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Justin's daddy took Canada from debt free to where we now owe hundreds of billions on our national debt.

That Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau who was prime minister of Canada in the 1970s-ish. That's also plain false. World War II and "the Great War" created Canada's national debt, just like nearly every other western country.

He gave government employees the right to strike. Now we are constantly being blackmailed into giving raises far above industry standards.

During Trudeau's tenure as PM, the federal public employees won the fight utilize freedom to association (the basis for forming a union) in federal court. Not given to them by anyone. Unless you think politicians should restrict who is allowed to get together to form a corporation (an association for profit), why should the government have the right to treat its employees any differently than other employees? Save for the exemptions for RCMP officers and Canadian Forces (solders) by the courts.

Given how many facts you have been mistaken about so far, your view doesn't hold much sway with me.

Bollocks regard above industry standards for pay. I make ~20% less than private sector equivalent, get a benefit packages that is worst than the last 50-person company I worked for in the private sector, and I have to listen people constant lie and repeat untruths about my compensation. Go to Treasuary Board Secretariat of Canada's website and look for yourself at my pay and benefits.

He forced an unneeded charter of rights on the population with no plebiscite and with no private property protections in it. Like a good Commie.

Are you some self-delusional totalitarian? Communists government (even the better ones) never granted powers or rights to its people. Only socialist countries gave rights of individuals over the nation state (or monarch).

Private property protection? That has a long and complex history in English common law, dating to at least the 14th century (from memory). The Canadian Charter of Rights grants rights to people not grant either property rights to people or rights to property. It also doesn't mention dolphins.

And forced it on one province which ever since has threatened to secede.

The English-French divide has been a part of the Canadian landscape centuries before Confederation. That was just another piece they latched onto. Like the Meech Lake accord, NAFTA, GST, and hundreds of other things before and since them.

The previous posters reference CBC Canada which is a Liberal lacky and should be abolished.

Why would a Crown corporation have a Liberal (party) bias under how many years now of a Conservative (party). government?

Because frankly if you know any media history you will know that media bias and claims thereof have been around as long as media itself.

I have dealt with them and they always slant the news to the point that I NEVER trust them to report truthfully.

And I have repeatedly found that media in multiple countries, both private and state sponsored all display bias and often make minor to significant mistakes in their reporting. So unless you want to tell me that the Daily Mail (UK) is a balanced political point of view, in which case I would suggest reading World Weekly News.

Obviously all these negative comments are from brainless socialists

Because to disagree with you would require someone not merely differ in opinion or political leanings, but they are clearly mentally impaired? Get over yourself.

and union bosses who bleed the rest of us dry.

Why? Because unions bosses are bad and corporation bosses are good?

Any good boss will try to maximize the benefits to those whom they represent, for-profit or not-for-profit.

English is the worldwide official language for commercial airline pilots, not cab drivers.

Nope. Both English and French are official languages for commercial airline pilots and air traffic control in Quebec. And ICAO allows the use of both English and the native language of the ground controllers.

Here's the story:

a) "the people" insist the government to scale back on spending, so they do.
b) departments cannot get $$ to build additional storage and so have to scale back holdings
c) the task is passed to the librarians who themselves have been subject to staff cuts. Why? Because a scientific department will cut 'superfluous staff', like librarians, before they cut 'necessary' staff, like scientists.
d) the librarians left have to scan what they must (can't scan it all because of $$/time limits) and dispose of what is deemed valueless
e) the librarians SOLICIT GUIDANCE FROM THE SCIENTISTS as to what should stay and what should go
f) the MAJORITY of scientists PAY NO ATTENTION UNTIL AFTER THE FACT because they are 'too busy for such things as managing archival documents'. The attitude is: they are scientists, not librarians.
g) lacking guidance and under pressure to make room for new arrivals (govt scientists order books and papers like they were free), the librarians make best guesses; and
h) bear the brunt of the abuse when some scientist decides to make an issue of the cull.

Nothing prevented the scientists from particpating in the entire process. Nothing prevented the scientists from scanning the documents themselves and holding them locally. NOTHING except their own APATHY.

The government scientists in Canada are well paid making, within a few years, over $100K/year (see DS 3-4/SE-RES-2 levels which are attained in 5 yrs or on hire and look for ) and who are not held to the publishing demands of even a small university. As public servants, they enjoy the equivalent of tenure upon hiring (very difficult to fire a public servant even during govt cuts). These facts frequently lead to apathy and a sense of privilege. There are some exceptional scientists, and then there are some who play at politics and do little else. That's what this issue is about; it's not about facts, it's about partisanship.

I guess you missed the part about--oh, well, nevermind. Here's a link if you want to file a request.

