A small businessman who successfully sued the Financial Transactions & Reports Analysis Centre for arbitrary enforcement of federal law yesterday urged the Commons finance committee to watch the watchdog. FINTRAC suspended its enforcement program after losing multiple Federal Court judgments: “You have the power to destroy my business.”
Islamophobia is lowest in British Columbia and highest in Québec, says new research by the University of Waterloo. Muslims nationwide are more likely to be the target of intolerance than other religious groups, the study said: “Negative attitudes toward Muslims do definitely exist across Canadian regions.”
The Commons health committee yesterday approved a bill mandating Australian-style plain packaging of tobacco products. MPs rejected a Conservative proposal to give cigarette makers more time to comply: “The evidence is overwhelming.”
Most people skipped Canada 150 celebrations despite federal claims of widespread enthusiasm, according to in-house research by the Department of Canadian Heritage. Surveys showed most Canadians neither volunteered nor participated at any local events, or bothered to watch TV programs marking the sesquicentennial: “I’m not interested.”
The Privy Council Office under an equity program hired two women to travel 6,000 kilometres to federal jobs in Vancouver. Authorities did not explain why no British Columbia women were qualified: “It’s a bit complicated.”
Cabinet has approved the dismantling one of Canada’s last bungalow-style Grand Trunk Pacific Railway stations. The Commons heritage committee estimates 20 percent of the nation’s existing heritage buildings are lost to demolition or neglect: “Fifty years from now the kids will ask: Where did all the heritage buildings go?”
The Transportation Safety Board faces a rare federal lawsuit over an investigation of a minor boating accident. Operators of a Great Lakes paddle wheeler accuse the Board of over-reach in its probe of a 2017 incident: “Hearsay, double-hearsay, triple-hearsay and worse.”
The Liberals
unveil their strategy
for national defence.
Consider every threat,
they conclude that one supply vessel
without guns to defend itself
(converted from a civilian cargo ship),
few second-hand fighter jets
to be purchased from Australia,
and four Sally-Ann-class submarines
(seaworthy at times)
would be sufficient to carry the Party
to the next election.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Cabinet’s climate change plan has Parks Canada considering installation of wind turbines at a national graveyard. The agency yesterday said the only Canadian memorial to refugees of Ireland’s Great Famine is an “evocative place”, but must lower its carbon footprint: “That island is a sacred site.”
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority logged 815 pages of traveler complaints last year, according to Access To Information records. Airport passengers wrote with accounts of rude, sarcastic and abrasive X-ray screeners: “I am not a miracle worker.”
The Department of Finance is withholding financial data from the public, the Parliamentary Budget Office said yesterday. Analysts said the department ordered that records remain confidential after the Office concluded cabinet failed to account for all its borrowing and spending plans: “We have some numbers in front of us and we can’t release them, and we don’t understand why.”
A Canadian website calling itself a “leader in social news and citizen journalism” is being sued for allegedly copying photos without permission. Digital Journal Inc. yesterday did not comment on the federal lawsuit.
“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” said Larry Minden, president of Minden Pictures Inc. of Aptos, Calif. “Nobody likes to become the enforcer, but it’s my photography business. It’s my fiduciary responsibility to try and protect copyright.”
Minden Inc. in a Federal Court application accused the Toronto-based Digital Journal of republishing five copyright photos for a period of three to five years. The website removed the photos last December 8 only when contacted by the owners, according to Court documents. Images were copied without payment or permission, said Minden.
“Those who use our pictures without authorization run the gamut from companies that are founded on the principle of grabbing what they can online and using it to attract eyeballs, to those who have no idea or understanding of copyright law,” said Minden. “It’s all over the map.”
Minden’s Court application said the stock image supplier typically charges US$500 a year for use of a single photograph. The company seeks $12,701 in damages from Digital Journal Inc.
“The creation of the photographs required an exercise of skill and judgment that necessarily involved intellectual effort,” Minden’s lawyer wrote the Court. “Minden has not been compensated for the unauthorized use of the photographs in which it holds copyright.”
“We’re not out there to beat anybody up,” Minden said in an interview. “It’s much like the issue with music or film. If everybody would license this material, then everything would be hunky-dory.”
Digital Journal in a 2009 feature Experts Advise Citizen Journalists On Copyright Law wrote, “Media law can be confusing”; “One of the more difficult decisions a citizen reporter must make concerns uploading images. What photos are copyright free?”
“According to media law expert Michael Geist, the Canadian law is unclear, so far,” the feature continued. “‘There is no specific rule relating to third-party uploading of content’”; “Based on a number of past suits, the site owner will unlikely be responsible for third-party infractions,” Geist was quoted.
Prof. Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, was appointed to the Digital Journal board in 2010.
By Jason Unrau
Seven government officials have been fined for breaches of the Conflict Of Interest Act in the past five months, according to records. Scofflaws included three cabinet-level directors of communications and the CEO of the Business Development Bank: “I paid it rather than keep arguing.”
The Canada Revenue Agency in a three-year period fired or suspended 178 employees for snooping through personal tax files, say Access To Information records. A federal labour board has upheld disciplinary measures against employees for reading Canadians’ tax returns: ‘The reality is employee misconduct does occur.’
A payday lender that charged 548 percent interest has seen payments knocked down to 5 percent by a judge. The Court cited payday rates as “harsh and unconscionable”. The ruling comes as the Senate debates Third Reading on a bill to update Canada’s usury law for the first time in 40 years; ‘This constitutes an unfair advantage.’
