French-speaking people are less financially literate than Anglophones, says the Canada Revenue Agency. Staff in an Access To Information report made the claim in attempting to explain the fact few Francophones follow the Agency on Twitter: “French Canadians discuss taxes less than English Canadians.”
Skeptical MPs are challenging the Canada Revenue Agency to sharpen its practices following a critical audit. The Commons public accounts committee yesterday examined findings the Agency spends months, even years processing tax disputes: “Taxpayers have no way of knowing how long they have to wait.”
Environment Canada is again researching methods to stop contamination from road salt. The department stopped short of reviving a 1995 proposal to list the substance as toxic.
“Environment Canada is such a wimpy organization,” said Kevin Mercer, founder of the watershed protection group Riversides. “If somebody says boo, they cower. The department is a shell and it’s an embarrassment.”
Canadian salt miners including K+S Windsor Salt Ltd. and Sifto Canada did not respond to interview requests. Industry and municipalities had protested earlier federal attempts to list road salt as a toxin under the Environmental Protection Act.
The Department of the Environment yesterday in a notice said it would spend $70,000 on research for municipalities to protect “salt vulnerable areas” including farms, forests and fish habitat. Environment Canada in 2015 urged that municipalities take voluntary steps to limit salt damage, such as storing all salt under protective cover.
“A comprehensive scientific assessment by Environment Canada determined that in sufficient concentrations, road salts pose a risk to plants, animals and the aquatic environment,” said the notice Guide For Management Of Salt Vulnerable Areas. The guide would promote “mitigation of impacts of road salts” on freshwater supplies, species at risk, aquatic life and natural habitat.
“The fact of the matter is all you have to do is look at the U.S. Environmental Protecton Agency which not only classified road salt as an environmentally toxic substance, but set limits for its usage,” said Riversides’ Mercer. “That’s more than Environment Canada ever got around to doing.”
Environment Canada in 1995 placed road salt on a “priority substance list”. Federal research in 2001 concluded salt posed a risk to “plants, animals, birds, fish and lake stream ecosystems and groundwater,” but stopped short of listing road salt as toxic. “Measures should be considered to reduce the overall use of chloride salts,” the department wrote sixteen years ago.
Ontario is the heaviest user of road salt in the country at more than 1.8 million tonnes annually, followed by Québec (1.5 million tonnes). Prairie provinces and British Columbia use the least road salt on a per capita basis.
Natural Resources Canada in a confidential 2013 report rated road salt a greater environmental risk than shale gas fracking. Salt was among “the largest risks to groundwater” alongside municipal landfills, industrial waste and fertilizer run-off, said the report Shale Gas Development In Canada: An NRCan Perspective.
By Jason Unrau 
A Conservative bill introduced in the Commons would deny cabinet billions in federal revenue from any carbon tax mandated on the provinces. The private bill strips 5 percent GST collections from carbon taxes on fuel: “This is not fair.”
Federal regulators should sponsor a bigger “sustainable and responsible” seal hunt to restore Atlantic cod stocks, says the Commons fisheries committee. MPs acknowledged there is no Canadian scientific data confirming seals are to blame for declines in groundfish populations: “They don’t eat vegetables.”
The RCMP Security Service in a declassified 1976 memo complained “liberal thinkers” were forcing police to accept gays and minorities as recruits. Mounties had used height requirements as cover for disqualifying unwanted applicants, wrote police. The memo was obtained through Access To Information: “Some police departments have already hired homosexuals because, no doubt, of political pressure.”
Employers must make a genuine effort to hire Canadians before applying for migrant labour, a federal judge has ruled. The decision came in the case of a small trucking company that complained it could not find Canadian drivers with as little as a year’s experience: “This decision is so unfair.”
Liberal and Conservative Senators are demanding cabinet explain the hiring of Red Cross investigators to monitor human rights in Canada Border Services Agency detention centres. The Agency is paying the Canadian Red Cross Society $1.8 million to check on thousands held in detention, including children: “There must be transparency.”
Statistics Canada is underestimating the number of non-resident foreigners in the country by more than 40 percent, says a federal agency. Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation commissioned its own research to counter StatsCan figures: ‘It is skewing the results.’
Transport Canada proposes to mandate seatbelts on highway motor coaches but not school buses. Refitting the nation’s 20,000 school buses with belts would be costly and unnecessary, regulators said: “Children are more likely to be killed walking to school when compared to taking a school bus.”
The Google search
didn’t take long.
“That’s the building I want
for our new embassy in Jerusalem,”
said the man behind the oak desk
bearing the presidential seal.
“It’s the nicest piece of real estate
I’ve ever seen. And the roof is just perfect!
What do you call this place?”
“Dome of the Rock, Sir.”
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
The Canada Revenue Agency mistakenly paid out at least $22.4 million in refunds to fraudsters in an internet-fueled tax protest movement, say newly-released Access To Information memos. A total 44 taxpayers were jailed under the scheme dating from 2007: “This campaign attracts true believers.”
Cabinet faces a federal lawsuit over one of the last nationally-subsidized transport companies. Crown-owned Marine Atlantic Inc. is accused of using millions in taxpayer funding to undercut private shippers. Transport Minister Marc Garneau declined an interview. “It’s before the courts so I’m not going to comment,” he said.
It’s faster to visit an employment insurance claims office in person than call the government’s 1-800 number, says a federal survey. The research follows longstanding complaints of lost calls and lengthy wait times: “They would disconnect you, and you’d call back later.”
Cabinet has no choice but to write off a 42-year loan to Cuba, says the Treasury Board. The 1975 loan in its day was mired in controversy after an agency was accused of lying to MPs over its terms: “Who would decide to write that off?”
