The federal budget is but a blur of billions
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New spending tallied at $101.4 billion was in the federal budget presented by Chrystia Freeland, with a plan to reduce the deficit to $30.7 billion over five years, while the debt load climbs past $1.4 trillion. Favour was found in the promise to eventually reduce the average day care day to $10, while adding taxes to digital services, vaping products, and luxury cars, boats and planes.
Tale of a skatepark showdown
A video initially posted to Instagram contained the voices of fellow young people at a Gravenhurst, Ontario, skatepark wondering why an officer was asking for I.D. from a 12-year-old. The OPP is currently investigating the incident, which followed local forces refusing to enforce new powers.
Ericsson’s software update is blamed for knocking out Rogers wireless service for a day. The outage that affected vaccination appointments, working from home and remote learning was eventually explained by chief technology officer Jorge Fernandes. Rogers recently extolled its technological prowess in seeking permission to buy Shaw.
An icy reception to a record
San Jose Sharks forward Patrick Marleau surpassed Gordie Howe for the most regular-season games played in NHL history, at 1,768, allowing one Saskatchewan native to replace another in the books. (But then, “Mr. Hockey” also played 419 games in the WHA.) Marleau’s milestone inspired debates that delivered the Twitter ratio to the takes:
Bob Lanois dead at 73. The sound engineer who co-founded Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton was also a visual artist with credits like the Tragically Hip video “Grace, Too,” and a harmonica player who released an album in 2008. His musical family, including brother Daniel and sister Jocelyn, was noted in a recent obituary for their mother, Jill.
Finally, because they got high
The Marijuana Conspiracy had its video-on-demand release timed to 4/20, renewing attention to its inspiration: a Toronto study in 1972 where 10 women smoked weed for 98 consecutive days, observed alongside 10 women who remained sober. Most reviews are unfavourable, with one likening it to a Heritage Minute dragged out for two hours: