Latest news with #QuestionPeriod
Toronto Star
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Toronto Star
Federal minister plans to hold consultations this summer on immigration intake
Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Lena Metlege Diab rises during Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Thursday, June 5, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld ajw flag wire: true flag sponsored: false article_type: : sWebsitePrimaryPublication : publications/toronto_star bHasMigratedAvatar : false :
Toronto Sun
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Toronto Sun
Federal minister plans to hold consultations this summer on immigration intake
Published Jun 27, 2025 • 1 minute read Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Lena Metlege Diab rises during Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Thursday, June 5, 2025. Photo by Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA — Immigration Minister Lena Diab says the federal government will consult this summer on its immigration levels plan and whether the student visa system is 'sustainable.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account In a recent interview with University Affairs, Diab says the annual consultations will reach out to the provinces, university administrators and students themselves. An Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokeswoman says the government expects schools to only accept students they can 'reasonably support' by providing housing and other services. Post-secondary institutions across the country are posting deficit budgets this year, laying off staff and cutting programs as international student enrolment drops. The government last year announced a cap on study permit applications and a gradual decrease in the number of student visas. Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner says her party wants to see an 'immediate and massive' reduction in student visas due to high youth unemployment and the housing crisis. In May, Statistics Canada reported the unemployment rate among returning students had hit 20 per cent, a three per cent increase over the previous year. Toronto Raptors News Music Toronto Raptors Canada
Toronto Sun
18-06-2025
- Automotive
- Toronto Sun
Tories accuse PM of thinking about Brookfield's 'bottom line' with EV mandate
Carney's financial holdings continue to be sore spot after issues raised in Liberal leadership race, federal election Conservative MP Andrew Scheer, leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. Photo by Justin Tang / The Canadian Press OTTAWA — While Canada prepares to launch a decade-long ban on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles next year, the Conservatives are accusing the PM of having more on his mind than climate change. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account During question period on Wednesday, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer accused Prime Minister Mark Carney of thinking more about the bottom line of his former employer in allowing his government to go ahead with the contentious Justin Trudeau-era policy. 'Canadians, autoworkers, Ford, GM — they all don't want the EV mandate, but the prime minister's intent on pushing it through,' Scheer said. 'Why? Well, right before becoming prime minister he was chair of Brookfield and he advocated for a ban on gas-powered cars. Brookfield is heavily invested in the EV supply chain. If this prime minister refuses to reveal his financial interests or self-admitted conflicts — isn't it true that this isn't about the environment, this is about the bottom line for Brookfield?' Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Carney's financial holdings were a sore spot during his run at the Liberal leadership and subsequent federal election, lashing out at several reporters who asked him about it — repeatedly insisting that all of his publicly traded assets were placed in a blind trust. As of Dec. 31, disclosures by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed Carney held just under $7 million US in unexercised stock options in Brookfield Asset Management. RECOMMENDED VIDEO In response, AI Minister Evan Solomon completely ducked the questions about his party leader's portfolio, instead talking up his government's efforts to protect auto-sector jobs from leaving Canada and the investments made by Canada in automakers. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'We have invested in the auto sector, including the EV sector, to build good jobs in places like St. Thomas,' he said, referring to the Ontario city's $7-billion Volkswagen battery plant, which is under construction. 'This government will always invest in workers and make sure that the auto industry is growing, resilient and successful.' This was the second straight day the Conservatives hammered the government over EV mandates, which will require 100% of all new cars sold by 2025 to be electric. On Tuesday, Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin accused the Tories of taking unfair aim at Canada's auto industry by demanding an end to the mandates, clearly unaware that Canada's auto industry is against the policy, which by next year will require 20% of new car sales to be EVs. In a news conference earlier this year, Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association president Brian Kingston described the EV mandates as 'complete fantasy' and legislation dictating which cars Canadians can and cannot buy as a 'made-in-Canada policy failure.' bpassifiume@ X: @bryanpassifiume Read More NHL Canada Soccer Canada Toronto Maple Leafs
