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”.
The Canadian Transportation Agency says it’s reviewing a website notice found to mislead air passengers over compensation for delayed and cancelled flights. One advocate said the notice was “disgusting”.
“The Agency is looking into the matter,” a spokesperson said. The Agency declined further comment. In a Fly Smart guide the Agency urged consumers not to get their hopes up for compensation over snarled airline schedules. The notice:
The notice is wrong on all three counts, said Dr. Gábor Lukács of Air Passenger Rights. Lukács noted under case law and the Agency’s own rulings, airlines must notify passengers of changes in flight plans; liability is assigned regardless of who is responsible for a flight delay; and courts have compensated passengers for “stress, inconvenience and loss of enjoyment” caused by delays or cancellations.
“This is appalling,” said Lukács, who wrote a letter of complaint to regulators. “Most passengers would go to the website and may not know about the rulings. Obviously the Agency is supposed to speak through its rulings, but this disconnect between those decisions and what is on the Agency’s website raises some serious concerns about the impartiality of the current decision-makers at the Agency.”
Bruce Cran, president of the Consumers’ Association of Canada, said the notice appeared clearly misleading. “This is a sign of disgusting unprofessionalism on the part of the CTA,” said Cran.
“We ask for a quick correction from the Agency,” Cran said. “They seem to have an anti-consumer attitude. We’ve been seeking a Passengers’ Bill of Rights that past governments have seen fit to reject.”
The last Parliament twice rejected private bills mandating minimum compensation for travellers. Bill C-459 An Act Regarding The Rights Of Air Passengers proposed that airlines pay customers up to $1,000 for flight cancellations or delays. The New Democrat bill was defeated on a 149 to 134 vote in 2013.
The Transportation Agency has acknowledged Canada is one of the few industrialized countries without a passenger rights bill, noting compensation for delays, cancellations or denial of boarding is the law in Argentina; Brazil; Chile; China; Colombia; Iceland; India; Israel; Nigeria; Norway; Pakistan; Peru; The Philippines; Switzerland; Thailand; Turkey; Uruguay; Venezuela and the United States, where delays of more than four hours entitle passengers to 400% compensation to a maximum US$1,300. The European Union requires that carriers reimburse passengers for delays of five hours or more, regardless of the reason.
By Dale Smith
Regulators are turning a profit on the National Do Not Call List. Sales of the list to telemarketers plus revenues from fines on scofflaws point to a multi-million dollar gain for the CRTC: “This could be a hefty cost”.
Cabinet cut research funding for the Canadian Space Agency by 85 percent even as it appointed a Space Advisory Board to promote science, newly-released accounts show. A former Agency president earlier described its state as “depressing”.
Budget data show Agency funding for research to support new discoveries fell from $54.7 million a year to just $8 million in the period from 2009 to 2015. Cuts included the 2009 elimination of a $33.9 million Space Technology Research Program.
“It’s not just research, it’s everything,” said Marc Boucher, director of the Canadian Space Commerce Association. “Some programs were cut altogether, including education. Public outreach was gutted and basically doesn’t exist anymore.”
Cabinet in 2014 appointed a Space Advisory Board under General (Ret’d) Walter Natynczyk to promote research. Canada was the third country in space after Soviet Russia and the U.S., with the 1962 launch of the Alouette I satellite.
“The general consensus is the Space Agency isn’t playing the game,” said Mark Fricker, president of the Canadian Space Society. “The rest of the community isn’t playing that game, either. If there’s funding for start-up ideas then you will find small funding from others, but as soon as the Space Agency backs out the company interests go with them.”
“It’s not a direct reaction, it’s a secondary reaction,” Fricker said. “That’s what hurts. We can’t leverage other assets because the major player has left.”
The Agency in 2014 hired consultants to “capture the economic argument for investment in space”, in an initiative former astronaut Marc Garneau called incredible: “I’m flabbergasted the Agency feels the need to have some contractor tell them what value they give to Canadians,” Garneau said in an earlier interview.
“When I was president of the Canadian Space Agency I didn’t need anyone to tell me how the work benefited the country; we knew it,” said Garneau, now Liberal transport minister, who left the Agency to run for Parliament in 2005. “This is kind of depressing.”
“It’s basically saying, help us talk to the politicians so they will think we do something useful,” Garneau said. “I find that extraordinary. When I was president we had no question what our value was to Canadians. It was our mandate.”
The Agency had said it needed publicists’ help to “present a common narrative in how and why Canada should invest in space”; “The primary audience of the ‘value proposition for space’ is senior officials within the Government of Canada.”
A 2014 survey by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada found 80 percent of federal researchers cautioned that cuts had hurt innovation, while 80 percent of Space Agency scientists said funding was inadequate.
“The consensus is Canada is not punching above its weight like we used to,” said the Space Society’s Fricker. “We are a dog without teeth. Unfortunately we are no longer the sought-after partner we were in the past for anything, let alone our specialty in space robotics and telecommunications.”
By Kaven Baker-Voakes
Railway attorneys have lost their first Federal Court challenge of mandatory arbitration for shippers. Lawyers for CN sought access to confidential emails between an arbitrator and regulators at the Canadian Transportation Agency: “We have been railroaded for far too long”.
