Broadcast regulators have again dismissed industry requests to alter terms of license on investment in Canadian programming. The operator of Super Channel sought exemptions after citing “financial pressure” from unregulated competitors like Netflix: ‘How important is programming to you?’
The Senate has passed a drug recall bill amid criticism of pharmaceutical companies as second only to “big oil” as a powerful Parliament Hill lobby. The legislation followed Health Canada complaints of obstructionism by drug firms in restricting medicine deemed a health risk: ‘Next to big oil, nobody’s bigger’.
Finance Canada has quietly dropped plans for retail price controls. Promised legislation to abolish “discrimination” in cross-border pricing is omitted from a 459-page omnibus budget bill, the last of the year. Authorities had said the bill would detail the measure: “They made such a big deal about it”.
Federal plans for a mandatory $7 background check on offshore visitors are rated “unfriendly” and “jarring” by foreign travellers. Citizenship & Immigration Canada interviews with passengers at three airports drew bad reviews on the plan to take effect in 2015: “Too dark”; “impolite”.
Health Canada is commissioning a winter-long evaluation of its pesticides program. The department is hiring consultants to evaluate its “effectiveness, efficiency and economy” with a final report due by next July: “It suggests to me we are under-resourced”.
Big spending on mines, pipelines, railways, dams and other utilities has driven Canadian investment rates past the U.S., says federal research. Statistics Canada estimated business investment was 15 percent higher here than in America over the past twenty years: “It is possible to compete”.
CBC
says farewell
to a dragon.
His letter of resignation
may have started with
“Dear Sir,”
ended with
“For that reason, I’m out.”
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
Cabinet is introducing a long-promised anti-corruption bill for Canadian energy companies amid suspicion the legislation was crafted by lobbyists. The measure waters down earlier opposition proposals to scrutinize the conduct of firms operating abroad: “You could drive a truck through those exemptions”.
A federal ban to end paper billing fees has been introduced in the Commons. Legislation would outlaw service charges for customers’ paper invoices under threat of $500,000 fines. MPs had been proposing the measure for six years: “It shouldn’t have taken this long”.
The Supreme Court has sidestepped a case of alleged unfair tax collections by Air Canada. A group of passengers had sought unsuccessfully to press class action claims the airline levied taxes that travellers did not have to pay: ‘The issue can be visited later’.
The Department of Agriculture is accused of skewing a multi-million dollar subsidy program to benefit large corporate farms over family-run operations. One Liberal Senator proposed that legislators investigate terms of grant programs under the Farm Income Protection Act: “Something is totally out of whack”.
The Department of Canadian Heritage is studying the viability of magazine publishers that received more than $55 million in federal grants last year. “Can the print magazine survive the digital age?” authorities asked in a federal notice. One periodical, Maclean’s, received $1.5 million in grants: “This is egregious”.
A fatal gun attack on Parliament Hill comes only days after lawmakers were assured of “successful” security precautions at the Commons and Senate. The Centre Block assault was the worst security breach in Parliament in 48 years.
Staff and eyewitnesses in the Centre Block reported hearing three separate bursts of automatic gunfire from the Hall of Honour, a central corridor leading from the Peace Tower to the Library of Parliament. More than 30 rounds were fired in total, “Bam-bam-bam,” one witness said.
Staff inside the building immediately locked doors and shut lights after the initial shots were heard at approximately 9:58 am yesterday. No shouts or cries were heard; after the last echoes of gunfire, witnesses in the Centre Block said the silence was broken only by the squawk of police radios.
Scores of people were trapped in the Centre Block at the time of the gun battle, including kitchen staff, postal workers, assistants from MP and Senate offices and reporters working in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Several fled by squeezing through a third floor window onto a Senate roof, then descending by construction scaffolding used for repairs to century-old stonework.
“Items in your pockets! Keep your hands free – move quickly!” said one contractor who ran to the scene to assist staffers attempting to flee the Centre Block. Witnesses said one distraught woman appeared ready to leap from a fourth floor window: “If you’re going to jump, jump on me!” said a construction worker. The woman was taken to safety down scaffolding by contractors.
Armed city police officers ringed the Senate, guns drawn, as employees sprinted behind the East Block; false police reports at the time suggested a lone gunman had fled inside the 90-metre Peace Tower to use as a sniper’s perch: “Keep down! Keep down!” police shouted as staff fled.
