Cabinet changes to the Statistics Act will ensure researchers’ independence, says Canada’s Chief Statistician. Two chiefs have resigned in the past seven years in protest over government policy: ‘The bill now removes any kind of doubt.”
Twenty dollars for lunch is plenty in claiming business tax deductions, a Tax Court judge has ruled. The decision came in the case of a St. John’s businessman who claimed the equivalent of $33 for business lunches: “Anything beyond $20 per day for lunch would be unreasonable.”
Alberta for generations was famous for mountains, rodeos, Mormonism, football, Ukrainian culture, meatpacking and Social Credit. Say “Alberta” today and any focus group replies, “oil”. That’s no accident, writes Prof. Geo Takach of Royal Roads University. From the 1947 oil strike at Leduc Number One, “resource extraction became heroic”. Alberta’s very identity was intertwined with oil sands production, for better and worse.
Tar Wars documents this modern cultural phenomenon. Takach calls it framing: “The concept of framing has roots in the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry. When we frame something, we make meaning of it as we locate, perceive, identify and label it.”
It need not be valid or even accurate, or distinguishable from crude propaganda. Tar Wars covers all angles. “Albertans transcend what one scholar aptly capsulized as ‘the ghoulish image of Alberta that haunts the imagination of many progressive Canadians’,” writes Takach.
Yet Albertans themselves framed the oil sands as the “engine of Canada’s economy”, a self-serving slogan that asserted the wellbeing of every family was linked to the stock price of Imperial Oil. Tell that to Goderich, Ont. when they closed the Volvo road grader factory, or Charlottetown when the $1 billion lobster fishery collapsed. Canada is a $2 trillion economy. We are bigger than Encana Corp.
“Beyond Alberta, the bit sands” – short for bitumen sands – “has become an escalating magnet for international interest and controversy,” writes Takach. Tar Wars bookends the thesis with two media spectacles.
One is a chirpy 2006 episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes that depicted Fort McMurray as a “boomtown” where “there is so much money to be made”. The TV story breathlessly chronicled billions in investment “bigger than a gold rush”, with throwaway quibbles from a Sierra Club naysayer.
The other bookend is Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives On The Alberta Tar Sands, an unnerving film featuring long, agonizing bird’s-eye views of open pit mines like gaping wounds in a pristine forest, accompanied “by a haunting, tonal soundscape with a rhythm suggesting a heartbeat.”
Somewhere between Boomtown and Black Death is a depiction of reality. Tar Wars looks for it. The search is compelling and clever. It dramatizes conflicting facts and imagery of the oil sands through familiar slogans: “Alberta is energy”; “Albertans are doing their best”; “Alberta is a safer, friendlier and more democratic source of oil than petro-dictatorships.”
Prof. Takach cites a 2013 documentary Oil Sands Karaoke that profiled community life in Fort McMurray, specifically to counter the “dark, disturbed, Hiroshima-like landscapes” outside of town. “We see karaoke singers, poured cocktails, a gargantuan warehouse interior, massive haul-trucks, rowdy pub dancers, a quiet residential street” – you get the picture.
Of course Alberta is more than the smell of jobs. Oil Sands Karaoke filmmaker Charles Wilkinson is quoted, “Raising issues like the science of climate change in Alberta is walking on eggshells all the time. It feels like you’ve walked onto the set of Fox News. As an Albertan myself, I’m really troubled by that. We should be able to talk about this stuff. We shouldn’t get angry at each other and label each other.”
By Holly Doan
Tar Wars: Oil, Environment and Alberta’s Image, by Geo Takach; University of Alberta Press; 256 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-1407; $34.95
A whistleblower fired after alleging misconduct at Employment Canada says she was left penniless and unemployable. Members of the Commons government operations committee yesterday cited other “horrific cases” of Canadians ruined for exposing federal wrongdoing.
“I’m in debt, I’m no longer considered employable, I don’t have any money,” said Sylvie Therrien, a former Employment Insurance claims investigator; “It was a horrible situation.”
Therrien was fired in 2013 after alleging managers were offered $50,000 bonuses for disqualifying legitimate claims for benefits. The Federal Court of Appeal in a January 20 ruling cited the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner for procedural unfairness in mishandling Therrien’s case.
