Senior public servant receives first formal Parliamentary reprimand for non-MP since 1913 

PHAC president rebuked, still doesn't produce documents on fired scientists

OTTAWA — The Conservatives are asking that the Public Health Agency of Canada's offices be searched after a public shaming of the agency's president failed to persuade him to turn over unredacted documents related to the firing of two scientists at the country's highest-security laboratory.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

PHAC head Iain Stewart was hauled Monday before the bar of the House of Commons to receive a reprimand from Speaker Anthony Rota for his repeated refusal to provide the documents.

Stewart duly showed up — the first non-MP to be subjected to such a procedure in more than a century — and stood impassively at the brass rail at the entrance to the Commons, as ordered by a motion passed by the combined opposition parties last week.

Rota informed Stewart that the Commons possesses constitutional powers to order the production of any documents it sees fit. Those powers, he said, "are essential to the performance" of MPs' duties.

"The House has the power and indeed the duty to reaffirm them when obstruction or interference impedes with its deliberations," Rota said.

"As guardian of these rights and privileges, that is precisely what the House has asked me to do today, by ordering the Speaker to reprimand you for the Public Health Agency of Canada's contempt, refusing to submit the required documents."

Rota told the Commons that Stewart's lawyer had informed him earlier in the day that the PHAC head was still not able to release the unredacted documents, as twice ordered by the Canada-China relations committee and twice by the House itself.

Stewart was not given a chance to say anything Monday. But he told the health committee last week that he is bound by law to protect national security and privacy rights and nothing in the House order relieves him of that obligation.

In a sign of support from the minority Liberal government, the 27-year veteran public servant was accompanied to the chamber Monday by acting Privy Council clerk Janice Charette, who could be seen giving him an elbow bump before he walked in.

Opposition parties have joined forces to demand the documents in hopes that they'll shed light on why scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were escorted out of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory in July 2019 and subsequently fired last January.

They are also seeking documents related to the transfer, overseen by Qiu, of deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology in March 2019.

Stewart has said the virus transfer had nothing to do with the subsequent firings. He's also said there is no connection to COVID-19, a coronavirus that first appeared in China's Wuhan province and which some believe may have been released accidentally by the virology institute.

Nevertheless, opposition parties continue to suspect a link and are, hence, determined to see the unredacted documents.

Video: Senior public servant receives first formal House of Commons reprimand for non-MP since 1913 (Global News)

Stewart was forced to stand at the bar for some 40 minutes while MPs debated what should happen next. Opposition MPs initially refused unanimous consent to let him depart but eventually relented.

"Having Mr. Stewart at the bar was very difficult for many of us to witness," Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux told the Commons later, questioning why "an outstanding" public servant who has done "such a wonderful job" during the COVID-19 pandemic was treated so badly.

"The amount of time he stayed at the bar was deeply offensive to many members."

But opposition MPs argued that the issue goes to the heart of Canada's democracy and the government's continuing refusal to comply with the will of the elected members cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.

"This government is rolling back 18 decades of parliamentary evolution with its defiance of now four orders of this House and its committee," said Conservative MP Michael Chong.

"Why do Canadians send 338 of their fellow citizens to this chamber if their decisions are going to be ignored? Why do we spend $400 million a year on this chamber and the other one (the Senate), if our votes don't mean anything? Why do we vote to adopt orders if they don't have effect?"

Conservative House leader Gerard Deltell served notice that he will propose a motion calling on Rota to instruct the Commons sergeant-at-arms to search PHAC offices and seize the documents.

If Rota doesn't agree with that, Deltell said he'll move that the issue be referred to the procedure and House affairs committee to consider an enforcement mechanism. If the committee fails to issue a report within four weeks, then the sergeant-at-arms would be directed to search PHAC offices and seize the documents.

"Let me be clear," Deltell said. "This House has a job to do and this House shall be respected and, especially, shall be respected by its own members."

New Democrat MP Jack Harris signalled that his party supports the Conservatives' proposal. The Bloc Québécois reserved its opinion, as did Rota, who at several junctures noted that he was dealing with "a very touchy" and "unique" and "unprecedented" situation.

Liberal House leader Pablo Rodriguez proposed an alternative to the original House order, which ordered PHAC to turn over the documents to the parliamentary law clerk, who would redact them as needed, with members of the Canada-China relations committee retaining the right to publicly release redacted material.

Rodriguez said the government is prepared to go along with the law clerk vetting, provided that he is assisted by national security specialists.

He argued that the law clerk does not have "the necessary training or expertise" to determine what sensitive information could negatively impact intelligence agencies. Disclosing sensitive information, Rodriguez said, could inadvertently reveal "covert methods of operations," imperil human sources, identify employees and have "a severe impact on Canada's reputation as a responsible security partner."

Rodriguez also challenged the opposition's position that parliamentary privilege supersedes all other laws, pointing to a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that found legislatures "do not constitute enclaves shielded from the ordinary law of the land."

However, opposition parties countered that he should have made that argument before Rota ruled last week that the Commons and its committees have unfettered power to demand the production of documents, no matter how sensitive.

They similarly dismissed Rodriguez's proposal to let the law clerk vet the documents, with advice from security experts, as too little, too late.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2021.

The Canadian Press

PHAC president Iain Stewart reprimanded in House by Speaker for failing to produce documents

The president of the Public Health Agency of Canada appeared before the bar at the House of Commons today, where he was publicly admonished by Speaker Anthony Rota for failing to turn over to a Commons committee documents related to the the firing of two scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

Rota called Iain Stewart into the House and began his reprimand by telling Stewart that the House of Commons and its parliamentary committees have defined powers outlined in law that must be followed.

"The powers in question, like all those enjoyed by the House collectively and by members individually, are essential to the performance of their duties," Rota said. "The House has the power, and indeed the duty to reaffirm them when obstruction or interference impedes with its deliberations.

