Blacklock’s newsroom pauses next week for our annual August holiday. We bid all our friends and subscribers a happy summer break and safe journey on your travels. Blacklock’s returns August 8 — The Editor.
Federal officials went to unusual lengths to keep the country’s largest engineering firm off a government ethics blacklist, according to Access To Information records. Treatment of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. included a “Dear Bob” letter to the company’s CEO, and assurances the company had “learned its lessons” after facing RCMP corruption charges: ‘It’s cleaning up the way it does business’.
Cabinet faces two federal lawsuits over a plan to collect fingerprints and mandatory credit checks on hundreds of thousands of government employees. Memos obtained through Access To Information indicate senior management hoped to avoid “political and media attention” over the mammoth security sweep that includes scrutiny of individuals’ Facebook postings: ‘Nurses, doctors, lawyers, the person who answers the phone — it applies to everybody’.
A new Act of Parliament holding pipeline operators liable for up to $1 billion in damages from oil spills will provide no relief in an ongoing Saskatchewan disaster, say regulators. The breached line was exempt from the federal law: “Emergency officers are on-site”.
A federal lawsuit over due process at the RCMP underscores the need to unionize the force, says a labour organizer. A police employee alleges in Federal Court documents that management breached the RCMP Act in reopening an old discipline case: ‘It brings the whole process into disrepute’.
Immigrant families held at a federal detention centre were put in lockdown so managers could parade schoolchildren through the facility on Take Your Kids To Work Day. Staff protested the incident was “demeaning”, according to minutes of a board meeting obtained through Access To Information. The disclosure comes as the Senate prepares to pass a bill for first-ever independent oversight of the Canada Border Services Agency: “People are watching”.
Delay in passage of a Liberal labour bill has prompted unions to put new membership drives on hold, says the Canadian Labour Congress. A Conservative law on certification remains on the books though cabinet vowed to repeal it last January: “It would be best to hold off”.
Cabinet should phase out farm marketing boards to boost national productivity, says an industry department report. The research obtained through Access To Information hailed Australia’s 2000 deregulation of its dairy industry as an example for Parliament: “Regulation appears to be less friendly in Canada”.
The Canada Revenue Agency for the second time three months is suing a bank to retrieve unpaid taxes from a delinquent borrower. Tax collectors complain they’ve been repeatedly stung by foreclosures in which banks auction debtors’ assets without settling tax liabilities: “It’s a nice way to get off scot-free”.
Government swag for Syrian refugees includes toques, a copy of the Charter Of Rights and a Buster Keaton film. The Department of Heritage said the freebies were intended to “provide all refugees with a physical culture kit to introduce them to Canada.”
“The goal is to provide the new arrivals with entertaining and educational items providing a first glimpse of Canadian culture,” said Tim Warmington, department spokesperson. “The kits contain items that reflect Canada’s rich culture.”
The gift bags were compiled from federal agencies and private book publishers as part of a “cultural welcome strategy”, according to a cabinet memo obtained through Access To Information. “The strategy will assist newcomers in adjusting to their new country,” the memo said.
Syrian refugees, numbering more than 27,000 to date, received family kits comprised of tote bags with a maple leaf, a Parks Canada tuque and a bilingual copy of the Charter. Free books included Sidewalk Flowers, an illustrated children’s book that won the Governor General’s Literary Award. “In this wordless picture book, a little girl collects wildflowers while her distracted father pays her little attention,” said a publisher’s summary. “Each flower becomes a gift, and whether the gift is noticed or ignored, both giver and recipient are transformed by their encounter.”
Refugees also received a collection of National Film Board DVDs of “great silent short films offering a taste of our country’s diverse stories,” Warmington said. Titles featured The Railrodder, a 1965 production starring silent film star Buster Keaton as a visitor who crosses the country in a stolen CNR crew car. The production was one of Keaton’s last film roles, released a year before his death at age 70.
Other DVDs for refugees included The Boy And The Snow Goose; the classic animated short The Log Driver’s Waltz; a 1980 short The Juggler depicting a street busker; and Meltdown, a 2012 animated short film in which “a polar bear must try his luck finding a job in the big city when the last of his Arctic ice environment disappears,” according to an NFB review.
“The intention is to provide all refugees with a physical ‘culture kit’ to introduce them to Canadian culture,” said a memo to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly; “The department worked with portfolio organizations and arts and culture stakeholders to source culturally-appropriate materials with an emphasis on existing materials that don’t require extensive knowledge of English or French.”
Cabinet budgeted $743 million to settle Syrian refugees this year. All the gift bag items were donated or drawn from surplus government gift shop inventory, the department said.
By Staff 
CBC-TV ad sales fell 69 percent last year with the loss of lucrative NHL licensing rights, according to Access To Information records. “Its view is that the business model for TV is broken,” said a confidential briefing paper for Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly.
A $351 million federal museum is hiring private marketing consultants after in-house research showed fewer than a quarter of Canadians have heard of it. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights seeks help to boost receipts after skipping tax payments to the City of Winnipeg: “It’s not the same as selling dish soap”.
A gun owners’ group that successfully campaigned to overturn Canada’s federal shotgun registry has dissolved into “mayhem”, according to Court documents. An Alberta judge voided the election of three directors of the National Firearms Association: “Both sides kind of got slapped around”.
A secret finance department memo admits cabinet’s attempt to promote “long-term stability” in soaring urban home prices was expected to have only minimal impact. Average prices in the nation’s costliest housing markets continue to rise at more than 10 times the rate of inflation: “We’re not fearing anything in particular”.
Environment Canada continues to use tonnes of road salt in national parks more than a decade after the department proposed regulating the substance. Advocates criticized the practice as harmful: ‘They can spread as much as they damn well want’.
