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'You will be caught,' ministers vow ahead of compulsory breath tests for drivers

If you choose to get behind the wheel after drinking, you will be caught under incoming federal impaired driving rules, the ministers responsible are cautioning. This direct warning comes in light of new drunk driving rules coming into force in two weeks, during peak holiday party season.

In Ottawa, on Tuesday December 4, 2018, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction announced that new drunk driving laws are going to come into force in two weeks during a news conference.

The incoming federal impaired driving laws passed in June 2018 as part of Bill C-46, but this portion of the legislation is coming into force on December 18. They allow police officers to conduct random and compulsory roadside alcohol breath tests on drivers without requiring a lawful cause. If drivers show that they are over the legal limit on their first screening, secondary tests would be taken at a police station to determine the driver’s blood alcohol concentration. These amended drinking and driving laws also stipulate that driving within two hours of being over the legal limit is illegal. Ministers expect the new mandatory alcohol screening permissions to be a powerful deterrent to drunk driving and to bring in a significant decrease in impaired driving.

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Forestry industry says it lost $500 million this year due to rail delays - iPolitics

Canada’s forestry-products industry says poor rail service has cost it $500 million this year, and the capacity crunch will only intensify if more Alberta oil ends up on Canada’s rail lines. “We’ve had a really difficult year in forest products (because of insufficient) rail service,” Derek Nighbor, CEO of the Forestry Products of Canada Association, …

The Forestry Products of Canada Association says that the forestry industry lost about $500 million this year due to poor rail service and delays. Canada's forestry industry heavily relies on the country's rail system to get their goods to market. It says that only 80 percent of Canada's lumber and pulp mills have access to the railway system. Likewise, the oil and gas sector also depends on Canada's railway system as a transporting method because of the shortage in pipeline capacity. Recently, Alberta oil decided to purchase their own rail cars and add them to the system, which is expected to add stress to the already limited network. Without producing more locomotives, additional railway cars will only cause deterioration to the system. The 2017-2018 grain backlog also forced the Trudeau government to adjust Bill C-49, the Transportation Modernization Act, to ensure that Canada's major railways continue to provide service. However, the forestry industry is not sure that C-49 is enough to deal with Canada's railway problems.

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Shelter shortage leaves women at risk, Ottawa advocates say before march to end gender-based violence

"One of the real risks in not having shelter space for women to access if they are fleeing abuse is that they stay in an abusive home, a violent home, a dangerous home."

In Ottawa on Nov. 25, 2017, there was a march to mark the United Nations campaign to end gender-based violence, and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Ahead of the event, several speakers publicly expressed their concerns about the serious lack of shelter space available to women and children fleeing violence in Ottawa. Since they do not have anywhere else to go, they stay in abusive situations, which puts their lives at risk. The 7 women’s shelters in the city are always at full capacity.

Furthermore, the #MeToo movement has had a profound impact on this issue. Women who have survived sexual assaults have started to call their crisis lines and access their services. A Statistics Canada report released in early November on police-reported sexual assaults in Canada comparing before and after the explosion of the #MeToo movement showed there was a significant increase in the number of incidents reported to authorities last year.

Violence against women and gender-based violence is prevalent everywhere. 70 percent of spousal violence still goes unreported. Immigrant women, in particular, are vulnerable to domestic violence since they do not have the social supports in their new community. 

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The federal government's efforts to address foreign interference in next year's federal election came into the spotlight recently after it was reported that the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Karina Gould, told the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee that it would be "virtually impossible" to prevent foreign interference in the upcoming election.

To protect Canada's electoral system from foreign interference, the federal government made has several amendments to the Canada Elections Act through Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act. However, federal government's efforts to prevent foreign interference in the upcoming federal election may prove fruitless, as the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Karina Gould pointed out during the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee.  The spread of false information on Facebook during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections has influenced the amendments that Bill C-76 has made in Section 91 of the Canada Elections Act in effort to prevent the influence of election results, by prohibiting anyone from making or publishing false statements about candidates, potential candidates, or political and public figures. Also, the Bill prohibits making false statements about political candidates during the election period. However, these amendments are limited as Bill C-76 cannot prevent false statements made through social media. These platforms can still publish false information or be willfully blind to fake news, with the intention of influencing election results. This bill stipulates that only those who publish false information during an election period will be subject to punishment. Thus, the bill cannot punish those who spread the false information prior to an election period, leaning false statements still remain accessible.

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Temp agencies frustrated by reversal of Ontario labour laws

Short-term workers will be cheaper to hire, but agencies say the vast slate of changes has proven expensive administratively

Even though Bill 47, the current Conservative government’s Making Ontario Open for Business Act, became law in Ontario, some staffing agencies do not support it and prefer the previous rules.