At 11:04 am the first electronic warnings were issued: “RCMP advises if you are in downtown Ottawa to stay away from windows”; and again at 11:29 am: “ALL BUILDINGS are currently in lockdown. Follow the instructions from Security Services. THIS MEANS stay in your office.”
A stonemason who led the rescue of dozens of people from the Centre Block declined to give his name. Pausing once behind police barricades, he called his wife and then unwrapped a stick of chewing gum: “I have fear mouth,” he said.
The gun attack was the worst breach of security on Parliament Hill since 1966, when a lone bomber killed himself by detonating homemade explosives in a Centre Block washroom near the House of Commons chamber.
‘We Literally Do A Risk Assessment’
The attack followed recent assurances to MPs that Parliament had adopted sophisticated security to protect legislators in what remains a public building. “We’ve been successful I guess in responding to increased security threats through a discreet and measured way,” Sergeant-At-Arms Kevin Vickers told the Commons’ House affairs committee October 9.
Hill security and police conduct daily briefings on “risk assessments”, Vickers said: “Each and every morning the RCMP, House of Commons Security Services, Canadian Security Establishment Service and Ottawa City Police have a conference call; in that conference call we go over everything.”
“We do literally a threat and risk assessment of any threats to the precinct and to members each and every day,” Vickers continued. “Then our security posture is either raised or lowered or maintained based on that threat and risk assessment.”
RCMP yesterday did not indicate Parliament heightened security following an October 20 incident in which a Québec jihadist ran down two Canadian soldiers outside a federal building in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, southeast of Montréal.
“Should there be a heightened incident going on somewhere that we’re concerned about, what we do is put more plainclothes armed officers out among the precinct,” Vickers testified. “That doesn’t interfere with everybody else, but the security posture is raised in congruence to that threat and risk assessment that’s done on a daily basis”.
RCMP are responsible for security on Parliament Hill grounds using armed constables; patrol cars; video surveillance cameras and auto barriers. Mounties screen all vehicles driving onto the Hill, including use of an electronic database with the names and photographs of all permitted staff. Police did not explain how a gunman was able to breach the Hill.
Security inside the building is managed by separate agencies mandated by the House and Senate, including armed guards, metal detectors, X-ray screeners and a mandatory ID badge system introduced in 1982. The Mounties and two parliamentary security services in 2009 established a Master Security Planning Office to coordinate protection measures.
The House of Commons’ annual budget is $413.7 million; total spending on security measures is not disclosed. The Senate Security Service only this past September 29 contracted for seven new X-ray baggage scanners, citing a list of “common prohibited items that the Senate Protective Service may encounter” including firearms, explosives, knives and pepper spray.
Follows September 25 Incident
MPs had begun reviewing Parliament security following a September 25 incident in which police blocked an MP from attending a vote in the House. Yvon Godin, New Democrat member for Acadie-Bathurst, said he was held back by the RCMP as a security precaution to make way for a motorcade by the visiting president of Germany.
“There was an RCMP officer on Bank Street,” Godin said. “I told him that I had to go up to Parliament. He answered me in English, ‘Get on the sidewalk’”; “Well, I am a member of Parliament and I have to go up,” Godin continued: “He answered in a very serious manner. He said, ‘I don’t care, and get on the sidewalk.’”
Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer was also blocked by RCMP from making his way to the Commons during the September 25 state visit. Conservative MP Ted Opitz, a former army reservist who served in Bosnia, described the police conduct at the time as “a failure of leadership”.
“In the parliamentary precinct where the RCMP have primacy, they are supposed to understand the standard operating procedures,” said Opitz, MP for Etobicoke Centre, Ont.; “The fault lies with the leadership.”
By Staff
Canadians will be paying the second-highest drug prices outside the U.S. without changes to federal rules on costs, warns a federal regulator. Data show Canadians already pay from 10 to 30 percent more for comparable drugs than other countries: “We have been creeping up”.
Pesticides blamed for risking Canada’s $2 billion pollination industry are virtually harmless to bee colonies under normal conditions, a Senate committee has been told. The study was paid for by the chemical manufacturer Bayer: “It’s amazing”.
