liberal government has unveiled the draft regulations that will implement its Online News Act, legislation that Google and Meta have said could lead them to permanently block news content on their platforms in Canada.

The government has said it hopes the new regulations will cause Google and Meta to reconsider those plans, but Meta remained unmoved Friday while Google said it’s still assessing whether its concerns have been addressed.

Article content

Article content

The new regulations include a formula for calculating how much revenue the social media giants would be expected to share with Canadian news publishers under the law, while providing more details about how the tech companies can receive exemptions from the legislation by making their own deals with news-publishers.

Government officials said that under the legislation Google could contribute $172 million a year and Facebook $62 million to Canadian news publishers, based on Google’s global search revenues and Meta’s Facebook global revenues. That’s about in line with previous department estimates but lower than the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s $329 million estimate last year.

**

The US is ignoring Justin and one of his resident fraud artists on lumber:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government is broadening its pushback against the latest U.S. decision to keep imposing duties on Canadian softwood lumber.

Trade Minister Mary Ng says Canada is launching challenges under the North American free-trade deal as well as before the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Nine days ago, Ottawa sought a judicial review of last month's Commerce Department assessment of the levies, which provided modest relief but maintained the combined duty rate at 7.99 per cent.

Ng says Canada remains open to negotiating a resolution to the decades-old dispute, which she calls "unfair, unjust and illegal," while arguing it increases housing costs.

She is again urging U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to sit down and negotiate a resolution to the decades-old dispute.

Such a deal would be challenging since the U.S. takes issue with a long-standing regulatory system in Canada that it says puts American producers at a disadvantage.

Tai has said the U.S. would be willing to negotiate, but only if Canada does away with a system that allows provinces to set prices for timber from Crown land.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada echoed that sentiment in a statement issued Thursday evening.

"The United States is open to resolving our differences with Canada over softwood lumber to ensure a level playing field for U.S. industry," David Cohen said.

"U.S. trade officials have communicated to Canada our commitment to reaching an agreement if Canada addresses underlying policy issues related to subsidization and fair competition.”