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Quebec Premier François Legault blasted federal culture minister Marc Miller on Tuesday, accusing him of downplaying the decline of French in Quebec and calling his comments an embarrassment to the province. “Marc Miller is a disgrace for all Quebecers,” Legault told reporters. “I don’t know how he’s going to show up at a cultural event in Quebec after saying nonsense like that.”Earlier Tuesday, Miller said he was “fed up” with the politicization of the language debate. He was named federal culture minister responsible for Official Languages on Monday, replacing Steven Guilbeault, who resigned from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet last week. Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller speaks to reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in...

Culture Minister Marc Miller expressed support Tuesday for removing a religious exemption on hate speech from the Criminal Code. Miller told reporters he doesn’t “think people should be using the Bible, the Qur’an or the Torah to escape from committing a hate crime or claim that … what would otherwise be a hate crime is done in the name of a religious text.”Miller chaired the justice committee until he rejoined cabinet on Monday. He said in French in a followup comment he was offering his own perspective and it remains to be seen what the government and the justice committee will do.The Bloc Québécois said in a press release Monday the party had the government’s support for an amendment to get rid of the exemption.The comments follow a report by the National Post saying the Liberals had re...

The federal government’s response to a report it commissioned on national pharmacare was “shockingly dismissive,” NDP interim leader Don Davies said this week as he called on the Liberals to come clean on their plans for the program. “I think it’s politically dishonest,” he said in an interview.Davies was involved in the negotiations that brought forward the Pharmacare Act last year.The law, which passed just over a year ago, was a key part of the supply-and-confidence deal between the NDP and Liberals under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.It required the government to set up a committee of experts to recommend the best way to create a universal, single-payer pharmacare system.That committee reported to Health Minister Marjorie Michel in October and its report was made public last mon...

A new report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) says Prime Minister Mark Carney‘s new housing agency is on track to build 26,000 homes over the next five years. That comes after Carney said during the federal election campaign that his government would double the pace of housing construction to 500,000 a year, but without specifying in that vow whether it would be the promised new federal agency that would do so.The impact of Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency created in September, on easing Canada’s housing crisis will likely be “modest,” the PBO report said.The PBO report says the agency is currently on track to increase housing supply by 2.1 per cent over the next five years. 4:31 ...

Changes could be on the way for federal income tax brackets next year, according to the Canada Revenue Agency. If the legislation working its way through Parliament becomes law, the proposed changes would mean Canada’s lowest earners may pay slightly less income tax starting in 2026.Some income tax cuts were introduced prior to the summer of 2025 by the federal government, and the new changes would essentially apply the same cut for the entire tax year. 2:20 Federal budget aims to balance spending with controversial cuts Prime Minister Mark Carney’s so-called “middle-class tax cut” introduced in the spring proposed dropping the federal income ...