Consider just these two points:

• 1) look at the article 'sources' ... and bear in mind that government subsidized cbc.ca is hardly a beacon of truth; and
• 2) what major functioning corporation allows the media unfettered access to any of its employees?

In the first case, comments from unions and disgruntled employees in newspapers in affected small towns are exceedingly biased. In the second case, a challenge: pose as a media representative, call up a random someone in any Forbes company, and ask them for an on camera interview. 99.99% chance you will be directed to the company Public Relations Dept. And that is what the Government of Canada is requesting its scientists to do. Period. Hardly muzzling.

The fact is, the Government is behaving like a proper business. They are being accountable and that includes making sure that those in positions of responsibility are aware of what their staff are doing. They have to be accountable. Why? Because the citizens of Canada, and the Opposition parties, stridently insist on it.

Besides, at the pay rates of government scientists, they should be generating a lot more research and spending less time fretting about whether they stroke their egos with a press interview. Do this research: number of papers per year published by a Canadian Defence Scientist @ $120K/yr versus an Assistant Professor at say University of Toronto, U Waterloo, or Memorial University (choose any Uni really, Assist profs are not making $120K/yr). It becomes apparent that having government do science is inefficient and expensive.

As for shutting down research areas: if industry or academia are doing research in an area, the government should rightfully ask why it should be involved as well. The Government shouldn't be participating in science, it should be encouraging industry and academia to pursue it. And it does although, sadly, here in Canada industry and academia don't really do research unless there's government money sent their way.

If someone wants to request the tapes, they could prove interesting. Here's the access to information act form (pdf). Fill it out, include a $5 cheque, and sent it to the CBSA atip coordinator:

Paul Colpitts
Access to Information and Privacy Coordinator
410 Laurier Avenue West, 11th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0L8
Telephone: 613-941-7431
Facsimile: 613-957-6408
ATIP-AIPRP@cbsa-asfc.gc.ca

Did you notice the shift? A couple of years ago they'd just shrug it off,

You mean this?

• Open Source Software, which is part of the "Federated Architecture Program" from Treasury Board of Canada.

Let's see there is a position paper, a FAQ, a list of open source providers (from Industry Canada), and resources from Public Works and Goverment Services resource entitled Software Acquisition Reference Centre.

It may not gather a lot of steam in terms of office desktops, too many MSCE-certified types are employed as Computer System Administrators, called "CS'es" because of the abbreviation of their job classification who are not experienced Linux administrators, but I think areas such as embedded systems, and servers, systems that don't have user's calling a helpdesk for technical support, are likely areas where the adoption over time is possible.

Presently groups tend to be isolated or have insightful, competent management willing to fight to their use Open Source / Free Software within the Government of Canada, but those are rare, internally led experiences, often from smaller, newer teams of people already with appropriate skills.

One side-effect is that if government adopts Open Source Software, it may change their closed culture of treating soft resources as scarce, and actually promote sharing within departments across geographical regions and groups, as well as inter-departmental sharing of resources, which could have a significant impact on reducing spending on custom development. Personally, I think the cultural changes of infusing Open Source could be vastly worth more than the lisense / CALs they would not have to buy.

One example is not accepting binary / executable only deliverables from an private-sector contractor, in an Open Source culture that appears insane and unsafe, but too often currently binary deliverables are used as leverage into a form of black-mail which makes the government department at the mercy of the contractor(s).

Did you notice the shift? A couple of years ago they'd just shrug it off,

You mean this?

• Open Source Software, which is part of the "Federated Architecture Program" from Treasury Board of Canada.

Let's see there is a position paper, a FAQ, a list of open source providers (from Industry Canada), and resources from Public Works and Goverment Services resource entitled Software Acquisition Reference Centre.

It may not gather a lot of steam in terms of office desktops, too many MSCE-certified types are employed as Computer System Administrators, called "CS'es" because of the abbreviation of their job classification who are not experienced Linux administrators, but I think areas such as embedded systems, and servers, systems that don't have user's calling a helpdesk for technical support, are likely areas where the adoption over time is possible.

Presently groups tend to be isolated or have insightful, competent management willing to fight to their use Open Source / Free Software within the Government of Canada, but those are rare, internally led experiences, often from smaller, newer teams of people already with appropriate skills.

One side-effect is that if government adopts Open Source Software, it may change their closed culture of treating soft resources as scarce, and actually promote sharing within departments across geographical regions and groups, as well as inter-departmental sharing of resources, which could have a significant impact on reducing spending on custom development. Personally, I think the cultural changes of infusing Open Source could be vastly worth more than the lisense / CALs they would not have to buy.

