Trump, children and refugees: 3 ways Canadian politics touched us this week
OTTAWA — With most of the country’s MPs deep into riding work or away on summer holiday, it’s the chatter among civil servants that echoes the loudest these days in the parliamentary precinct. But instead of gabbing about the weather like usual, the small talk is all about who is getting paid and who is not.
The government’s new pay system, Phoenix, has not been working properly, and this week officials acknowledged that more than 80,000 government employees — about a quarter of the work force — had had serious problems with their pay.
In scenes more often associated with emerging markets on the brink of debt default, government officials apologized, pointed to emergency funding and promised to make employees whole — all while admitting to breaches of private information.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country reeled with the thought of Donald Trump as U.S. president; received brand new cheques from the federal government to spend on their children; and seemed to pay little heed to the handful of politicians left behind in Ottawa to discuss what else they can do for desperate refugees in the Middle East.