Recent Government of Canada Publications from the Weekly Acquisitions List

The Government of Canada's Weekly Acquisitions List is a list of publications by various public bodies and agencies of the federal government that were catalogued in the previous week. 

Some of the documents in the most recent list include:

• Missing records, missing children : interim report of the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples: "Despite progress on uncovering the truth surrounding residential schools, grey areas remain. The committee’s recent work found that many questions remain unanswered regarding the transfer of records about residential schools to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. As such, the committee decided to do a focused study to hear from federal, provincial, and territorial governments as well as from Catholic entities who have not yet fulfilled the requirements stipulated under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement to remit records. Records are scattered across the country with no way of finding them other than traveling to a location and physically searching through dense linear feet of paper records. Indigenous families must conduct such searches to determine what happened to their children who went missing while attending the schools, or who went missing from health or social services institutions administered by provincial or territorial governments. This report, entitled Missing Children, Missing Records, makes 11 recommendations to improve access to residential school records. The key message is that the Government of Canada needs to support Indigenous communities to locate and access residential school records. The committee believes the federal Documents Advisory Committee is an important initiative and recommends that its work be funded and supported by dedicated staff to ensure it can meet its mandate."
• Emergency Preparedness and Response in Canada for People Living with Dementia (Public Health Agency of Canada): "This public opinion research report presents the results of online focus groups/dyads and in-depth interviews conducted by Narrative Research on behalf of Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada to better understand the current state of emergency preparedness and response guidance and the adequacy of measures to protect and support people living with dementia during emergency situations, with a particular focus on how to better prepare for future climate-related emergency situations. The research included a total of 25 online focus groups of various sizes, two dyad and 11 indepth interviews conducted from January 25th to February 23rd, 2024, divided into the following categories: people living with dementia who confirmed their ability to participate, unpaid caregivers to people living with dementia, and paid care providers who care for and interact, either directly or indirectly, with people living with dementia in a professional capacity, including paid care and support personnel, first responders, and government/logistical planners. Good geographic coverage was achieved across Canada and various community sizes were represented, including large urban, small/medium size urban, and rural areas."
• Report of the second legislative review of the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (Health Canada): "In Canada, responsibility for health-related matters such as tobacco control is shared between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. The Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (TVPA) is the federal legislation that regulates the manufacture, sale, labelling and promotion of tobacco and vaping products. Each province and territory also has laws and regulations in place for tobacco control. These pieces of legislation work together with other tobacco control tools such as policy and programs, to address tobacco-related disease and death. As written in the legislation, the TVPA’s overall purpose is to 'provide a legislative response to a national public health problem of substantial and pressing concern and to protect the health of Canadians in light of conclusive evidence implicating tobacco use in the incidence of numerous debilitating and fatal diseases'. It supports four specific objectives related to tobacco products: to protect young persons and others from inducements to use tobacco products and the consequent dependence on them; to protect the health of young persons by restricting access to tobacco products; to prevent the public from being deceived or misled with respect to the health hazards of using tobacco products; and to enhance public awareness of those hazards. The TVPA includes a requirement for a legislative review of its provisions and operation to take place every two years. This review assessed whether progress was made towards achieving the tobacco-related objectives of the TVPA and whether the federal response, from a legislative perspective, is sufficient in addressing tobacco use in Canada."