MPs are accused of meddling in a Health Canada proposal to ban a common pesticide. Environmental groups complained they were put on the “B-list” to testify at the Commons agriculture committee: “The thing smacks of political interference.”
MPs are summoning a senior Transport Canada official to answer a critical audit on motor vehicle safety. The Commons public accounts committee twice cancelled hearings after Deputy Transport Minister Michael Keenan failed to attend for questioning on complaints the department is too close to auto lobbyists: “It’s a question of accountability.”
Health Canada should consider doubling the retail price of cigarettes under a plan to halve the number of smokers by 2035, says the Canadian Cancer Society. Cigarettes currently cost about $12 for a pack of 25: “We’re not even close to reaching the limit.”
A federal labour board has dismissed a complaint by a prison guard fired after allegedly smuggling drugs to inmates. The decision follows Parliament’s 2015 passage of a Drug-Free Prisons Act: “It is doubtful that there is a prison in the world that is drug-free.”
Cabinet would consider expanding a multi-million dollar ethanol fuel mandate, says an Environment Canada document. Staff did not comment. Critics have described the ethanol regulation as a farmers’ subsidy with little environmental benefit: “The policy has failed to deliver value to Canadian taxpayers.”
A marijuana-fueled property rights protest has been dismissed by the Federal Court of Appeal. The judgment came in the case of a British Columbia trade school that objected to a licensed grower next door: “It is not for the courts to second-guess the policy choices made by Parliament.”
Cabinet has no count of dual Canadian citizens. The Department of Immigration in a Senate tabling said it has no estimate of how many residents carry two passports, or live abroad: “We want to make that information public.”
The Department of Natural Resources is commissioning an $85,000 survey of how many electric cars are on the road. Testimony at the Senate energy committee indicated Canada will not meet greenhouse gas emission targets even if sales quadrupled: “If there’s demand for plug-ins, there will be plug-ins.”
Commodity prices and not foreign speculators are the cause of rising farmland values, the Senate agriculture committee has been told. Legislators are reviewing whether to monitor foreign farm purchases nationwide: “The agriculture market as an industry became a lot sexier.”
I’ve heard
Jim Crow is still dancing
to amuse the Whites.
He’s the woman in Thailand,
hands in ice water
16 hours a day,
peeling shrimp.
At Walmart,
$10 a platter.
He’s the man in Bangladesh,
working the textile machine
with a thousand others
in an ill-constructed facility
built for half that many.
The midnight-blue polo shirt by Joe Fresh is a steal;
$16 at Loblaws.
He’s the child in the underground tunnels
of Congo’s mining industry
– no protective gear –
carrying rocks and washing the cobalt ores
for less than $2 a day
to power lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, laptops, and
smartphones.
I look at my old BlackBerry.
A touch-screen would be nice, and
iPhone 8 is coming this fall.
Black History Month is over.
Back to work.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
The Red Cross is being hired on a $1.8 million federal contract to monitor human rights in Canada Border Services Agency detention facilities. The Agency detains more than 6,000 people a year. The Red Cross will ensure federal employees are complying with the law: “We should be doing our own job, really.”
Corporations cannot invoke Charter rights to evade administrative penalties, says the Federal Court of Appeal. The ruling came in the case of a small Québec trucking company fined $9,000 for shipping injured livestock: “I apply the law.”
A Senate bill banning the capture and display of whales, dolphins and porpoises could damage marine research, says the Department of Fisheries. Legislators cited intense lobbying over the bill; one Senator said he’d received nearly 1,000 emails: “What is driving this?”
A monetary theorist has lost a legal bid to pay off old debts with a promissory note. Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta blamed the failed scheme on a U.K. website and “preposterous” reading of a Library of Parliament report: “As Milton Friedman observed, There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
Cabinet will table by June its plan to permit the RCMP to unionize. The initiative comes more than two years after the Supreme Court struck down a Mountie union ban as unconstitutional.
“The President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Public Safety are committed to responding to Senate recommendations as soon as possible in order to provide clarity to RCMP members and reservists,” cabinet wrote in a tabling yesterday in the Senate. “It is anticipated the proposed response to the Senate will be tabled by the spring of 2017.”
The Supreme Court on January 16, 2015 fixed a one-year deadline to have Parliament pass an RCMP union bill, then extended the deadline to May 17, 2016 following election of the 42nd Parliament. The bill is currently awaiting reintroduction in the Commons after senators amended its original terms.
“It is in the Minister’s court,” Senator Larry Campbell (Independent-B.C.) said in an earlier interview. “We acted on it, and then they missed two deadlines. I have no idea what they are doing.”
“How long does it take to review this?” said Campbell; “We’re going on a year since the amendments passed. If one of their bills came back and we held it for a year, they would be screaming their heads off.”
MPs in 2016 passed the original Bill C-7 An Act To Amend The Public Service Labour Relations Act that permits Mounties to negotiate pay and benefits. The bill contained numerous exemptions to collective bargaining, including issues over staffing and equipment, demotions, appointments, “law enforcement techniques” and grievances over misconduct.
Cabinet at the time said some bill must pass quickly. “Delaying the passage of this legislation is problematic,” Liberal MP Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra), parliamentary secretary for the Treasury Board, told the Commons in 2016.
“Members could be represented by multiple bargaining agents, making it difficult for the RCMP to maintain a cohesive national approach to labour relations,” said Murray. “That is especially worrisome given the nature and function of our national police force.”
“Think of a time when the RCMP might be called in to address a situation of disorder that has to do with a strike and collective bargaining,” said Murray. “How would its members respond if it were members of the same union that was on strike?”
Senators subsequently amended the Commons bill, stripping away most exemptions to collective bargaining. Cabinet had opposed the amendments.
By Staff