"As guardian of these rights and privileges, that is precisely what the House has asked me to do today, by ordering the Speaker to reprimand you for the Public Health Agency of Canada's contempt, refusing to submit the required documents."

Stewart also was ordered to bring with him the unredacted documents demanded by opposition MPs. The Speaker said Stewart's lawyer had reached out to Rota's office earlier in the day saying he would be unable to produce the documents.

Calling someone to the bar of the House is a rarely used procedure meant to publicly shame a person who has committed "an offence against the dignity or authority of Parliament," according to House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition.

Since 1913, it has not been used against a private citizen. It has been used twice, in 1991 and 2002, to discipline MPs who had grabbed the ceremonial mace during heated Commons proceedings.

Opposition parties joined forces earlier this month to pass a motion in the Commons ordering PHAC to turn over all unredacted documents related to the firing of scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her biologist husband, Kending Cheng, who were escorted off the premises in 2019 and were officially fired in January of this year.

The motion called for the documents to be handed to the parliamentary law clerk, who would confidentially review them and redact anything he felt would compromise national security or the ongoing police investigation.

The motion specified that the Canada-China relations committee, after consulting with the law clerk, could choose to make public any redacted material.

In defiance of the House order, the minority Liberal government instead provided the unredacted documents to the all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, NSICOP, whose members have top security clearance and are bound to secrecy.

NSICOP was established by the Liberal government in 2018 to review Canada's national security and intelligence activities.

The Liberal government argued that NSICOP was the appropriate body to examine the documents without putting at risk national security or compromising any ongoing investigations.

Last week, Rota ruled that sending the documents to NSICOP is not an acceptable alternative since it's a relatively new body and not a standing committee of Parliament.
Liberal government must obey House order: Chong

Today, Liberal House Leader Pablo Rodríguez said the government remains concerned about the possible impacts of releasing sensitive intelligence.

"While the government accepts that the Parliament and parliamentary counsel have the appropriate security clearance to review the information, we do not believe he has the necessary training or expertise in national security related information to make the necessary assessment" of what can be released, Rodríguez said.

Rodríguez said disclosing sensitive information could compromise covert investigative methods used in intelligence gathering or put at risk human sources of information and their families. "It can have a severe impact on Canada's reputation as a responsible security partner," he said.

Rodríguez proposed two possible methods that would allow MPs to review the documents.

The first involves striking an ad-hoc committee of MPs, as was done during the Afghan detainee debate under former prime minister Stephen Harper. MPs who took part in that committee were sworn to an oath of confidence in return for access to documents.

The second proposal was to have the law clerk and parliamentary counsel, assisted by national security experts, look at the documents together to decide what can be released.

Conservative MP Michael Chong argued that the House could not stand by and let a government refuse to deliver documents lawfully ordered by the House of Commons.

Rota said he would take the arguments into consideration and come back to the House with a ruling on what to do next.

ECOCIDE

Turtle carcasses wash ashore in Sri Lanka after ship fire

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Nearly a hundred carcasses of turtles with throat and shell damage, as well as a dozen dead dolphins and a blue whale, have washed ashore in Sri Lanka since a container ship burned and sank, raising fears of a severe marine disaster.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Ecologists believe the deaths were directly caused by the fire and release of hazardous chemicals while the Singapore-flagged X-Press Pearl burned for 12 days and sank last week off Sri Lanka’s main port in the capital Colombo. Government officials, however, said these causes were “provisionally” confirmed and the investigation was continuing.

The fire started on the ship on May 20 and dead marine species started washing ashore days later.

A ship manifest seen by The Associated Press said 81 of the ship's nearly 1,500 containers held “dangerous” goods.

The Sri Lankan navy believes the blaze was caused by its chemical cargo, most of which was destroyed in the fire. But debris including burned fiberglass and tons of plastic pellets have severely polluted the surrounding waters and a long stretch of the island nation’s famed beaches.

Post-mortem analysis on the carcasses are being performed at five government-run laboratories and separately by the Government Analysts Department, said an official of the wildlife department who spoke on condition of anonymity as the official was not authorized to speak to the media.

Video: Raging container ship fire off Sri Lanka coast (Reuters)

“Provisionally, we can say that these deaths were caused by two methods — one is due to burns from the heat and secondly due to chemicals. These are obvious,” said Anil Jasinghe, secretary of the environment ministry.

He refrained from giving an exact cause, saying “post-mortem analysis are still being conducted.”

Thushan Kapurusinghe of the Turtle Conservation Project blamed the fire and chemicals the ship carried for killing the turtles.

With over three decades experience on turtle conservation, Kapurusinghe said the dead turtles had oral, cloacal and throat bleeding and "specific parts of their carapace have burns and erosion signs.”

The sea off Sri Lanka and its coastline are home to five species of turtles that regularly come to lay eggs. March to June is the peak season for turtle arrivals.

Lalith Ekanayake, a marine and coastal ecologist, suspects, based on the nature of the fire and amount of chemicals, that “at least 400 turtles may have died and their carcasses may have sunk in the sea or drifted to the deep sea.”

Sri Lanka plans to claim compensation from X-Press Feeders, the ship's owner, and already have submitted an interim claim of $40 million.

Bharatha Mallawarachi, The Associated Press

'Tip of a much larger iceberg': Report reveals more evidence of forced-labour goods imported to Canada

A workers-rights group has uncovered new evidence that goods possibly made with forced labour are entering Canada from China and elsewhere, despite being banned in the United States.

© James MacDonald Shipping containers are loaded onto rail cars at the Global Container Terminals Inc. (GCT) Vanterm container terminal in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Saturday, March 21, 2020.

Dozens of shipments of Malaysian palm oil and clothing manufactured in China have arrived in this country from two companies blacklisted by the U.S., a report released Monday by Above Ground reveals.

The information adds to evidence that, despite a new Canadian law meant to keep out products of slave labour, such goods continue to flow into the country with impunity.

