The Department of Health is rewriting regulations to permit vitamin D supplements in yogurt similar to fortified milk. Federal data confirm as many as seven percent of Canadians have a vitamin D deficiency due to long, dark winters: “For example, at 52 degrees north in Edmonton, no synthesis of vitamin D occurs in the skin between October and March.”
Environmental benefits of an $8 billion subsidy program for industry are unknown, Department of Environment managers yesterday told the Commons public accounts committee. Conservative MP Dan Mazier (Swan River-Dauphin, Man.) expressed outrage: “You are so flippant about it. You don’t even care.”
Blacklock’s shareholders issued the following statement: The Attorney General and a federal judge are enacting new rules allowing password sharing. This impacts all internet users nationwide. It follows a Federal Court decision in Blacklock’s Reporter v. Attorney General, case number 2024 FC 829.
This is the law by September 1 without an appeal. The ruling runs to 67 pages but the key paragraph is number 136. What does it mean? Here are the answers:
Can I share my passwords? Yes, so long as you can think up some “legitimate business reason.” You don’t have to literally be in business. This is up to you. One legitimate business reason could be saving money on passwords.
What type of password can I share? Any kind at all. The rule applies to any ordinary password to websites, newspapers, video and music services, library databases, scientific or technical journals, peer-reviewed periodicals, you name it.
What if terms and conditions say I can’t share? It doesn’t matter. The judge ruled Blacklock’s terms were “plainly visible” and clearly prohibited password sharing without permission. Blacklock’s even sent the password buyer two written notices with a number to call if they intended to “share or distribute content.” The judge dismissed it as irrelevant.
How many times can I share my password? As often as you like. The Parks Canada manager in the case shared her password with every co-worker who asked, at least nine people. Could those nine people each share the password with nine of their friends? Of course. Parks Canada at the time had 2,16o employees.
Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa, called the ruling a “huge win” for people who don’t want to pay for content on the internet. There are “enormous implications for libraries,” he wrote. The University of Toronto Library serves 97,000 students. Under the new rule, password sharing mushrooms from 9 to 900 to 97,000 without payment or permission.
Doesn’t this have consequences for companies that rely on passwords? Yes, it is catastrophic.
Will Blacklock’s appeal this ruling? We are a small business like a million others. We have spent eight years and $538,665 fighting the Attorney General and Federal Court to uphold property rights. FC 829 should be appealed to the Supreme Court, but large corporations and trade associations relying on electronic commerce cannot leave it to Blacklock’s alone to litigate the definition of “password” in Canada in the digital age.
Parties interested in joining an appeal with financing should contact counsel: Scott Miller, c/o MBM Intellectual Property Law. 275 Slater Street, 14th Floor, Ottawa K1P 5H9.
The deadline is Friday, August 30 at 6 pm Eastern. After that moment, password sharing is law.
Any future Conservative cabinet would appoint a lobby-free tax reform committee, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. He made the pledge as Conservatives opposed an $18 billion increase in capital gains taxes: “Get ahead by working hard.”
The Commons yesterday by a 208 to 118 vote passed a Ways And Means Motion to raise capital gains tax revenues. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland called it a blow for tax fairness against multimillionaires, a claim disputed by critics: “Almost 50 percent of the people impacted by this tax otherwise make less than $100,000 a year.”
Superintendent of Financial Institutions Peter Routledge yesterday told MPs he is “very concerned” about interest rate shocks facing tens of thousands of mortgage borrowers. Some homeowners will see payments jump 50 percent on average, he said: “That is a very significant shock.”
A federal ban on replacement workers in case of strikes or lockouts will bring “certainty in this crazy world,” Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan said yesterday. The bill reflects the power and influence of Canadian labour, he said: “They are asking for more.”
The Canada Revenue Agency last year paid more than a quarter million to distribute fake “news” articles written by employees, records show. Two dailies were among the newsrooms that published the Agency’s handout stories as legitimate items: “The purpose of these articles was to inform Canadians.”
New data show the CBC draws just 11 percent of social media engagement nationwide, the poorest performance of any Canadian television network despite $1.4 billion in annual subsidies. The CBC has a thousand employees posting content online: ‘Five Canadian media outlets attract the most engagement.’
All parties yesterday pledged support for a Bloc Québécois motion to unmask foreign spies in Parliament. “What more will it take for us to act?” asked MP René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, Que.), sponsor of the motion: “We can’t keep making empty speeches.”
Irregularities in sole-sourced federal contracts to McKinsey & Company point to widespread “disregard for the rules,” Auditor General Karen Hogan said yesterday. Hogan told MPs her auditors also encountered federal employees too frightened to disclose what they knew of misconduct in contracting: “Yes, they are afraid of reprisals.”
New federal taxes on capital gains are still cheaper than rates in California, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday. Freeland introduced an expected Notice Of Ways And Means Motion to raise billions more in taxes on the sale of businesses, stocks, vacation homes and other equity: “That’s a lot of additional money.”
An $87,100 budget cut to a Senate committee junket to Africa is “difficult to bear,” says Senator Peter Boehm (Ont.), a Liberal appointee. Boehm sought $265,400 to lead the foreign affairs committee to Addis Ababa, complaining other senators take more useless trips to write reports nobody reads: “I don’t think it’s particularly fair.”
Covid ventilators auctioned as scrap metal at $6 apiece were ordered under a Public Health Agency contract that paid millions up front, records show. The secret terms were disclosed through Access To Information: “The contract went fine.”
A third of Canadians will be foreign-born by 2041 based on current immigration trends, says a Statistics Canada briefing note. Canadian-born residents would become a minority in Toronto, it said: “We have made a conscious decision to be an open country.”
