And now back to Montreal

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/02/14/director-general-disputes_n_2691353.html

Director general disputes report on Montreal's hiring practices

CBC  |  Posted: 02/14/2013 10:03 pm EST  |  Updated: 02/15/2013 7:46 am EST

Montreal's director general is pointing the finger at the Montreal Public Service Commission after it leaked a report about the city's hiring practices.

The report, written by the commission that audits the city's hiring practices, was leaked to daily French newspaper La Presse.

The report says one-third of managers hired in Montreal last year were hired "arbitrarily" without the jobs being properly posted.

Lots happening at the federal level too.

http://fairwhistleblower.ca/content/fantino-refers-potential-conflict-interest-case-watchdog

Fantino Refers Potential Conflict Of Interest Case To Watchdog

Topics: 

CORRUPTION, CIDA

Rating: 

0

CBC News – February 14, 2013

International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino has referred a potential conflict of interest case to the public sector integrity commissioner.

A former executive with the Canadian International Development Agency who was at the centre of a recent whistleblower watchdog report went on to go work on a CIDA-funded project after he left the agency, according to a French media newspaper report on Thursday.

International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino has referred a potential conflict of interest case to the public sector integrity commissioner, after a former Canadian International Development Agency employee left the agency to work on a CIDA-funded project. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

"It has come to my attention that a former CIDA employee may have been in a conflict of interest," Fantino said in a press release on Thursday.

Naresh Singh, the former CIDA executive, according to the media report, left the agency and went to work for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities as the director in charge of overseeing a new $23.2-million CIDA-funded project. But he resigned from his post at the FCM on Monday, after media tried to reach him for an interview.

And the Beat Goes On.

http://www.vigile.net/Operation-Diligence-la-commission This article from La Presse by KATHLEEN LÉVESQUE explains how a police wiretap operation around 2007 called operation Diligence was used by the Charbonneau Commission. Some of the wiretaps were used last week to convince the contractor Giuseppe (Joe) Borsellino, owner of Garnier Construction to testify about what he knew. The wiretaps led Diligence to investigate former Liberal cabinet minister Tony Tomassi, Tony Accurso, the former treasurer of the FTQ Construction union, Brandone Eddy, associated with the former Liberal Premier Jean Charest. Shortly after a meeting of Eddy and Charest, the police were ordered to end investigations of the whole matter according to a CBC report. The Commission questioned Borsellino, about Tony Accurso's attempts to influence investment decisions of the FTQ Investment Fund, as well as contractor negotiations with the former director general of the FTQ Construction Union, Jocelyn Dupuis, who used his inside knowledge of the FTQ to try to arrange certain labour agreements. The Commission is supposedly politically independant but when push comes to shove, when politicians, developers, unions, contractors, investement funds, law firms, engineering firms, banks and Caisse Populaires, and finally several police forces are all being seriously looked at, are we going to ever discover the whole story? Especially when Mr. Charest named Louis Dionne and Yves Paradis , previously members of the Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales, DPCP, as judges in 2011, possibly to prevent them from testifying at the Commission.

