Tag: politicians

Federal government approved pay raises for 336,188 bureaucrats despite weak department performance

The federal government approved pay raises for 336,188 public servants in 2025, even as departments continued to miss nearly half of their own performance targets, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The records show 78 per cent of federal employees received a pay increase last year, while only 596 employees — about 0.14 per cent of the federal workforce — saw their pay reduced.

“Taxpayers have every reason to question why the vast majority of bureaucrats are taking bigger paycheques when departments can barely pass their own test,” said CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano. “Federal bureaucrats shouldn’t feel entitled to more money every year just because they’re on the taxpayer payroll.”

The latest figures continue a long-running trend. About 385,000 federal employees received raises in 2024, while more than one million pay increases were granted between 2020 and 2023. The federal government has not disclosed the total cost of the salary increases.

CTF General Counsel Devin Drover criticized the government’s refusal to release the financial impact of the raises, calling it another example of Canada’s weak access-to-information system.

“Taxpayers are on the hook for another wage hike, but the government won’t tell Canadians the price tag,” Drover said. “Taxpayers pay these wages and they have a right to know the bill.”

According to federal performance reports, departments met just 54 percent of their own performance targets in 2024, their best result in the past five years. In two of those years, departments failed to meet even half of their stated objectives.

The report also points to research from the Fraser Institute showing government employees earned an average wage premium of 4.8 percent over comparable private-sector workers after accounting for factors such as education, experience and occupation.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects the cost of the federal bureaucracy will reach $79.4 billion this year, exceeding spending levels during the final year of Justin Trudeau’s government after adjusting for inflation. Public Accounts data show the cost of the federal bureaucracy increased 80 percent between 2015 and 2024.

Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to “spend less” and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s commitment to return the civil service to a “more sustainable level,” the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects personnel costs will continue to rise.

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House approves long-awaited stock trading ‘ban’ — here’s who the largest traders are

The House passed a sweeping set of restrictions on stock trades by lawmakers and their spouses that was paired with a voter ID provision that scared off many Democrats. 

The “Stop Insider Trading Act” cleared the House 232 to 198, with the full support of Republicans and 13 Democrats on board.

This includes Reps. Kathy Castor of Florida, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Susie Lee of Nevada, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Darren Soto of Florida, and Derek Tran of California.

Complicating things for Democrats was the voter ID provision in the bill, which would’ve required photo identification to cast a ballot. 

Given that dynamic, there appears to be little appetite for the “Stop Insider Trading Act” in its current form in the Senate, which is subject to the 60-vote filibuster.

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Husband of Socialist Rep. Ayanna Pressley Responds to Dead Body Being Found on His Property

Boston police are investigating the discovery of a body at a property owned by Conan Harris, the husband of Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

Officers responded to a call at Harris’ property at 25 Malta Street in the Mattapan neighborhood on Saturday afternoon.

The call was later upgraded to a death investigation, with homicide detectives being brought in.

Newsweek reports, “The property, 25 Malta Street, has in the past been listed as the address of his business.”

The deceased has not yet been publicly identified.

Pressley and her husband reportedly do not reside at the Mattapan property, and it has been rented out.

A spokesperson for the congresswoman issued a statement on behalf of the family Saturday evening, saying, “The Congresswoman extends her deepest condolences to the impacted family.”

The Newsweek report adds:

Harris responded to the case in a post to Facebook on Saturday.

“Thank you Everyone for the care and concern, our family is safe,” he wrote. “My heart goes out to the family that lost a loved one today in Mattapan.”

Harris, Pressley’s husband since 2014, previously worked as a senior public safety adviser in Boston City Hall and now operates his own consulting firm.

He previously served ten years in prison for drug trafficking charges.

Details about the cause of death or any potential suspects have not been made public at the time of publishing.

Boston police have not released additional information beyond confirming the death investigation at the address.

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Canada: Indigenous Leaders Say Politicians Ignored Them as Communities Burned

Fast-moving wildfires in Ontario, Canada, destroyed an entire indigenous community this week whose leaders said politicians delayed evacuation orders, failed to help find lodging for the displaced, and ignored calls for help as the flames engulfed them.

Ontario formally requested federal assistance this week as dozens of wildfires threatened northern communities, some of which had already begun evacuating themselves or fleeing by boat. Canada does not have a federal emergency management agency or a federal fire authority, however, rendering its national government largely unable to address the country’s annual massive wildfires.

