Fraud charges against a federal contractor accused of stealing $250,000 are only the beginning, a Department of Public Works manager said yesterday. The theft of millions is suspected, MPs were told: “Is it not true at this very minute there are middle men just soaking Canadian taxpayers?”
U.S. protests over the Government of Canada’s poor record on protecting copyright owners is merely a “political tool,” says a staff briefing note to Trade Minister Mary Ng. The United States placed Canada on its 2024 “watch list” over concerns on copyright thievery.
“It serves as a political tool to satisfy domestic U.S. stakeholders,” said the April 25 briefing note. “The United States has strong offensive interests in the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights globally and in this report places countries alleged to have inadequate intellectual property laws in three escalating categories: ‘Watch List,’ ‘Priority Watch List’ and ‘Priority Foreign Country.’”
“Canada is on the ‘Watch List’ for 2024,” said the briefing note Special 301 Report On Intellectual Property Protection. “Canada does not recognize the validity of the report.”
Any complaint that the Government of Canada tolerates copyright theft “relies primarily on industry allegations rather than empirical evidence and objective analysis,” said the note to Minister Ng. “We continue to engage bilaterally and constructively on intellectual property issues with the United States.”
The United States Trade Representative in an April 25 Special 301 Report placed Canada on its “watch list” for numerous shortcomings in protecting copyright. “Levels of online piracy remain very high in Canada,” it said. Court rulings allowing mass copying of literary works had also “significantly damaged the market for educational authors and publishers,” it said.
Canadian authors and publishers have lost more than $200 million in royalties since a 2012 Supreme Court ruling allowed mass photocopying of books under the guise of “personal research.” One institution, York University of Toronto, admitted in Court documents it distributed 29 million photocopies in student course packs without payment or permission.
Department of Justice lawyers weeks after the “watch list” was issued also won a May 31 Federal Court ruling in Blacklock’s Reporter v. Attorney General that expanded copyright theft to include password sharing. The U.S. Trade Representative has not yet commented on the ruling.
Evidence in the Blacklock’s case showed a Parks Canada manager, Genevieve Patenaude, purchased a single password then shared it with anyone who asked, at least nine people. Justice Yvan Roy ruled that while Patenaude made an obvious “mistake” – Blacklock’s terms against password sharing were “plainly visible,” he said – passwords could now be shared by anyone for any “legitimate business reason” where there is “significant public interest in reading articles.”
Neither Minister Ng nor her department publicly discussed the impact of the password ruling. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters June 19 that while she too shared password-protected news articles, “I am a huge believer in the value of the work that all you guys do, the work of professional, salaried journalists.”
By Staff 
Solar panels pose a “significant pollution risk,” the Department of Public Works said yesterday. Landfilling of used panels too costly to recycle will see toxic chemicals leach into groundwater, it warned: “The volume of end of life solar panels will grow which will result in significant pollution risks.”
New Democrats are now election-ready, Jagmeet Singh said yesterday. “We are getting close,” Singh told reporters while touring Northern Ontario where the Party stands to lose a veteran incumbent due to resignation and redistricting: “We are getting close to an election.”
Indian Residential School “denialism” is undermining reconciliation with First Nations, says a federal memo. The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations did not define the term: “We must not deny what happened.”
There are “going to be some issues” with a federal IT project to digitize border collections of Customs duties, says a federal memo. Cost of the program under development since 2016 is more than $526 million: “There are no doubt going to be some issues.”
Canadian National Railways has agreed to pay $8 million for breach of the Fisheries Act, the Department of Environment said yesterday. The fine follows crude oil spills from two Northern Ontario derailments in the winter of 2015: “It was minus 30 degrees at the time.”
Canadians’ Charter right to a speedy trial applies in traffic court, a Justice of the Peace has ruled. A charge of red light running against an Oakville, Ont. driver was dismissed after prosecutors waited too long to bring the case to court: “It is not a complex matter.”
Cabinet was willing to “use all tools at our disposal” under its drug policy including “national decriminalization,” says a federal document. The memo to Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks is dated just five weeks before British Columbia abruptly ended its experiment with decriminalized drug use on complaints of public disorder: ‘Tools include approaches to decriminalization.’