This post somehow disappeared from my blog, so here goes again. It's worth the read. Bonjour M. Yeatman, J'aime bien votre traduction. L'anglais n'est pas ma langue maternelle, mais je m'y retrouve très bien. Bravo Pierre Simard The Fright Industry in Crisis. Pierre Simard, Ph.D. Professeur École nationale d'administration publique Abused, people are sceptical of politicians and experts who present catastrophic scenarios. Fright is the business plan of many government and interest groups. We no longer manage risk: the slighest threat becomes a looming disaster. We've even invented a method to manage these threats, the precautionary principle. Recently, in the last 20 years, the threats of planetary catastrophes just keep on appearing. But after the Y2K bug, bird flu, swine flu, global warming, and finally the A(H1N1) flu, the growing Fright Industry is going through an unprecedented crisis. Until recently, the Fright Industry has achieved an immense success. Other than the financial benefits generated for various firms, it has enabled these <> politicians to control and manipulate their citizens, nonwithstanding limiting their freedom. The strategy is simple: they rely on certain chosen public analysts who flood us with information.They're betting that it's rational for individuals to repeat their ideas or opinions to others. Because it's difficult to stay well informed and properly research facts, people generally rely on the media for the truth. The fact that a story appears on TV or makes it to print adds a measure of truth to it. To contradict or challenge this is both difficult and risky. Instead of critisizing a news item, people, not wanting to seem misinformed, prefer to adopt the argument that has been offered to them as objective reporting. But, eventually, people have realized one thing: if the media are especially effective in broadcasting the next catasrophy, they are generally incompetent when it comes to reporting on scientific issues. They've too often been used by alarmists to deliver their messages of doom. Abused, people are now skeptical of politicians and groups of experts who present catastrophic scenarios that defy reason. Almost everywhere around the world, opinion surveys released by various groups such as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the World Health Organization are showing that the confidence people have in studies is losing ground. The last vaccination campaign against the A(H1N1) flu has clearly demonstrated the decline. In most European countries, the vaccination rate has been around 10% even though in our 'Distinct' Québec, it reached 57%. Eventually the certain disaster did not occur. There've been around 15,000 deaths around the world attributed to this flu whereas the normal seasonal flu causes from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths annually. Today both the WHO and the IPCC will have to respond to their critics. The WHO will have to appear before the European Commission for having created, in concert with the pharmaceutical industry, a false alarm concerning a pandemic. The IPCC is still suffering from the revelations of Climatgate. It's still trying to defend it's alarmist predictions about the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers, the Amazonian forest, and the retreating ice fields of Mt. Kilimanjaro. To summarize, the Fright Industry is in crisis. Having to justify their positions, these industry giants have slowed their predictions of certain disasters. Nevertheless, another threat, just as real, is just on the horizon. The thought that our governments could unite to put a 'safety net' around this industry makes me very uncomfortable. This gallant crusade led by premier Charest and his environment minister, Line Beauchamp, is quite simply terrifying. The Fright Industry in Crisis. Pierre Simard, Ph.D. Professeur École nationale d'administration publique Abused, people are skeptical of politicians and experts who present catastrophic scenarios. Fright is the business plan of many government and interest groups. We no longer manage risk: the slighest threat becomes a looming disaster. We've even invented a method to manage these threats, the precautionary principle. Recently, in the last 20 years, the threats of planetary catastrophes just keep on appearing. But after the Y2K bug, bird flu, swine flu, global warming, and finally the A(H1N1) flu, the growing Fright Industry is going through an unprecedented crisis. Until recently, the Fright Industry has achieved an immense success. Other than the financial benefits generated for various firms, it has enabled these <> politicians to control and manipulate their citizens, notwithstanding limiting their freedom. The strategy is simple: they rely on certain chosen public analysts who flood us with information.They're betting that it's rational for individuals to repeat their ideas or opinions to others. Because it's difficult to stay well informed and properly research facts, people generally rely on the media for the truth. The fact that a story appears on TV or makes it to print adds a measure of truth to it. To contradict or challenge this is both difficult and risky. Instead of critisizing a news item, people, not wanting to seem misinformed, prefer to adopt the argument that has been offered to them as objective reporting. But, eventually, people have realized one thing: if the media are especially effective in broadcasting the next catastrophe, they are generally incompetent when it comes to reporting on scientific issues. They've too often been used by alarmists to deliver their messages of doom. Abused, people are now skeptical of politicians and groups of experts who present catastrophic scenarios that defy reason. Almost everywhere around the world, opinion surveys released by various groups such as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the World Health Organization are showing that the confidence people have in studies is losing ground. The last vaccination campaign against the A(H1N1) flu has clearly demonstrated the decline. In most European countries, the vaccination rate has been around 10% even though in our 'Distinct' Québec, it reached 57%. Eventually the certain disaster did not occur. There've been around 15,000 deaths around the world attributed to this flu whereas the normal seasonal flu causes from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths annually. Today both the WHO and the IPCC will have to respond to their critics. The WHO will have to appear before the European Commission for having created, in concert with the pharmaceutical industry, a false alarm concerning a pandemic. The IPCC is still suffering from the revelations of Climatgate. It's still trying to defend it's alarmist predictions about the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers, the Amazonian forest, and the retreating ice fields of Mt. Kilimanjaro. To summarize, the Fright Industry is in crisis. Having to justify their positions, these industry giants have slowed their predictions of certain disasters. Nevertheless, another threat, just as real, is just on the horizon. The thought that our governments could unite to put a 'safety net' around this industry makes me very uncomfortable. This gallant crusade led by premier Charest and his environment minister, Line Beauchamp, is quite simply terrifying. Not translated by Google as you might observe but by me, T. Yeatman. -- Pierre Simard, Ph.D. Professeur École nationale d'administration publique Visitez aussi mon blog: pierresimard.blogspot.com

Judges in Quebec

From the Montreal Gazette

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Appeals+Court+judge+pulled+Hells+case/2965759/story.html

MONTREAL - A judge of the Quebec Court of Appeal has been pulled off a case involving the Hells Angels because he once represented the biker gang as a lawyer.

Radio-Canada reported Thursday that Quebec’s chief justice, Michel Robert, made the decision to remove Quebec Court of Appeal Judge Jacques Léger after learning he advised the Hells in a case involving the gang’s trademarks before being appointed to the higher court in 2006.

Léger was scheduled to preside over a bail hearing next Tuesday of four Hells charged with murder. Léger had not informed the chief magistrate of his past or decided himself, as per the tradition, to decline to hear the case.

'Arrogant' BAT tried to remove a judge

From The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jan/03/bat-tried-to-remove-judge

British American Tobacco, one of the UK's most powerful companies, has been accused of "breathtaking arrogance" after one of its subsidiaries pushed for the removal of a judge hearing a cancer compensation lawsuit being brought against it.

The company, which each year produces 715 billion cigarettes in 41 countries and employs more than 50,000 people, claimed an Australian judge, Jim Curtis, would not have "an impartial and unprejudiced mind'' over the case brought by Claudia Jean Laurie, the widow of a smoker.

The company, which last year made global profits of almost £2.7bn, said this was because in a separate case in 2006 Curtis had branded BAT Australia "dishonest" for its role in the destruction of documents relating to the potentially harmful effects of its products.

Curtis said the company destroyed documents in anticipation of legal action and "dishonestly concealed this purpose by pretence of a rational non-selective housekeeping policy".

A former senior BAT executive, Fred Gulson, admitted the purpose of the policy was "to get rid of all the sensitive documents… under the guise of an innocent housekeeping arrangement".

Global Partners are Springing Up

Hopefully these gentlewomen and men will start the ball rolling.

http://www.c5-online.com/AntiCorruptionDEU.htm 

TI welcomes new EU mandate to fight corruption 
Berlin/Brussels, 15 December 2009

Transparency International (TI), the global coalition against corruption, welcomes the inclusion of an anti-corruption stipulation in the next 5-year plan for the European Union’s Justice and Home Affairs (Stockholm Programme), and calls on the EU to include concrete anti-corruption measures for EU member states in the post-Stockholm action plan.

The Stockholm Programme is a plan whose implementation will -among other home affairs areas- define EU action to evaluate and fight corruption, including crucial areas affecting the security of EU citizens such as police and customs cooperation, rescue services, criminal and civil law cooperation. The post-Stockholm action plan, to be adopted in June 2010, must include concrete anti-corruption requirements for EU member states to comply with.