CIBC Says Opp's

Do you think the CIBC will lower service charges for having screwed up, of fire anyone? Nah....

For the second time in three years, the ability of the CIBC (TSX:CM) to protect confidential data has come under scrutiny after a computer file containing information on up to 470,000 Talvest Mutual Funds clients was lost in transit between offices. In 2004, it was disclosed that the bank had for three years been inadvertently sending faxes containing confidential information to scrap yards in West Virginia and suburban Montreal.

And CIBC is not the only one who has breeched your right to privacy.

As for the credit card information at HomeSense and Winners, senior representatives from the Canadian banks held a conference call with major Canadian card issuers, VISA and Mastercard, to discuss damage control Thursday.

A senior banking executive confirmed information has already been used for fraudulent activity and the banks had received thousands of calls about the compromised credit card information.

TJX Co. Inc., based in Framingham, Mass., said they became aware in mid-December of a security breach during which the credit and sales transaction information of "significantly less than millions of holders" was removed from company databases.

The company said computers that handle customer interactions and store information, including credit card numbers, were illegally accessed at several store locations in December. Stores belonging to the TJX chain also accept American Express and Discover credit cards.

The compromised information was from transactions that took place in 2003 and during the period between mid-May and December 2006.

The problem is of course that privacy laws in Canada are a paper tiger.

Regardless of any potential amendments which may be made to PIPEDA in the near future, businesses should, in order to avoid privacy liability under PIPEDA: obtain legal advice in the event that they suffer security breaches (or "involuntary disclosures" of personal information under their control) prior to deciding whether or not they should be notifying the individuals whose information is at stake, credit agencies and other entities such as relevant government agencies or banks of the security breach;

And you can be in charge when a criminal breech of privacy occurs and just go on your merry way complete with payout package....

CRA commissioner resigns in wake of reports of privacy breaches

The head of the Canada Revenue Agency has told his staff he intends to resign his post in April.

"I have come to a stage in my personal and professional life where it is wise to reflect on what I have accomplished," agency commissioner Michel Dorais writes in an internal e-mail dated Jan. 12.

"It has become clear that the time is now ripe for me and my family to take on a new direction, outside of the federal government."

Dorais's resignation follows several media reports that detailed privacy abuses at the agency, including the leak of Liberal MP Ken Dryden's personal tax information and confidential tax information mistakenly mailed out to the wrong recipients.

CRA employees who are found guilty of disclosing confidential tax information - a violation of the Income Tax Act - face fines of up to $5,000 or jail time of up to 12 months. Under the Criminal Code of Canada, breach of trust by a public officer is punishable by a maximum prison sentence of five years.

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Nice Job If You Can Get It

Criminal Capitalism

CEO's

CIBC

Banks

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Little Mosque Bombs

As I predicted once you lost the audience outside of GTA....

the ratings for Little Mosque on the Prairie have dropped from 2.1 million viewers for the first episosde down to 1.2 million for episode 2.

And CBC has six more shows in the can...it can only decline further, it just is not funny.

It now has the same amount of viewers as Corner Gas, which is also about Saskatchewan and actually made in Saskatchewan, unlike LMOTP, which is made in a Toronto back lot.

The producers continue to show a lack of prairie understanding, for instance making goat curry jokes when everyone out here knows that we favour lamb curry, being that lamb is plentiful out West. Including the hallal lamb that I get from my local butchershop.

And last time I checked the Prairies included Alberta.

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CBC


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A Sad Story

This is a sad story....in more ways than one....a dumb idea for an attack blog ends up struck dumb by lack of support.....

Courtesy Big Blue Wave....

Friday, January 12, 2007

New Blog: Stop the Greens!

In my search for blogs to add to Opinions Canada, I happened upon this one, Stop the Greens!, a blog devoted to trashing the Green Party of Canada.

I'm not really for or against the Greens. I figure they will split the vote on the left anyway. I'm just bemused by the concept of a blog devoted exclusively to making another party look bad.

I just thought I'd offer that up to the blogging community. Maybe someone will find it useful or interesting.

UPDATE: Looks like Alex is giving up. He says he's not getting enough support.

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Blogs




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TANSTAAFL Except in Alberta

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

-TANSTAAFL - except in Alberta....

The King has left the building.....

Here is a lesson in Ralphonomics, gone but not forgotten. Business as usual in the Kingdom of Alberta.

Alberta government departments spent nearly $1 million on catering and coffee service in the year ending March, 2006, according to the “blue book” which records grants, supplies and services.

Betting is big business in Alberta, it funds the province and is in turn funded by taxpayers. In last springs budget Horse-racing in Alberta got a $45 million horse racing subsidy

It is after all the sport of Kings and Ralph considered it one of his favorite sports, being the gambler he was.

The heads of Horse Racing Alberta make more money than the premier - and they're being paid with taxpayer's dollars, claim the Alberta Liberals.

And this is really rich....literally....now imagine if the Federal Liberals or Conservatives did this, why the outrage in Ottawa. Oh yeah, there they have an opposition that can bring down the government, here we have a One Party State.

20-year oversight
Alberta Grits demand action after finding Tories haven't filed financial reports since '87
Alberta Grits are demanding an overhaul of the province's election finances disclosure law after Elections Alberta revealed the Tories haven't filed required financial reports for nearly two decades.

The situation involves a secret "foundation fund" the party was allowed to keep after the financial disclosure law was passed in 1978, provided it filed annual reports on transfers from it.

