MPs for the second time in two years will consider a bill to federalize shipwrecks. The proposal would see the Canadian Coast Guard assume costs of salvage and clean-up of wrecked and abandoned vessels nationwide: “They can act fast”.
Municipalities nationwide seek tighter federal scrutiny of telecom providers in local property disputes, according to submissions to the CRTC. The appeal follows long-running feuds over placement of cellphone towers: ‘They don’t know conditions on the ground’.
Poverty is called a trap, though millions of Canadians have escaped it using subtle and very human methods. The Department of Employment, an anti-poverty agency, is not good at this. “The welfare state, which imposes order from above and requires specific outcomes, fails on many levels,” write Joe and Stephanie Mancini. “Access to basic necessities of life is often denied because someone does not fit into bureaucratic categories, or because they cannot navigate complex rule-based systems.”
The Mancinis’ Transition To Common Work is a crisp critique of the welfare state written by a devoutly Catholic husband and wife committed to aiding the poor. This is not a rant about the dole. It is an eloquent account of the subtle, human remedies for despair.
At the Working Centre in downtown Kitchener, Ont., founded by the Mancinis in 1982, “We became known as the place to go where there were few other options,” they explain. What do visitors say? “‘My brother died in Hamilton and I am trying to find bus fare and clothing so I can go to the funeral.’ ‘My daughter is in a hospital just outside London and I would like to visit her. Is there someone I could pay to drive me there two times a week?’ ‘I am new to Canada and I am trying to find work as an engineer.’ ‘I am living in my car but I have a dog, so I have to find a job quickly so I can find a place to live.’”
This is where the Mancini method works and Employment Canada fails. No check-off bureaucracy can resolve the small, immediate crises that are the burden of the workaday poor. At one point the couple attend an Employment Canada workshop where managers provide a fixed answer for the jobless: “Unemployment could be beaten by an organized and meticulous job search,” Transition recounts. “The jobs are out there, the system works, and it’s up to the unemployed to work hard to find them. What else could the government say? This was the same service that was paying out Unemployment Insurance claims. The Canada Employment Centre was designed with carrots and sticks. Part of its mandate was to help the unemployed find work, but it could also suspend benefits if the job search was not up to undisclosed standards.”
Later the Mancinis count the job listings at the Kitchener unemployment office: there were 560, with about half paying less than $5 an hour, and nearly a quarter of the postings part-time: “The bulk of the jobs paid low wages for unskilled labour. When we published these details in our newsletter, we received a letter from the Canada Employment Centre manager demanding that we never count the jobs board again.”
Instead they created the Working Centre. It runs a thrift store and bicycle repair shop, market garden and café. It serves a no-charge lunch and rents apartments at sub-market rates. It issues a quarterly newsletter Good Work News, and draws funding from an annual Mayor’s Dinner and a golf tournament where unions sponsor foursomes and a big prize table. It is “a non-judgmental place that offered hospitality and support for the unemployed” — without bureaucracy.
Transition To Common Work is fresh and candid. It concedes failure. The Mancinis opened a recycling depot that bundled paper and metal for scrap dealers. At its peak it employed 12 and generated $20,000 a month in revenue till it collapsed in the teeth of the Mulroney Recession in 1991: “We started with altruistic notions about recycling and sought companies and individuals eager to recycle their waste,” they write. “We learned that paper mills had no loyalty and treated us like second-class citizens, and that equipment salespeople had their own agenda.”
“The initiative had no value in itself,” Transition concludes – a lesson lost in so many anti-poverty programs. “We concluded that private and public bureaucracies expend vast sums of money administering systems that are often second rate or unimaginative and that governments tie up tax money in highly unproductive activities.”
Transition details the subtle, human methods a Kitchener couple used to better their city. It works. They proved it. In 2014 the Mancinis received the Benemerenti Medal from the Pope for outstanding service to society.
Transition to Common Work: Building Community at The Working Centre, by Joe & Stephanie Mancini; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 232 pages; ISBN 9781-7711-21606; $14.99
The Department of Public Works says it’s prepared to fingerprint federal contractors under a so-called “integrity regime”. Officials also maintain a confidential database of subcontractors without individuals’ consent, according to documents obtained through Access To Information: “It was gut-wrenching when I saw that letter”.
The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a class action lawsuit over hip replacements. The case follows the 2013 lapse of a Senate bill to create a national registry of medical devices: “Anybody who has an artificial implant would like to know”.
Canada Revenue Agency cannot expect small business owners to perform audits it could do with “fingertip access” to its own records, says a Tax Court judge. The ruling came in a dispute over pension payments by a British Columbia janitorial company: “You’d think it would be easier dealing with CRA”.
Health Canada in what it calls a “high priority” initiative is expanding a program to warn health care workers of the dangers of radon and other indoor pollution. The $380,250 program follows data that few homeowners test for radon: “People tend to believe their doctor”.
A court ruling on a Cold War-era law has Draconian implications for private patent holders who quit public service, cautions a lawyer in the case. The Court of Appeal ruled the 1954 Act requires that employees report inventions to the Crown even after they’ve retired from paid work: ‘A lot of people out there have no idea they are still ‘public servants’, and why would they?
Budget cuts left the Canada Border Services Agency with little choice but to curtail full security checks on exports, says the union representing customs officers. The Auditor General earlier estimated fewer than one percent of Agency staff are assigned to export controls: “I can guarantee you we’ve been impacted strongly”.
The close of a costly seven-year trade dispute on meat exports to the U.S. has yet to see Canadian producers on the path to recovery, industry executives say. Trade groups estimate they suffered more than $6 billion in lost sales and some $5 million in legal fees in overturning a U.S. regulation on labeling: “They’re still being cautious”.
Ecologists are questioning delays in enacting a federal ban on a cosmetic additive voted environmentally toxic by Parliament. Environment Canada will wait till 2019 to ban the sale of products with plastic particles called microbeads: “This should happen a lot faster”.
Parks Canada is seeking corporate sponsors for Canada 150 celebrations after complaining cabinet failed to provide funding for public programs. The agency earlier proposed asking oil and chemical companies to sponsor facilities at national parks: “Be innovative”.
A Senate committee seeks to reopen aquaculture hearings to press cabinet for a bill to federalize licensing of fish farms. The chair of the fisheries committee has blamed current regulations for declining industry revenues: “The Act must legitimize the aquaculture industry”.
A new bill would see Parliament appoint a chief science officer following elimination of a post for a cabinet advisor in 2008. The bill’s sponsor said the new appointee, similar to an officer of the U.K. Parliament, should have full staff and a $3 million annual budget: “It’s a good investment”.
Transport Canada for the first time in 40 years is updating safety requirements for the nation’s commercial fishing fleet. New regulations will cost the industry at least $1.4 million a year: “It has to be economically sound”.
