Unlicensed Uber taxi services raise questions over tax enforcement, says a Department of Justice report. The document obtained through Access To Information said the so-called “sharing economy” poses problems for tax collections: “Where should the lines be drawn?”
The government is misspending nearly $2 million a year depositing pension payments into the bank accounts of dead employees. Cabinet enacted new regulations to curb the practice: “The process to recover the money is not easy”.
More Canadians die from diesel exhaust than from being run over in traffic, says new Health Canada research. More study on diesel-related asthma in children is needed, officials said: “Most Canadians are regularly exposed to diesel exhaust”.
Federal regulators have yet to clarify enforcement of rules on start-up discount airlines after a Winnipeg-based carrier was grounded in February. The Canadian Transportation Agency is reviewing regulations disallowing licensed carriers from subcontracting bookings to third parties: ‘We plan to resume very shortly’.
The peril of microplastics in the seafood chain is the subject of first-ever research by the fisheries department. Authorities are contracting a two-year study of microplastics in shellfish: ‘It isn’t going to be pretty’.
Cabinet may consider a U.S.-style program to track derelict boats cluttering the nation’s harbours, says Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo. A bill before Parliament would see the Coast Guard assume millions in salvage costs and environmental clean-up: “It’s a huge issue”.
Lawmakers will try for a third time in two years to enact first-ever regulation of merchant fees charged by Visa and MasterCard Canada. A Liberal bill in the Commons would grant cabinet blanket powers to fix fees by executive order: ‘When you’re small you have no leverage’.
Cabinet should ease 2014 restrictions on migrant workers blamed on a “frenzy of politics”, says the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Changes in foreign labour permits left employers with chronic shortages of skilled workers, MPs were told: “Canada is bleeding from a wound we’ve inflicted upon ourselves”.
The federal government as the biggest landlord in the country must lower energy use by at least 20 percent, says an advocacy group. The public works department and other agencies own some 4 million square metres of building space nationwide: “Show leadership”.
A federal investigation into a Nova Scotia fisherman’s death is renewing calls for tighter safety regulation of the nation’s fishing fleet. Transport Canada is proposing to update safety requirements for the first time in 40 years: “There is a risk”.
Major VIA Rail changes proposed in a Department of Transportation report will result in a small, regional service that leaves too many Canadians in their cars, says Unifor. The study recommends stripping passenger subsidies outside VIA’s core business in Ontario and Québec: ‘It’s an infrastructure backbone’.
Excise taxes on small distillers would be cut 49 percent under a private Conservative bill in the Commons. A similar 2006 cut in beer taxes was credited with fueling the nation’s micro-brewery craze: “There is quite a bit of tax in a bottle”.
The Department of Health is expanding a national check-up on Canadians’ exposure to lead, pesticides, PCBs and other substances. Thousands of people will be tested for exposure to chemicals, including a flame retardant banned only six years ago as a health risk.
“Chemical substances are everywhere,” the department wrote; “For the majority of chemicals, the data will serve as a starting point for comparison with data from future surveys to determine how and why these levels may be changing over time.”
The department in a notice said consultants will be hired to analyze blood and urine samples from Canadians nationwide to test for trace chemicals. So-called biomonitoring data were last collected in 2009, 2011 and 2013 under a Canadian Health Measures Survey conducted by Statistics Canada. Researchers last tested 5,800 people including children as young as 3.
New check-ups will track polybrominated flame retardants used to treat household furniture, carpets and other products. Regulators in 2014 banned another chemical, tris 2-chloroethyl phosphate, used in children’s pillows, toys and pajamas. The European Union cited the substance as carcinogenic.
“Biomonitoring provides an estimate of exposure to a chemical,” the health department wrote in a 2015 Third Report On Human Biomonitoring Of Environmental Chemicals In Canada. “However, a chemical’s presence alone will not necessarily result in adverse health effects. The risk a chemical substance poses is determined by evaluating its toxicity and the levels to which people may be exposed.”
StatsCan researchers earlier concluded 100 percent of Canadians test positive for blood lead levels, although in small concentrations, decades after regulators restricted the commercial use of lead. Most leaded gasoline was banned in 1990; lead content in paint has been heavily regulated since 1976.
Bans on lead in consumer products followed research in Canada and the U.S. dating from 1926 that proved links between exposure and numerous health problems in children including lower IQ, hyperactivity and reproductive damage.
