It’s Heartaches By The Number as the CRTC ruled Country Music Television can stop broadcasting so much country music. Musicians expressed dismay: ‘Our friends will have no home’.
Cabinet will “bend the curve” on rising prescription drug prices, says Health Minister Dr. Jane Philpott. The remarks followed a warning Canadians will soon pay the second-highest drug costs outside the U.S., according to the federal Patented Medicine Prices Review Board: “Canadians pay far too much”.
A national broadcast regulator has cleared two networks of ethics complaints over stories touting in-house corporate handouts. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said it found no proof CTV or Global skewed their “news” to boost management initiatives: “Heads up”.
Federal marine distress call centres are working well despite cuts imposed since 2012, says cabinet. The union representing emergency monitors said the service is vulnerable with budget rollbacks and poor technology: “I can assure you”.
Canada could become a “hub for animal testing” without new regulations outlawing manufacturers’ experiments on live animals, says the sponsor of a Senate bill to ban the practice. Industry has called the measure unwarranted: “Animals still suffer and die every year in the name of cosmetics”.
Parliament will strike a special committee to plan a “proactive federal pay equity regime”. The motion’s sponsor called it a step to legislating agencies like Canada Post that have waged decades-long legal battles over equity payments.
“Individual women and individual unions should not have to be fighting this on an ad hoc basis,” said New Democrat MP Sheila Malcolmson. “We’re delighted to be working in cooperation with the rest of Parliament to get this done so it does not get left to individual women to stand up for their right to equal pay, and it does not get left to the courts – and only lawyers profit.”
MPs yesterday voted 224 to 91 for Malcomson’s motion, that the House “close the unacceptable gap in pay between men and women”; and “appoint a special committee with the mandate to conduct hearings on the matter of pay equity and to propose a plan to adopt a proactive federal pay equity regime, both legislative and otherwise”. The committee must report by June 10.
“We need federal leadership,” said Malcolmson, MP for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, B.C; “The committee will choose its witnesses. We want to hear from all people.”
Canada Post is in its 24th year of a pay equity dispute with the Canadian Postmasters & Assistants Association over unequal pay. Ninety-five percent of members are women. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2015 ruled their complaint had merit, prompting a Federal Court application by the post office for judicial review.
The Crown corporation earlier waged a 29-year legal battle against women clerks that took a 2011 Supreme Court judgment to award $150 million in damages. The claim by the Public Service Alliance of Canada was the longest pay equity dispute in Canadian history to that time.
Malcolmson would not say if Canada Post management would be summoned to testify at the pay equity committee, but said Parliament should enact a federal law to settle longstanding litigation: “Canada needs a framework and to legislate pay equity.”
“This is not a partisan issue,” Treasury Board President Scott Brison said in debate on the motion. “There is a lot of common ground within all political parties in the House.”
“We have no intention of turning back the clock,” Brison said; “Any gap is unacceptable when based on gender. We need to deal with this gap in a balanced and responsible way that ensures women’s right to equal pay for work of equal value.”
Conservative MPs opposed the motion, though one praised its intent. “I was a victim of pay inequity on several occasions throughout my 32-year career in engineering,” said Marilyn Gladu, MP for Sarnia-Lambton, Ont.
“I was given a zero bonus one year even though I was top rated,” Gladu said. “I was told the company was on hard times, and it was. However, my male counterparts each received between 5 percent and 10 percent of their salary as a bonus at the same time. Although laws have been put in place to ensure that men and women are paid equally for the same work, there are still ways to discriminate, including time to promotion, bonuses, and disparity within a pay band.”
MPs cited federal data that most government employees are women, 55 percent, while the number in executive positions is 46 percent.
By Mark Bourrie 
A first-ever Aquaculture Act long sought by fish farmers is “certainly something to consider”, says Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo. His department earlier hired consultants to help develop a legislative framework for aquaculture companies: “The department and industry can work together”.
A Senate forum on electoral reform has been told there’s no need to hold any new referendum on proportional representation. Voters in four previous referenda rejected the plan: “I’m worried about this”.
The Senate banking committee has opened hearings on the value of the loonie in a bid to provide clarity for consumers, says its Conservative chair. Senators will summon testimony from the Bank of Canada, department of finance and others: “We have a problem”.
MPs will consider creating a third chamber on Parliament Hill for backbenchers to read speeches into the record. The “parallel chamber” is similar to a meeting hall in the U.K. where then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke in 2013 in an event mistakenly reported by media as an address to the British Parliament: “We’ve had a lot of interest”.
Natural Resources Canada is hiring a second staff volcanologist following research that rates 13 dormant volcanoes as a “high” or “moderate” hazard for ash fall. All the peaks are located in British Columbia, though a federal scientist warned fallout would likely head east: “People aren’t aware of the volcano hazard”.
Canada Border Services Agency has virtually given up intercepting shipping containers containing narcotics, say federal auditors. The findings confirm a confidential 2012 memo that dismissed drug seizures as too time consuming: “There are probably some things that are leaving the country that shouldn’t”.
Cabinet approved scant funding for a vaunted crime crackdown on tobacco smuggling, new accounts show. RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency spent less than one percent of their budgets on a program cabinet claimed would “make our streets safe”.
Environment Canada has granted two mining corporations long extensions to comply with federal law on pollution controls. An advocacy group described the concessions as disturbing: “Industry gets what it wants”.
A federal agency that oversees airport security is winning praise from Canada’s chief auditor despite being cited for unlawful contracting. Auditor General Michael Ferguson said he found no irregularities at the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority amid damning Federal Court judgments: “We’re satisfied”.
