Three months after promising speedy disclosure of proposed cuts to Crown employees’ pension benefits, cabinet is quiet on plans to repeal guaranteed benefits. “We’ll just wait,” said Kevin Sorenson, Minister of State for Finance: “I can tell you one thing…”
The Supreme Court today struck down yet another Act of Parliament, a 2001 bill compelling lawyers to submit clients’ identities in the name of anti-terrorism. Justices ruled unanimously that cabinet went too far in treating attorneys as agents of the Government of Canada.
“The regime authorizes sweeping law office searches which inherently risk breaching solicitor-client privilege,” wrote Justice Thomas Cromwell for the Court. “It does so in a criminal law setting and for criminal law purposes.”
Under the Proceeds Of Crime & Terrorist Financing Act all lawyers were required to keep records of clients’ ID and submit to federal audits under threat of $500,000 fines. The law also attempted to track cash transactions of $10,000 or more by banks, realtors, casinos, currency exchange firms, diamond dealers and others.
The Federation of Law Societies spent over a decade fighting the law as unconstitutional. Supreme Court justices agreed the Act was illegal. “There is overwhelming evidence of a strong and widespread consensus concerning the fundamental importance in democratic states of protection against state interference with the lawyer’s commitment to his or her client’s cause,” Justice Cromwell wrote.
The Department of Justice spent more than $3 million defending the Act, according to accounts obtained by Blacklock’s. Canada has some 27,000 law firms.
The Act, which predated 9/11 anti-terror regulations, prompted the Federation of Law Societies to publish its own “know your client” guidelines that restricted lawyers from accepting large cash payments, and other measures. “The disappointment is we had in the law societies really stepped up to the plate,” John Hunter, past federation president, said in an earlier interview.
“The government did not have to go to litigation,” Hunter said. “We thought we were working to similar ends.” The British Columbia Supreme Court ruled in 2012 the federal regulations were unconstitutional, and treated lawyers as information gatherers for federal agents.
Lawyers remain at “real risk for money laundering”, according to a confidential government report obtained through Access To Information January 30. The study by the Financial Transactions & Reports Analysis Centre complained that Canadian attorneys “are sought after by those desiring to launder funds” specifically because of client-solicitor privilege.
“International sector exports and investigators shared that they were aware of a number of cases wherein legal services had been used, including the use of a trust account, to assist money laundering operations,” said the report Money Laundering & Terrorist Financing Vulnerability Assessments, authored by Grant Thornton LLP for the federal government.
By Dale Smith 
One Canadian airport is rated a notably high-risk entry point for drugs, pornography and disease, according to confidential federal records. And a busy U.S. border crossing is described as a terror risk due to the large local “Arab population”, according to a Canada Border Services Agency report: “There have been no cases of terrorists”.
Meaningful cuts to regulatory red tape may take “several years” to achieve in the face of bureaucratic inertia, says the chief of a federal advisory panel. The Treasury Board launched what it called an “ambitious” campaign to curb pointless regulation three years ago: “Has there been significant improvement?”
Cabinet appears to be weakening Access To Information laws “by attrition” amid a shortage of funding for the federal agency that oversees fair disclosure of public records, says a Liberal MP: “They are starved on two fronts — lack of powers and lack of financing”.
Trucking companies, not railways, ship the overwhelming majority of Canada’s dangerous goods, new federal data confirm. Statistics Canada said the rate “raises questions” amid greater public focus on rail safety: “We move them one truck at a time”.
Transport Canada is mandating new safety regulations on school vans following a 2008 accident that killed eight people in New Brunswick. However regulators stopped short of requiring seat belts in all vehicles that transport schoolchildren, saying the measure would be expensive and impractical: ‘It would significantly increase the cost of school buses’.
The federal tax system is so complex Canada Revenue Agency is buying thousands of software kits to help individuals fill out government forms. The tax department contracted the off-the-shelf computer programs for use by community groups that volunteer to help Canadians complete their tax returns: “Things keep getting added and nothing ever gets removed”.
Cabinet will harmonize regulations on labeling of hazardous chemicals within two years, according to a notice. The initiative has been ongoing since 2011: “It took a lot longer than anyone had anticipated”.
A CBC union has been cited for violating the Canada Labour Code after a longtime shop steward harassed a fellow employee. Graphic details of the case were suggested in videotaped evidence submitted to the Canada Industrial Relations Board: ‘You do not admit to having left a moist substance’.
Fifty-four years after pioneering wheat sales to China, Canadian food exporters are largely unknown in the People’s Republic, complains an industry report. The Canadian Agriculture Policy Institute urged that federal regulators help boost sales: “Canadian food remains off the radar”.
Environment Canada is testing the Great Lakes for traces of a stew of chemicals including cocaine, insect repellent and an ingredient found in rat poison. More than 8 million Canadians draw their drinking water from the lakes: “We need to take this seriously”.
The disciplining of a “rogue employee” after three years of federal hearings and reviews points to an imbalance facing small employers, says an attorney who handled the case. A British Columbia food processor was the subject of 7 separate hearings on complaints by a single employee: “Often you’re dealing with Ma and Pa employers who don’t have great financial resources”.
Health Canada says it will name and shame pharmaceutical companies that fail to publicly warn of drug shortages, but stopped short of detailing a mandatory reporting system. The initiative comes almost a year to the day after Parliament rejected a bill compelling disclosure of shortages: ‘It’s very nice’.
An Alberta think tank that advocated charging the GST on food and rent now admits consumption taxes are “regressive”. The concession came from the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s alma mater: ‘Poor income groups couldn’t afford that very nice cut of beef anyway’.
