At least 5 percent of applicants for jobs as Transport Canada policy analysts plagiarized answers in their civil service exam, say court documents. Applicants were tested on “knowledge of key issues relating to transportation”, and were expected to show values and ethics: "Who can tell?"
Health Canada is commissioning a five-figure study on processed food labeling after proposing stricter regulation of salt and sugar. The department awarded a sole-sourced $426,000 research contract to a U.S. firm for “trend monitoring” on food labels and marketing: 'We require a significant amount of data'.
A bill introduced in the Commons aims to end once and for all the confusion over numeric dates. The Conservative bill comes 27 years after the Canadian Standards Association proposed a uniform method of listing dates like today’s, 2015-12-23: "Misinterpretation of the significance of numbers can occur".
Federal regulators have cited a national chain of houseware stores for breach of the Textile Labeling Act for the second time in two years. JYSK Canada was not fined, but ordered to pull items and post a “correction notice” for customers: 'If it occurs again penalties will be severe'.
Regulators knowingly allowed an insolvent Canadian airline to continue selling tickets for months before it collapsed, says an advocacy group. Air Passenger Rights released whistleblower emails to Transport Canada that warned of financial difficulties at SkyGreece Airlines two months before the company was grounded: “It seems no action was taken”.
Cabinet has gutted provisions of Bill C-377 only ten days before unions and labour trusts nationwide saw a legal requirement to compile confidential financial records for publication on a government website. The Canada Revenue Agency refused to say how much it spent in preparing to enforce the law: "We're talking real money".
Another sporting good supplier faces a five-figure federal penalty for misleading claims its hockey helmets may protect players for concussions. Consumers’ advocates described the Competition Bureau settlement as weak: "It lets the company spend on brand remediation".
Trade groups say they spent some $5 million on lawyers’ fees in waging a seven-year battle to repeal U.S. restrictions on Canadian meat exports. Authorities yesterday marked the formal end to the 2008 dispute over so-called country of origin labeling: 'It was a long and expensive fight'.
Statistics Canada is appealing to “civic duty” in promoting a new, improved census in 2016, cautioning its TV promotions won’t be as entertaining as beer ads. Patriotic appeals must also avoid imagery like dead maple leaves that suggest the nation “is in decline”, focus groups said: "Graphic treatment of such a prominent national symbol was disturbing".
Rail shippers can be required to pay for liability on hazardous goods, a federal court has ruled. Canadian Pacific Railway Co. successfully challenged a regulator’s decision that billing customers on liability for cargo it freighted was unreasonable: "There has to be a way to move those goods".
Health Canada is endorsing the continued sale of a herbicide banned in the European Union, concluding it poses no threat to Canadians’ health or the environment. The public has till January 29 to comment: 'The substance affects people the same way regardless of where they live'.
One of the country’s largest provincial marketing boards has lost a crucial legal battle. The Supreme Court declined to hear a bid by Québec’s maple syrup producers to block the off-board sale of goods: "Each province has their own rules".
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday: “Ice-skating falls send thousands each year to emergency rooms…”
The territories are a 60-year experiment in state planning. The result is a succession of little victories and big defeats. Ottawa spends $64 million a year on food subsidies, yet chicken costs $45. The jobless rate in Nunavut is 18 percent. Homeless shelters in Yellowknife face periodic outbreaks of tuberculosis. Yukon’s GDP has shrunk three years in a row.
“Canada’s North has always been a colony to southern interests, a fact that has profoundly marked its historical development,” writes editor Chris Southcott in Northern Communities Working Together. “Despite current trends towards increased self-government, the territorial North is still heavily dependent on the federal government for the provision of services and decision making.”
Health Canada faces demands it table thousands of documents in Parliament involving a regulatory decision that drove a Manitoba company out of business. MP James Bezan said he suspected regulators were “over-zealous” and may have skirted federal law: "The department tried to wear them down in the hope they would go away".