And the Ottawa-based organization says it has likely identified only a “small fraction” of what’s arriving

That’s partly because it could only obtain import records from the U.S., where such information is made public. In Canada, the federal government keeps data from shippers’ “bills of lading” confidential.

As well, the files only rarely indicate the manufacturer of the imports, and when they do it’s the maker of the finished product, not suppliers who might be using forced labour, the group says. Canadian firms, meanwhile, can petition American authorities to remove their shipments from the public record entirely.

Rights activists skeptical as Canadian fashion brands carefully deny using China forced labour

Trade minister dodges questions on whether Canada has curbed potential forced-labour imports from China

“What we’ve uncovered from this limited search may be just the tip of a much larger iceberg linking Canadian importers to forced labour overseas,” said Above Ground in its report, called Creating Consequences.

The federal government implemented legislation last year that bars the import of goods made wholly or in part with forced labour.

Much of that kind of product is believed to originate in China, where evidence suggests that Uyghur people and other minorities from Xinjiang province are coerced into working in cotton fields and factories.

But the government has yet to indicate that any shipment has been barred under the law.

One of the only clues to what is happening on the ground comes from U.S. shipping records, which indicate when an import arrives at an American port and then is sent to Canada. Previous media reports by the CBC, Toronto Star and Guelph Mercury have identified some products that are banned under the American forced-labour law but made their way here.

Above ground perused the same records and identified two more U.S.-blacklisted firms whose goods are ending up in Canada.

One is Hero Vast Group, a China-based clothing manufacturer that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (U.S. CBP) says employs prison labour. American records indicate that at least six Hero Vast shipments have entered Canada since 2018, imported by two separate companies here.

The other is palm oil made by Malaysia’s Sime Darby Plantation, which the U.S. CBP says shows the presence of 11 of the International Labour Organization’s forced-labour indicators.

Canada has received 29 shipments of Sime Darby palm oil since 2018, including five since last December, the report said.

Above Ground also looked at products that have not been blacklisted by the U.S., but for which there is other evidence pointing to possible use of forced labour.

That includes the products of Qingdao Taekwang Shoes, which received 8,900 Xinjiang minority members at its factories, where they were subject to after-hours re-education programs, according to media and NGO reports . Just under 200 shipments of its shoes have arrived in Canada since 2007, says the report.

Above Ground details as well what it considers an inadequate response from Ottawa, where the effort is led by the Canada Border Services Agency.

Responding to questions from the group, the CBSA declined to say if importers who violate the new rules would face any penalty, as they do in the States.

As well, the Canadian law requires “legally sufficient and defensible evidence” of forced labour before stopping an import. The U.S. rules, by comparison, talk of evidence that “reasonably but not conclusively” points to involvement of forced labour. It then allows the importer to prove the contrary and free up its shipments, said the report.

“Canada must move beyond words and use legal methods to cut Canadian business ties to forced labour abroad,” the report said.

That includes rigorously enforcing its current law and implementing “human-rights due-diligence” legislation that proactively obliges companies to rid their supply chains of forced labour.

Meanwhile, the CBSA told Above Ground that it would not be revealing the names of any importers subject to enforcement action under the existing forced-labour law, said the report.

“Overall, it’s just this blackbox,” said Lori Waller, a spokeswoman for the group, about Ottawa’s program.

CANADA

Environmental racism bill one step closer to becoming law

A private member’s bill aiming to address environmental racism successfully passed through committee Monday and will be reported to the House of Commons this week.

“This is a major step forward,” said Liberal MP Lenore Zann, who sponsored the bill. “It's an exciting day.”

All committee members except the Conservatives voted in favour of the amended bill.

If passed, Bill C-230 would require the federal government to collect data on links between environmental hazards, race, socioeconomic status and health, and compel the environment and climate change minister to develop a national strategy to address the harms caused by environmental racism.

The Bloc Québécois and Conservative Party opposed the bill initially, but the Bloc has changed its tune thanks to amendments removing references to measures that could infringe on provincial jurisdiction.

“This includes removing the requirement to assess the administration and enforcement of the environmental laws in each province,” Liberal MP Lloyd Longfield said in committee, acknowledging that “protection of the environment is a shared jurisdiction among the different levels of government.”

Bloc Québécois MP Monique Pauzé said the concern was that the bill would enable the federal government to interfere with provincial responsibility, but this amendment addressed those concerns.

“We're really pleased to see this, and we'll be supporting the Liberals,” she said in committee Monday evening.

According to Zann, several additional amendments also strengthened the bill.

The preamble was amended to include not just Indigenous and racialized communities but also other marginalized communities, expanding the scope of the bill.

An NDP sub-amendment strengthened language calling for the collection of data on links between race and environmental hazards by changing the word “may” to “must” to ensure data collection takes place.

The bill was also changed to include environmental justice and is now renamed “a national strategy respecting environmental racism and environmental justice,” with text amended to include the promotion of efforts across Canada to advance environmental justice and to assess, prevent and address environmental racism.

Zann said it was important to her that environmental racism remain the focal point of the bill and that she fought to keep it first in the title.

“I'm extremely relieved and very glad to see amendments that I believe will actually strengthen the bill,” Zann said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer. “It was a very nice collaboration between the Liberals and the NDP and the Bloc Québécois.”

The amended bill will be reported to the House of Commons this week, and if the Bloc’s newfound support continues, it will likely pass to third reading.

“The fact that this comes on National Indigenous Peoples Day, I think, is very symbolic and very emotional,” said Zann. “It's very moving for me, because it is their interests, and Black Canadians and racialized communities and marginalized communities, whose struggles and victories are at the heart of this bill.”

Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, National Observer

AN ICONIC CANADIAN STORY
Saskatoon beaver steals Canadian flag, makes dinner out of flag pole

Mickey Djuric 

CBC

22/6/2021

 

© Mike's Videos of Beavers/YouTube Spud, a one-year-old beaver that lives along the Meewasin Trail in Saskatoon, appears to be standing on guard for the Canadian flag. But the young beaver had other plans.

