The Department of Justice is a department of the Government of Canada that represents the Canadian government in legal matters. The Department of Justice works to ensure that Canada's justice system is as fair, accessible and efficient as possible. The department helps the federal government to develop policy and to draft and reform laws as needed. At the same time, it acts as the government's legal adviser, providing legal counsel and support, and representing the Government of Canada in court.
The sponsorship scandal, AdScam or Sponsorgate, was a scandal in Canada that came as a result of a federal government "sponsorship program" in the province of Quebec involving the Liberal Party of Canada, which was in power from 1993 to 2006.
Victor Toews is a Canadian politician and jurist. Toews is a judge of the Court of King's Bench of Manitoba. He represented Provencher in the House of Commons of Canada from 2000 until his resignation on July 9, 2013, and served in the cabinet of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, most recently as Minister of Public Safety. He previously served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1995 to 1999, and was a senior cabinet minister in the government of Gary Filmon. Prior to his appointment to the judiciary, Toews was a member of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Donald Neil Plett is a Canadian senator who has been the leader of the Opposition in the Canadian Senate since November 5, 2019. He is the founding president of the National Council of the Conservative Party of Canada, and the longest serving individual to have held this position.
Michael Dennis Duffy is a former Canadian senator and former Canadian television journalist. Prior to his appointment to the upper house in 2008, he was the Ottawa editor for CTV News Channel. Upon turning 75 on May 27, 2021, Duffy retired from the senate due to mandatory retirement rules.
The Office of the Prime Minister (commonly called the prime minister's office or PMO comprises the staff that supports the prime minister of Canada and is located in the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council Building in Ottawa, Ontario. The PMO provides policy advice, information gathering, communications, planning, and strategizing. It should not be confused with the Privy Council Office, which is the higher office that controls the Public Service of Canada and is expressly non-partisan; the PMO is concerned with making policy, whereas the PCO is concerned with executing the policy decisions made by the government.
Marshall Rothstein is a former Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Thomas Lee Strickland is an American lawyer who was formerly chief of staff to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks in the Interior Department. Strickland served as United States Attorney for Colorado and was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate for Colorado in 1996 and 2002. He joined WilmerHale as a partner in September, 2011.
Kory Teneycke is the former vice-president of Sun News Network. He was also the former Director of Communications to the Prime Minister's Office under Stephen Harper. He was the campaign manager for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party during the 2018 Ontario election.
Human trafficking in Canada is prohibited by law, and is considered a criminal offence whether it occurs entirely within Canada or involves the "transporting of persons across Canadian borders. Public Safety Canada (PSC) defines human trafficking as "the recruitment, transportation, harbouring and/or exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of a person in order to exploit that person, typically through sexual exploitation or forced labour. It is often described as a modern form of slavery."
Nigel S. Wright is a Canadian businessman and lawyer. He served as the thirteenth Chief of Staff of the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, from September 2010 to May 2013 and is a Senior Managing Director in the London office of Onex Corporation. Wright left the Prime Minister's Office after it was reported that he had used his own money to permit Senator Mike Duffy to repay the government for housing expenses that were, at the time, the subject of media and political controversy.
ACT Alberta is a Canadian coalition of Government of Alberta representatives, non-governmental organizations, community organisations, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. ACT Alberta provides resources to help front-line workers identify potential trafficking situations and aid victims of human trafficking. The coalition also raises awareness of human trafficking in Alberta.
Richard Wagner is a Canadian jurist serving as the 18th and current Chief Justice of Canada since 2017. He previously served as a puisne justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal (2011–2012) and of the Supreme Court of Canada (2012–2017). For several months in 2021, following Julie Payette's resignation as Canada's governor general, Wagner was the administrator of the government of Canada as well as chief justice.
Jessica Edith Louise Foster, is a Canadian woman who disappeared in the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada, United States, in 2006. Her parents are Glendene Grant and Dwight Foster. Jessie Foster had spent some time living in Calgary, Alberta. In 2005, Foster and a friend of hers visited Florida together, and then stopped by Las Vegas on the way back in May where Foster decided to stay. Before disappearing the following year, Foster became involved in prostitution, was arrested once for solicitation, and was the victim of battery on several occasions.
North Preston's Finest, also known as NPF, the Scotians, or the North Preston gang, is a gang of pimps based in North Preston, a satellite of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking is a four-year action plan that was established by the Government of Canada on June 6, 2012 to oppose human trafficking in Canada. In 2004, the government's Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in Persons was mandated to create a national anti-human-trafficking plan, but the mandate went unfulfilled despite reminders from politicians and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Member of Parliament (MP) Joy Smith put forward motion C-153 in February 2007 to put a plan in place, and the House of Commons passed it unanimously. Smith began developing a proposal and released it in September 2010 under the title "Connecting the Dots". University of British Columbia law professor Benjamin Perrin helped guide Smith's writing of the proposal. Before the establishment of the NAP-CHT, a variety of people and organizations—including the 2009 and 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Reports of the United States Department of State—criticized Canada for failing to have such a plan.
The Canadian Senate expenses scandal, also known as Duffygate, was a political scandal concerning the expense claims of certain Canadian senators which began in late 2012. Senators Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy, Mac Harb, and Pamela Wallin claimed travel and living allowance expenses from the Senate for which they were not eligible. Deloitte LLP was retained to provide the Senate with an independent examination of the expense claims. Duffy, Harb, and Wallin repaid ineligible amounts. Harb retired a few months into the scandal, and in November 2013, Brazeau, Duffy, and Wallin were suspended from the Senate without pay. Brazeau, Duffy, and Harb were criminally charged. On April 21, 2016, Duffy was acquitted on all charges. Charges against Harb were withdrawn and no charges were to be laid against Wallin. The scandal attracted much public attention, with as many as 73% of Canadians following it closely. Many said that the scandal impacted the 2015 Canadian general election.
Invisible Chains: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking is a 2010 book about human trafficking by Benjamin Perrin. Perrin wrote the book after researching human trafficking for ten years. In Invisible Chains, Perrin recounts a variety of stories of human trafficking in Canada, including that of the prostitution of a child in Ontario whose sexual services were advertised in the adult services section of Craigslist. The book was timed to be published within three weeks of the release of Joy Smith's proposal for the National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking. Perrin advocated adopting Smith's proposal, saying that Invisible Chains "shows that while traffickers have a plan, Canada doesn't," and that the victims are the ones who suffer from the lack of a national action plan. Perrin promoted the book in Winnipeg, Manitoba in October 2010. Mark Milke of the Calgary Herald said that Perrin's book is "not an enjoyable read. It's depressing... but it's a necessary read," going on to say that Invisible Chains "will do much good." University of Manitoba professor Joan Durrant praised Invisible Chains, calling it a powerful book. Chester Brown condemned Invisible Chains, saying that it purports "that johns are evil monsters." In response, Brown wrote Paying for It, a graphic novel written "from the john's point of view, since of course, I don’t think of myself as an evil monster." Perrin's book was nominated for a George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, but lost to One Story, One Song, an essay collection by Richard Wagamese.
Harperman is a 2015 protest song about Stephen Harper, then the Prime Minister of Canada. It was written by Anthony (Tony) Turner, an Ottawa folksinger who worked as a government scientist at Environment Canada, studying migratory birds.
Sean Speer is a Canadian academic, commentator, and public policy analyst. He is senior fellow at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, Fellow in strategic competitiveness at the Public Policy Forum, Editor-at-large at The Hub, and a regular contributor to the National Post. He has been published in The Globe and Mail, Maclean's, C2CJournal, National Review, and Policy Options.