National Observer
14-06-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
What Gregor Robertson's housing track record can tell us about his ministerial plans
There's a paradox at the heart of today's housing crisis that few politicians are willing to name, let alone solve: Millions of Canadians can't afford a home and desperately want prices to go down. But millions of other Canadians do own a home and desperately want prices not to go down. This is the pickle Canada's new housing minister, Gregor Robertson, failed to address on his inauspicious first day on the job, when a journalist asked him, 'Do you think that prices need to go down?' It was a trick question of course, or at least one loaded with subtext: which massive cohort of Canadians do you plan to screw over, the ones who own a home or the ones who don't? Instead of recognizing the trap, Robertson blithely answered the question he was asked. 'No, I think that we need to deliver more supply, make sure the market is stable – it's a huge part of our economy – but we need to be delivering more affordable housing.' The only part of that answer anyone heard was the first word. ' Canada's new housing minister doesn't think prices need to go down,' CTV trumpeted, as 100 similar headlines ricocheted around the country before the day was over. Full disclosure: I am both a homeowner (albeit one who wishes prices would, in fact, go down), and an acquaintance of Robertson's. I haven't seen or spoken to him in several months, and the housing ministry did not make him or anyone else available to comment for this story. Robertson's opening debacle with the parliamentary press scrum struck me as a rookie move — one that might have been excusable for a rookie politician, but that's not what Robertson is. He's the former three-term mayor of one of Canada's biggest cities, as Conservatives kept reminding him throughout his first week in Question Period. Expanding on the theme of Robertson's supposed love for expensive housing, Conservatives repeatedly accused Robertson of causing Vancouver's housing crisis during his 10-year stint as mayor, during which time home prices almost tripled. Everyone ignored the rest of Robertson's answer, where he talked about delivering more affordable housing, but it's worth revisiting. How exactly does the government intend to do this? How can you introduce cheap housing at one end of the market without affecting prices throughout the rest of it? So far, the only details we have come from the mandate for Build Canada Homes (BCH), the new federal agency Robertson will be in charge of. As the name implies, BCH promises in its mandate to 'get the federal government back in the business of building homes.' Through this agency, the federal government will 'act as a developer to build affordable housing at scale.' Canada doesn't need hundreds or thousands of new homes. It needs millions. That hasn't happened in more than 30 years. And if you ask people in the trenches of getting affordable housing built, it's exactly what the country needs. 'More than just housing' Municipal councils are at the vanguard of housing, from approving changes to land use to issuing building permits, and Robertson entered local politics in 2008, a moment when the federal government had thoroughly washed its hands of the housing portfolio. 'When the minister was first elected mayor of Vancouver, the federal government was openly hostile to the idea of investing in affordable housing,' recalls Thom Anderson, CEO of the Co-Operative Housing Federation of BC. Anderson has been in that role since 2000, and remembers when a newly minted Mayor Robertson struck a task force on affordable housing for Vancouver. One of the notions to come out of that task force was the idea of putting municipal land toward the housing crisis through a body known as Community Land Trust. At Robertson's request, the city put out a call for tenders to build affordable housing on city land. 'Essentially the request said, 'Look, if we made land the city owns available to a Community Land Trust on a 99-year lease for, say, 10 dollars, what could you build?'' Anderson said. 'How quickly could you build it and how affordable would it be, now and in the long haul?' Anderson submitted a tender on behalf of his provincial co-op federation, and won a contract to build 358 homes in an abandoned section of Vancouver's River District. 'That was so successful that the city then gave us seven more sites. And then two more. And now, 10 years later, we've built out 12 sites owned by the city, leased on the long term to the Community Land Trusts, including more than 1,000 deeply affordable co-op homes that will be deeply affordable forever.' In 2021, Monica Jut moved into one of the River District co-op units that Robertson and Anderson helped bring into being. 