A Saskatoon photographer captured his own heritage minute after he witnessed a beaver standing on guard for thee, right under a Canadian flag.

Or so he thought.

Using two branches, Mike Digout placed a Canadian flag over a popular beaver passage in the heart of Saskatoon on the Meewasin Trail.

A family of beavers are known to frequent the area so Digout thought it'd be "really cool to get a picture of a beaver with a Canadian flag."

But Canada's national animal had other plans.

A one-year-old beaver — appropriately named Spud by the local photographers because she's "the cutest little potato in the pond" — was the first to take interest.

"Spud is a really curious beaver and pays a lot of attention to photographers and human things," Digout said.

At first, Spud got under the banner, and stood straight up.

Digout couldn't believe what he was witnessing so he quickly clicked the shutter button on his camera, while filming the moment with another.

"What occurred to me immediately was the part of the national anthem that says 'We stand on guard for thee' and here this furry little beaver — which is a well-known symbol of Canada — standing straight up and actually looking like it was paying respect to the flag because she was looking right at it," Dugout said.

The moment was brief before Spud's ulterior motive was revealed.

"She obviously recognized the smell of something she likes to eat. She leaned over, and after looking at it a few times, she grabbed one of the branches that was holding up the flag and made a run for it," Digout said.

He ran after her so the flag wouldn't end up as garbage in the pond.

"Just as I was about to take steps toward her, the flag broke off the flagpole, and she scurried back into the pond with dinner out of my flag pole."

LABOR THEORY OF VALUE

4 reasons that workers quitting at a record pace means the economy will come back stronger than ever

bwinck@businessinsider.com (Ben Winck) 

Record-high quits suggest Americans are confident in their ability to find better jobs.

The unusual labor market trend may give way to several encouraging developments for the US economy.

Here are four reasons the quits surge could benefit the US, from higher pay to a productivity revolution

.
On the surface, the labor market hasn't been making much sense.

Take April for example: Ten million Americans were unemployed, even though nearly that same number of jobs were open (9.3 million, a record high). That same month, hiring slowed to a crawl and 4 million more people quit their jobs (another record high). That sum could grow even larger; roughly 40% of employees have considered quitting, according to a Microsoft survey.

For the first time in decades, it's workers that are in short supply, not jobs. And businesses' efforts to attract hires could bring improvements long overdue for the average worker.

Here are the four reasons why a wave of quits can pay dividends for working Americans down the road.

1. More power for workers

While record-high quits might seem like a setback on the labor market's recovery, the April reading is encouraging. The surge suggests Americans are confident in their abilities to find work that pays the same or better.

Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's consumer expectation survey back up this narrative. Americans' job-finding expectations leapt in May to their highest level since February 2020, just before COVID-19 lockdowns began. Expectations for wage growth similarly swung higher.

Taken together, the data and spike in quits suggest workers are leveraging new power in the economy. With labor in such high demand, businesses are offering perks like signing bonuses and better benefits to speed up their hiring efforts.

2. Higher wages

The clearest sign of boosted worker power is in nationwide wage growth. Pay has soared over the last two months at the fastest rate since the 1980s as companies competing over workers raise starting wages. Large-scale employers including Amazon, McDonald's, Chipotle, and Under Armour have all announced wage hikes in recent weeks.

Boosted pay can quickly benefit the entire economy, particularly when wages climb among low-income Americans, who are the most likely to spend new cash instead of parking it in a bank. Studies of how stimulus checks were spent support the assertion.

3. A productivity revolution

The wave of quits has also opened the door to stronger productivity growth. Many businesses that lasted throughout the pandemic were forced to strip their operations to the bare essentials. Waiters were replaced with QR codes, hotel check-ins were completed through online apps, and real-estate tours turned virtual.

The country has since retracted many of its COVID-19 restrictions. Yet a sharp pick-up in worker productivity suggests some of the pandemic-era changes remain. Businesses are paying their employees more, and workers are leveraging new technologies to get more done. Productivity boomed 5.4% in the first quarter, the fastest rate in more than 20 years.

Businesses doing more with fewer workers and increased productivity can spark what economics writer Noah Smith deems a "virtuous cycle" for the broader economy. Technological progress and new innovations can further lift productivity, which gives workers a better case for demanding higher pay, Smith wrote in a June 13 blog post.

4. Smarter job creation

Americans have long feared that automation will permanently erase jobs from the US economy. But previous periods of sweeping innovation prove otherwise, Smith wrote. The industrial revolution pushed countless Britons out of antiquated trades and into higher-paying jobs. The internet has boosted productivity in practically every pocket of the economy, but it also paved the way for entirely new industries.

The nationwide push for higher wages and stronger productivity should be viewed as an encouraging development, not one of doom and gloom, Smith wrote.

"Believing in technological progress is about believing in the potential of humankind," he said. "Do we really think that QR code ordering in restaurants will be the innovation that finally renders humans obsolete?"

Read the original article on Business Insider

GREENWASHING

Raters of companies' green credentials need more oversight, UK watchdog says

© Reuters/Henry Nicholls FILE PHOTO: Skyscrapers in The City of London financial district are seen from City Hall in London

LONDON (Reuters) - Environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings, widely used by asset managers to make climate-friendly investments, need tighter oversight to avoid risks to the smooth functioning of financial markets, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said on Tuesday.

Investors are increasingly demanding that asset managers put their cash into companies that meet "green" or ESG criteria, with references to ESG ratings embedded into their investment processes, the FCA said.

But the ESG ratings business, a market that could be worth $1 billion this year, has no firm definition of data provision that applies globally, the FCA said.

ESG ratings providers, which rank companies' performance based on ESG factors, have different methodology and use different ways to plug gaps in data, leading to little correlation between them, the FCA said.

