Category Archives: Canadian Austerity

Federal programs and research facilities that have been shut down or had their funding reduced

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THE FIFTH ESTATE Friday January 10, 2014 in Science and Technology

Hundreds of federal programs and world renowned research facilities have been shut down or had their funding reduced by the federal government. This list was compiled by the Canadian Association of University Teachers and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. If you are a federal government scientist or researcher and your program, project, or research facility has been affected by the cuts we would like to hear from you, please comment below or send us an email at fifth@cbc.ca

  • Environmental Emergency Response Program
  • Urban Wastewater Program
  • Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Smokestacks Emissions Monitoring Team
  • Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission
  • National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy
  • Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, Winnipeg Office
  • Municipal Water and Wastewater Survey
  • Environmental Protection Operations
  • Compliance Promotion Program
  • Action Plan on Clean Water
  • Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) (PEARL lost its $1.5 million annual budget when the government stopped funding the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science (CFCAS) . In May 2013, the federal government announced the facility would get a $ 1 million a year grant for the next five years. But according to Professor Tom Duck, of Dalhousie University, with the loss of CFCAS, atmospheric and climate research will be funded at less than 70 per cent of the level it was funded at in 2006.)
  • Sustainable Water Management Division
  • Environmental Effects Monitoring Program
  • Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan
  • Chemicals Management Plan
  • Canadian Centre for Inland Waters
  • Clean Air Agenda
  • Air Quality Health Index
  • Species at Risk Program
  • Weather and Environmental Services
  • Substance and Waste Management
  • Ocean Contaminants & Marine Toxicology Program
  • Experimental Lakes Area (Under the Bill-38 the ELA was shut down. As of January 2014, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Ontario government are working out an agreement with the federal government to take over the facility.)
  • DFO Marine Science Libraries
  • Centre for Offshore Oil & Gas Energy Research
  • Kitsilano Coast Guard Station
  • St. Johns Marine Traffic Centre
  • St. Anthony’s Marine Traffic Centre
  • Conservation and Protection Office
  • Conservation and Protection Office (L’anse au Loup, NL)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Trepassey, NL)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Rigolet, NL)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Burgeo, NL)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Arnold’s Cove, NL)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Baddeck, NS)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Canso, NS)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Sheet Harbour, NS)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Woodstock, NB)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Port Hood, NS)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Wallace, NS)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Kedgwick, NB)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Montague, PEI)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Inuvik, NT)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Rankin Inlet, NU)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Clearwater, BC)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Comox, BC)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Hazelton, BC)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Quesnel, BC)
  • Conservation and Protection Office (Pender Harbour, BC)
  • Atlantic Lobster Sustainability Measures Program
  • Species-at-Risk Program
  • Habitat Management Program
  • DFO Institute of Ocean Sciences (Sidney, BC)
  • Freshwater Institute – Winnipeg
  • Oil Spill Counter-Measures Team
  • Maurice-Lamontagne Institute’s French language library
  • Canadian Coast Guard Management
  • Water Pollution Research Lab (Sidney, BC)
  • Water Pollution Research Lab (Winnipeg, MB)
  • Water Pollution Research Lab (Burlington, ON)
  • Water Pollution Research Lab (Mont-Joli, QC)
  • Water Pollution Research Lab (Moncton, NB)
  • Water Pollution Research Lab (Dartmouth, NS)
  • St. Andrew Biological Station
  • Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility
  • Ice Information Partnership
  • Motor Vehicle Fleet
  • Inshore Rescue Boat Program
  • Species at Risk Atlantic Salmon Production Facilities
  • Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization
  • At-Sean Observer Programs
  • Financial Management Services
  • Pacific Forestry Centre, Satellite Office (Prince George, BC)
  • Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing
  • Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program
  • Isotopes Supply Initiative
  • Clean Energy Fund
  • Sustainable Development Technology Canada – Next Generation Biofuels Fund
  • Program of Energy Research and Development
  • Pacific Forestry Centre
  • Astronomy Interpretation Centre – Centre of the Universe
  • MRI research, Institute Biodiagnostics
  • Polar Continental Shelf Progam
  • Canadian Neutron Beam Centre
  • Aquatic Ecotoxicology, Aquatic and Crop Resource Development
  • Molecular Biochemistry Laboratory, Aquatic and Crop Resource Development
  • Plant Metabolism Research, Aquatic and Crop Resource Development
  • Human Health Therapeutics research program
  • Automotive and Surface Transportation program
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research
  • Environmental Risks to Health program
  • Substance Use and Abuse program
  • First Nations and Inuit Primary Health Care program
  • Health Infrastructure Support for First Nations and Inuit program
  • Interim Federal Health Program
  • Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration
  • Environmental Knowledge, Technology, Information, and Measurement program
  • Science, Innovation and Adoption program
  • Rural and Co-operatives Development program
  • Farm Debt Mediation Service
  • Centre for Plant Health (Sidney, BC)
  • National Aboriginal Health Organization
  • First Nations Statistical Institute
  • Cultural Connections for Aboriginal Youth
  • First Nations and Inuit Health
  • Fertilizer Pre-Market Efficacy Assessment program
  • Enforcement of Product of Canada label
  • RADARSAT Constellation Mission
  • Whapmagoostui-Kuujjuarapik Research station
  • Kluane Lake Research Station
  • Bamfield Marine Science Centre
  • Microfungal Collection and Herborium
  • Biogeoscience Institute
  • Coriolis II research Vessel
  • OIE Laboratory for Infectious Salmon Anaemia
  • Canadian Phycological Culture Centre
  • Brockhouse Institute
  • Polaris Portable Observatories for Lithospheric Analysis and Research
  • Mount Megantic Observatory
  • Smoke Stacks Emissions Monitoring Team
  • National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy
  • Environmental Protections Operations Compliant Promotion Program,
  • Sustainable Water Management Division,
  • Environmental Effects Monitoring program,
  • Fresh Water Institute
  • Canadian Centre for Inlands Waters (Burlington)
  • World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre
  • Environmental Emergencies Program
  • Parks Canada
  • Montreal Biosphere
  • Statistics Canada
  • Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
  • Laboratory for the Analysis of Natural and Synthetic Environmental Toxicants
  • National Ultrahigh-field NMR Facility for Solids
  • IsoTrace AMS Facility
  • Canadian Phycological Culture Centre
  • Canadian Resource Centre for Zebrafish Genetics
  • Neuroendocrinology Assay Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario
  • Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding
  • Portable Observatories for Lithospheric Analysis and Research Investigating (POLARIS) (Ontario)
  • Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
  • Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research
  • St. John’s Centrifuge Modelling Facility
  • Quebec/Eastern Canada high field NMR facility
  • Félix d’Hérelle Reference Center for Bacterial Viruses
  • Canadian Neutron Beam Laboratory
  • The Compute/Calcul Canada
  • Center for Innovative Geochronology
  • Biogeoscience Institute
  • Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences
  • Pacific Northwest Consortium Synchrotron Radiation Facility
  • Centre for Molecular and Materials Science at TRIUMF
  • Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research
  • Canadian Cosmogenic Nuclide Exposure Dating Facility
  • Atlantic Regional Facilities for Materials Characterization
  • The Canadian SuperDARN/PolarDARN facility

