The Canada Labour Code will see significant amendments including changes to workplace health and safety regulations, says Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk. Her remarks came as MPs last night voted in principle to repeal two newly-enacted Conservative labour bills: “There will be a number of changes”.
Industry Canada breached federal law in concealing basic details of an easy-term loan program that’s seen most payments go to Québec, says the Information Commissioner. Blacklock’s tried for two years to obtain the names of borrowers who received $75.5 million from the little-known Canada Youth Business Foundation: “I do not have those numbers”.
Service Canada’s national 1-800 service is so dysfunctional even federal employees won’t use it, according to evidence in a labour board hearing. Call records show Canadians have zero chance of speaking to a live operator: “Clients want to speak to a real person”.
Advocates credit the Minister of Fisheries with enforcing the Species At Risk Act to save trout threatened by Alberta industry. It follows a 2015 lawsuit that cited cabinet for breaking its own laws intended to protect fish and wildlife in peril.
“We are monitoring this and will step up if more legal action needs to be taken,” said Prof. Shaun Fluker, of the University of Calgary’s law faculty; “There are far-reaching effects – and that’s why they have been reluctant to issue the order.”
The Alberta Wilderness Society and Timberwolf Wilderness Society sued cabinet for failing to issue a required order to save the Westslope Cutthroat Trout, the only trout species native to Alberta’s Oldman and Bow River systems. The fisheries department in 2014 published a recovery strategy for the threatened fish, but then failed to issue any order prohibiting mining, logging or other activity threatening the trout’s critical habitat.
The Species At Risk Act obliges cabinet to “prevent wildlife species from being extirpated or becoming extinct; provide for the recovery of wildlife species that are extirpated, endangered or threatened as a result of human activity; and to manage special of special concern to prevent them from becoming endangered or threatened.”
Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo issued the critical habitat order last November 20 two weeks after being sworn to cabinet. “It affects the ability to change the character of environmental protection along the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies,” said Prof. Fluker.
Scientists counted only 51 surviving “genetically pure” Cutthroat Trout in nine lakes at Banff National Park, and the upper Bow and Oldman River systems.
‘Not Just A Technical Breach’
“This order does nothing to solve the problem; it just makes it easier to improve the situation,” said David Mayhood, aquatic ecologist with the Timberwolf Wilderness Society. “The order is stringent and doesn’t allow for much leeway. They basically have to prosecute if people continue damaging these critical habitats.”
Advocates cited industrial threats to trout habitat including hydroelectric dams, roads, a proposed open-pit coal mine and “other linear disturbances”. “The basic problem is they don’t have an action plan,” Mayhood said. “Most of what they are doing now is a holding action.”
A federal judge in 2014 also concluded regulators failed to comply with the Act in meeting deadlines to save British Columbia wildlife in peril. Ecojustice sued in Federal Court, saying cabinet had needlessly delayed recovery plans for species at risk including the Pacific Humpback Whale; Nechako White Sturgeon; Southern Mountain Caribou; and the Marbled Murrelet, a small coastal bird listed as threated in 2003.
“The federal government blasted through deadlines required by Parliament,” Sean Nixon, counsel for Ecojustice, said in an earlier interview; “This isn’t just a technical breach of the statute. The timelines are there for a reason: delays harm species. The longer you wait to address a problem, the more the species declines.”
In the Ecojustice case, Justice Ann Mactavish ruled it was “simply not acceptable for the responsible Ministers to continue to miss the mandatory deadlines that have been established by Parliament.”
“To state the obvious, the Species At Risk Act was enacted because some wildlife species in Canada are at risk,” wrote Mactavish; “Many are in a race against the clock as increased pressure is put on their critical habitat, and their ultimate survival may be at stake.”
By Kaven Baker-Voakes 
Unlicensed Uber taxi services raise questions over tax enforcement, says a Department of Justice report. The document obtained through Access To Information said the so-called “sharing economy” poses problems for tax collections: “Where should the lines be drawn?”
The government is misspending nearly $2 million a year depositing pension payments into the bank accounts of dead employees. Cabinet enacted new regulations to curb the practice: “The process to recover the money is not easy”.
More Canadians die from diesel exhaust than from being run over in traffic, says new Health Canada research. More study on diesel-related asthma in children is needed, officials said: “Most Canadians are regularly exposed to diesel exhaust”.
Federal regulators have yet to clarify enforcement of rules on start-up discount airlines after a Winnipeg-based carrier was grounded in February. The Canadian Transportation Agency is reviewing regulations disallowing licensed carriers from subcontracting bookings to third parties: ‘We plan to resume very shortly’.
The peril of microplastics in the seafood chain is the subject of first-ever research by the fisheries department. Authorities are contracting a two-year study of microplastics in shellfish: ‘It isn’t going to be pretty’.
Cabinet may consider a U.S.-style program to track derelict boats cluttering the nation’s harbours, says Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo. A bill before Parliament would see the Coast Guard assume millions in salvage costs and environmental clean-up: “It’s a huge issue”.
Lawmakers will try for a third time in two years to enact first-ever regulation of merchant fees charged by Visa and MasterCard Canada. A Liberal bill in the Commons would grant cabinet blanket powers to fix fees by executive order: ‘When you’re small you have no leverage’.
Cabinet should ease 2014 restrictions on migrant workers blamed on a “frenzy of politics”, says the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Changes in foreign labour permits left employers with chronic shortages of skilled workers, MPs were told: “Canada is bleeding from a wound we’ve inflicted upon ourselves”.
The federal government as the biggest landlord in the country must lower energy use by at least 20 percent, says an advocacy group. The public works department and other agencies own some 4 million square metres of building space nationwide: “Show leadership”.
A federal investigation into a Nova Scotia fisherman’s death is renewing calls for tighter safety regulation of the nation’s fishing fleet. Transport Canada is proposing to update safety requirements for the first time in 40 years: “There is a risk”.
Major VIA Rail changes proposed in a Department of Transportation report will result in a small, regional service that leaves too many Canadians in their cars, says Unifor. The study recommends stripping passenger subsidies outside VIA’s core business in Ontario and Québec: ‘It’s an infrastructure backbone’.
