Blacklock's Reporter

The Prime Minister’s Office privately consulted with industry lobbyists on a bill that would require unions to disclose their finances under threat of $1,000-a day penalties, Blacklock’s has learned. Eleven senior Conservative staffers and MPs, including the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, met with the same construction group that earlier successfully lobbied for repeal of the 1930 Fair Wages and Hours Act. “Those are big hitters,” said Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti.

Lobbying records disclose tourism promoters requested 39 top-level meetings with cabinet members, MPs and federal staff after the government cut funding for travel promotion. “If we don’t reach out we’re not heard,” said David Goldstein, CEO of the Tourism Industry Association. One government official told Blacklock’s the budget reductions were “radical.”

Three years after the collapse of Nortel, the resulting loss of scientific investment is raising doubts Canada’s research and development spending will keep pace with other nations, say analysts. Nortel at its peak hired 1 in 4 engineering graduates, outstripping General Motors as the largest corporation in the country.

Federal inspectors should have been “more hard-nosed” in tracking the biggest beef recall in Canadian history, the minister of agriculture told a House of Commons committee. The recall came amid 16 known cases of illness due to E.coli-tainted beef from an Alberta slaughterhouse.

A Senate bill to sanction Vegas-style sports betting is now a long shot following protests by the Toronto Blue Jays. “It could be a close vote,” said the bill’s sponsor, after a baseball executive invoked the Black Sox scandal in casting the Canadian bill as a threat to the “pristine” game.

Inventive Canadians should qualify for direct federal subsidies under sweeping reforms to the nation’s “antiquated” patent system, a think tank has told the Commons’ Standing Committee on Industry. The Canadian International Council pressed MPs to counter the loss of intellectual property to foreign investors: “We have an IP leakage problem, people.”

Financial illiteracy is contributing to “worrying” over-spending by consumers, an advocacy group told MPs. The warning follows a federal study that found less than half Canadians surveyed could identify a credit report. Said one banker: “Some Canadians don’t understand what interest is.”

Decades-old government guidelines on coal deliveries are being withdrawn in a bid to keep up with the times, says the Canadian General Standards Board. Also lost to modernization are government standards for hickory axes, park wardens’ rabbit-fur hats and uniforms for elevator operators.

The nation’s central bank forecasts sluggish, steady growth for years to come, but warns of looming storms over household debt. The Bank of Canada revised its forecast for economic growth to 2.2 percent this year, from an outlook this past July of 2.1.

Canadians remain “energy pigs” in per capita fuel use though the country fares better when applying more selective statistics to international comparisons, says the government’s conservation czar. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Carol Buckley, director general of the Office of Energy Efficiency.

MPs are opening committee hearings on a private bill that would outlaw the bulk removal of boundary waters under threat of imprisonment and multi-million dollar fines. “Canadians need to know our water is not for sale,” said Conservative MP Larry Miller, the bill’s sponsor. “Water is not a commodity like coal or iron ore or oil.”

After a four-year absence an Ottawa version of Frank magazine famed for skewering politicians and pundits alike will soon resume spilling the capital’s secrets. The periodical’s colourful history included litigation involving a Quebec judge and CTV reporter who became satirical targets of the magazine.

Sweeping changes to federal loan guarantees for small companies smack of “bank-centric” adjustments that will cost entrepreneurs, says the nation’s largest advocacy group for small business. Changes permitting higher fees and rates on loans were detailed during Small Business Week.

Federal inspectors pledge to lay on extra “surveillance” of processing at a Brooks, Alta. slaughterhouse now reopened following the nation’s largest beef recall.

Florida is not a state that is “contiguous” with Canada, a three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled. The judgment came in the case of an Employment Insurance claimant who insisted he was available for work while drawing benefits in the Sunshine State.