“Ahh, the light! It Burns! It Burns”
Blacklock’s- Act Quicker To Hide Records
Federal managers have issued new guidelines for concealing records effective January 26 including permanent deletion of chat posts within 15 days. The policy follows Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election pledge that Access To Information was “quite important.”
“What’s changing?” read a notice issued by managers in one department, Veterans Affairs. “Teams channels including private messages deleted after one year. Teams chats including Copilot messages deleted after 15 days, currently deleted after 30 days. Outlook deleted items: emails permanently deleted after 30 days in the deleted items folder.”
The War on IQ
Telegraph- How Whitehall created a skills crisis by discriminating against nerds
Civil service lacks abilities in empirical thinking that are needed to make tough decisions
Great Success!
Armstrong Economics- $1 Trillion Flees California’s Billionaire Tax
The billionaire tax would require California residents worth over $1 billion to pay a one-time 5% fee on all assets, including unrealized gains.
The Canadian Dream
National Post- Report finds 7,000 Canadian restaurants closed last year amid rising costs, softening demand and declining alcohol sales
“Business closures do not occur when conditions deteriorate; they occur when resilience is depleted. Owners exhaust personal capital, restructure debt and postpone difficult decisions in the hope that conditions improve. For many restaurants, that hope carried them through 2023 and 2024. By 2026, the arithmetic becomes unavoidable,” the report says.
Great Success!
Great Success!
Sun- Ottawa bureaucracy up 80% in last decade, says Canadian Taxpayers Federation
The report says the cost of the federal bureaucracy increased 80% in 10 years, the government added 99,000 bureaucrats in the last decade, and the government rubberstamped $1.5 billion in bonuses since 2015.
If It Wasn’t For Government Fraud
Would there be any fraud at all?
Peter St Onge- Federal Fraud could end the Income Tax
None Of Your Business
Ottawa Citizen- How productive is the public service? We’ll never know
“Democracy”
National Post- Estimated 2,500 undeclared foreign agents operate in Canada
The federal government estimates there are nearly 2,500 businesses or people in Canada working surreptitiously on behalf of foreign states to influence local politics and governments who will need to register publicly.
Great Success!
Reason TV- California’s fast-food disaster
Your Moral and Intellectual Superiors
Worth Every Penny
Today in Canadian Infrastructure
If It Wasn’t For Government
Who would make heat unaffordable and then tell you to…
Telegraph- Wiggle your toes to stay warm during cold snap, council tells elderly
Pave The Swamp
Kash Patel announces closure of FBI HQ Hoover building;
“When we arrived, taxpayers were about to be on the hook for nearly $5 billion for a new headquarters that wouldn’t open until 2035. We scrapped that plan. Instead, we selected the already-existing Reagan Building, saving billions and allowing the transition to begin immediately with required safety and infrastructure upgrades already underway. Once complete, most of the HQ FBI workforce will move in, and the rest are continuing in our ongoing push to put more manpower in the field, where they will remain,” he continued.
Great Success!
Blacklock’s- Mexican Embassy Is Fed Up
The Government of Mexico complains it is too expensive and bureaucratic to do business with Ottawa. The candid report by diplomats comes three months after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a “new era of cooperation” with Mexico.
The report was submitted to the Senate foreign affairs committee. Ottawa was so dysfunctional that Mexican diplomats had difficulty getting basic data here, it said.
Great Success!
MLI- The Provincial Productivity Crisis
-Public sector size has grown in every province, with health care being the main driver.
-The efficiency of public services – how much value we get per dollar spent – has fallen everywhere. Manitoba saw the largest drop in productivity, while Alberta saw the smallest decline.
New Rules
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was charged in a two-count federal indictment that alleges she obstructed official Department of Homeland Security removal proceedings and knowingly concealed the man from immigration authorities at a courthouse in April.
Dugan was found guilty of obstructing federal agents and not guilty of concealing an undocumented immigrant from arrest during the courthouse incident.
The jury reached the mixed verdict after deliberating for approximately six hours on Thursday, according to WISN.
Dugan, who pleaded not guilty, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. The judge has not yet set a sentencing date.
Wisconsin Republicans threatened Friday to impeach embattled judge Hannah Dugan if she doesn’t resign immediately
We Reject The Premise
You’re assuming there’s something there to measure in the first place.
CTV- Government rejects call to measure productivity across public service
The federal government is rejecting a call from a working group to measure productivity across Canada’s public sector, arguing that doing so would not “readily align” with its priorities.