Regulatory oversight

TSB Calls for Action on Aviation Safety Recommendations

Topics: 
TSB, Transport Canada, Public health & safety, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
0

May 9, 2013

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) released its annual reassessment of responses to Board recommendations. When the TSB identifies serious safety deficiencies during an investigation, it issues recommendations to the regulator or industry, putting a direct spotlight on what needs to be addressed.

Troubled by slow progress, the TSB is now calling on Transport Canada to intensify efforts on a number of outstanding safety recommendations, especially in aviation.

Apotex warned by U.S. to raise quality control standards

Topics: 
Pharmaceutical industry, Public health & safety, Regulatory oversight, Health Canada
Rating: 
0

CBC News – April 26, 2013

Canadian generic drug maker Apotex Inc.'s exports to the United States could be blocked if the company doesn't correct quality control problems, according to a warning letter from a U.S. regulator.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's website includes a warning letter sent to Apotex describing "repeated deficiencies" in quality control, such as ensuring drug products at one of its Toronto-area plant were free of bacterial or fungal contamination.

Stafford Hospital: the scandal that shamed the NHS

Topics: 
UK, Health care, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
2
The following are selected extracts

Laura Donnelly – January 6, 2013

It was the scandal that shamed the NHS. Hundreds of hospital patients died needlessly. In the wards, people lay starving, thirsty and in soiled bedclothes, buzzers droning hopelessly as their cries for help went ignored. Some received the wrong medication; some, none at all.

Over 139 days, the public inquiry into the Stafford hospital scandal has heard testimony from scores of witnesses about how an institution which was supposed to care for the most vulnerable instead became a place of danger.

Review to examine E. coli outbreak, beef recall

Topics: 
Food safety, CFIA, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
3

The Canadian Press – February 9, 2013

The federal government has launched a review of the E. coli outbreak last fall that sickened 18 people and led to the largest beef recall in Canadian history.

The review is to focus on what contributed to the outbreak of the potentially deadly bacteria at the XL Foods Inc. plant in Brooks, Alta. It will also look at how well the Canadian Food Inspection Agency performed, including why tainted meat was distributed to retailers and sold to consumers.

Silence on the slaughterhouse floor

Topics: 
Food safety, Workplace conditions, Public health & safety, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
4
The following are selected extracts

Jean Lian – January 10, 2013

The recent meat recall at XL Foods Inc. in Brooks, Alberta is not wanting in superlatives. It is one of the most massive meat recalls in Canadian history involving one of the country’s largest beef packing plants that processes more than 4,000 head of cattle a day.

Meat tainted with E. coli sickened a four-year-old boy and numerous others, resulting in the facility being shut down for a month and thousands of workers laid off.

Speculation and Criminal Manipulation of Food and Commodities Prices

Topics: 
Food industry, Financial industry, Corruption, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
3
Michael Greenberger

In an interview with the Real News Network's Paul Jay, Professor Michael Greenberger claims that weak regulations on speculators swamping markets and lack of enforcement of existing laws on criminal intent, are driving up prices.

Greenberger is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, where he teaches a course entitled "Futures, Options and Derivatives." Professor Greenberger serves as the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.

Canada's Petro Lobbyists Grow Faster than Pipelines

Topics: 
Oil & gas industry, Environment, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
3

Nation's lobbying laws among the weakest, energy industry gets top access

Andrew Nikiforuk – December 5, 2012

Polaris Institute report calls for public inquiry into how oil money is distorting Canada's democracy. Image via Shutterstock.Oil and pipeline companies, including seven of the world's largest corporations, have intensified their lobbying efforts in Ottawa over the last four years and held 2,733 meetings with public officials.

These lobbying efforts directed by 27 energy companies and eight industry associations appear to have resulted in dramatic public policy changes such as the gutting of specific environmental legislation.

How Alberta became a wild west for small investors

Topics: 
Alberta, Financial industry, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
3
The following are selected extracts

Nearly $2 billion lost. As many as 20 troubled or bankrupt companies. Tamsin McMahon looks at how Alberta regulators failed to guard against the biggest losses

Tamsin Mcmahon with Anthony A. Davis –December 2, 2012

For “Maria,” the gnawing doubt began shortly after she signed papers handing over her life savings to a real estate developer in Alberta. She attended a seminar in Ottawa in 2009 touting the benefits of investing in real estate, which promised better returns than the tumultuous stock market.

Among the investments on offer was a company called CBI Group, run by Red Deer brothers Ron and Travis Cadman, which promised a chance to invest in an array of projects they were developing around Alberta—a luxury vacation property in the resort community of Sylvan Lake, a condo project in Red Deer that listed a movie theatre and a resident chef among its amenities—as well as a chance to invest in foreclosed properties in Arizona.

Antibiotics banned in EU unleash deadly bacteria

Topics: 
Pharmaceutical industry, Food industry, Food safety, Public health & safety, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
2

Dr. Mercola – December 19, 2012

The United States uses nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics annually in food production. Livestock antibiotic use accounts for 80 percent of the total antibiotics sold in the US, and unnecessary use of antibiotics in food animals (cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys) is a major driving force behind the rampant development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Compare this to the 6 million pounds of antibiotics that are used for every man woman and child in the US combined. But unlike human use, in which antibiotics are prescribed to treat serious infection, in animals, drugs such as penicillins and tetracyclines are routinely added to animal feed as a cheap way to make the animals grow faster.

Federal meat inspectors at XL Foods plant told to 'ignore' contamination

Topics: 
CFIA, Food safety, Regulatory oversight
Rating: 
4
The following are selected extracts

Renata D'Aliesio and Jill Mahoney – November 29, 2012

Canada’s food-inspection agency is rejecting claims of a two-tier safety system, contending beef destined for Canadian dinner plates receives the same scrutiny as meat exported to Japan.

The union representing federal inspectors had raised concerns about the handling of cattle carcasses at the embattled XL Foods beef-processing plant in meetings last month with Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) brass.

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