Shippers and farmers are expressing astonishment over cabinet claims that regulated fines on delinquent railways were a “typo”, and only one-seventh the penalty promised. Transport Minister Lisa Raitt yesterday failed to explain the garbling of fines for railways that do not meet shipping quotas: “The law is the law”.
Environment Canada has filed hundreds of requests for subscriber information from telecom providers in its investigations of polluters and scofflaws, including warrantless searches. Data tabled in Parliament indicate the department’s enforcement branch filed 676 requests in the past four years: ‘There are no directories for mobile phones’.
Federal inspectors will gain new powers to order repairs or force closures of unsafe rail crossings under a bill introduced in the Commons. The measure’s Conservative sponsor noted the safety amendments will affect the nation’s 18,500 level rail crossings: “Why wait for somebody to get hurt?”
Catching, convicting and jailing criminals takes billions of dollars with a single violent delinquent estimated to cost $11.3 million, according to confidential research by the Department of Public Safety. The data was released through Access To Information: “Crime is a process and not an event”.
Canada Revenue Agency has been cited by a federal judge for concealing documents from a taxpayer. The agency withheld files despite three requests, mistakenly claiming records had been destroyed or never existed in the first place: ‘They consistently delayed disclosure’.
A bill that would effectively curb the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline has been introduced in the Commons. New Democrats introduced the private legislation to ban oil tankers off the northern coast of British Columbia: ‘This is borne out of a crisis’.
A promised balanced budget law may have far-reaching consequences, cautions the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Authorities warned that legislated restrictions on deficit spending could hurt essential services and off-load costs on provinces: “It’s a political stunt”.
A new Conservative bill would banish provincial welfare payments to refugee claimants. The measure follows earlier restrictions to claimants’ medical coverage that were struck down as “cruel and unusual” in Federal Court: “We are watching”.
Canada’s marine industry is expressing growing alarm over confidential terms of a European trade pact that claims to “ensure a level playing field” in the sector. Shipowners and union executives alike questioned cabinet assurances that no harm will come from treaty negotiations to formally conclude Friday: “It just confirms our fears”.
The Commons has rejected a motion to revive a subsidy program for home energy refits. MPs on a voice vote dismissed a New Democrat motion to restore a program cancelled by cabinet as an austerity measure in 2012: “This is disappointing”.
The size of police departments varies as much as 45% in cities nationwide, says research by the think-tank Fraser Institute. The calculation follows a Commons report warning of unsustainable policing costs: “We have to take action to fix it”.
Canadian National Rail Co. says it has received “no notice” of a mysterious fine, the first of its kind, for missing a federal grain quota. The Department of Transport claims it levied the fine after CN failed to meet minimum requirements to ship 536,250 tonnes of grain a week: ‘No notice here’.
A federal lawsuit over the environmental impact of a new B.C. coal terminal highlights increased scrutiny of emissions, say analysts. Attorneys for the group Ecojustice filed the lawsuit to review a decision by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority to license a $15 million terminal: ‘It’s outrageous’.
Canada Revenue Agency faces questions over a “security state” scheme to bypass federal law in compiling a database of suspected fraud within the tax department. An MP and the union for senior staff questioned the ethics and legality of the program.
“This is startling; it’s Frankenstein-esque,” said Peter Bleyer, special advisor to the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada; “Once you go down this crazy path you don’t know what you’re going to wind up with.”
The Revenue Agency is contracting private consultants to build an “internal fraud” surveillance system to track anonymous tips from its 40,000 employees on suspected wrongdoing by co-workers. In a contract notice, the agency said existing methods to investigate “fraudulent activity and inappropriate conduct by employees” are too restricted by the Access To Information Act and Privacy Act.
“Any information gathered during the course of an investigation into wrongdoing becomes accessible under these Acts; therefore, employees may be reluctant to come forward,” the agency noted; “An anonymous reporting channel, more commonly known as a tip line or hotline, provides employees with an anonymous means to report concerns such as allegations of fraudulent activity or misuse engaged in by fellow employees or management.”
Blacklock’s review of thousands of in-house Summary Discipline Reports on tax officials over a six-year period found only 3 suspected cases of criminal activity: an employee who improperly accessed 162 tax returns; another who falsified a $14,000 reassessment payment; and a third worker who altered family members’ tax returns and directed refund cheques to a personal bank account.
Bleyer said the new informants’ surveillance system appeared to be a disproportionate response: “Canada Revenue Agency is creating a problem where there is none,” he said.
“This turns the public service into a security state,” Bleyer continued. “It creates an atmosphere of secrecy and fear, and I’d point out the context in which this agency is operating. The government is so obviously interested in secrecy: that is the message coming from that centre.”
Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay did not comment.
Evidence Will Be ‘Permanently Deleted’
The tax department in its notice to contractors stressed the informants’ database must not be shared with any third-parties – a blanket exemption that would include parliamentarians – and allow management to destroy records at will: “All information collected on behalf of the Canada Revenue Agency belongs to the CRA,” the agency wrote; contractors are to “maintain all allegations within the database until Canada Revenue Agency authorized reviewers or a CRA project authority request to have them permanently deleted from the database.”
MP Murray Rankin, New Democrat revenue critic, described the scheme as unsettling. “It is disturbing,” said Rankin, MP for Victoria. “The Access To Information Act has been held by the Supreme Court to be a ‘quasi-constitutional’ right. To see Canada Revenue doing an end run around that Act is very disturbing.”
The Access Act was introduced in 1983. Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in a 2009 speech described the legislation as having “quasi-constitutional status”, calling it a “check on abuse of powers”: “The need for information is compounded by the inevitable tendency of governments and those exercising powers on behalf of the government to disclose only as much as they deem necessary,” Justice McLachlin said.
Canada Revenue would not explain the need for the surveillance system, and did not comment on what assurances it could offer that incriminating material embarrassing to government officials would not be destroyed. “That cuts both ways,” said the Professional Institute’s Bleyer. “They want to protect this information from who? Does it protect the informants or does it protect the government?”
“We need to talk to Canada Revenue Agency,” Bleyer added. “What is the intention of this? Is it really as crazy as it sounds? We’re going to take a close look at this.”
By Tom Korski 
Imported tea that violates federal standards on pesticide content is probably harmless, says Health Canada. The department’s Canadian Food Inspection Agency calculated a consumer would have to guzzle litres of tea daily to “elicit an adverse health effect” from trace chemicals: “75 cups a day”.