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s department is refusing comment over its hiring of forensic auditors to assess risk of a “national compensation program.” Staff would not confirm they anticipated millions in fraud and waste through a costly gun buyback scheme scheduled in 2025: “Help.”
The federal Phoenix Pay System failure has now cost taxpayers $3.7 billion and counting, the highest figure disclosed to date. The latest damages are cited in a Department of Public Works briefing note: “It gives us all kinds of lessons about how to build a better public service.”
CBC employees should not “feel compelled to weigh in on controversial news stories” on Twitter, says a network ombudsman. The advisory followed one CBCer’s tweet in sympathy with a Palestinian activist arrested for threatening to kill Jews and drink their blood: “The journalist should have included more context.”
A performance audit of the Canada Summer Jobs program is underway with investigators’ findings due by year’s end, says a federal memo. It is the first audit since program managers were accused of withholding hire-a-student subsidies from employers who did not subscribe to cabinet’s political views: ‘Follow-up focuses on religious beliefs.’
Old stones, ancient lines.
Boundaries.
Demarcated. Decimated.
The blind lead the Blinded.
Summer unfurls, thunder rumbles;
in the distance.
Special reports, queries.
Dimly perceived, a whiff of malfeasance.
Foundations laid bare.
A People laid bare.
Old stones, ancient lines.
There is nothing quite like a prairie sunrise.
By W.N. Branson
Thursday, August 6, 1981 was a day to remember. At 11 am Eastern the Bank of Canada raised the prime rate to 21 percent. The country had a million unemployed for the first time since the Dustbowl. Farmers and small business owners had a hunted look. Mortgage and trust companies collapsed, 17 of them, and then the banks.
No one who survived the summer of ’81 ever forgot it. “Scarring,” the economists call it now. At a 2017 hearing of the Commons agriculture committee, members were chattily debating farm debt when an oldtimer, then-MP Bev Shipley (Lambton-Kent, Ont.), spoke up. “I remember the 1980s,” he said. The room froze.
Author Aaron Hughes’ 10 Days That Shaped Modern Canada omits that date to remember. Hughes acknowledges his work is necessarily subjective. Hughes’ favourite dates are neither mine nor yours. That is not the point.
“Not all days are created equal,” writes Hughes. “While the vast majority of days ebb and flow in a repetitive fashion, some become singularly momentous to a nation’s formation and outlook that, although their importance is recognized at the time, the true significance becomes apparent only after the fact.”
Memory is selective and intimate. It rarely travels well. In 1927 Maclean’s magazine asked readers, “Who is the greatest living Canadian?” The top response was Charles Saunders. Find the Maclean’s editor today who could identify Saunders (a plant geneticist) or recall what he did (developed Marquis Wheat that made Canada a global food exporter).
Hughes is a professor of humanities at the University of Rochester. He has not lived in Canada in ten years. “I have had to listen to Americans talk about themselves,” he writes.
“In all of these conversations I frequently find my eyes glazing over while asking myself questions like: What does it mean to be a Canadian?” he writes. “What dates and events have shaped us as a nation?” 10 Days is quirky and compelling. It is excellent book club material. It is a good way to start a fight.
Hughes’ Top Ten list includes bizarre entries. He cites July 21, 1988, “the day the Multiculturalism Act was signed into law” (!) and August 6, 2016, “the day of The Tragically Hip’s last concert” (!!)
He omits the January 1, 1989 enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement that cost 495,000 factory jobs. He makes no mention of the October 26, 1992 Charlottetown Accord referendum, “a defeat for the elites of this country,” said Izzy Asper, then-chair of CanWest Global Broadcasting Corp.
Professor Hughes’ memory, like each of ours, is his own creation. “This vision is largely liberal, progressive, anglophone and centralist,” he writes. “As universal as it may seem however, it is nonetheless important to realize it is by definition also particular.”
“Just as the book was going to press a large truck convoy rolled into Ottawa and blocked some border crossings with the United States protesting Covid-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions,” writes Hughes. “The convoy and its protests ended after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau temporarily invoked the Emergencies Act thereby suspending the rights of citizens to free movement or assembly. Clearly modern Canada is still in the process of being shaped.”
By Holly Doan
10 Days That Shaped Modern Canada by Aaron W. Hughes; University of Alberta Press; 288 pages; ISBN 978-177212-6327; $27.99