Bill 47 reverses many of the guidelines from Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, which was passed by the former liberal government. According to this new bill, workers do not have two guaranteed sick days. Instead, they have combined eight days unpaid leave for illness and household reasons. In addition, the minimum wage is also frozen at $14 until 2020. Previously, Bill 148 had wanted to increase the minimum wage to $15. Bill 47 will also make it more difficult for temporary workers to unionize.

Even though the new law allows employers to hire temporary workers and pay them less than permanent employees for the same work, some agencies are frustrated about this change to the labor law since they have to spend significantly more time and money to make changes to all their documentation and staff training once again. Some of them also believe that Bill 47 is unfair because it reverts to a lower wage and makes temporary employees second-class citizens. Staff agencies insist that Bill 47 will eventually hurt a lot of industries rather than help them save money.

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'Shocking': Rona Ambrose wants Senate to pick up the pace on sex assault bill | CBC News

The Senate seems to be setting a slow pace on a bill mandating sexual assault training for judges — and the bill's original sponsor, former Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose, isn't happy about it.

In July of 2017, Former Conservative Party Interim leader Rona Ambrose introduced Bill C-337 to make sexual assault law training mandatory for incoming judges. She believed that this law would inspire the population to have more confidence in the justice system. However, Ambrose has become frustrated since the bill has been stuck in the Senate for nearly two years, even though the House of Commons passed it within the first four months of 2017. In this interview by CBC, Ambrose criticized the lack of progress in the Senate and is pressuring the Senate to move more quickly on the bill. On the other hand, the P. E. I. government is pursuing similar legislation, and calling it Bill 110, which would make sexual assault law education mandatory for all judges in Prince Edward Island. Bill 110 has already had its second reading in the provincial legislature, which has further frustrated Ambrose because the provincial legislation was being passed at a faster rate than the federal legislation. She now hopes that the P. E. I. bill will provide enough evidence to pressure the Senate into quickly passing Bill C-337, and finally sending it to committee.

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Toronto Blows Past Winnipeg For Highest Homicide Rate In Canada

It's been a violent year.

Toronto has the highest homicide rate out of Canada's largest cities according to Statistics Canada’s report “Homicide in Canada, 2017”. There were 92 victims of homicide in 2017. The rate of homicide for the entire country in 2017 was 1.8 deaths for every 100,000 people. In comparison, Toronto’s homicide rate for the same year was 3.3. So far this year, there were 91 homicide victims in Toronto, which means that they will probably set a new record. A sociology professor at the University of Toronto analyzed that the higher rate is largely due to unregistered guns, especially firearms accessible for people in vulnerable situations. 

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The Safe Food for Canadians Regulations: Advancing Food Safety

Under the framework Responding to Today, Building for the Future, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency moves food safety forward.

In June 2018, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) published the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR), which will replace the current 14 sets of regulations with a single set of modern regulations. The SFCR were carefully developed and supported with the help of extensive consultations with food businesses, food experts, average Canadians, and foreign partners. The SFCR will make Canada’s food regulatory system safer, more agile, more transparent and more responsive by removing unsafe food from the marketplace. The SFCR will come into force on January 15, 2019.  

The new regulations will make changes to grades and standards. Also, they will require food businesses, including food importers and exporters, to have licenses, to maintain traceable records for more efficient and effective recalls and investigations, and to demonstrate that the food is manufactured, prepared, stored, packaged, and labeled under conditions that provide the same level of protection as the SFCR.

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Justice and Public Safety Ministers advance shared priorities in St. John's

ST. JOHN'S, Nov. 16, 2018 /CNW/ - Today, federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) ministers concluded two days of...

On November 16, 2018, federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) ministers gathered in St. John's in NF and prioritized justice and public safety issues: modernizing the criminal justice system, prioritizing public safety and police work, constructing new legal frameworks for cannabis and impaired driving, solving the issue of Indigenous overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, improving the family justice system, and others.

Ministers expressed their support for Bill C-75, and their backing for the restorative justice techniques in hopes of creating a modern criminal justice system. They also discussed federal engagement on gun and gang violence that are parts of Bill C-71 as well as the new federal funding to improve Indigenous policing facilities in First Nation and Inuit communities. Later on, the topic of the Cannabis Act and impaired driving were discussed and, in particular, how cannabis must be regulated for youth to avoid impaired driving. Regarding family law reform, Ministers supported Bill C-78, which aims to address family violence, contribute to poverty reduction efforts and improve access to the family justice system.