The Canada Revenue Agency says taxpayers now have about a 50-50 chance of speaking to a live agent on their second or third attempt when contacting its toll-free call centres. “We’re getting to a point where about half the calls are getting through,” Revenue Commissioner Bob Hamilton told the Senate national finance committee. “I’m not trying to say it’s perfect.”
An RCMP drug recognition expert says there is no scientific rationale for a marijuana impairment limit in a federal bill. Health Canada has said it has no advice for cannabis users on how to comply with the legislation: “Is it only to teach people a lesson?”
Cabinet is rewriting its own tobacco bill 17 months after it was introduced in the Senate. Members of the Commons health committee yesterday expressed dismay with a loophole allowing advertising of vaping products: “I in no way feel this should be allowed in the public sphere.”
Municipalities remain the least transparent level of government in the country, says the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The group yesterday said it must resort to Access To Information requests to obtain basic records on municipal spending.
“One of the biggest challenges is that system is different for every city,” said Aaron Wudrick, the Federation’s federal director. “Once you learn the federal Access To Information system you can use it for every provincial system, but cities don’t work that way. There are often different rules. We would like to see the same rules applied everywhere, all the time.”
The Federation yesterday issued its annual Teddy Awards for government waste, including a citation for the City of Montréal for a $34 million subsidy to a 2017 electric car race. Only 25,000 tickets were sold for the so-called Formula-E event.
“There is just less attention paid to that level of government and there’s not as much interest from media,” said Wudrick. “We’re a non-profit organization; we don’t have the bandwidth to watch every single city council in the country the way we do provincial and federal governments.”
Other citations for municipal waste included the City of Calgary over six-figure grants for municipal art projects, including $221,000 for a “large metal ball located behind a fence at the Calgary fire department’s repair and maintenance facility”; and $246,000 to install decorate lighting at a wastewater station.
The Toronto Transit Commission was cited for a $1.9 million Light Spell program allowing riders to submit eight-character messages to be displayed in lighting at subway stations: “When the new stations opened in December, Light Spell remained offline as the Commission was concerned about ‘hate speech and the potential for the installation to be misused by some’.”
The Government of Canada is subject to mandatory disclosure of program spending, labour costs, out-of-court settlements, loss due to theft or negligence and the value of contracts over $10,000. No similar legislation forces disclosure of municipal spending.
“It’s important to remember that municipalities are creatures of the provinces, and so normally we hold the provinces to account because they’re the ones overseeing them,” said Wudrick. “When the federal government gives money directly to municipalities, there is the possibility that the lines of accountability aren’t clear.”
“We’re increasingly finding that we have to do a lot of digging, sometimes for years and years, to find this information,” said Wudrick; “We have to drag the information out of them. It’s actually better for them if they proactively release information.”
The Federation’s top award for public misspending went to the Department of Canadian Heritage, for spending $8.2 million to erect a temporary hockey rink with Zamboni shed on Parliament Hill. Costs averaged $10,000 a day, said Wudrick: “Any temporary rink costing millions of dollars is a project that should have been put on ice from the get-go.”
By Jason Unrau 
A handwritten note in a grandfather’s 1971 passport has saved Canadian citizenship for a young boy. In the first Federal Court ruling of its kind, a judge faulted the Department of Immigration for rejecting a citizenship application by the descendant of a traveling Canadian: “It is not a matter to be taken lightly.”
A cabinet bill exempting railway employees from federal privacy law marks a dark precedent in Canadian workplace surveillance, union executives yesterday told the Senate transport committee. A Teamsters director called Bill C-49 “a blank cheque to bureaucrats to determine what is right and what is wrong”.
Cabinet yesterday served notice it wants the Senate to begin voting on a marijuana bill within two weeks under threat of a debate cut-off. The government will not tolerate “delay for the sake of delay”, an official said: “You are moving this forward very quickly.”
The Senate last night passed into law a bill proclaiming Remembrance Day a legal federal holiday. A similar New Democrat bill lapsed in 2015 on concerns it would lead to another statutory holiday in all provinces: “There have been some concerns.”
Canada Post faces new demands on pay equity after being faulted by a federal judge for disparity in benefits. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers yesterday said it will seek arbitration over pay differences between urban and rural mail carriers: “Settle this.”
A federal labour board has upheld the firing of a Canada Revenue staffer who invoked her Agency connections in trying to save $10,000 in a real estate deal. The Public Sector Labour Relations & Employment Board called it a clear case of intimidation: ‘Agency powers over each taxpayer are enormous.’
The Bank of Canada estimates one third of small and medium-sized businesses boycott credit cards due to high transaction fees. Merchants’ fees, typically 1 to 3 percent, are not federally regulated: “It adds up fast.”
Labour Minister Patricia Hajdu says a new federal workplace harassment bill should curb teasing, yelling, touching, off-colour jokes and inappropriate Twitter comments. “It is, more broadly speaking, laying the foundation for cultural change,” Hajdu yesterday told the Commons human resources committee: “It can be people who use a certain style of joking that makes others very uncomfortable.”
The Commons public accounts committee yesterday described dysfunction at the Canada Revenue Agency as shocking, disappointing and alarming. MPs ordered tax managers to report within 120 days on improvements to Agency call centres: ‘It did a poor job.’
MPs tomorrow will give Second Reading to a Senate bill banning junk food advertising to children. Cabinet is proposing amendments to narrow any restrictions on marketing: “It is difficult to know exactly what we are agreeing to.”
A tobacco manufacturer yesterday protested a proposed plain packaging law would prohibit marketing of smoke-free nicotine products. A bill passed by the Senate in 2017 would enact an Australian-style law requiring that cigarettes be sold in a plain brown package with graphic health warnings: “It’s not going to have the impact you think it will.”
