A merger in the multi-million dollar armoured car business is prompting a probe by the Competition Bureau. Anti-trust officers filed a Federal Court application to look over documents in the contracting of armoured car services used by retailers and banks: “We think the Bureau is doing due diligence here.”
The Department of Fisheries is appealing another ruling upholding a European Union ban on seal meat, pelts and other products. However opponents of the trade noted Canada’s sealing industry has virtually collapsed and is now reliant on government aid: “We have to make money somehow.”
Parliament would appoint its first-ever science officer under a widely-praised bill in the Commons. MP Kennedy Stewart, New Democrat science critic, sponsored the legislation to follow a precedent set by the U.K. The Canadian Association of University Teachers called the bill “marvelous”.
The Department of Finance says tax evaders may have dodged millions in payments using computer software commonly available on the internet. Authorities said “zapper” ware is so pervasive that Canada Revenue auditors are uncertain of the extent of the fraud: “It’s computer science.”
Business is pressing for more changes to an anti-counterfeit bill deemed flawed and weak. Food & Consumer Products of Canada told MPs the legislation to curb piracy actually makes enforcement a “rights holders’ problem” with costly and onerous requirements.
MPs have clashed over a Public Safety bill dubbed a “bumper sticker” on prison drug abuse. Cabinet urged quick passage of the Act, though critics said it pointlessly codified what already occurs at prisons and the Parole Board: “There is nothing I can see in this bill that actually does anything…”
Canada and the U.S. have “a long way to go” in harmonizing regulations despite vaunted promises of progress, says a former industry minister. The critique is only the latest over slow progress at “Beyond The Border”, a cabinet venture announced with fanfare in 2011.
Federal regulators should monitor consumer loyalty programs such as Air Miles and retail points cards, says the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. The group proposed oversight of schemes that enable retailers to compile consumers’ personal data on the promise of prizes: “They’ve done pretty well off these.”
After 21 years cabinet is preparing to ratify an agreement on patents for plant breeders. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Canada will adopt a 1992 pact on patent rights amid praise from some growers and jeers from others: ‘Seed companies have choices — and right now it isn’t Canada.’
A former cabinet minister named CEO of CropLife Canada is dismissing environmentalists’ claims he’ll influence former colleagues on behalf of the chemical industry. Ted Menzies said he’s complying with all lobbying restrictions: ‘I want to help the membership find ways to feed a hungry world.’
There’s nothing wrong
naming a newborn
Prince George Alexander Louis.
If tradition prevails,
it would be sixty-five years –
perhaps more –
before he becomes
King George the VII.
Long after most of us
are gone.
To better connect
with his subjects to be,
and to reflect
the true mosaic
of his future kingdom,
Prince George Mohammed Raj
might have been
a better choice.
(Editor’s note: Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, recently published his first collection of poems Martians Among Us with In/Words Press)
An MP who quit the government caucus over concealment of public salaries is prodding Parliament to endorse even greater disclosure. Independent legislator Brent Rathgeber proposed the government publish the salary of any employee who’s paid the same as an MP at $160,000 a year: “I might as well double down.”
It is always fresh to view the nation from a different perspective. Author Mark Milke explores Canada’s story without mentioning French explorers or the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. His is a tax-eye view.
Who is not wiser on learning the first Canadian tax was a 50 percent export levy on beaver pelts for top hats? Or that Alberta pioneered the gas tax, 2¢ a gallon, in 1922. Or that Ontario municipalities levied local income tax under the 1850 Assessment Act of Upper Canada. Or that tax brackets peaked at 98 percent on millionaires’ wartime income in 1944.
Tax Me I’m Canadian! is a crisp accounting of revenue measures since the pre-Confederation era. Milke correctly notes the first federal income tax was never promised as temporary – Parliament was nearly broke at the time, 1917. Nor is it unconstitutional as claimed by “bizarre” theorists and conspiracy buffs. “If I had a buck for every time that someone emailed or called to insist that ‘the federal government cannot legally collect income tax,’ I would have long ago retired to sip red wine in an expensive villa in southern Italy,” Milke writes.
Yet there is less.
Tax Me I’m Canadian! at its worst is a roundup of the usual suspects – Québecers, aboriginals, New Democrats, unions – who Milke blames for sponging off the middle-class. The author is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. The lament is tired, and panders to the Fraser Institute’s most enthusiastic advocates.
Does Canada really need a Farm Income Protection Act that pays growers a $22,500 annual grant when rising farm income is at a record high? Milke has no comment.
Does Imperial Oil really need free medicare for its 4,800 employees at taxpayers’ expense at the same time it pays dividends to shareholders? Milke is silent.
Does it really make sense to offer suburbanites toll-free roads when local governments complain the nation has a $171 billion infrastructure “deficit”? Milke, nyet.
Tax Me I’m Canadian! perpetuates an unfortunate myth that bloated governments conspire to steal from the many to reward a contemptible few. In truth, Canadian taxes are high because the majority of electors will not accept the alternative is exorbitant user fees that will hit ‘em where they live.
As the late Don Blenkarn, former chair of the Commons finance committee, once put it: “Everyone says they want to cut the deficit, but there was not an election I saw where somebody did not come out offering something.”
By Holly Doan
Tax Me I’m Canadian! By Mark Milke; Thomas & Black; 169 pages; ISBN 9780-9687-91523; $21.95
The Supreme Court today upheld one province’s bid to regulate the cost of generic drugs. The ruling is expected to set a regulatory pattern nationwide, a legal analyst told Blacklock’s. Justices in a unanimous 7-0 judgment concluded Ontario was within its rights in attempting to enforce a price cap by banning rebates paid to pharmacies by drug manufacturers.
Legislators are questioning a little-noticed bill that would see Natural Resources Canada sell nearly 50,000 acres of pristine wilderness for coal mining. The property has been preserved as Crown land since 1905, and borders an area protected from mining by the B.C. legislature: ‘Beautiful — it’s also an area well-known for high quality coal.’