Deputy Electoral Officer Bill Sage told the Sun he failed to notice that the statements stopped coming.

"I was responsible for it. I was the director of financial operations at the time. It was something that escaped me and I didn't realize it until just recently."

Yeah it was supposed to happen twenty years ago....I wonder whose son this guy is that he can blythely say he was responsbile for the oversight , after he was told by the reporter looking into this, and forget to tender his resignation.....wait sorry this is Alberta not Ottawa.

Finally the ultimate lobbyist gets the ultimate lobbyist job, move over Rod Love here comes Ralph.....

Ralph hooks up with 'straight-talkers'
Less than a week after leaving provincial politics, former Alberta premier Ralph Klein has joined a top law firm to advise clients on business opportunities in the booming province.

Too late though comes this announcement after the horse has left the barn....

Stelmach promises registry for lobbyists





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Alberta

PC

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Stelmach



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Blowing in the Wind

So is there a need for more federal corporate welfare for utility companies to go green, I think not.

TransAlta gets 25-year wind power purchase deal
Canada's top publicly-traded electricity generator, said on Friday it has been awarded a 25-year power purchase agreement to provide 75-megawatts of wind power to New Brunswick Power Distribution and Customer Service Corp. With the addition of Kent Hills, TransAlta will operate approximately 260 megawatts of wind-generated power in Canada. TransAlta said it has tripled its wind business since acquiring Vision Quest Windelectric in 2002.

No need for folks to pity poor Jim Dinning for not getting coronated as CEO of Alberta he still has TransAlta to play with.

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Environment

Hydro



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Free Speech Works

See no need for the Israel Lobby to throw a hissy fit, free speech and debate should not be opposed with threats and name calling, because it is about a controversial issue.

Anti-Israel motion defeated by Ontario teachers union local
CBC Toronto

Union rejects boycott of Israel Globe and Mail

However do notice the influence of the Lobby on the CBC headline versus the Globe and Mail headline which actually says what the motion was about.

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Israel

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Corporate America Greener Than Harper

The whole focus of the Harpocrites attack on Kyoto, even under the new Environment Minister, has been on how useless carbon credit trading is......

Ten major US corporations, including industry giants General Electric, DuPont and Alcoa, have joined forces with leading environmental groups to call for a slash in carbon-dioxide emissions of 10-to-30 per cent over the next 15 years. The New York Times says introduction of the group is aimed at bolstering the recent impetus for Congressional action on emissions controls and creation of a market “in which allowances to emit carbon dioxide could be traded in a way that achieves the greatest reduction at the lowest cost.”

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Star Wars The Next Installment

This will provoke another round of debate on the need for Ballistic Missle Defense and Canada's involvement with the infamous and ineffectual US Missle Defense System. Of course the Chinese took a page from North Korea when they saw how effective the U.S. was in countering it's nuclear tests.

Chinese missile destroys satellite
Telegraph.co.uk - 11 hours ago
By Toby Harnden and Alex Massie in Washington. The prospect of "Star Wars" between China and the West loomed last night after Beijing used a ballistic missile to destroy a satellite in space.

The U.S. has a policy of weaponizing space, and now China is obviously joining the club. We need to end the weaponization of space, period.

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China


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Leahy Damns US Government Over Arar

U.S. 'knew damn well' Arar would be tortured: senator

Which is a stronger statement than the Harpocrite government has ever made about Arar. Oh yeah he is still waiting for that Official apology from the New Government of Canada.

Gonzales was grilled relentlessly on Thursday by Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy. Leahy said that when Arar — a citizen of both Canada and Syria travelling on a Canadian passport — was detained in 2002, American authorities knew he would be tortured if they deported him to Syria.

"We knew damn well if he went to Canada he wouldn't be tortured," said Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont. "He'd be held and he'd be investigated.

"We also knew damn well if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country — a country that has always been a beacon of human rights — to send somebody to another country to be tortured.

"You know and I know that has happened a number of times in the past five years by this country. It is a black mark on us."

And Arar still cannot get into the United States despite the weak tea protest by Harper, Day and MacKay. In fact he is still on the No Fly List, which the Government continues to collaborate on. Canada mum on giving US no-fly names

Mr. Chertoff refused to comment on why Mr. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, still cannot enter the United States or fly over its territory.

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No Profit In Ending Cancer

This hits it on the head. Why can't capitalism find a cure for the ultimate disease of capitalism; cancer. There is no profit in ending the disease.

Cancerous tumours can be shrunk without radiation by administering a drug already used safely in humans for decades, says a doctor whose research is creating a major buzz in medical circles. But because the drug cannot be patented, pharmaceutical companies won't be eager to fund clinical trials to bring it to market, leaving its future in question.

"We've succeeded in reducing tumours with a drug shown to have little side-effects in humans. You could essentially take it as a pill," said University of Alberta researcher Evangelos Michelakis.

The drug is called dichloroacetate, or DCA.

Michelakis, working with several researchers in Edmonton and Ottawa, discovered how DCA can reverse the hallmark weapon of cancer's plague: The sudden ability of abnormal cells to multiply indefinitely, unchecked.

DCA restores a specific function of mitochondria -- the mini power engines that drive cellular activity.

Mitochondria normally cause unhealthy cells to die off, but that function is suppressed in cancer patients.

"In more than 50 years, no one's been able to figure out how to fix mitochondria in cancer patients," said University of Calgary oncology professor Dr. Randy Johnston, who's been studying cancer for 25 years.

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