It ain’t easy to spin dismal job numbers

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The Conservative government relied on a familiar refrain to try to spin its way out of Friday’s awful jobs report released by Statistics Canada.

First, the facts:
  • Over the past year, “one full-time job was added for every four part-time jobs.”
Second, the analysis from Bay Street:
  • “Scotiabank note calls jobs numbers a shocker, weakest job growth by far since the recession.”
  • “Disappointment across the board,” said Mark Chandler, head of fixed income and currency strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
  • “That full-time employment growth is nearly flat in the past year while part-time job growth is up 2.5 per cent ‘indicates that businesses are not eager to expand payrolls,'” said Arlene Kish, senior principal economist at IHS Global Insight.
Third, a recap of past Conservative spin:

Whenever faced with bad economic news, the Conservatives claim that Canada leads the G-7 in jobs and economic growth since the recession. They make this misleading statement by using selective statistics.

When population growth and purchasing power are taken into account to get the complete picture, Canada falls behind G-7 countries Germany, Japan and the United States. That’s fourth place (out of 7!).

Fouth, the go-to spin:

Watch Industry Minister James Moore try to spin the bad news using the “Yah, but we’re still #1” discredited stat.

Public sector employee protections watered down under bill C-4

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Monday, 11 November 2013 08:00 | Written By Barry Goldman and Matthew Scott

On Oct. 22, the government of Canada introduced bill C-4, a massive piece of omnibus budget legislation containing reforms and amendments to many existing laws.

The amendments affect a number of laws, including the Public Service Labour Relations Act.

The bill C-4 amendments to the act would remove many labour rights public service employees are entitled to under current legislation. Sweeping reforms to the definition of essential services, the mandate of the Public Service Labour Relations Board, the right to strike by public servants, and the financial nature of the arbitral and conciliation awards the board may grant would, among other things, effectively neuter the bargaining rights of the affected members of the public sector.

The opening volley on bargaining rights is a subtle change to the mandate of the board under s. 13 of the act. Previously, the board had a mandate to provide “adjudication services, mediation services, and compensation analysis and research services” in accordance with the act. But the amendments in s. 295 of bill C-4 dispense with the compensation analysis and research services powers of the board. That means the board could now only provide adjudication and mediation services. The change foreshadows amendments that will dramatically modify the board’s powers with respect to arbitral and conciliation awards.

