Migrants, moms and the Indian Act: how federal politics touched us this week
OTTAWA — Bill Morneau’s French villa? We hardly knew ye.
Weeks of loud opposition-led scorn over the finance minister’s policies and personal wealth switched frequencies this week to highlight instead the Liberal connections to the Paradise Papers — a huge leak of 13.4 million records linking the world’s wealthy, including some 3,000 Canadians, to offshore tax havens.
Accusations of consorting with rich tax-avoiders who play by a different set of rules than the rest of us followed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Asia — at least until dramatic posturing on a renewed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement stole the limelight at the end of the week.
As politicians wrangled about large amounts of money shifting rapidly around the globe, there were developments much closer to home — of a lower key, but with more immediate consequence for some families: warnings about migrants, changes to the treatment of women in the Indian Act and new options for parents who are about to have babies.