Combined with other features of ESG rating provision, there may be "potential for harm to market functioning, or to consumers, in some circumstances", the FCA said in a consultation paper on Tuesday.

"Since ESG rating providers operate and cover companies globally, we consider that there would be a strong benefit in a globally applicable regulatory approach, rather than a local regime," the FCA said.

"However, global coordination can often take time and the harms may arise locally in the meantime."

There has been a flurry of consolidation among companies that provide ESG ratings. MSCI has acquired Innovest and KLD, Moody's has bought Vigeo Eiris, Morningstar taken over Sustainalytics, S&P Global completed an acquisition of RobecoSAM in January 2020 and the London Stock Exchange Group completed its acquisition of Refinitiv this year.

Policy options include guidance for firms on using ESG data and ratings, a best practice code for ESG data and rating providers, and introducing regulation of ESG data and raters, which has already been suggested by regulators in the European Union, the FCA said.

The EU's securities watchdog has said regulation is needed for raters to avoid "greenwashing", which refers to giving a misleading impression of green credentials.

(Reporting by Huw Jones. Editing by Jane Merriman)

READ IT AND WEEP

CRA audits of ultra-wealthy Canadians yield zero prosecutions, convictions

“In former times we didn’t see tax avoidance as a crime," said Brigitte Unger, professor of economics  "But now we see the public sector needs money, and this is effectively stealing money from public coffers, and should be treated as such," she said.

OTTAWA — Data from the Canada Revenue Agency shows its recent efforts to combat tax evasion by the super-rich have resulted in zero prosecutions or convictions.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In response to a question tabled in Parliament by NDP MP Matthew Green, the CRA said it referred 44 cases on individuals whose net worth topped $50 million to its criminal investigations program since 2015.

Only two of those cases proceeded to federal prosecutors, with no charges laid afterward.

The lack of prosecutions follows more than 6,770 audits of ultra-wealthy Canadians over the past six years.

It also comes amid a roughly 3,000 per cent increase in spending on the agency's high-net-worth compliance program between 2015 and 2019 due to a beefed-up workforce, according to an October report from the parliamentary budget officer.

Green said federal authorities avoid pursuing Canada's biggest tax cheats but go after small business owners who don't pay their taxes under a "two-tiered system" pocked with "loopholes."

“The CRA is not pursuing Canada’s largest and most egregious tax cheats. And yet for a small mom-and-pop shop if you don’t pay your taxes long enough — two or three years — then they will absolutely go in and garnish your wages ... because they know you don't have the ability to take it to court," he said.

“There's a tax code for the ultra-wealthy ... and then there's a tax code for the rest of us," Green said. "The rich are taking advantage of the holes in our tax system. And this Liberal government continues to allow them to do so.”

The issue is top of mind for federal lawmakers this week as a parliamentary committee convenes to discuss the CRA's attempts to combat tax evasion and avoidance. Diane Lebouthillier, minister of national revenue, is slated to appear before the panel Tuesday afternoon.

A spokesman for the minister's office referred questions to the CRA, which did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Denis Meunier, former deputy director of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, known as Fintrac, said the dearth of criminal charges is striking. But authorities often lack resources to carry out pricey, painstaking prosecutions across international borders and can opt instead for hefty non-criminal penalties.

"They may have some of the best lawyers fighting, so you may see that more in tax court, rather than convictions," Meunier said of proceedings against the ultra-wealthy.

"You need a search warrant to go kick in — well we don’t kick in doors, but you knock on them."

Often tax evasion boils down to unreported incomes or exaggerated expenses, which can then be deducted from income declared on tax filings.

"It’s not atypical to see individuals pay out invoices from foreign consulting companies. You pay a million bucks for a specialized report, and the company is a consulting firm based in a tax haven (where the real, or 'beneficial,' owner is hidden from view) and basically the company is owned by the same guy in Canada whose business it is," Meunier said.

It can be extraordinarily tough to trace money through the warren of shell companies and tax havens used by those seeking to stash their loot.

"Those persons who set up those shell companies and trusts in all those jurisdictions, they hear you coming. They know CRA Is after them," said Kevin Comeau, author of a 2019 C.D. Howe report on money laundering.

"They can just put in a couple more trusts and companies in other jurisdictions to make the trail longer at any time. It's a never-ending rabbit hole."

The Liberal budget in April allotted $2.1 million over two years for the Industry Department to launch a new beneficial ownership registry by 2025.

Comeau, a retired lawyer and member of Transparency International Canada’s working group on beneficial ownership transparency, said the registry could be a "game changer” for tax avoidance.

“Even if it is legal, they're not paying their fair share. So there's going to be huge social pressure on those persons to unwind those dealings and actually start bringing their money back to Canada,” he said.

“Many of these people are very highly respected people in the Canadian establishment.”

The absence of criminal prosecutions against high-net-worth residents comes in an era of rising wealth inequality, a disparity laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The top one per cent of Canada's families hold about 26 per cent of the wealth — some $3 trillion — up from the roughly 14 per cent estimated under previous methodology, according to modelling in a report from parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux in June 2020.

The same report found that families with $29.3 million and more rank among Canada's 0.1 per cent.

Tax evasion — a predicate offence, meaning it forms a component of a more serious crime, such as money laundering — differs categorically from tax avoidance, a legal means of keeping wealth out of tax collectors' hands through clever accounting.

But critics say the vast troves wealth that remain untouchable to government authorities reveal the need to tighten tax rules as well as crack down on cheats.

“In former times we didn’t see tax avoidance as a crime," said Brigitte Unger, professor of economics at Utrecht University and head of the world’s biggest tax evasion project, run by the European Union.

"But now we see the public sector needs money, and this is effectively stealing money from public coffers, and should be treated as such," she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2021.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

Biologist estimates helium balloons are ending up in Great Lakes by the hundreds of thousands

© Submitted by Leanne Grieves 

A half-deflated balloon marking someone's graduation lies in the sand on the north shore of Lake Erie.


