Union Questions Why Mandarin An 'Asset' At B.C. Mine

More questions are being raised about the temporary hiring of Chinese miners to work in underground coal mines in northeastern B.C.

The United Steelworkers Union says job ads posted on the Government of Canada’s job bank last year list speaking Mandarin as an asset.

Director Stephen Hunt says this raises questions about the requirements for working at the mines, especially after one company found no qualified Canadians to work at an underground mine near Tumbler Ridge.

DND owes two years in pension contributions to soldier sent sick-leave bill

The combat veteran against whom the Canadian Forces is threatening legal action to retrieve $427.97 in overdrawn sick days is actually owed more than two years in pension contributions by the Defence Department, the Citizen has learned.

The Canadian Forces is not backing down from its position that Kevin Clark, diagnosed with PTSD after coming to the aid of a fellow soldier shot by a Bosnian sniper, has to pay up for the two days of extra sick leave he took in 2006. But department officials say the pension issue is a separate case that retired master corporal Kevin Clark will have to work through.

Bureaucrat who took $600,000 in kickbacks says he was victim

A Montreal city engineer who lined his pockets while inflating cost estimates so construction companies could cash in says he is a victim of the system he helped build.

In his fourth day of testimony at Quebec’s corruption inquiry, Gilles Suprenant said he would have been happier of the system had never taken root – even if he pocketed at least $600,000, along with a wide assortment of gifts.

Beware of Romneycare

Mitt Romney can be a hard man to pin down. But there is one thing that he’s been clear about: if he becomes President, he will repeal Obamacare. That simple promise, more than any other that Romney has made, illuminates what is most at stake in this year’s election. The campaigns may spend most of their time talking about taxes and jobs. But health care is where the election’s outcome will have the most immediate and powerful impact on how Americans live.

Abolishing Obamacare would eliminate subsidies for people buying insurance and rescind regulations requiring insurance companies to guarantee coverage and benefits (for instance, to people with preëxisting conditions). Romney’s proposed alternative is to give individuals a tax break when they buy insurance and to push them toward high-deductible insurance plans, which he believes will make them more rigorous and price-conscious in choosing doctors and treatments. Romney also wants to reform Medicare by encouraging more competition among private insurers. The details are skimpy, but the core principle is that unleashing the power of the free market will bring down costs and raise quality.

Ryan's Riots: Plan Will Starve One in Five Americans and Create Massive Social Unrest

It's Food Day, so let's put Paul Ryan's soup kitchen stunt aside for the moment and take a serious look at what a Romney/Ryan budget might mean for the future of eating. Today, the number of Americans receiving food stamps has reached nearly 15 percent of the population, and 17 million American households experience hunger. Despite such indications of growing domestic food insecurity, Paul Ryan has proposed a $133 billion cut to nutrition assistance, an evisceration that would add 10 million more Americans to the 50 million who already are missing meals.

Closing The Gender Wage Gap Would Create 'Huge' Economic Stimulus, Economists Say

When 24-year-old preschool teacher Katherine Fenton stood up at the second presidential debate and asked the candidates what they planned to do about the gender wage gap, both candidates dodged the question, and conservatives collectively rolled their eyes at the mention of one of their least favorite of the Democrats' talking points. But lost in the election season banter over women's issues is the fact that pay equity, if taken seriously, could stimulate the economy to at least twice the degree that President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus bill did.

Paul Krugman: Romney Victory Could Mean 'Double-Dip Recession'

If Mitt Romney is elected president, then the economy may experience another recession, according to Paul Krugman.

"I think there's a real chance that he'll manage to pursue a policy in the first couple of years that simultaneously blows up the deficit and depresses the economy," the Nobel Prize-winning economist said on HuffPost Live Wednesday. "Tax cuts for the rich, who won't spend them, and slash spending for the poor and the middle class, who will be forced to cut back. And so we end up managing to have a simultaneous deficit explosion and double-dip recession."

Bank Of America Mortgage Fraud: Feds Sue For Over $1 Billion Alleging Multi-Year Scheme

Federal prosecutors sued Bank of America for $1 billion on Wednesday, alleging that the bank's former Countrywide unit concocted a mortgage scheme it called the "Hustle" in order to sell thousands of fraudulent and otherwise defective mortgage loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"In order to increase the speed at which it originated and sold loans ... Countrywide eliminated every single checkpoint on loan quality and compensated its employees solely based on the volume of loans originated," the lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal district court, alleges.

Islanders to rally against EI changes

Community and labour groups upset over changes to employment insurance are planning to bring their concerns to National Revenue Minister and Egmont MP Gail Shea’s doorstep when they rally at her office this weekend.

The groups are calling for the federal government to scrap recent changes to allowable part-time earnings for EI claimants. These changes will hurt seasonal industries as well as part-time workers, said Lori MacKay, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in P.E.I. (CUPE).

Canada caught in geopolitical energy struggle between China and the U.S.

What is a middle power with an overabundance of natural resource assets to do when the rising rival of its most crucial ally — politically, militarily, economically — comes knocking?

That rival is China; the ally, the United States of America. Canada and the Harper government appear caught in the crosshairs of a geopolitical energy struggle.

Already, U.S. lawmakers have begun to raise the alarm over China’s growing stake in Canadian oilsands development. The pending sale of Canada’s Nexen for $15.1 billion to China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) is deeply unpopular with Canadian voters, with a majority unhappy at the prospect of a Chinese state-owned enterprise owning a controlling stake in a Canadian energy gem.