Lead remains listed as a toxin under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Environment Canada in 2014 proposed first-ever regulation of lead used in auto wheel weights, estimating some 114 tonnes a year fall of tire rims and are pulverized into toxic dust. The department in 2013 also reviewed the environmental risk of lead shot used by hunters. Lead shot is already banned in national wildlife areas, and for hunting most migratory birds.
Biomonitoring will also examine Canadians’ exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls once commonly used in electrical transformers and other equipment. Canada outlawed the manufacture, sale and import of cancer-causing PCBs in 1977 under a United Nations Stockholm Convention On Persistent Organic Pollutants.
Other chemicals to be tested include acrylamide; arsenic; bisphenol A; benzene; cadmium; chlorophenols; fluorene; fluoride and mercury.
By Mark Bourrie 
One of the country’s largest business schools is suing a faculty member for alleged breach of the Copyright Act. Western University’s Ivey Business School claims a professor copied its licensed works for email distribution to two Asian universities: “How much do you know about China?”
Health Canada should strike an all-scientific panel to revise its national Food Guide free of industry influence, says a Senate report. It follows criticism the current Guide reflects lobbying by food processors and agri-business groups.
“We know now it is not the basis of a good healthy diet,” said Senator Dr. Kelvin Ogilvie (Conservative-N.S.), chair of the Senate social affairs committee; “One of the things we want to do is put an emphasis on the whole meal, as opposed to individual nutrients.”
The committee in a report Obesity In Canada criticized the Guide for promoting fruit juice as a healthy substitute for raw fruit. Senators also heard testimony that recommended dairy consumption of 3 cups a day for adults is excessive; a half-litre of 1% white milk contains 216 calories.
“Fruit juice, for instance, is presented as a healthy item when it is little more than a soft drink without the bubbles,” Obesity said; “It contains all the sugar from several pieces of fruit, none of the fibre, and the vitamin content may be compromised due to the production methods used.”
“The Nutrition Facts Table of orange juice would indicate that it is high in vitamin C, but was described by one witness as not much better nutritionally than soft drinks, given the high sugar content,” the report said. “An orange, on the other hand, consumed as a whole fruit, contains more than the daily recommended amount of vitamin C but comes with the intrinsic fibre of the fruit, which lowers the glycemic load.”
Too Much Milk?
“There is no way that fruit juice should be counted as a fruit and vegetable,” Dr. David Hammond, associate professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health, said in an earlier interview. “Eat fruit; you get less added sugar.”
The Senate committee urged that regulators appoint a panel of physicians, nutritionists and researchers to revise the Guide with recommendations based on actual meals, not nutrients, and specifically exclude input from food processors and agriculture lobbyists.
“We don’t want this process to be biased,” said Prof. Jean-Philippe Chaput, an obesity researcher with the University of Ottawa. “If the food industry is part of this, it doesn’t work — because of course they want people to eat more. It needs to be unbiased.”
The Senate committee over the course of its two-year investigation heard complaints of lobbyists’ influence on the Food Guide. “There is no evidence that suggests that every Canadian in the country should be drinking two or three glasses of milk a day,” Dr. Anna Issakoff-Meller of the Guelph, Ont. Family Health Team earlier testified at Senate committee hearings.
“There has never been any study in the history of time that says that that will confer specific health benefits,” Issakoff-Meller said. “We don’t know why that recommendation was made, but certainly there was the nutrition manager for the British Columbia Dairy Foundation who was sitting on the 12-member advisory panel of the Food Guide at the time of this current Guide’s creation. Maybe she got a raise afterwards; I don’t know.”
The Guide was last revised in 1982, 1992 and 2007. It details recommended daily consumption of grains; fruit and vegetables; dairy products and meat and fish. “All witnesses agreed that Canadians need to eat more whole foods – namely vegetables, fruits, nuts and meat – and they need to stay away from highly processed foods,” said Obesity, which followed a two-year investigation by the Senate panel; “Several witnesses agreed that Canada’s Food Guide has been at best ineffective, and at worst enabling, with respect to the rising levels of unhealthy weights and diet-related chronic diseases in Canada.”
Waterloo’s School of Health in 2015 research found only 53 percent of Canadians surveyed could identify the basic food groups listed in the Guide. “Canada’s dated food guide is no longer effective in providing nutritional guidance to Canadians,” Senators wrote.
By Kaven Baker-Voakes