'It's been one of the most impactful decisions of our lives. It's given us more than just housing; it's given us stability, connection with the other members, and the freedom to grow,'Jut said. She moved here with her teenage daughter from Maple Ridge. 'We lived in market housing, but most of those places were rentals, and when the landlords were selling, it meant that we had to find another place to live.' Jut became a widow 10 years ago. She works for the federal government and has a stable income, but as a single mother, she was unable to afford a home in Vancouver. She pays approximately two-thirds the market rate for her two-bedroom flat, and knows she'll never be subjected to rent hikes or forced to move again. 'The biggest benefit of being part of the Community Land Trust is definitely stability. What they do is they protect our land from speculation and ensure that our homes remain permanently affordable. That security allows us to have bigger dreams.' In addition to making municipal land available, Vancouver – under Robertson's leadership – became the first city in Canada to impose a speculation tax, as well as an empty homes tax, which now generates roughly $150 million each year that is put entirely toward non-market housing. 'It was characterized as a punitive tax grab at the time,' Anderson recalls, 'but if you're going to take some of the wealth generated off the real estate asset base and redistribute it to create more affordable homes, what better use for a tax could there be?' Housing solutions Many of the affordable-housing ideas Robertson came up with have since spread across the country. 'Cities across the country are looking at their own land as a potential way to address the housing crisis, and Gregor could see that early in the process,' said Abi Bond, who spent five years as director of Toronto's housing secretariat after she worked with Robertson as Vancouver's director of homelessness and affordable housing programs. 'He also understood how important it was to embed affordability into supply. When you look at what the City of Vancouver delivered, it's not just supply[ing] market rental. It also includes social housing, supportive housing, all of those types of homes as well. So he didn't forget about people who are experiencing homelessness that needed places to live.' Near the end of Robertson's term, he led a successful push to get provincial funding for temporary modular housing to provide shelter for unhoused city residents. With the help of provincial funding, Vancouver approved 11 modular housing projects in his final year in office, leading to the rapid construction of over 600 units. These numbers, like the amount of co-op housing built (224 units) or approved (648 units) under Robertson's mandate, were drowned out by the wave of price increases and homelessness that overwhelmed any positive impacts Robertson was able to achieve. As a result, Robertson's oft-repeated claim to have built more affordable housing than any other mayor in Canada tends to ring hollow – especially in light of his ill-advised promise, early in his career, to end homelessness in Vancouver. Bond agrees that the solutions Robertson came up with were insufficient to save Vancouver from the twin explosion of housing costs and homelessness. But she doesn't feel that was the mayor's fault. 'It's very challenging to control the market at a municipal level, especially when many of the things affecting that market, affecting the housing crisis, are not in your control.' Anderson agrees and blames 'the complete absence of federal and provincial partners' for the problems that overwhelmed Robertson's best efforts to do what he could with the limited funds a mayor has to work with. Even so, 'as a result of [Robertson's work as mayor], there is now a fledgling network of community land trusts literally all over the country – in Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia – reclaiming neighbourhoods for whole communities who are dispossessed,' Anderson said. 'You don't do that without a political champion, and our political champion was Gregor Robertson.' Millions of homes needed Four thousand kilometers east of Vancouver, Tom Clement saw what Robertson and Anderson were accomplishing. As CEO of the Co-Operative Housing Federation of Toronto, the largest co-op federation in Canada, Clement decided to follow suit. 'We're very impressed with what's happened in Vancouver, the great work they did when Gregor Robertson was the mayor,' he said. Clement's federation is currently collaborating with a community land trust to build a 612-unit co-op in Scarborough, the biggest of its kind to be built since the federal government stopped building co-op housing under former rime minister Jean Chretien. Like all co-ops, the Scarborough complex will provide rent at below-market rates (typically 65 per cent of market rates, though that figure varies across projects and regions). The complex is being built through a mix of municipal land grants and federal financing. 