“I was ostracized,” said Therrien. “People didn’t want to talk to me, and people started questioning how I did my work. Everything I did was wrong. If I took a five-minute break, people said I took 10 minutes.”
“People who are in fact responsible for wrongdoing are often the people with the power,” said Therrien. “They are high up. People below them are made to suffer. They are put through the wringer. That was my experience.”
“The employer has lots of lawyers and a whole range of people who can destroy your reputation, and this is in fact what they do,” said Therrien; “You should review the Act to provide proper protection so the system protects the whistleblower, instead of protecting people who already have the power.”
MPs conducting the statutory review of the 2007 Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act said the law has failed. “Whistleblowers are ethical and yet they get penalized,” said Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi (Don Valley East, Ont.).
“The Act is more of a paper shield than a metal shield,” said Ratansi; “I want to ensure this culture of intimidation – that the big guns come to extinguish you – I want to ensure that in the public interest we are letting the public know they can report wrongdoing without being persecuted.”
“Lives Were Destroyed”
MPs on March 21 heard testimony from a Hope, B.C. plumbing contractor, D.R. Garrett Construction Ltd., that was blacklisted and bankrupted after complaining of hidden asbestos at the Kent penitentiary in Agassiz, B.C. “I was put out of business by the federal government,” said owner Don Garrett.
“We have seen some horrific cases of the government going out of its way to destroy people’s lives,” Conservative MP Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West) yesterday told the committee: “Obviously, we’re going to have some major changes.”
“How do we protect whistleblowers and their staff from bad government practices so their company is protected from being blacklisted?” said McCauley; “Any contractor sitting at home is going to see how lives were destroyed and say, ‘There’s no way in the world.’”
Integrity Commissioner Joe Friday, faulted by a federal judge for breaching procedural rights in the Therrien Employment Insurance case, said he was committed to improvements. “I can assure you that is my goal as commissioner,” said Friday. “Sensitivity training, a different organizational culture – it’s a very daunting challenge, but one we have certainly identified.”
By Staff
Cabinet should modify but not repeal 2012 Conservative amendments to the Navigation Protection Act, says a panel of MPs. The Commons transport committee objected to wholesale rejection of revisions that narrowed environmental assessments: “It will be a much better process.”
Farm groups and transport companies are protesting tougher animal welfare regulations, the first revisions in 40 years. Nearly 1.6 million poultry and livestock die in transit each year in Canada, by official estimate: ‘It’s very akin to human beings traveling.’
Air Canada is doing its best to comply with the Official Languages Act, say executives. Cabinet is reviewing a proposal to fine the carrier over service complaints involving lack of bilingual staff: “It’s really hard to find people who are bilingual.”
Smoking rates have plateaued at more than five million Canadian tobacco users, by official estimate. New data by Statistics Canada followed more dramatic declines in the last decade: “There is a long term trend.”
Cabinet will increase unspecified business fees and mandate inflationary hikes in charges every year after, say 2017 budget documents. The Department of Finance did not detail the program: ‘It is likely to make it worse, not better.’
A federal labour board has ordered a diligent public employee fired for allegedly cheating on a civil service exam to be reinstated. Investigators had claimed the woman’s work was improbably thorough: “It can be explained.”
Unions will gain rights to intervene in cross-border trade disputes, says cabinet. Labour has sought amendments to the Special Import Measures Act allowing unions to file unfair trade complaints: “Unions have the right to participate.”
An information commissioner has upheld a complaint over $2.50 in excess charges for processing an Access To Information request. Disputes over fees to obtain public records are “a permanent point of tension,” said Saskatchewan’s commissioner.
VIA Rail has won a three-year federal funding commitment to cover ongoing deficits. The Crown railway’s operating shortfall, currently $280 million a year, is projected to continue for at least another decade as management attempts to revamp the service: “Why can’t VIA make money?”
Canada’s first government bond program sold directly to consumers is ending in its 100th year. The Canada Savings Bond introduced as a patriotic loan program in 1917 is no longer worthwhile, said the Department of Finance: ‘I remember a woman who subscribed for a $1,000 bond and had it framed.’
Cabinet is abolishing a costly tax credit rated a failure despite billions in expenses. The 15 percent Public Transit Tax Credit will end effective June 30: “There has been a lot of debate over how useful it is.”
