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Report Air Canada doing internal review on holiday storm troubles
TORONTO — The Globe and Mail reports that Canada's largest air carrier is reviewing how it responded after winter storms led to widespread cancellations and delays during the holidays. Air Canada had to foot the bill for more than five-thousand hotel rooms, issue thousands of meal vouchers and conquer a mountain of luggage at airports.
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NDP threatens legal action over caucus taping
OTTAWA — The NDP wants the names of "any and all individuals" involved in the Conservative decision to record and distribute copies of a New Democrat caucus meeting — and it is threatening legal action to get them. A letter from NDP counsel presses the Conservatives for the information and strongly suggests litigation will follow unless the names are forthcoming.
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Ottawa posts seal hunt rules
OTTAWA — The federal government has quietly posted new seal hunt regulations that will slow down the controversial harvest by forcing sealers to take more time ensuring the mammals are dead before skinning. The rule changes, which include beefed up federal enforcement, come barely a month after federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea said Canada was "proceeding as usual" with the 2009 hunt in the face of a proposed European Union ban on seal products.
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Harper top newsmaker
OTTAWA — Captain Canada or the Grinch Who Prorogued Parliament? By dint of sheer news volume, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a heavyweight in 2008 — from a historic apology for the Canadian government’s role in residential schools to an equally unprecedented constitutional end run around a House of Commons bent on his political demise.
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Children killed in house fire
BELL ISLAND, N.L. — Three young children, including a five-year-old boy, his seven-year-old sister and their five-year-old cousin, were killed in a raging house fire early Saturday that has stunned residents of the family’s tiny, close-knit island community in Newfoundland’s Conception Bay. By the time firefighters were called to the home on Bell Island, about 35 kilometres west of St. John’s N.L., it had been fully engulfed by flames, said RCMP Cpl. Trevor O’Keefe.
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Political confusion reigns oer us
TORONTO — D’oh Canada! We hardly know you. The prime minister is not our head of state. We are not a representative republic. We do not elect our prime minister directly.
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Ignatieff to lead Liberals
MODERATOR'S NOTE: This story is now closed to commenting. OTTAWA — Michael Ignatieff secured the federal Liberal leadership Tuesday without a fight and his immediate challenge of uniting his battered party was made easier after his only remaining rival, longtime friend Bob Rae, bowed out of the contest. The former Harvard academic became the beneficiary of a stampede to replace the unlamented Stephane Dion.
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Bank of Canada slashes key rate to 1.5 per cent
OTTAWA — The Bank of Canada took an axe to short-term interest rates Tuesday, warning of a deteriorating global economy and declaring for the first time that Canada has stumbled into a recession. The central bank cut its trendsetting rate by three-quarters of a point to bring the target for the overnight rate to the lowest level in half a century at 1.5 per cent.
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Dion gone, but . . .
MODERATOR'S NOTE: This story is now closed to commenting. OTTAWA — Liberal MPs moved Monday to select Michael Ignatieff as interim leader of the party at a caucus meeting Wednesday in Ottawa, but leadership rival Bob Rae is marshalling his forces to oppose the plan. That raises the possibility of a destructive division in the party as it heads for a showdown with the Conservatives over the federal budget on Jan. 27.
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Ignatieff could be leader by this week
OTTAWA — Michael Ignatieff appears poised to become federal Liberal leader on Wednesday with the support of a majority of Grit MPs and senators. But his chief rival, Bob Rae, is not going down without a fight. He’s challenging the legitimacy of a leadership process that excludes tens of thousands of rank and file Liberals.
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