At the time of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics Sochi begins

At the time of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics Sochi begins

Stray dogs, dangerous drinking water and lobby-less hotels haven't exactly convinced the world that Sochi is the kind of "winter wonderland" Russian President Vladimir Putin made it out to be.

Amid the controversy, the start to the 2014 Winter Olympics is coming up as Russia becomes the world's centre stage in winter sports competition.

The opening ceremonies of the XXII Winter Olympics will air on CBC television at 9 a.m. MT.

For a complete list of events, visit Postmedia's Winter Games website at, 

canada.com/olympics/results.

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Know the truth about the scandal boarding schools hampered by the slow action of the government

Know the truth about the scandal boarding schools hampered by the slow action of the government

It seems that the federal government dragging its feet on that commitment by court order to provide millions of documents from the Library to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) , which is considering boarding schools scandal .

There is a need to records from before the committee to find out the truth of the decades-long saga , such as piecing together the role played by the federal government - including former ministers and senior bureaucrats .

Between the 1870s and 1996 , were taken about 150,000 Aboriginal children from their homes by the federal government to schools run by the church , where Alaivaoualgesda and suffered from sexual and at least 4,000 have died .

I learned Postmedia News that the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper , for a full year after it ordered by the court to produce records to the committee , has not issued until the request Display (RFP) to companies outside to bid on contracts to sort through the documents in the archives of the Federal so it can be passed along .

At the same time , and time is running out for the Commission , which was recently extended its mandate, but it must submit its report by June 2015 . In fact , you should finish writing a report several months earlier volumes of it so it can be translated and prepared for release.

Indeed, says the Executive Director of the Commission in the slow means that the government will not Truth and Reconciliation Commission does not get access to all internal documents that are needed to write its report.

As an interim measure , the government gave the committee $ 1600000 since last summer to hire researchers to pore through archival documents , but that money is due to expire March 31.

He said the NDP Aboriginal Affairs critic Jean Crowder Thursday that the delay is unacceptable and raises questions about whether the government is trading in an attempt to hide the records.

"He does not make you wonder why they're dragging their feet ," she said .

"You can not help but wonder what is in those documents that the government does not want the committee to have. "

Eventually , she will harm the credibility of the Commission's report because it lacks access to all the necessary documents .

" It will lead people like me and others to question what this government is trying to hide ."

Residential schools saga , which distorted the lives of thousands of children from indigenous people and their families , and is considered by many to be the biggest shame in the historic Canada .

And resulted in a lawsuit against the federal government and the churches involved in the settlement of payments for the affected people and the creation in 2008 of the Commission . Its function is to hold public hearings so people can tell their stories , and the collection of records and the establishment of the National Research Center .

At the time, Harper issued an apology to indigenous people deep in the House of Commons for the residential schools .

The problem is that the committee found itself in conflict with the Harper government , which has been the transfer of some of the documents , but not all of the material in the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) , which is considered "relevant" to the saga of the residential schools .

The conflict ended in court , where the judge ruled in favor of the Commission on January 30, 2013 .

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The new integration a draft law emphasize rules, aimed fraudsters

The new integration a draft law emphasize rules, aimed fraudsters

Federal government wants to triple the cost of citizenship, making it difficult to become a Canadian citizen , tighten sanctions on fraud , and regulate the profession of counselor citizenship .

Dubbed " the first comprehensive reform of the citizenship law in a generation, " Bill C-24 - Canadian Citizenship Act to strengthen - was introduced today in the House of Commons . They seek to enhance the value of citizenship , and to reduce red tape and eliminate backlogs .

" We are confident that these changes reflect what Canadians want and expect, a system that emphasizes how great Canadian citizenship is a privilege , while protecting it from exploitation ."

Under the new rules , new entrants must reside in Canada for four out of six years , and at least 183 days each year , to be eligible to apply for citizenship . They must also demonstrate that they have raised income taxes during that period. There will be a need for public officials to do the math to make sure .

In rare cases , however, judges will be asked to intervene to determine residency if someone believes that they have a good reason for the failure to meet the requirement to be physically present .

Threshold under way three years out of four , however, is not defined residence currently serves as the physical presence , and there are no requirements for taxes .

In an attempt to level the playing field , and international students and temporary foreign workers and also will not be able to count the time spent in Canada before becoming a permanent resident about the residency requirement for citizenship .

The bill also opens the door to so-called " lost Canadians " sons " war brides " and Canadian soldiers born out of wedlock before 1947 when there was Canada 's citizenship laws of its own.

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Election law and fair elections contributed to Canada

To make sense of the many disparate provisions in the Conservatives’ sprawling 242-page Fair Elections Act, the first question to ask of each is not whether it is good or bad but: what problem was this intended to solve?
God knows we have enough real problems with how we run elections. The bill was born of the mess of the 2011 election, with its multiple allegations of voter fraud, including but not limited to the infamous robocalls affair: still unsolved, two years later, despite a Federal Court judge’s finding that, indeed, mass fraud had occurred. A partial list would also include the vast and needless expense of modern election campaigns, and the consequent diversion of party energies, rhetoric and policy to the ceaseless quest to raise funds. And, despite or perhaps because of all of these frenetic efforts to “reach out” to the electorate, the constant decline in turnout.
But that is not, apparently, how the Tories see it. Rather, the bill seems motivated by an entirely different set of concerns.
Take the battery of provisions aimed — that seems the appropriate word — at Elections Canada, the government agency responsible for running elections and enforcing their rules. Frustrated by the slow progress of the investigation into the robocalls scandal the chief electoral officer had asked for greater powers, notably to compel evidence from witnesses: a draconian measure, but not unknown in similar circumstances.
The act gives him none of these, responding instead by hemming in the powers of investigators on all sides. For example, they would be required to notify subjects that they were being investigated: an unusual provision, to say the least, even if an exception is made where this would compromise the investigation. Even more remarkably, the whole of Elections Canada’s enforcement operations, under the commissioner of Canada elections, would be removed from it and transferred to the director of public prosecutions, within the Justice department. This would make it accountable, not to Parliament as it is now, but to the government.
Whether this would make any practical difference to how election irregularities are investigated is an open question. What’s of interest here is what it reveals of Tory thinking. That is, the problem it was intended to solve would seem to be that the elections investigator was too powerful, too dogged, too independent.


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