The plastic balloons we use to mark some of the biggest milestones in our lives — births, deaths, graduations, homecomings, engagements, gender reveal parties — are ending up in the Great Lakes by the hundreds of thousands, according to an Ontario biologist who spent two weeks gathering trash.

Leanne Grieves is a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University in Hamilton who studies bird behaviour and communication. This summer, she's been working at Birds Canada at Long Point on the north shore of Lake Erie.

"Lake Erie is beautiful and the shoreline is just stunning, especially if you're on the Long Point peninsula," she said. "It's really a glorious place to be."

What wasn't so glorious, though, was the trash, which became such an eyesore for Grieves that she couldn't help herself.
Hundreds of balloons along 7 km of beach

"There is just so much garbage washing up on shore," she said. "After a couple of days driving up and down to our site, I just thought, 'This is ridiculous. We have to start cleaning this up.'"

So Grieves and fellow biologist Ryan Ley started going up and down the shore, picking up whatever trash they found. In just under two weeks, across seven kilometres of beach, the pair amassed less than 380 helium balloons — and it wasn't always easy.

"Sometimes I had to wade out in my rubber boots to get balloons that hadn't yet washed ashore," Grieves said.

"Sometimes it would involve digging into the sand to extract balloons that had been buried and sometimes going up into the surrounding habitat to extract balloons from trees and shrubs."

The mass release of balloons has been a traditional way to celebrate special events for decades, but the practice is becoming increasingly controversial as studies highlight the environmental consequences.

While the balloons do break down over time, they don't dissolve completely, and the smaller plastic debris ends up in the environment, where animals can mistake it for food.

When ingested, the plastic provides no nutritional value and if the pieces are large enough, they can block or become lodged in the intestinal tracts of animals, slowly starving them to death.

Animals, such as birds and turtles, can also become ensnared in the strings and streamers that accompany balloons, drowning them or weighing them down so much that they're unable to find food.

The Canadian Wildlife Federation suggests alternatives to releasing balloons, such as planting a tree or memorial garden, to honour a loved one.

On its website, the federation notes that balloons can travel long distances when carried by winds and currents, noting a report about a balloon released at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, that ended up in Los Angeles 8,500 kilometres away.

Shiny, metallic-looking mylar balloons, in particular, have been known to cause fires or blackouts when they become entangled in power lines.

Gender reveal, grad balloons common finds

Despite the dangers, people are still releasing plenty of balloons.

Grieves said she and Ley found plenty of pink and blue balloons released at trendy gender reveal parties, as well as graduation balloons coinciding with the end of the school year.

"They say things like 'follow your dreams' or 'the adventure is just beginning,' but it's just this huge balloon trashing this beautiful landscape, so it's a bit shocking to see that."

One of the most striking finds that illustrates how a seemingly small and fleeting moment of celebration can have a lasting effect on the environment, according to Grieves, was a balloon from last Christmas.

"It was dated December 13, 2020 and it was in quite good shape, so these balloons really do stick around in the environment for months, if not, years."

During her trash-finding work, Grieves documented everything, including taking took pictures of each one before stuffing it into a trash bag and carefully noted the amount collected and where.

She also did a little math. Once she and Ley cleaned a section of beach, they returned the next day and counted every new balloon they found along that same stretch.

Based on her calculations, she estimates 1.9 balloons wash up on every kilometre of Lake Erie's 1,400-km shoreline each day.
The potential impact is 'staggering'

"If you assume they wash up on the Lake Erie shoreline at an equal rate, it's possible that 960,000 balloons wash up on the Lake Erie shoreline every year," she said.

"Even if my estimate is off by 50 per cent, that's half a million balloons that are washing up just on one of our Great Lakes. The potential impact of these balloons is staggering."

She said given the sheer number of balloons Grieves found that seemed to cover the gamut, from Mother's Day to welcoming the troops home, it shows how popular the practice of releasing balloons into the air is, despite the environmental consequences.

With the exception of a few Ontario communities passing their own bylaws banning the release of large numbers of helium balloons, there is no provincial or federal legislation regulating the practice.

A New Democrat-sponsored petition to the House of Commons is trying to gain enough signatures to ban the release of helium balloons, along with sky lanterns, making it punishable by levying a fine.

Grieves hopes by sharing her work, more people will understand the potential environmental consequences of releasing helium balloons.

"Balloon releases are an ongoing issue and you can't just clean them up once, and we'll continue to clean them until we stop releasing them."

A tiny Alaska town is split over a gold mine. At stake is a way of life

This year, plans to open operations finally took a significant step forward when Dowa took over the majority interest in the project from its Canadian partner, exploration company Constantine.

LONG READ

Dominic Rushe in Haines, Alaska 

THE GUARDIAN JUNE 22,2021

For 2,000 years, Jones Hotch’s ancestors have fished Alaska’s Chilkat River for the five species of salmon that spawn in its cold, clean waters. They have gathered berries, hunted moose and raised their families, sheltered from the extremes of winter by the black, saw-toothed peaks of the Iron Mountain.

Now Hotch fears a proposed mining project could end that way of life.

Hotch has an infectious, boyish laugh – but there is no mistaking how worried he is about plans to build a mine where millions pounds of zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold are buried, beneath the valleys’ mountains. We arejust miles from the headwaters of the Chilkat, the glacial river that serves as the main food source of the Tlingit, the region’s Indigenous people, as well as the inhabitants of Haines, the nearest port town.

“You guys might have your Safeway,” he says, waving his arm across the valley. “There’s ours all around here.”

Hotch, a tribal leader, lives in Klukwan, a village that takes its name from the Tlingit phrase “Tlakw Aan” – “the village that has always been”. It is the hub of an ancient trading route – later known as the Dalton Trail – that runs from Haines to Fort Selkirk in Canada.