In a letter to federal Emergency Management and Community Resilience Minister Eleanor Olszewski, Dunlop said 15 communities were evacuating or considering evacuations. She warned that simultaneous air evacuations could exceed Ontario’s available aircraft and requested a federal response within 24 hours instead of the usual 48.

Federal officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported.

The request came after a fast-moving blaze devastated Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, also known as Collins First Nation, north of Thunder Bay. Chief Helen Paavola said residents escaped in small boats while watching flames swallow trees beside their homes. Some fled wearing only the clothes on their backs.

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Unacceptable and Dangerous: Georgetown’s China Initiative Gives CCP-Linked Groups Access to Future US Policymakers

In the latest anti-American move made by American academic institutions, Campus Reform is reporting “Georgetown University has spent the last decade building one of the nation’s most prominent China-focused academic pipelines while receiving tens of millions of dollars in Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked funding and nearly $1.5 billion in foreign gifts and contracts since 1992.”

This is outrageous and dangerous in light of President Trump’s address Thursday night to the nation and the revelations of what the CCP engaged in.

President Trump has argued that China interfered in our elections.

The CCP or Chinese Communist Party has sought to undermine America from within at every turn.

Georgetown has raked in billions from foreign governments. Georgetown increased tuition prices for hard-working American families. This fall, undergraduate tuition will cost American students $74,520 before room, board, and fees are factored in, more than doubling since 2006.”

This is outrageous and unacceptable.

“The university has also helped create opportunities for Chinese state-linked institutions and CCP-tied organizations to gain access to the next generation of U.S. policymakers in Washington, D.C.”

If this seems like a recipe for disaster its because it is.

“The university’s Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues was launched in 2016 with a $10 million “gift” from the Hong Kong-based Spring Breeze Foundation. A 2020 Department of Education Section 117 report stated that Spring Breeze was financed by CP Group and noted the company’s extensive commercial relationships with the CCP. ”

According to this student writing at Campus Reform, this is not a typical exchange program but rather a subversive CCP initiative.

“By 2019, the initiative had launched five research groups, supported 43 student fellows, organized 16 U.S.-China workshops, produced 23 podcasts, funded graduate study tours in China, and hosted 35 public events. ”

“Georgetown has charged families premium prices for access to elite civic and policy leadership opportunities while simultaneously building channels for CCP-linked institutions to reach the students most likely to enter American government, diplomacy, law, and national security work.”

This is ominous; there should be exactly 0 cooperative programs that give the CCP any access or benefit from our universities, as they clearly cannot be trusted.

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Politicians Should Stop Hiding Behind the ‘Two-State Solution’ Fantasy

Creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel seemed feasible when President Bill Clinton hosted the signing of the Oslo accords at the White House in September 1993. The goal was reaffirmed in 2011 when 90 percent of the Senate co-sponsored a resolution supporting “a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

But today, the two-state scenario is far-fetched to the point of delusion if not evasion.

For politicians, it has become a box to check. According to data from the American Jewish Congress, every Democrat and most Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee currently say they support “the two-state solution.”

Whatever the rhetoric, ending Israeli control over Palestinians in the territories occupied since 1967 is not on the table.

“Nobody who talks about a so-called ‘two-state solution’ talks about an end to settlements and colonization, and an end to the occupation,” Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi said in an interview this year. “If you don’t have those as the preconditions, it’s not a state – it’s some reshuffling of a status quo of colonization and occupation.”

At best, only such reshuffling is on the horizon. The essence of colonization and occupation is baked into Israel’s Jewish nationalism that has hardened into systemic cruelty toward Palestinians undergoing genocide.

Yet the boilerplate refrain for a two-state solution has great political utility in the United States. For most politicians, it’s very handy for virtue signaling. The same holds true for pro-Israel pressure groups. Even AIPAC, while incapable of faulting the Israeli government for anything, blames Palestinians for refusing “to negotiate on the basis of the Trump peace framework – which envisions a two-state solution.”

