Accidental damage to buried utility lines costs up to $5 billion a year, the Senate energy committee has been told. Senators expressed support for a bill to create a national call-before-you-dig system: “There is really nothing but upside.”
MPs last night protested an 11th hour bid by cabinet to amend a DNA privacy bill already endorsed by the Commons justice committee. Members of all leading parties accused cabinet of gutting the legislation: “This action makes me more than a little bit angry.”
Canada’s Public Sector Integrity Commissioner says a Court ruling that he breached a whistleblower’s right to procedural fairness will not be appealed. One MP called the case outrageous: “It raises very serious questions.”
The Canada Border Services Agency faces a federal lawsuit over alleged racial profiling. The Canadian Human Rights Commission has identified 77 profiling complaints against the Agency in the period from 2011 to 2016: “It was rude and humiliating.”
Most Canadians remain uninformed on major credit charges by lenders, says the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. The Agency paid a pollster $76,112 to survey the public on “knowledge of their rights and responsibilities.”
The RCMP in a case of disguised discipline unfairly revoked a file clerk’s security status as a means to fire the employee, says the Federal Court of Appeal. “This is huge,” said the British Columbia complainant in the case: “It got really ugly.”
Regulators had to “remove the punch bowl” with new credit curbs on indebted homeowners, says the CEO of Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation. However no additional restrictions are immediately planned, the Commons finance committee was told: “It is possible to have too much of a good thing.”
Red tape is so pervasive even public servants find it irritating, says a Treasury Board report. One employee complained it took eight supervisors to sign off on a $200 travel claim: “Filling out a solemn declaration for a $3 bus ticket is not a good use of resources.”
Employees at an obscure federal agency average more than 18 sick days a year, the highest rate in the public service, say Access To Information records. The average government-wide was 11 days annually: “There’s always some bad apples in every crate.”
Environment Canada relies on public complaints to enforce the Fisheries Act, says a senior official. Members of a parliamentary committee protested discretionary enforcement of the law protecting fish habitat: “Why not regulate?”
A federal tribunal has cited the Canada Border Services Agency for improperly levying a $1,300 fine on a Québec woman. The traveler was penalized for carrying a half-kilogram of beef in her luggage, though she admitted to the purchase on her Customs Declaration form: “I have never been to school and therefore cannot read or write.”
The prison vote likely cost a tough-on-crime Conservative MP his seat in the last election, according to newly-released data. A lawyer who won a Supreme Court decision granting inmates the vote said the outcome does not distract from fairness of the ruling: “There are a lot of bad people who aren’t in prison, and they still get the vote.”
Foreign ownership of farmland is not a threat and should not be federally-regulated, say Canada’s largest farm investment managers. The Senate agriculture committee is to report by June 30 on whether to monitor or restrict foreign investments in prime land: “Does it really matter who owns farmland in this country?”
The National Energy Board faces a lawsuit for denying compensation to an expert witness to appear at a regulatory hearing. The dispute is not uncommon, said West Coast Environmental Law: “You cannot engage in a meaningful way without going out of pocket.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs spent more than $150,000 to announce the reopening of regional offices, officials say. The offices were closed three years ago as an austerity measure: “That was part of our commitment.”
