The group Mothers Against Drunk Driving has lost a bid to ban the issue of irreverent vanity license plates. The New Brunswick Court of Appeal upheld a defence lawyer’s right to use the plates DUI DR: ‘Our legal system rejects trial by public opinion’.
The foreign affairs department has budgeted $100,000 a year for individual appointees acting as part-time goodwill hosts in U.S. cities. Annual expenses for one honorary consul ran to US$99,334 including receipts for wine, cake and “brainstorming” lunches. The department took three years to release the accounts under Access To Information: “Does this fit the bill?”
The military faces a federal lawsuit on whether disciplined soldiers, sailors and air crew have a right to legal counsel. Attorneys filed the claim on behalf of a Nova Scotia air force technician punished for going AWOL: “This sounds like a horror story”.
Petitioners are urging Parliament to repeal an obscure federal law that makes blasphemous libel an indictable offence. Prosecutors last used the Criminal Code provision to charge distributors of a Monty Python film in 1979: “They should get this arcane law off the books”.
The fisheries department for a second year is concealing the size of Canada’s Atlantic seal hunt. Official claims of confidentiality follow disclosures the cost of monitoring the annual hunt is worth five times the export value of seal products.
“They are continuously subsidizing this thing,” said Andreas Krebs, spokesperson for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “If we don’t have access to the data, then Canadians can’t make a decision on whether or not they want to support this with their tax dollars.”
The department censored figures in a 2016 Seal Quota Report requested by the Fund through Access To Information. A similar 2015 report was also redacted.
“We had a good relationship with the Department of Fisheries for decades in terms of them providing information to us,” Krebs said. “There seems to be a tightening of information the department is making available to stakeholders. Until 2014 most of this information was freely available on the internet, and then they stopped publishing it.”
The IFAW had requested details of the landed value of the 2016 Atlantic hunt; the quantity and value of seal meat and pelts; and the number of licensed sealers who joined the hunt. The department withheld data under a confidentiality clause of the Access To Information Act exempting release of public records “which could reasonably be expected to result in material financial loss or gain” to a third party.
The fisheries department confirmed it will not release the records. “Since there are only a small number of participants and buyers in the seal hunt, this makes it possible to extract confidential business information from landing and value statistics,” said Carole Saindon, spokesperson; “This measure is to protect the privacy and economic interests of participants in the seal fishery, where there are a very small number of them.”
Access records have indicated the fisheries department and Canadian Coast Guard spend $2.5 million a year monitoring the Atlantic hunt, though the export value to 2014 was worth less than $500,000. “The Government of Canada spends a fortune,” said one staff memo; “These costs are beyond the capacity to absorb from traditional budgets.”
Surveillance expenses totaling $975,000 in 2007 more than doubled to $2.5 million a year by 2009 including $1 million for a Coast Guard icebreaker; $475,000 in helicopter rentals; $400,000 for high definition long-range cameras “capable of identifying a person at one mile”; and $375,000 in staff overtime. Costs for the RCMP were not tabulated.
Seal exports that peaked at $34.3 million in 2006 collapsed under a 2009 European Union ban on Canadian products. The World Trade Organization three years ago upheld the ban that saw the price of seal pelts fall from $100 apiece to as little as $20.
By Dale Smith 
Canada Post has lost a key court decision in a decades-old pay equity dispute. A federal judge ruled that lengthy delays in a Canadian Human Rights Act investigation of the post office were an “unfortunate example” of a failed pay equity process: “After more than twenty years the substantive aspects of the complaints have not been addressed”.
The collapse of one of Canada’s largest anti-tax movements will not stem the tide of copycat protests, says a legal analyst. Canada Revenue Agency has admitted to more than half-a-billion dollars in bogus claims by conspiracy theorists: “Their ideas spread like wildfire”.
Health Canada promises to “improve the openness of transparency of regulatory decisions” after being sued over allegations of illegal licensing of pesticides. The department’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency said in a Strategic Plan it has to regain public confidence: ‘We must be accountable’.
Cabinet faces millions in costs under a proposal to have Canadians use digital ID to access federal services. Records estimate the expense of “cyber authentication” at more than $1,300 per enrollment: ‘Why can’t we apply for a passport online?’
The Senate this fall will see reintroduction of a bill to update Canada’s decades-old usury law after the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge of exorbitant interest rates. Justices dismissed an application involving a gambling debt: “We are not a Third World country”.
Internet commerce and growing self-employment threaten national labour standards, says federal research. A Privy Council Office study warned of an age of unregulated “digital piecework” beyond the reach of minimum wage laws and health and safety standards: ‘The potential for exploitation is stark’.
A Tax Court judge has revealed audits and inner workings of one of the nation’s largest Ponzi schemes. The Court heard 19,469 Canadians participated in the scheme that saw investors buy spaces on a pirate-themed game board and trade in alleged semi-precious gemstones: ‘Thousands were enticed into being distributors’.
Parliament should enact first-ever national standards in the multi-million dollar armoured car trade, says an MP. A bill before the Commons would compel the labour department to fix standards for all operators in all provinces: “The government needs to step up”.
Blacklock’s newsroom pauses next week for our annual August holiday. We bid all our friends and subscribers a happy summer break and safe journey on your travels. Blacklock’s returns August 8 — The Editor.
Federal officials went to unusual lengths to keep the country’s largest engineering firm off a government ethics blacklist, according to Access To Information records. Treatment of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. included a “Dear Bob” letter to the company’s CEO, and assurances the company had “learned its lessons” after facing RCMP corruption charges: ‘It’s cleaning up the way it does business’.
