Following Ottawa’s unveiling of a new Canadian passport design on May 10, the Royal Canadian Legion said they are “disappointed” by the decision to remove an image of the Vimy Ridge Memorial that “signifies the sacrifices made for the very sort of freedom the passport provides.”  “The Vimy Memorial was a fundamental image, also representing…

One day before the annual March for Life in Ottawa kicks off, members of the Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) gathered on Parliament Hill to call for the protection of unborn children and to criticize the potential expansion of Canada’s euthanasia laws to include minors. “The hundreds of thousands of us across this country who recognize…

Federal ministers Karina Gould and Sean Fraser have unveiled Canada’s new passport designs stripped of previous historical symbols featured in the previous version. They say the reasons for the changes are mostly to prevent counterfeiting and are not politically motivated. Gould, who is minister of families, children and social development, and Fraser, who is the…

Families Minister Karina Gould announced today that the federal government has now “completely eliminated” the backlog of passport applications that caused major delays—and major political strife—last year. She also announced that Ottawa is launching a new digital tool that will allow Canadians to check the status of their Service Canada application online, as long as they…

The Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU) may be filing a formal labour-code complaint against a federal department on the grounds that it was not consulted before the mask requirement for in-person visitors to Service Canada locations was recently dropped. Social Development Minister Karina Gould told a parliamentary committee on Feb. 14 that the mandate has been…

The requirement that people visiting Service Canada offices must be masked has been dropped, a parliamentary committee has heard. Service Canada is operated by the department of Social Development Minister Karina Gould, who appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources on Feb. 14. Conservative MP Rosemarie Falk told Gould about various complaints she…

Service Canada has “virtually eliminated” the passport application backlog, which peaked at over 250,000 applications in August 2022, says Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Karina Gould. Most of the new passport applications causing the backlog were being processed on time as early as October, but thousands of other applicants who had applied beforehand were still…

Families Minister Karina Gould is expected to introduce legislation today to strengthen child care in Canada, which is likely to include an effort to secure a long-term role for Ottawa in the new national daycare system. The Liberal government brought in a national child-care plan that would cut daycare fees by an average of 50…

Social Development Minister Karina Gould says 35,000 people have applied for the new child dental benefit since the program opened a week ago. Gould was responding to an opposition question in the House of Commons about Canadians who are struggling with the rising cost of living. The new benefit is aimed at children under the age of…

The federal government is seeking feedback on creating a national school food policy that would bring a meal program into public schools across the country. “One in five children in Canada are at risk of going to school hungry on any given day,” said a Nov. 16 release from Employment and Social Development Canada. “School meal programs…