Good morning. This is Chris Bilton.
Proposed legislation in the federal government's budget aims to help prevent a type of tax fraud known as a carousel scheme. This comes after an investigation by the fifth estate found the federal treasury has repeatedly lost millions of dollars to international crime networks in the past several years. We'll have more on that below.
We'll also look at why the plan to end the war in Gaza has stalled, and the massive backlog of cases in India's judicial system.
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Proposed rules aim to stop CRA from paying out more bogus refunds
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(Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
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The federal government's 2025 budget, tabled last month, included a proposal to tackle a type of tax fraud known as a carousel scheme. Tax fraud experts say it's long overdue — if also a belated acknowledgement that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has been repeatedly duped into paying out untold millions in bogus tax refunds to scammers.
The background: Carousel schemes involve a series of fake companies working together to make it look as if goods are being sold and resold, with the last company in the chain claiming a refund — even though no tax was paid in the first place. The proposed legislative fix, known as a reverse charge mechanism, is designed to prevent fraudsters from claiming these bogus GST and HST refunds.
Why it matters: A source familiar with the CRA told the fifth estate they believe the Canada Revenue Agency has lost hundreds of millions to carousel schemes. The agency stated in a recent email that it has "no systematic way" of adding up exactly how much of the public’s money has been wrongly paid out to fraudsters. In a recent email to the fifth estate, the Finance Department said the reverse charge mechanism proposal is “one possible tool to address fraud” and "would prevent unwarranted refunds from being paid, generating $90 million in federal revenues over four years beginning in 2026-27."
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'There is no real ceasefire': Why the plan to end war in Gaza has stalled
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(Mohamed El Saife/CBC)
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Both sides of the war in Gaza are dragging their feet on moving on to the next crucial phase of a fragile ceasefire.
What's happening: A 20-point peace plan brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump and endorsed by the UN Security Council is effectively on life support as other countries have yet to step forward to lead a proposed International Stabilization Force in Gaza. Another major obstacle is Hamas’s refusal to fully disarm — which the militant group says it won’t do unless a "sovereign" Palestinian state is established.
What else: Since the ceasefire was signed in October, 400 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, including five people in an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter on Friday night. A compromise repeatedly suggested by the U.K., France and many Arab countries is that the Palestinian Authority, which has had limited authority over the occupied West Bank for most of the last three decades, could take temporary control of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far refused this option.
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This Vancouver man has been fighting for justice in his mother’s killing in India for 20 years. Here’s why
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(Salimah Shivji/CBC)
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India's archaic judicial system — and its backlog of millions of cases — leaves those seeking justice, along with many lawyers and judges, with a sense of hopelessness.
What happened: Vancouver resident Sanjay Goel's mother, Dr. Asha Goel, a Canadian citizen, was visiting family in Mumbai when she was badly beaten and killed in 2003 in an attack allegedly ordered by two of her brothers. Her children initially thought the criminal case would be open and shut. They had a confession from one of the alleged assailants, as well as strong DNA evidence where the match is for one person out of 10 billion.
The issue: All that evidence couldn't penetrate India's massively overburdened justice system, where more than 54 million cases, criminal and civil, are pending. India is plagued with a shortage of judges, with a ratio of 15 judges for every million Indians, according to data compiled by the India Justice Report, and its judicial system has archaic procedures that rely heavily on oral arguments from lawyers.
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In the city of Culiacán, Mexico, there are fears that a civil war within the Sinaloa cartel, one of the biggest suppliers of cocaine, methamphetamines and fentanyl in the world, could become the deadliest ever. The Sinaloa cartel, once headed by Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán and the lower-profile Ismael (El Mayo) Zambada, split into two factions on July 25, 2024. The ensuing war between "Los Chapitos" (those loyal to the Guzmán sons) and "Los Mayitos” (those loyal to Zambada) has seen local news outlet the Noroeste record more than 2,400 killings and more than 2,900 reports of disappeared persons across Sinaloa since September 2024. Read Jorge Barrera's reporting from Culiacán here.
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