Budget Provisions

Budget Concerns Dept: Bill C-38, introduced in the House last week, calls itself, innocuously, "An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures.", according to Vancouver Sun. It ranges far beyond the traditional budget concerns of taxing and spending, making changes in policy across a number of fields from immigration among other changes, it erases at a stroke the entire backlog of applications under the skilled worker program , to telecommunications opening the door, slightly, to foreign ownership , to land codes on native reservations and this is the sort of thing people once made quite a bit of a fuss over. The bill does implement certain budget provisions: for example, the controversial changes to Old Age Security. But "and other measures" rather understates matters, to under-state the matter. The bill runs to more than 420 pages. It amends some 60 different acts, repeals half a dozen, and adds three more, including a completely rewritten Canadian Environ-mental Assessment Act. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.