Posting about chocolate bars below reminded me: I stopped by the local Jean Coutu a couple of days ago, and saw they had a small display holder with three kinds of chocolate bars – quite small ones – one of them pistachio and kataifi, like the trendy bars of the moment (although somewhat undercut by recent news of salmonella) – at the individual price of $19.99.
The Canadian recall of pistachio products is current, so I wonder why the store felt OK about selling them.
Air Canada flight attendants are now on strike although a lockout has also been declared.
Later Saturday, already a back-to-work order is in effect.
It may be helpful to note, especially as even Air Canada’s site isn’t always clear, that Jazz flight attendants aren’t on strike, so if you’re flying a smaller plane, or can switch to one, your flight might be on.
And the Liberal government, again, breaks a strike and, using a novel section of the law that arguably doesn’t allow them to do so, sends the dispute to binding arbitration. One can debate the harm to the economy and balance priorities, but after doing this again and again, usually after no more than a day or two, no one can really say that the Liberal Party of Canada is pro-Labour.
They put a neoliberal international banker with no experience in office in charge, it should come as no surprise to anyone that he is acting like a neoliberal international banker.
Carney’s confident there’s nothing credible to the left of the Liberals, so he’ll just get on with it.
Mark Carney is giving us the government Erin O’Toole dreamed of. (I contend O’Toole would’ve won a stunning majority if he had been leading the Conservatives this year.)
In a world of populist governments is seems so quaintly anachronistic to have a neoliberal technocrat at the helm.
Campaign left and govern right has been the liberal MO for a long, long time now – Carney is just being more cunning. He didn’t even campaign left, he campaigned populist. Kind of smart strategically given that it took out the left AND right votes.
Who sent the rail workers, both CN and CP, back to work? Who sent the dockworkers, in Quebec City, Montreal and Vancouver, back to work? Who sent Canada Post workers back to work? And who threatened to do this with the AC pilots and a bunch of others, until they settled before going on strike? It was not Mark Carney or his government, it was “centre-left” Justin Trudeau and his. Harper’s government told the Canadian Industrial Relations Board in 2011 to impose binding arbitration on the AC flight attendants if they concluded that flight attendants rejecting two contracts the union supported and sent to a vote “created conditions that are unfavourable to the settlement”, but it didn’t happen because both sides agreed to arbitration first. Trudeau was the first person to use the law this way, and he directed the CIRB to end the strikes, point final, usually on the day the strike started, with no contract in sight.
The Canadian Bar Association’s National Magazine had an interesting article earlier this year on this specific section of law and the use this way. It is highly novel, is subject to an ongoing court challenge and goes against what both employers and labour thought it should when the law was reviewed in the 90s, with both sides saying it would discourage bargaining in good faith. That is exactly what happened. Carney may have used it yesterday, but Trudeau was the innovator, he’s the one who used it again and again and again, he’s the one that used it at the first sign of disruption, not Carney, not the Harper Conservatives. Justin Trudeau effectively removed the right to strike for large, federally-regulated employees; Carney is just following the road paved by his predecessor.
Anyway, it turns out when you rig the game, the other side doesn’t play: the head of CUPE (not the head of the flight attendants’ locals, the head of the national union) just ripped up the CIRB order at YYZ this afternoon and says they’re not going back to work and are challenging the order. I can’t remember the last time labour flexed its muscle in this country, but it has been a long, long time.
Trudeau pretended not to be anti-labour but of course he was. He was never centre left, he only campaigned that way. The only thing pushing him centre left was the NDP, and Carney wiped them out.
A company that employs kids aged under 14 to sell chocolate in parks and door‑to‑door (I’ve turned a couple away) will not be penalized by the CNESST. So what’s to stand in the way of businesses exploiting kids?
I remember selling chocolate to raise money for a school trip, but it was the school who bought the chocolate and then resold it to us, who sold it, though not as employees technically? This is fishy, and the fact they’re trying to help kids not get into trouble but also profiting is odd.
The company is counting on people assuming the kids are fund‑raising, but it’s just retail.
Exactly. And if you’re retail selling in public places you probably need a permit and are surely subject to labour laws.
An incident on the Lachine Canal bike path has elicited the claim that a cyclist can’t be charged with hit‑and‑run because the vehicle is not motorized.
Many of the driving rules only apply to motorized vehicles. Last I checked you can’t be charged with driving under the influence on an acoustic bike because it’s not a motor vehicle, just as you can’t for walking drunk (though you can for boating drunk even on a sailboat). (You might be able to be charged for dangerous manœuvre, or disorderly conduct, IANAL, etc.) This would just fall under reckless or negligent behaviour, probably not assault, as it would if you were walking, so fleeing the scene is generally not a crime, and sadly these people are unlikely to find this irresponsible person. At least health care is mostly free.
Last year, judge Dennis Galiatsatos made the startling ruling that a part of the new language law stating that a French translation of court decisions be made available “immediately and without delay” was unconstitutional because it would delay court decisions in English. The Court of Appeal has now ruled that Galiatsatos overstepped his authority.
French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge hailed the new ruling saying that the French‑language charter must be defended because “the future of the French language and our nation depend on it.”
This ruling isn’t proof that the language legislation is valid, this ruling is showing the limitations of judges taking action without any complainant
Impressive group of judges – two McGill law profs (one was Dean), and a former prosecutor (a graduate of McGill law).
The main part of the decision touches on the fact that provincial courts in criminal matters have a more restrained jurisdiction than the superior courts. If a superior court judge had made the same decision it would have been OK.
The decision explains the limits starting at para 76:
https://citoyens.soquij.qc.ca/php/decision.php?ID=2582DE9797A2A2F51E1B6E9DD7D0B918
For those who prefer, here’s the decision in English:
https://www.canlii.org/en/qc/qcca/doc/2025/2025qcca736/2025qcca736.html
Thank you, H. John.
Nicholas 13:42 on 2025-08-16 Permalink
Was it the same brands, or from the same factories? If it’s the same, absolutely, off the shelves, they should be reported, but if romaine lettuce from Arizona that’s sold in Quebec has E. coli, you wouldn’t blame someone for selling romaine lettuce from California.
Kate 15:01 on 2025-08-16 Permalink
I didn’t get a photo, but it was not the brand sold in gold‑coloured boxes that the fruiterie had been selling (and which looked luxe, almost worth $20). These were small, wrapped in plastic and looked like ordinary cheap granola bars. I’ve no idea whether they’re on a list.
MarcG 07:14 on 2025-08-17 Permalink
The pistachios ended up in these Baklava too https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/andalos-brand-pastry-products-recalled-due-salmonella
MarcG 10:10 on 2025-08-17 Permalink
What does it say about our food system that it took 10 days from the time the source material was determined to be harmful to recalling those Baklava?
Ian 07:38 on 2025-08-19 Permalink
I’m pretty impressed, actually.
MarcG 08:14 on 2025-08-19 Permalink
It’s not like the pistachios are a virus that spread and mutate – there was a batch of them somewhere that had a problem and they were sold to people. So check the sales records, where are they now? Contact those people. Makes me think that there were many, many resellers touching those nuts (lol) between the source and the baker for it to take 10 days to track them down.
MarcG 08:06 on 2025-08-22 Permalink
Another baklava recall. I don’t think that all of these pistachios are from the same batch, they seem to be like enoki mushrooms, sesame seeds (tahini) and pumpkin seeds which for whatever reason are regularly recalled due to Salmonella contamination.