A confidential Department of Agriculture report faults farmers as lacking higher education, and Canadian food processors for stinting on research and development. The undated research prepared for deputy ministers was obtained through Access To Information: “These low skill levels are an impediment”.
The Supreme Court is ordering lower courts to reconsider three challenges of a federal austerity law that capped public employee wage increases. The challenges were brought by CBC staff in Québec and dockyard workers in British Columbia: “It’s unusual”.
Cabinet will not indicate when it will introduce a pre-election bill and regulations to comply with Supreme Court orders on union rights. The 41st Parliament is scheduled to adjourn June 23 in anticipation of an autumn campaign: “We will be moving forward in the future”.
A restaurant chain has lost a federal lawsuit over Employment Canada’s refusal to grant permits to hire full-time migrant workers. The Federal Court ruled employers should try harder to find part-time Canadian students, though it may cost more: “The program was not intended to be used as a means to allow employers to change industry standards”.
Parliament must regulate an “imbalance” in the rail system to improve service for shippers, according to a Liberal motion in the Commons. The appeal follows complaints that Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific failed to meet cabinet quotas on grain deliveries: “The rail lines are just moving what is quickest and easiest”.
Cabinet is expected to appoint a combat veteran as the Commons’ $150,000-a year Sergeant-at-Arms for the first time since 1960. It follows MPs’ passage of a government bill granting veterans preference in public service hiring: ‘Hiring a veteran is the smart thing to do’.
Cabinet must rewrite labour amendments after the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of an omnibus budget bill C-4 that passed two years ago. The legislation granted cabinet virtually unchecked powers to limit employees’ right to strike, similar to a 2008 Saskatchewan Act now ruled unlawful: “I don’t think you could have a stronger decision than this one”.
Municipalities should privatize some policing services to control rising costs, says a Québec think tank. The analysis follows a Commons committee report that cautioned police costs forecast to reach $17 billion this year cannot be maintained: “You’re opening a pretty serious can of worms”.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is abruptly postponing long-awaited revisions to safety regulations. The agency said it required more “feedback” from industry. The amendments follow the passage three years ago of a Safe Food For Canadians Act that promised streamlined rules and more scrutiny of processors: “We are taking a pause”.
Parliament must restrict food advertising that targets young Canadians, advocates have told a Senate committee investigating obesity. Childhood obesity rates have tripled since 1985: “When was the last time you saw an advertisement for broccoli?”
Cabinet has suffered another blow at the Supreme Court as justices struck down legislation that limits the right to strike. The Court ruled 5-2 the right to withdraw services is constitutional and should be enshrined in the Charter.
“The right to strike is not merely derivative of collective bargaining, it is an indispensable component of that right,” wrote Justice Rosalie Abella for the majority. “It seems to me to be the time to give this conclusion constitutional benediction.”
The ruling came in the case of a Saskatchewan Act, later mirrored in a copycat federal bill, that granted public employers unchecked powers to decide which workers were “essential”, and therefore forbidden from striking. The Saskatchewan legislature has one year to repeal its Public Service Essential Services Act.
The Regina legislation enacted in 2008 had applied to all public employers including municipalities, universities, police boards and Crown corporations. Justice Abella said the law failed to account for “an adequate, impartial and effective alternative mechanism for resolving collective bargaining impasses”.
“Where essential services legislation provides such an alternative mechanism, it would be more justified under section 1 of the Charter,” Abella wrote. “In my view, the failure of any such mechanism in Public Service Essential Services Act is what ultimately renders its limitations constitutionally impermissible.”
The ruling effectively kills an identical law enacted by the federal cabinet in 2013 amending its own Public Service Labour Relations Act. The federal amendments gave cabinet “the exclusive right to determine whether any service, facility or activity of the Government of Canada is essential because it is or will be necessary for the safety or security of the public or a segment of the public.”
Other Union Bill Okayed
In a companion ruling, the Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of another Saskatchewan bill, the Trade Union Amendment Act, that made it easier to decertify unions. The Act lowered the threshold of votes required to trigger a decertification drive from 50 percent to 45 percent.
“These requirements are not an excessively difficult threshold such that workers’ right to associate is substantially interfered with,” the Court ruled. A similar federal bill C-525, lowering the threshold to 40 percent, passed the House and Senate and is due to become law June 16.
Bill C-525 also repealed the card-check system in federally-regulated industries, a decades-old system that allowed union supporters to sign membership cards to certify a bargaining agent. The Conservative bill replaced card signatures with a secret ballot.
By Dale Smith 
New air regulations should proceed despite industry complaints they’ll “cripple” regional and specialty carriers with higher costs, says Transport Minister Lisa Raitt. Changes to flight crew rules, the first since 1996, may be enacted within months, the Minister said: “There is an election coming”.
Attorneys’ duty of client confidentiality and competition for fees pose a “real risk for money laundering”, says a confidential government report. The analysis cited small law firms in particular as “vulnerable” to handling proceeds of crime: “We are aware of instances”.
The RCMP have purchased bitcoin in a bid to track the workings of the pseudo-currency, though police say they have not attempted any sting operations on black-market traders. Mounties testifying at the Senate banking committee said bitcoin should be monitored: ‘Have you tried to buy illicit goods?’
A federal ruling that outlaws preferential telecom pricing by companies promoting their own wireless content strikes a blow at “monopolies”, says the Consumers’ Association of Canada. Broadcast regulators ordered a halt to the practice that saw Bell Mobility Inc., Quebecor Media Inc. and Videotron discount their own app services at the expense of competitors: “They thought they could get away with it”.
