Pat's Posts

BYLINE: Joanna Smith
SOURCE: Toronto Star

An evaluation of the multi-million dollar advertising campaign for the federal home renovation tax credit shows it was intended to promote the government along with the savings.

The federal government spent nearly $8.2 million on advertisements appearing in print, broadcast and online media last year to promote the Home Renovation Tax Credit, which was billed as a stimulus program and allowed homeowners to claim 15 per cent on between $1,000 and $10,000 worth of work on their 2009 tax returns.

BYLINE: John Ivison
SOURCE: National Post

Nothing divides the NDP like the Israel-Palestine conflict, as was suggested in this space three weeks ago, when I forecast this simmering internal debate would boil over before long. This column does not make a habit of being right -- predictions are normally more in line with the U.S. Office of Patents, which declared in 1899 that everything that could be invented had already been invented. But this one has come to pass.

BYLINE: Mia Rabson
SOURCE: Winnipeg Free Press

OTTAWA -- Liberal Sen. Mac Harb last week introduced legislation in the Senate to ban the seal hunt except for aboriginal hunters with treaty rights. His attempt last year fell flat when no other senator stood to second it.

This time, Progressive Conservative Sen. Lowell Murray gave the required seconding but the rest of the Senate still voted to not have the bill added to the order paper. Harb, a former Ottawa-area MP, has no support from his party.

BYLINE: PETER ZIMONJIC,
SOURCE: PARLIAMENTARY BUREAU

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation's annual "Teddy" awards for government waste highlighted QMI Agency work that exposed MPs' junk mail spending and the City of Toronto's homeless audit.

"The flyers ... have increased in cost from $5.9 million in 2005-06 to $10 million in 2008-09," CTF Prairie director Colin Craig said.

"Oddly enough, as our deficit skyrocketed, MPs hiked up their usage of these flyers to tell us about everything but the deficit."

BYLINE: Don Martin
SOURCE: National Post

At his debut as the chief figure in the federal government's deficit-elimination push, Treasury Board president Stockwell Day should have at least had the decency to blush at the first tiny nick of his scalpel.

Confronted by runaway spending in a budget requiring $53-billion worth of changes to the ledger, Mr. Day summoned reporters yesterday to announce he would save a maximum of $1.4-million by eliminating 245 appointments.