Here in south-east Alaska, the consequences of the climate crisis are already visible. “Our mountains used to be snow-capped all year round,” Hotch said. “Two summers ago, our mountains were almost totally bare.” In Haines, hardware stores sold out of box fans because it was so hot.

King salmon – also known as Chinook – are in particular trouble. Haines’ popular annual fishing derby for largest species of Pacific salmon has been canceled, and now if anyone catches one, it must be released, in the hopes of encouraging their numbers.

“We need the snow to keep water cold for the salmon, for the summer blueberries,” says Hotch. Last year he saw fewer bumblebees, essential for pollination, and the blueberry crop was very disappointing. “I saw a bumblebee last week and I got real happy,” he laughs.

The mine, known as the Palmer Project, is still in the exploratory stage but financial control of the project was taken over by Dowa – a metals manufacturer and one of Japan’s largest companies – in a move that is seen as giving fresh impetus to the project.

If it gets approved, Hotch worries that contamination from the mine, located under the Saksaia glacier, could destroy the salmon runs they rely on. Even the exploration now under way could irreparably damage the fragile ecosystem, he believes, adding that the town would suffer too. Haines is heavily reliant on commercial salmon fishing, as well as tourism – each November, visitors flock to town to watch the largest convocation of bald eagles on the planet gorge on salmon.

“This project is a serious, significant threat facing our people,” says Hotch. “Some of the younger generation here now, they could say, ‘We were the last ones that were able to smoke fish, jar fish, pick blueberries,’” says Hotch. “We are working very hard to make sure no generation will have to say that.”

Mining has a long and storied history in the Chilkat Valley, stretching back all the way to the 1890s Klondike gold rush. Hopeful prospectors have been trying to strike it rich ever since Haines local Merrill Palmer – hence the name of the mine project – first laid claim to the site in 1969.

This year, plans to open operations finally took a significant step forward when Dowa took over the majority interest in the project from its Canadian partner, exploration company Constantine.

“It is a decision by an investor, already highly invested, to put in additional money to further develop it and take control of the project,” Jim Kuipers, a Montana-based consultant, told the Chilkat Valley News. “Every year the project continues to get financed and ownership gets more consolidated it does become more likely to happen.”

Along the banks of the Chilkat, there are already signs of increased activity. The Haines highway is being extended to carry heavy trucks at higher speeds, and the state-run Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (Aidea) is proposing financing reconstruction of the town’s deepwater dock to include an ore dock that would make it easier to transport the bounty that the Constantine corporation believes the mine contains.

The economic turmoil triggered by the coronavirus has added impetus to the plans. The unemployment rate in Haines was over 14% in January. Meanwhile, copper prices have soared to record levels as large parts of the global economy emerges from pandemic lockdowns. The Palmer project would support 220 full-time jobs and 40 contractors, a significant boost to a town with a population of 1,863.

‘What we have here is special, not just for us but for the world’

For Gershon Cohen, a long-time Haines resident and project director of Alaska Clean Water Advocacy, rumblings that the mine may finally become a reality are “a nightmare”.

Cohen moved to Haines in 1984 and lives surrounded by trees in a beautiful wooden house he built himself – nothing out of the ordinary for Haines’s hardy, self-sufficient residents. On a walk to the shed he uses as his outside office, his wife suggests he gives me the “moose and the bear” talk. I joke I am a little old for that, but the dangers of the area’s two largest mammals are very real. Bears are likely to sniff you coming from a mile off and leave before you ever see them, but moose are easier to surprise and likely to trample you if spooked.

This is still a wild place. A record 40 grizzlies were killed in Haines last year, perhaps because poor fish runs and a bad berry season drove them into town looking for food (they have also been kept out of the local dump by an electric fence.) Bears, however, are smart – they have learned to open car doors to look for food and are not averse to breaking and entering houses.

“What we have here is very special, not just for us but for America and the world,” said Cohen. “There is a very real possibility that this mine will destroy the fisheries here. With the fish gone, there will be no eagles, no bears, no tourists. If this mine gets started it’ll be here for what? Ten years? What’s that against thousands of years of supporting this community?”

Haines and Klukwan are part of the Inside Passage, the longest and deepest fjord in North America and a place with a unique ecology. Cold, glacial freshwater meets the sea here, making it the perfect spawning ground for salmon and a critical corridor for bears, moose, lynx, coyote and snowshoe hares.

“Part of what makes this place so full of life is the robust salmon runs,” says Shannon Donahue, executive director of the Great Bear Foundation. The salmon transport nutrients from the ocean to the streams, they feed the bears and the eagles and their bodies feed the forest. But salmon are “pretty picky about their habitat,” she says.

Copper in particular can be catastrophic for them. Salmon can travel thousands of miles to return to the stream where they were born to die, using a smell memory bank to navigate one of the greatest migrations in the animal kingdom.

Metals leaked into streams can destroy the fish’s ability to find their way home, and“fugitive dust” shaken from trucks transporting extracted minerals can also contaminate the waterways, eventually building up to levels that can destroy the salmon’s unique homing abilities.

The mine’s supporters believe they can safely extract the Palmer Projects riches. But even if they do, the mine’s “tailings” – the waste materials including millions of tonnes of contaminated water – will have to be managed forever.

For local opponents, one recent disaster comes to mind immediately. In 2014 the tailings at the Mount Polley gold mine in British Columbia failed, sending 24m cubic metres of mine waste into the local waterways.

The Palmer site sits on active earthquake faults and in an area prone to catastrophic landslides. Only last December, two people died and multiple houses were destroyed after record-breaking rainfall triggered a landslide in Haines, leaving a huge, brown scar on the hillside.

As he recounts the tragedy, Cohen shakes his head. “What could possibly go wrong?”
‘It’s nerve-racking to even pick a side’

Alaska is heavily Republican and deeply pro-mining, but Haines is split on the project – and this includes the Native community, says local artist James Hart, a tribal council member of the Chilkoot Indian Association.