'That's what I call the BC model,' Clement said. When asked how he felt about Robertson ascending to federal cabinet, Clement was thrilled. 'To have such an experienced federal housing minister, it's fantastic. You've got to understand the municipalities. Housing is very much a municipal-level issue, but there's no way that the municipalities can do it alone. They need a federal program, a strong federal partnership, and I think that's what he's going to bring.' But scale remains the issue. Canada doesn't need hundreds or thousands of new homes. It needs millions. 'One of the biggest inhibiting factors of scale is how fast and how much financing and grants you can actually access,' said Bond. 'For most municipalities, that's what's controlling their ability to move quickly. Everybody has the ambition, they've got sites, they've got access to density through local zoning. But the federal government has been limited by the scope of their programs.' That appears poised to change now with Robertson at the helm of an agency – Build Canada Homes – that expressly promises 'to provide $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital to affordable home builders.' That's on top of tens of billions more in other financing and grants, plus the federal lands that Robertson is now in a position to add to municipal community land trusts. 'He's got the prime minister's mandate to embrace a new program of supply-like construction that hasn't been seen since just after the Second World War,' says Anderson, head of the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC. At the same time, Anderson cautioned Robertson 'is going to be inheriting a machinery, through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the federal bureaucracy, that hasn't been challenged to do that for quite some time. There's a lot of muscle memory that's been lost there.' On top of reinvigorating federal bureaucracies, Robertson now confronts the task of aligning 13 provincial and territorial governments with thousands of towns and cities. The odds are steep, and the timelines are almost guaranteed to disappoint anyone hoping for a sudden change in Canada's housing crisis. But after 25 years in the business of affordable housing, Anderson is more optimistic today than he's ever been. 'We haven't had a housing minister in a long, long time, if ever, that is so ready to tackle this challenge.'
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CUPE: WSIB CEO Misled Minister and Public, Leaked Internal Memo Shows
TORONTO, June 12, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Ontario Compensation Employees Union (OCEU/CUPE 1750) is renewing its call for accountability at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), after revelations the union first brought forward, a growing claims backlog and costly shortcuts, which continue to be downplayed and denied by WSIB leadership. Despite internal evidence to the contrary, WSIB leadership from the CEO on down assured the public and the government that the WSIB was "keeping up," while the Minister of Labour repeated those false claims in the Legislature. "For weeks, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board's CEO has been telling Ontario that everything is fine, that there's no backlog and no risk. Now we know that was a lie," said Harry Goslin, President of OCEU/CUPE 1750. "We have a leaked internal memo from WSIB management that proves the opposite: the backlog is growing, and the system is on fire." The internal memo, sent to WSIB staff over the weekend, confirms the agency is taking shortcuts by automatically approving nearly all physical injury claims, even those with delayed reporting, pre-existing conditions, or active employer objections. WSIB admits in the memo that these shortcuts "increased risk" and are only in place to work through the mounting backlog. What's worse, the union says, is that Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development of Ontario, David Piccini repeated the CEO's false reassurances in Question Period, telling MPPs and the public that the WSIB was "keeping up" when the opposite was true. "If a regular Ontarian lied to their boss, there would be consequences. But somehow Jeffrey Lang, the CEO of the WSIB, thinks he can mislead his boss, mislead the public, and walk away unscathed. That's unacceptable," said Goslin. "You don't get to play by a different set of rules just because you're at the top." The lockout of 3,600 frontline WSIB workers began on May 21. Union members are calling for a fair deal that protects public service standards and ensures injured workers get the support they deserve without delay or deception. "It's time for the CEO to answer for this. It's time for the government to stop covering for WSIB leadership," said Goslin. "This lockout needs to end. Workers are ready to get back to work and fix the damage that's been done." mb/cope491 View source version on Contacts For more information, or to arrange an interview with a spokesperson, please contact: Bill ChalupiakCUPE Communications Representativewchalupiak@ 416-707-1401 Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
