Eyes on election, Tories balance budget with asset sales

Ottawa | Reuters — Canada’s Conservative government, seeking re-election this year, delivered a federal budget Tuesday that promised a slim surplus despite the oil price crash, while offering goodies to seniors and small businesses and boosting security spending. It will mark Canada’s first surplus in eight years, accomplished with the help of the sale of […] Read more




Aerial view of Lac-Megantic after the July 2013 derailment and explosion that killed 47 people. (TSB.gc.ca)

Canada demands oil trains carry more insurance, levy imposed

Ottawa | Reuters — Canada will increase the insurance railways must carry when they haul crude oil and impose a levy on shippers to help cover the cost of major accidents in the burgeoning oil-by-rail industry, Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said Friday. Raitt unveiled the measures in a bill which responds largely to the 2013 […] Read more



CWB 2.0 backs out of directors’ court challenge

A court challenge of the new law ending the Canadian Wheat Board’s marketing monopoly proceeded in a Manitoba court on Friday, while the government insisted it was full steam ahead on its market-opening plans, and grain handler Viterra began offering forward contracts. Eight now-former farmer directors of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), who had launched […] Read more

Tories aim to end CWB single desk in 2012

Canada’s Conservative government will likely introduce legislation this autumn that will end the Canadian Wheat Board’s marketing monopoly on wheat and barley in 2012, the returning federal agriculture minister said Wednesday. Western Canada’s grain industry has operated since the Second World War under a monopoly that forces farmers to sell wheat and barley to the […] Read more