Especially for politicians eager to have the deep-pocketed Israel lobby on their side at election time, saying “two-state solution” has become little more than a way of dodging key facts that exist on the ground. The Israeli military now controls 70 percent of Gaza after reducing it to rubble that has buried an unknown number of bodies. The 2.1 million Palestinians still alive in the enclave are confined to just 30 percent of its 141 square miles, under terrible living conditions.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank has pushed Palestinian people into smaller and smaller fragmented areas, divided by hundreds of checkpoints, while they face lawless violence from Israelis akin to the KKK’s terrorizing of blacks in the Jim Crow South. Several hundred settlements and outposts in the West Bank are now home to upward of 730,000 Israelis, with more arriving all the time.

Given such realities, advocates for a two-state solution have no credible answer to a basic question that is rarely asked: Where would the putative Palestinian state actually be located?

When Britain, Canada and Australia announced their formal recognition of a Palestinian state last fall, putting the number of nations doing so over 150, they were recognizing a phantom. “Israelis and Palestinians alike say the possibility of a two-state solution seems more remote than ever,” the New York Times reported at the time. “Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has devastated the enclave. Israeli settlements have become ever more entrenched in the West Bank.”

But in U.S. politics, the routine is to maintain the convenient fantasy of a two-state solution. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was simply offering up requisite platitudes during a CNN interview in August 2024 when she declared her commitment to “work toward a two-state solution, where Israel is secure and in equal measure the Palestinians have security and self-determination and dignity.”

David Mandel, a Sacramento chapter leader of Jewish Voice for Peace, told me: “In light of demographic and political realities, a ‘two-state solution’ has become a mostly empty mantra, frequently mouthed by politicians who did nothing to bring it about when it might have been a viable path to end violence and build toward something better.” He added: “It has also become a political refuge for many Americans, including a great many Jews, who are generally progressive and want to differentiate themselves from Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk, but only performatively, without joining efforts to end real violations of Palestinian rights like occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.”

A grim truth is that no one really knows what a genuine “solution” might be for the mega-tragedy that continues to unfold in Palestine. Unhelpful from Americans is the facile prescription of a two-state solution or, for that matter, any other supposed remedy. Claiming to know what’s best for Palestinians is built into a colonial mindset that has propelled intervention in the region for more than a hundred years.

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Ex-Canada MP arrested after police seize 439 guns and antique cannon from his home

Ex-Canadian MP Inky Mark has been arrested after police found a trove of guns, ammunition and an antique cannon along with thousands of dollars in cash in his home.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) seized 439 firearms from his house near Dauphin, Manitoba, last week during a firearms trafficking probe. At least three of the guns were illegally trafficked, RCMP said.

Mark, 78, has been charged with firearms trafficking and several other gun-related offences, including possessing unauthorised devices and unsafe storage, which officials say threaten public safety.

Manitoba follows Canada’s strict federal gun control laws, but its provincial government actively opposes extra restrictions.

A cultural appreciation for recreational shooting runs deep in the region.

Mark, a former Dauphin mayor, was arrested during a police search on 7 July.

He appeared on a dozen charges in court last week and was released from custody with conditions.

“The illegal trafficking of prohibited weapons is a serious offence that threatens public safety,” RCMP Assistant Commissioner and Manitoba Commanding Officer Scott McMurchy said on Monday.

“We thank the many RCMP officers who are working on this case for their tireless efforts in targeting individuals who are trafficking these dangerous and illegal weapons and bringing them to justice.”

The investigation began in March when police were notified of firearms charges in the US against another Dauphin-area man.

That investigation led RCMP to find and seize firearms allegedly purchased by Mark, which police said were “never lawfully transferred”.

At least three firearms are believed to have been illegally trafficked and one firearm had its serial number tampered with, officials said. They also found more than C$300,000 (£158,000) in cash at the home.

While the motive is unclear, Manitoba RCMP Cpl Barry Kirby said at a news conference on Monday: “We know he’s a firearm collector, but that’s really all that we know.”

Mark was elected mayor of Dauphin in 1994 and lost a re-election bid in 2010.

In parliament, he represented a constituency now known as Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa from 1997 until 2010, when he resigned from the House of Commons.

He has been a member of the Reform Party of Canada, the Canadian Alliance and a Conservative, and unsuccessfully ran for the seat again in 2015 as an independent.

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Jack Smith’s Team Spied On 44 Lawmakers’ Texts, Built A Case On Them, And Misled Congress: Grassley

Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators blew past the Justice Department’s own privilege safeguards to directly access text messages between Trump White House officials and 44 members of Congress – then had the FBI match the phone numbers to lawmakers’ names, according to DOJ records released Tuesday.

Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in a letter accompanying the records that Smith’s team “bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed these text messages.” The FBI then worked out which senators and House members had sent or received them, Davis wrote.

The filter unit existed for one purpose: to screen messages pulled from the National Archives for privileged material before line investigators ever laid eyes on them.

“All communication to/from the Filter Team must go through the Coordinator,” one internal protocol document states – adding that nothing was to reach the investigative team without a filter attorney’s sign-off.

The messages, sent between October 2020 and Jan. 20, 2021, ran between a bipartisan roster of lawmakers and Trump White House figures including chief of staff Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, now-CIA Director John Ratcliffe and now-FBI Director Kash Patel, the records show.

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Congressman Outraged After Brief Detention By Gun-Wielding Israeli Settlers In West Bank Visit

A group of extremist Jewish settlers equipped with US-made M4 rifles detained US lawmaker Ro Khanna and his group during their visit this week to the southern occupied West Bank, the Democratic representative has disclosed.

“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed; they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” Khanna told Reuters on Thursday.  “And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road.“ Khanna said, adding, “And then they call the IDF and ​the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.“

Khanna’s aide, Cameron Kasky, said the delegation was held for over an hour near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet ethnically cleansed by Israeli settlers in 2023, before appealing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem to free them. 

Khanna’s visit to the occupied West Bank comes as support for Israel splits Democrats ahead of the US midterm elections in November, with the issue contributing to primary defeats for incumbent lawmakers financed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Israel’s favorability rating among Democratic voters has fallen from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May 2026, according to recent polls. 

The US lawmaker’s confrontation with extremist settler groups occurs amid a broader campaign of state-supported settler violence that, by mid-2026, has escalated into systematic ethnic cleansing and land theft in the occupied West Bank. 

As of July 2026, illegal settler outposts effectively control 18 percent of the occupied West Bank, following an “unprecedented” expansion directly backed by the Israeli government.

Former Israeli officials have characterized the current escalation as a “systematic campaign” of “Jewish terrorism” intended to facilitate de facto annexation of the Palestinian territories.

An Oxfam analysis based on UN data revealed that since 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 1,244 Palestinians, exceeding the total from the previous 17 years combined, and forcibly displaced nearly 46,000 people.

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Florida mayor’s arrogant answer when asked why he was illegally driving around in a POLICE CAR with flashing blue lights

A Florida mayor was caught illegally driving a police car and using its flashing blue lights for a VIP traffic experience.  

Newly released body camera footage shows Hialeah Mayor Bryan Calvo, 28, being pulled over by a Miami police officer, after Calvo allegedly made an improper left turn in Coconut Grove, Miami at 11.30am on June 14.

But what began as a routine traffic stop quickly escalated when officer Yasmani Gonzalez noticed the black Chevrolet SUV Calvo was driving was fitted with flashing red and blue police lights.

‘Is this a police car? Is this your personal?’ the officer interrogates in the footage.

‘I’m an elected official,’ retorted Calvo, whose mayorship is non-partisan.

The response did little to impress the officer.

‘You turned on your police lights,’ the officer told him. ‘That’s a criminal offense, and I can easily take you to jail.’

The tense roadside exchange continued as the officer delivered a reminder that holding an elected office position does not entitle him to lawless behavior.

‘I don’t care if you’re the mayor,’ Gonzalez slammed. ‘If you’re not a police officer, don’t activate police lights.’

The officer then warned Calvo that he was driving a police vehicle despite not being a sworn law enforcement officer. 

Gonzalez proceeded to threaten jail time, saying, ‘that right there could be a third-degree felony.’

However rather than making an arrest, the officer issued Calvo two citations – one for the improper left turn and another for having prohibited emergency lights on the vehicle. 

Court records show the mayor has pleaded not guilty to both violations. It also remains unclear whether Calvo is still driving the SUV.

The footage has also launched fresh questions over why the city’s mayor was driving a police-issued SUV equipped with functioning emergency lights.

Florida law generally limits the use of blue lights to authorized emergency vehicles and does not provide a specific exemption for mayors. Although municipalities may authorize rare vehicle assignments or equipment for operational purposes, local policies do not supersede state law.

Driving a city vehicle equipped with police-style equipment could be interpreted as the impersonation of a police officer, even if emergency lights were not activated and is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

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