One example is not accepting binary / executable only deliverables from an private-sector contractor, in an Open Source culture that appears insane and unsafe, but too often currently binary deliverables are used as leverage into a form of black-mail which makes the government department at the mercy of the contractor(s).

Did you notice the shift? A couple of years ago they'd just shrug it off,

You mean this?

• Open Source Software, which is part of the "Federated Architecture Program" from Treasury Board of Canada.

Let's see there is a position paper, a FAQ, a list of open source providers (from Industry Canada), and resources from Public Works and Goverment Services resource entitled Software Acquisition Reference Centre.

It may not gather a lot of steam in terms of office desktops, too many MSCE-certified types are employed as Computer System Administrators, called "CS'es" because of the abbreviation of their job classification who are not experienced Linux administrators, but I think areas such as embedded systems, and servers, systems that don't have user's calling a helpdesk for technical support, are likely areas where the adoption over time is possible.

Presently groups tend to be isolated or have insightful, competent management willing to fight to their use Open Source / Free Software within the Government of Canada, but those are rare, internally led experiences, often from smaller, newer teams of people already with appropriate skills.

One side-effect is that if government adopts Open Source Software, it may change their closed culture of treating soft resources as scarce, and actually promote sharing within departments across geographical regions and groups, as well as inter-departmental sharing of resources, which could have a significant impact on reducing spending on custom development. Personally, I think the cultural changes of infusing Open Source could be vastly worth more than the lisense / CALs they would not have to buy.

One example is not accepting binary / executable only deliverables from an private-sector contractor, in an Open Source culture that appears insane and unsafe, but too often currently binary deliverables are used as leverage into a form of black-mail which makes the government department at the mercy of the contractor(s).

Did you notice the shift? A couple of years ago they'd just shrug it off,

You mean this?

• Open Source Software, which is part of the "Federated Architecture Program" from Treasury Board of Canada.

Let's see there is a position paper, a FAQ, a list of open source providers (from Industry Canada), and resources from Public Works and Goverment Services resource entitled Software Acquisition Reference Centre.

It may not gather a lot of steam in terms of office desktops, too many MSCE-certified types are employed as Computer System Administrators, called "CS'es" because of the abbreviation of their job classification who are not experienced Linux administrators, but I think areas such as embedded systems, and servers, systems that don't have user's calling a helpdesk for technical support, are likely areas where the adoption over time is possible.

Presently groups tend to be isolated or have insightful, competent management willing to fight to their use Open Source / Free Software within the Government of Canada, but those are rare, internally led experiences, often from smaller, newer teams of people already with appropriate skills.

One side-effect is that if government adopts Open Source Software, it may change their closed culture of treating soft resources as scarce, and actually promote sharing within departments across geographical regions and groups, as well as inter-departmental sharing of resources, which could have a significant impact on reducing spending on custom development. Personally, I think the cultural changes of infusing Open Source could be vastly worth more than the lisense / CALs they would not have to buy.

One example is not accepting binary / executable only deliverables from an private-sector contractor, in an Open Source culture that appears insane and unsafe, but too often currently binary deliverables are used as leverage into a form of black-mail which makes the government department at the mercy of the contractor(s).

And as it happens, the government, or at least parts of it, still use WordPerfect extensively.

Actually I don't know any Canadian federal department that still uses WordPerfect, heck I don't even know if the last version works under Windows XP. That's not to say some underfunded group like Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Parks Canada, or Canadian Wildlife Service doesn't.

Treasury Board and nearly everyone in Ottawa (nation's capital) uses MS Office as a corporate standard.

The department I've associated with uses MS Office nationally, but my small group uses OpenOffice internally. I don't even run MS-Window on my desktop or laptop.

Environment Canada, Department of National Defence, Communications Security Establishment, and I believe the Coast Guard have groups or divisions that use Linux or *BSD (OpenBSD for certain), and tools like KDE, GNOME, Apache, Tomcat, Perl, PHP, GCC, netfilter, pf, OpenSSH, Squid, bind, and plenty of other common open source / Free Software for desktops (think engineering workstatons, not too many office PCs), and servers.

The Government of Canada, has some position papers and related material on Open Source Software available from Treasury Board of Canada, here, also there the Getting Open Source Logic INto Government / aka GOSLING / OISILLON (Options Innovatrices et Synergiques pour l'Introduction du Logiciel Libre dans les Organisations Nationales) which advocates adoption within government.

A somewhat related project (web2.0) is the internal GCpedia (Government of Canada own internal wikipedia), here is the Wikipedia entry.

Requirement: It's also important that it conform to ADA accessibility guidelines. In particular, I'm looking for books or tutorial websites that teach the basics of good graphic design -- how to make it more appealing without losing the ability to communicate effectively.