The amendments to the act redefine essential services as being “a service, facility or activity of the government of Canada that has been determined under subsection 119(1) to be essential.” Under the old language of Division 8 of the act, the employer had only the exclusive right to determine the level at which an essential service could be provided. The employer and employees had to co-operate to determine which employees were affected and then enter into an essential services agreement. Failure to agree would result in intervention by the board.

The new language under s. 305 of bill C-4 would give employers the exclusive right to determine if a service, facility, or activity is essential “because it is or will be necessary for the safety or security of the public.” It would also give employers “the exclusive right to designate the positions in a bargaining unit that include duties that, in whole or in part, are or will be necessary for the employer to provide essential services, and the employer may exercise that right at any time.”

These changes would most certainly reduce the ability of federal public servants to strike. Bill C-4 also amends the process for dispute resolution under the act. It says bargaining units in which 80 per cent or more of the employees are designated as essential may not strike and must resolve their disputes through arbitration. Furthermore, bill C-4 would bolster s. 194(2) of the act that prohibits an employee organization such as a union from declaring or authorizing a strike, the effect of which would be to involve the participation of employees designated as essential by the employer.

Also, under bill C-4, no officer or representative of an employee organization would be able to counsel or procure the declaration or authorization of a strike with respect to an essential bargaining unit or counsel or procure the participation of those employees in a strike. Given that an employer would be able to designate employees as essential at any time, the change could very well make it significantly more difficult for employee organizations to secure strike votes in the future.

After having restricted the ability of employee organizations to engage in concerted labour action, the amendments would also rewrite the rules involving arbitrations and conciliations before the board. Before, under s. 148 of the act, the board had a broad spectrum of factors to consider in making an arbitral award as well as the ability to look at any other factors it deemed relevant. The new amendments strip the board of these broad powers.

Now the considerations take the form of preponderant and other factors. The term preponderant factors contains new elements, including consideration of whether the compensation levels are a “prudent use of public funds” and “Canada’s fiscal circumstances relative to its stated budgetary policies.” Likewise, the term “other factors” is a category to which many of the former considerations under the current act have been relegated. There have also been similar amendments to the conciliation provisions set out in the new s. 175 of the act.

And bill C-4 goes even further. If passed, it would allow the chairperson, either by fiat or on the application of either of the parties, to direct the board to review the matter if, in the chairperson’s opinion, the decision does not represent a reasonable application of the s. 148 factors highlighted above. This new mechanism can force the board to reconsider decisions it could have made, without internal review, under the current act where it has considered the s. 148 factors but failed to do so in a “reasonable” manner.

There’s no doubt bill C-4 will have an impact on federal public servants. Although the act was not a perfect piece of legislation regarding the collective bargaining rights of federal public servants, it did afford reasonable protections. The amendments incorporated within bill C-4 have definitely watered down employee powers and protections and, in the process, effectively removed many of those rights.

Barry Goldman is a partner at Shibley Righton LLP and a member of its labour and employment law group. Matthew Scott is a litigation associate in the firm’s Toronto office and is also a member of its labour and employment law group.

Scrap proposed changes to federal labour legislation in Bill C-4.

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Less than a week after reconvening Parliament, the Conservative government introduced Bill C-4, an omnibus budget bill that proposes to radically change our rights as federal public sector workers, and, by extension, is an attack against the rights of all Canadian workers.

Bill C-4 takes away the democratic rights of federal public sector employees and seriously undermines the health and safety protections in the Canada Labour Code covering workers under federal jurisdiction.

Bill C-4 is all about making it easier for the government and Treasury Board to come after federal government workers in the next round of bargaining and to strip away our long-standing negotiated rights.

Bill C-4 proposes amendments to federal labour laws that will not modernize the public sector. Rather, they are regressive and set back rights 30 years.

Bill C-4 is past second reading in Parliament and has been referred to the committee stage.

Please take action now. Email your MP and ask them to oppose these unfair and radical changes to labour legislation that affects Canadian workers.

http://psacbc.com/bargaining/email/scrap-proposed-changes-federal-labour-legislation-bill-c-4

Turning Back the Clock 50 Years: Bill C-4 and federal workers

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Larry RousseauLarry Rousseau Regional Executive Vice President, Public Service Alliance of Canada

Posted: 11/23/2013 7:39 am    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca

Stuffed into the 309-page Conservative budget implementation act, Bill C-4, that was tabled last month, are a slew of drastic changes to the federal labour relations system, which will affect the health and safety provisions, human rights protections, and collective bargaining rights of federal workers. As its number suggests, Bill C-4 is truly explosive.

On the health and safety front, the government is changing the Canada Labour Code to limit the rights of workers to refuse unsafe work, and also doing away with independent health and safety officers, relegating their responsibilities to political appointees of “the Minister.”

