Pipeline corporations are praising a cabinet bill that caps the industry’s liability at $1 billion in case of an oil spill. However executives of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association contradicted each other on whether the coverage would actually cover costs of an eco-disaster: “Call it a worst-case scenario”.
The federal Student Loan Program has lost a bid to force repayment of thousands in debts from a jobless graduate. The ruling in a Saskatchewan court allowed a bankrupt student with a Bachelor of Arts degree to avoid $33,870 in federal loans: “I am not satisfied she obtained a benefit from her education”.
Changes to natural gas export licenses rated a “gift” to industry will see Canadian firms granted double the licensing terms of U.S. corporations, says the Department of Natural Resources. The changes were inserted in a 157-page omnibus budget bill: ‘It provides greater certainty to investors’.
Nordstrom and Whole Foods are moving in;
David’s Tea is announcing a major expansion;
Parliament undergoes a $3 billion renovation; and
full-page ads by Rocky Mountaineer
offer life-changing trips
for over $1,000 a day.
Oh, and for one senator,
cold Camembert isn’t good enough.
The Liberals have yet to hear about all this;
they still think
the next election
is about the economy.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Of all populist movements to spring from the Prairies in the Mulroney era – and there were dozens – none achieved a more enduring impact than the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Disparaged by critics as a Conservative shill, nobody gave spendthrift Conservatives more grief.
The group once rolled up its giant debt clock outside the party’s national convention: “It was detained by the RCMP and searched by bomb-sniffing dogs,” recalls Federation president Troy Lanigan.
Does the language commissioner really need a car and chauffeur? Did cabinet really have to spend $12 million training geologists in Ethiopia? What was the defence department thinking when it wrote 167 pages of specifications to order mukluks? The Federation has an opinion on that.
Fighting For Taxpayers is an affectionate account of the group’s founding and grassroots financing. Born as the Association of Saskatchewan Taxpayers in 1989, it became a kind of national magpie caw-cawing over frugality in a cheeky, abrasive manner guaranteed to irritate officialdom. “Years ago a TV reporter in the Victoria press gallery, Robin Adair, made the point to me that government employee unions had spokespeople in the capitals who built relationships with legislature reporters and were available for quick comment on provincial affairs,” Lanigan writes. “Part of our media success, especially breaking into the daily news cycle, was building similar relationships and offering a counterpoint in an arena where big-government advocates had enjoyed a virtual monopoly for decades.”
In the pre-Federation era media heard no taxpayers’ voice save the annual rumblings of the Auditor General and Question Period needling of opposition MPs. The Federation opted for pitchforks and torch parades. The results delighted ratepayers.
“Few things have provided more laughs than writing the Teddies script each year”, the name given the Federation’s dubious awards for wasteful spending, Lanigan writes: “From snowplows moving nothing but air in Montreal, to an escalator going straight into a wall; the Saskatchewan government losing $36 million trying to grow potatoes; the federal government advertising a non-existent jobs program; Liberal Senator Raymond Lavigne ordering his staff to cut down trees on his neighbour’s property.” This is gold.
Fighting For Taxpayers pulls some punches. The Federation has always been strangely silent on farm subsidies; many farmers are subscribers. And it pays homage to Jason Kenney, a pioneering organizer from 1991 to ’95, without noting Kenney as a member of cabinet voted for the largest single deficit in Canadian history, a whopping $55.6 billion in 2013. “Post-Kenney, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation would become a better organized, more stable place, but it would lose the naïveté, the fearlessness and the rawness that defined those early years,” Fighting reports. Taxpayers are left to wonder what it was that Kenney took from the experience.
Yet the Federation remains essentially true to its mandate. Few employees have taken government jobs – Lanigan counts 10 in 25 years: “If I had my way the number would be zero”. And Federation directors to their credit are rarely seen at Ottawa cocktail parties.
The Federation remains a hell-raiser that delights in ridicule, as shown in their choice of mascot: Porky The Waste Hater, the invention of former research director Adam Taylor: “It cost $50 to rent Porky at Malabar costume rentals in Ottawa, but since it was rarely rented, the owner told Adam in 2005 ‘for an extra $40 you can have it’. And so, for the princely sum of $90, Porky earns hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of publicity each year, primarily as the star attraction of the Teddy Waste Awards.”
Fight the man!
By Holly Doan
Fighting For Taxpayers: Battles Fought & Battles Ahead, by Troy Lanigan; Canadian Taxpayers Federation; 163 pages; ISBN 9780-9940-13200; $21.95
A mammoth security check on federal border agents is so intensive the Government of Canada is hiring outside contractors to investigate its own employees. The Canada Border Services Agency says it needs help to probe the “reliability and loyalty” of staff, but didn’t specify whether it will monitor Facebook entries, Twitter comments, LinkedIn pages or Google references: “This is overboard”.
MPs have passed a bill to curb bootleg commercial fishing on warnings that fines are too low, and enforcement will take years to fully implement. The fisheries department said it has no estimate on the black market in Canada, though the worldwide trade in illegal fishing is worth billions: “I wonder why it has taken so long”.
Parliament has exempted itself from new legislation on workplace protection for interns. The Department of Employment confirmed unpaid staffers in MPs’ and senators’ offices are not fully covered by the Canada Labour Code: “Good to know”.
Another charity — the second in a week — is taking Canada Revenue Agency to court after being threatened with loss of its registration. The Humane Society of Canada Foundation claimed “irreparable harm” if it loses charitable status: ‘We want to make sure the sector clearly understands what the rules are’.
High-fructose corn syrup commonly used as a sweetener in processed foods is highly addictive in lab rats, new Canadian research confirms. The study comes as a Senate committee concludes hearings on whether to seek new labels or taxes on sweetened products: “We should really start considering what we are putting in our food”.
Canada must veto any European-style ban on bee-killing farm chemicals, says the Senate agriculture committee. The panel yesterday ended an 18-month investigation of bee health with a call for more research: “It is too early”.
Cabinet doesn’t know if a multi-billion dollar tax program intended to promote individual savings actually worked. The Department of Finance said it has no information on whether savings rates increased under its 2009 Tax-Free Savings Account plan: “We haven’t done that analysis, sorry”.
Major oil pipelines see safety audits at the rate of once every 17 years, says Natural Resources Canada. Officials told a Senate committee just a handful of audits occur annually on the 73,000-kilometre pipeline system that’s federally regulated: “You could look at it that way”.
Forestry-supported municipalities are appealing for federal help in countering a Greenpeace protest against pulp and paper giant Resolute Forest Products Ltd. of Montréal. Greenpeace accuses the firm of poor environmental practices in Canada: “It is costing us jobs”.
Cabinet appears to have no basis for claims 80,000 new jobs will follow ratification of a free trade pact with Europe, says the deputy chair of the Senate banking committee. The Senator cited her own research concluding no rationale can be found for the number: “We tried to find out”.