Hart is against the mine, but is wary of speaking out. “I am not a scientist, but I have seen what has happened in other places,” he says. “Worst-case scenario [is] it could potentially devastate and wipe out all of our salmon runs.”

Sharing that view in a small town where everyone knows everyone has consequences. “It’s nerve-racking to even pick a side or voice an opinion as a minority person,” he says. “The political climate in Haines makes it really hard.”

Hart’s mother has long been involved with tribal politics and and is another opponent of the mine. Recently people yelled at her in the street “just for having an opinion,” he says. “It’s not even an opportunity for having a dialogue, it’s just yelling because you have an opinion.” The incident made him more nervous for himself and his family.

Support for the project also runs deep. Jan Hill, Haines’ former mayor, is also Tlingit and a First Nation’s member of the Southern Tutchone. Her family has deep ties to the community and the project; Palmer was a friend of her parents.

“Mining is kind of in my blood,” she said. Her great grandparents came up to Alaska in 1898 from Washington state for the Gold Rush. “We have dealt with resource extraction in this community and it’s worked well for us. For the most part it is done responsibly and that’s what is important to all of us,” she said.

She points to Constantine hiring local people who can buy homes , offering “good paying summer jobs” for students and purchasing all the goods it can in Haines. And experts at Constantine offered help after the recent fatal landslide that would not have been available otherwise.“They stepped up immediately,” said Hill. “They are a part of our community.”

“None of us want bad things to happen to our fish or any of the wildlife. We live a subsistence lifestyle here. We depend on our fish and moose, the bears and ducks – all the creatures that God gave us. We all have these concerns, but I believe Constantine is very responsible. They are very regulated, they are good stewards of the environment.”

Garfield MacVeigh, Constantine’s chief executive, says he listens closely to the community’s apprehension. “We hear and appreciate those concerns. All the work we are doing is to demonstrate that we won’t be a threat to the environment. If we can’t demonstrate that, you are not going to build the project,” he said.

He points to a similar sized mine, Greens Creek silver mine near Juneau, about 80 miles as the eagle flies from Haines, which went into production in 1989 and has been operating for 32 years without any obvious impact on salmon.

Asked about Hotch’s concerns, he said: “I hear them, and as far as I am concerned they [the Tlingit] will be there for another 2,000 years, because we won’t take a risk that would result in any threat to the river environment.”

Many of the concerns about the impact of the mine were unscientific, he said, and comparisons to the Mount Polley catastrophe were “very misleading”.

“These days you are seeing virtually every project, anywhere, being contested. You have got the extreme group on one end contesting all of these things. They seem to become political rather than scientific. That’s their intent, to create noise around this and make it more and more political. The more extreme element doesn’t seem to be interested in the scientific data that may or may not justify the project,” he said.

Cohen dismissed MacVeigh’s comments, saying that there had been plenty of evidence, including from state reports , of high levels of pollution near Greens Creek.

Holding strong opinions can be hard in a small community. Other Haines residents were happy to talk as long as they were promised anonymity. One said it was particularly hard for the younger generation to speak out. The pandemic recession hit the town hard and, given its isolation, life was already too expensive for many here. “My friends are moving away,” he said. “I’m lucky – I’m working. But I can’t afford to piss anybody off. Older people have less to lose.”

He suggested I go and check out how much a gallon of milk cost in the local supermarket. A gallon of 2% milk was $6.89 in Haines, while the national average in April was $3.58. Nearby, the supermarket was selling organic cucumbers for $2.29 a piece, compared to $1.49 in a Whole Foods in Brooklyn.

It’s not just the mine that divides Haines. The town has a long reputation for sharp-elbowed politics and bitter generational infighting.

Few people know that better than Kyle Clayton, publisher of the Chilkat Valley News. Trying to objectively cover the Palmer project is a hard task. “I piss everybody off,” says Clayton. “I’ve been called a lackey for the mine.”

A handsome 36-year-old, Clayton has the worried look of a peacemaker. “It comes from all directions. The good thing is that in a small town, you can talk to people and reach some kind of understanding.”

He dislikes the black or white nature of the debate. “There’s a lot of unknowns. It’s still a long way off from being a project,” he says. He wants to see more information before deciding whether he should take a side.

On his paper-strewn stand-up desk is a list of 22 questions to be asked of interviewees to “complicate the narrative”, to “amplify contradictions and widen the lens”. In this hyper-partisan age, he is determined the paper will try its hardest to be fair to both sides.

People warned Clayton of Haines’ reputation before he moved from Petersborough, another small Alaskan town near Juneau. These days, he thinks it’s not so different from much of America. When he speaks to people back home, they tell him people there are at each other over face masks and Covid vaccinations.

“Maybe we just did it first?” he says. “Haines is definitely a divisive little town. But what doesn’t get said is a lot of people are very engaged,” he says.

As plans for the Palmer project pick up, the community and the wider world is likely to get even more engaged – and enraged. The Biden administration recently banned drilling for oil and gas in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Alaska’s Republican governor Mike Dunleavy called it an “assault on Alaska’s economy”.

But the opposition to the mine may not come entirely from the left. Last year Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s son and a keen hunter and fisherman, joined opposition to the controversial Pebble mine at the headwaters of salmon rich Bristol Bay. That project is now in jeopardy.

Hotch said his community would be fighting hard to make sure Merrill Palmer’s gold stays underground. No short-term gain is worth the risk involved, he said.

“There might be money for five, 10, 15 years and then they will leave for the next spot, wherever that is. And we here will have to live with the consequences of what they did to our lands.”

More than anything, he wants the way of life that has supported his people for 2,000 years to be protected.

“I long for the day we can stop having to do this and look at ways that the salmon can have a friendlier way swimming up river. That’s how we can help them. That’s my goal after we finish this battle. They have been helping us for generations. It’s the absolute least we can do.”