Meanwhile, another part of the bill will alter the Public Service Labour Relations Act (PSRLA) to prevent federal public service workers from accessing the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal over workplace discrimination complaints. Workers facing discrimination will instead have to file their complaint directly with their employer, which would have the power to promptly dismiss it for “being trivial, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith.”

Bill C-4 also guts public service collective bargaining by further modifying the PSLRA to allow the government to unilaterally determine which workers are essential and therefore forbidden from striking, without recourse to third party review. (At present, when the government and the union disagree on who is essential, either party can refer the matter to the Public Service Labour Relations Board, which ensures that neither side can exaggerate their assessment of who is essential or non-essential, a sensible system that has worked well over the years.)

Furthermore, Bill C-4 denies unions the right to refer a dispute to arbitration, unless more than 80% of workers are deemed essential. This means that the government would be able to declare 79% of workers in a bargaining group as essential, deny arbitration, and then force the remaining 21% minority to strike, in a classic attempt to divide and conquer workers in a given bargaining unit.
Arnold Heeney, the renowned Canadian diplomat and civil servant who led the Preparatory Committee on Collective Bargaining in the Public Service way back in 1963, noted in his memoirs that prior to free collective bargaining “there was great and growing dissatisfaction among government employees generally with the arbitrary and paternalistic system which continued to prevail…” As a consequence of this dissatisfaction and the stunning 1965 wildcat strike by postal workers, the government under Lester B. Pearson was forced to pass in 1967 the Public Service Staff Relations Act, which first codified the right to free collective bargaining as well as the right of public service unions to choose between strikes and third party arbitration to resolve disputes. And as Heeney further observed, though a number of politicians and labour leaders at the time predicted an explosion in the frequency of strikes, “the majority of civil servants chose the former route” of arbitration to resolve their disputes with government.

Indeed, the historical record has shown that major public service strikes have remained rather infrequent, but that the right of recourse to a strike has been critical to balancing the overwhelming power held by the government over public service workers. After all, the government not only has inherent power as the employer, it also has the power to set the rules of the game through legislation.

Yet today, we find ourselves with a government intent on turning back the clock almost 50 years by attempting to rig the labour relations playing field to the point where public service workers will be thrown back to that “arbitrary and paternalistic system” Heeney wrote about. And it would seem, of course, that the government couldn’t care less that the proposed changes to the PSLRA will effectively undermine the right to free collective bargaining under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2007.

Together, the dangerous, undemocratic and retrograde changes contained in Bill C-4 will directly impact some 800,000 Canadian workers subject to the Canada Labour Code in industries as diverse as rail, air, broadcasting, telecommunications and fisheries, in addition to well over 200,000 federal public service workers who fall under the PSLRA–approximately a million people in total.

Yet, the Conservatives have moved to limit debate in Parliament in an attempt to ram the bill through in the next couple of weeks. In fact, it has now emerged that labour changes in the bill were drafted secretly, without consulting law professors or labour-management experts (and certainly without consulting any of the unions representing federal workers).

It’s hard to imagine a reason for the callous health and safety changes, which needlessly endanger workers, but it’s clearly evident why the Conservatives are frustrating the collective bargaining process currently spelled out in the PSLRA.

Led by Treasury Board President Tony Clement, they have spent the last two years repeatedly attacking the pay and benefits of federal public service workers, claiming that these are out of line with the private sector. They say these workers, who deliver important quality public services like Old Age Security and food inspection to Canadians, are paid too much, but ignore that the Parliamentary Budget Officer recently reported that in the last decade–the latter part of which was shaped by the Conservative agenda–wages of federal workers have mostly just kept up with inflation. They also absurdly claim at every opportunity that federal public service workers take over 18 days of sick leave each year, again ignoring research from Statistics Canada demonstrating that this is simply not true.

The repetition of such claims–false as they are–serves the goal of creating a political atmosphere conducive to squeezing out from federal public service workers non-monetary benefits they negotiated over previous decades, often in lieu of their requests for raises that were said to be unaffordable, and therefore rejected, in the context of deficits during the Mulroney years, followed by pressures of debt repayment during the Chrétien years.

We’ve been down this road before. Just this past year, the government repeatedly overreached and tried to undermine free collective bargaining with public service workers only to be forced back to the table following action by unions. It did it with technical inspectors, whose many bargaining positions were later validated by a Public Interest Commission. It did it with foreign service officers, who then won a bad faith bargaining decision. And it did it with border services officers, who also won a court injunction against a forced vote. Bill C-4 undoubtedly presents an unprecedented assault on workers and the middle class, aimed at rewriting the very rules of the game. However, one at a time, the abusive sections of this law will be defeated.

Follow Larry Rousseau on Twitter: www.twitter.com/larryrousseau