Blacklock's Reporter

Health Canada is licensing the first-ever commercial sale of an engineered species, made-in-the-lab salmon. Approval came despite a federal lawsuit and fisheries department warnings of high environmental risks. “I would certainly eat it,” said Health Minister Dr. Jane Philpott.

Attempts to regulate micro-plastic pollution have failed, says a Liberal MP. The Commons in 2015 unanimously voted to list microbeads as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act: “Risk-based assessment has failed on so many levels”.

Air Canada is being singled out for a special report by the Commissioner of Official Languages. The airline is accused of only grudgingly following the Official Languages Act: “Their position is this is a private company”.

Promised reforms to end hidden borrowing by cabinet are less than meets the eye, say members of the Senate national finance committee. The finance department in its 2016 budget had pledged to halt the practice of borrowing billions without telling Parliament: “You don’t know what you don’t know”.

A Court judgment allows federal environmental panels to do their work without fear of legal challenges over confidential documents, an analyst says. The Supreme Court declined to hear a B.C. mining company’s demand for files over a $1.5 billion project: “I think they were hoping to find some smoking gun’.

The Department of Canadian Heritage is paying a $130,000 subsidy to an Ottawa think tank for “expert advice” on what is ailing newspapers. The Public Policy Forum earlier published research likening the plight of print media to challenges facing pornographers: “Inequality has always been a fact of life in the creative industries”.

Telecom regulators turned a 10 percent profit on the sale of a National Do Not Call List to telemarketers last year. The CRTC had claimed the list was not a revenue source: ‘It’s almost a form of taxation”.

Canada Post must examine “every conceivable” way to make money, says Public Services Minister Judy Foote. Cabinet said any recommendations from a $2 million task force on modernizing the Crown corporation will be published online for comment: “A lot of work has to go into this”.

Cabinet should order a comprehensive review of the Income Tax Act, an Open Caucus forum by Senate Liberals has been told. The last federal examination of tax policy was commissioned in 1962: “It’s so obvious that something needs to be done”.

New rail insurance rules prompted by the fiery Lac-Mégantic wreck are to take effect June 18. Short line railways have protested the increase in coverage will cost jobs: “Where do we find the money to pay for this?”

A federal conference on administrative tribunals is so boring it’s like watching paint dry, writes the chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Organizers paid expenses for a Toronto magazine editor to participate on the chance it “could be good publicity” for the event.

Union drives are underway in the RCMP though Parliament yesterday missed a second deadline to legislate terms of collective bargaining. The Supreme Court set the May 17 deadline to pass the bill after cabinet earlier skipped a January date to enact legislation: “It is bad from a public safety perspective”.

Objectors protesting the Canada Elections Act have been hit with a costly Court order. A federal judge ordered three British Columbia dissenters to pay $25,000 but acknowledged they likely don’t have the money: “What do we do now, go to jail?”

Audio and video recorders are essential in all railway locomotives and should be mandated by regulators, says the Transportation Safety Board. Cabinet has yet to release a long-awaited final report on recorders due last month: ‘It can go a long way to identify hazards’.