The http://www.gc.ca/Government of Canada (GoC) has developed a comprehensive set of http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/index-eng.aspguidelines for its web sites which might be of interest to you in light of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

As for graphic content you are best served by hiring a professional with experience communicating in a visual, non-text, medium.

Like many institutions, the Canadian government has their own security initiative: MITS (Management of Information Technology Security). It aims specifically at being proactive at safeguarding information and IT systems. It is mandatory for all systems to be certified before they are put into production. It would appear that MITS compliance doesn't mean the system is hacker proof or that there are no bugs. To be more effective, I hope there will be something added to this policy in order to better test applications and not to simply be a paper exercise. Apparently they were able to address the problem rather quickly.

I've never had any problems with the CRA or MOT (ontario). I use firefox on windows mostly, so maybe it's just a Linux thing. If there is a problem, make sure you complain to them. If you are having trouble then you might want to complain to the Treasure board since they have specific guidelines stating that websites are supposed to be accessible to everybody, regardless of what type of OS or browser they are running. I'm not sure if the MOT has to follow the same guidelines, because they are provincially operated, but the CRA definitely should have a working site in firefox.

What the industry wanted was a DCMA type act in Canada. They didn't get that and they won't get that. Instead they settled for an anti-camcording law.

I hope you know something I don't. With regards to the anti-camcording bill, the head of the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association[2] said it "is really the first step - not only for the movie industry - where the government has shown it will seriously address the whole area of intellectual property theft." Reports are that the government intends to go ahead with a DMCA-style "reform". Bev Oda, one of the two ministers responsible for copyright, has previously said Canada will ratify international treaties, implying that includes the WIPO treaty on which the DMCA is based[1]. The 2007-2008 Report on Plans and Priorities lists "copyright reform" as a priority to which the government has "previously committed". Given the

On the up side, now is not the time to give up: the significant opposition to stronger copyright provisions seems be having an effect. While the RPP's statement on the issue points towards anti-circumvention legislation and a flawed conception of copyright as a simple conflict between creators and consumers (when in fact there are creators on both sides, and citizens and the public interest are directly affected), it avoids committing to any paricular course of action:

even though technological advances open the way for innovation and renewed creativity, they do bring with them challenges for the arts and cultural community and for government, especially in terms of balancing the rights of creators and consumers. . . . Actions: reforming copyright; . . .

I wrote to her in January and received a similarly ambiguous reply: "the Government is continuing to consider the concerns of all Canadians . . . The Government wants to ensure that the rights of Canadian creators are adequately protected by law, and that these rights are balanced with the ability of the public to access works."

[1] I should point out that Canada is under no obligation to ratify the WIPO treaty. Even if we do, the treaty's anti-circumvention provisions don't require all of the excesses of the DMCA:

Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law.

[2] For the most part we don't make Canadian films, we distribute American ones. For the distributors, maximalist intellectual monopoly laws are in their interests even if they inhibit the production of Canadian films.

Proposed Budget Expenditures for the State of California for the year 2004-2005 is 99.144 Billion Dollars (Budget Summary)

In 2003-2004 the Canadian Government budget weighed in at approximately 180.7 Billion Dollars (Expenditures)

Please note that the Canadian Government expenditures do not include provincial or municipal tax revenue.

Nice unsubstantiated claim there...

(speaking as one who is trained to fight fires including the use of installed Halon systems)

Oh, appeal to authority too... good one! Got Documentation(tm)?

• Exposure to 7% halon for 8 hours produces no ill effects.
• Since low concentrations of Halon 1301 are required to extinguish most fires, and as the agent has a low degree of inhalation toxicity in its natural state, it can be successfully used to attack fires quickly in normally occupied areas.
• Halon 1301 ... a medium for extinguishing fires by inhibiting the chemical chain reaction of fuel and oxygen.
• Most authorities agree that the Halon acts as a chain breaker.

The way Halon puts out a fire, quite simply, is to smother it

If that were the case, how does it manage to work in such low concentrations? It shouldn't be any better than flooding the room with CO2, nitrogen, or some other gas that doesn't support combustion. Tell me, what's the minimum concentration of CO2 needed to put out a fire? At least 34%, perhaps? How about Halon 1301? 5% or so.

When the Employer requires an employee to be available on stand-by during off duty hours, an employee shall be compensated at the rate of one-half (1/2) hour for each four (4) hour period or portion thereof for which he has been designated as being on stand-by duty.
...
An employee on stand-by duty who is required to report for work shall be paid, in addition to the stand-by pay, the greater of:
(a) the applicable overtime rate for the time worked;
or
(b) the minimum of three (3) hours' pay at the applicable rate for overtime; except that this minimum shall only apply once during a single period of eight (8) hours' stand-by duty.
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