OTTAWA — A Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) report on federal service delivery to small businesses found that Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) received the highest level of dissatisfaction from small business owners.

Forty per cent of respondents rated the quality of service as “poor,” and 49 per cent rated timeliness as “poor,” despite the IRCC workforce increasing by 170 per cent since 2013.

By contrast, only 10 per cent of small businesses felt they received “good” service. The immigration department was among the five federal services reviewed by the CFIB.

“The delaying of being able to process foreign work permits really impacts the ability of some of our members to keep their doors open,” said Michelle Auger, CFIB director of trade and author of the report.

“Businesses often rely on temporary worker programs and permits when they’re unable to find the specific skill sets they need,” she said.

Michael Wood is a small business consultant and professor at Algonquin College. He said that, for small businesses, securing foreign workers amid IRCC service delays is “nearly impossible.”

“These government services are swelling in terms of employment, but I’ve been seeing plenty of businesses that are having a hard time getting real, quality answers from people who are there to answer questions on the immigration side of things,” said Wood.

Small businesses interact with the IRCC when supporting employees with immigration-related needs.

This includes assisting staff with work permits and permanent residency applications. Many also turn to the IRCC for guidance on evolving immigration policies that affect their ability to attract and retain international hires.

However, the IRCC routinely falls short of providing meaningful support to these businesses, said Auger.

The report noted that 73 per cent of small businesses consulted expressed concern about the growing size of the federal government, citing persistent challenges in accessing timely, reliable and effective services.

“The IRCC is the department that falls last when it comes to customer service and timeliness of response,” Auger said.

Gary Gervais, who runs Heartland International English School in Manitoba, said slow IRCC processing times have resulted in a 50 per cent decrease in his business, which relies on foreign student numbers, this year.

“It’s pretty much industry-wide for language programs in Canada,” said Gervais, who added that it sends a message: “Don’t bother coming to Canada.”

Several businesses that the CFIB consulted as part of their report said IRCC decisions to deny or revoke work permits created “major disruptions” in their operations.

Many also said they had to escalate issues through their MPs due to the difficulty in reaching federal immigration officials directly, another IRCC responsibility.

Wood said an “easy fix” to this issue comes down to “looking at it from a business perspective.”

“I’m a business guy, so I know about issues X, Y and Z. But when challenge Q comes in, and I’ve never had to deal with it, I know I need people who can relay accurate information about this subject,” he added.

“It comes down to staffing the IRCC with an experienced team that can quickly and reliably help these businesses.”

The report comes when privately-sponsored refugees waited, on average, 30 months for the IRCC to process their application, according to a study by the Auditor General of Canada.

Yet for Gervais’ international students, who require visitor visas as they largely enter from Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, such timelines are largely unreliable.

According to the IRCC’s online processing time checker, people who applied from Colombia under the visitor visa stream face a wait time of “42 days.”

“The reality is we’re seeing students applying and it’s taking 12 weeks,” said Gervais. “It’s completely unreliable.”

However, the IRCC detailed efforts last month to “streamline operations and reduce red tape” for industry stakeholders, including small businesses.

It states the federal service has “been disadvantaged by not having a nimble mechanism” to adapt to the volume of backlogged applicants that accumulated over the course of the pandemic.

Wood said that while a logjam of foreign workers is a problem for small businesses, a partial solution may be looking at domestic workers.

“I know one Canadian-born student who’s sent out a hundred resumes and hasn’t got one phone call back. This guy is beyond intelligent, fully engaged, a hard worker, and yet he enters the job market and has no success,” said Wood.

“The IRCC issue is definitely a challenge for securing workers coming from other countries, but small businesses should also look domestically.”

Jasmin Guenette, CFIB vice president of national affairs, said small business owners are not measuring the government’s success by how many people they’re hiring.

Rather, “it’s about how quickly they’re picking up the phone, how consistently they’re resolving issues…,” Guenette said in the report.

“Too many departments are not delivering the results expected for the price we pay […] small businesses deserve better, and they expect the public service to do better.”

The survey was taken between May 6 and June 2, based on responses from 2,190 CFIB members who are owners of Canadian independent businesses, from all sectors and regions of the country. Online polls are not considered representative samples and thus don’t carry a margin of error. However, the poll document provides an estimated margin, for comparison purposes, of plus or minus 2.09 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

National Post

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OTTAWA — A stark June memo from the director of Canada’s spy agency highlighting culture and morale issues at the service was applauded by employees relieved that management was no longer sugar-coating longstanding workplace issues.

The emails from Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) employees to Director Daniel Rogers reveal some workers were frustrated with years of senior management failing to acknowledge lacklustre employee survey results and serious systemic issues.

National Post obtained a dozen pages of CSIS emails via access to information request. All employee names in the emails except Rogers’ are redacted.

“I cannot recall, in my almost 18 years of service, ever hearing anything of the sort from management, where there is a recognition of an obvious systemic issue within the organization,” one employee wrote to Daniels in June.

“It feels as though the organization is sick and the doctors haven’t been admitting it,” they continued, adding that the memo brought them to tears.

The emails were sent to Rogers in response to an

agency-wide memo he sent in June

highlighting many of the poor results for CSIS in the sweeping biennial survey that covers workplace morale and satisfaction, trust in leadership and overall effectiveness.

“I’ll be candid about what I’ve seen: the results are disappointing and unacceptable,” Rogers wrote to staff in a blunt memo in which he committed to improving workplace culture and leadership.

“Low morale across our workforce and lack of trust in leadership not only affect our ability to achieve mission success, but weaken trust in our Service by Canadians and our Government at a time when we are needed most,” he added while noting CSIS is not acting at its “full potential”.

Culture change at CSIS — long and often promised but slowly (if ever) delivered — will be management’s “overriding priority” over the next year, the director promised.

That includes tying executives’ bonuses to the implementation of updated corporate commitments that emphasize a healthy, effective and ambitious workplace. Rogers also committed to reviewing how CSIS chooses, evaluates and trains its managers.

The 2024 poll was the latest of a series PSES results that place CSIS near the bottom of the public service.

After Daniels’ memo was posted internally, multiple individuals told the director that they had received exclusively positive reactions from staff.

“In the past when the PSES message had a positive twist, the feedback from employees was that (the executive committee) was tone-deaf,” one person wrote. “Employees seem to like the honesty of this current PSES message. Not trying to sugar coat it or my favourite comment ‘no sunshine pumping there!’.”

“This seems to be the first time that our Executives even acknowledges the bad things as opposed to only focusing on the good,” wrote another employee.

One emailer took a swipe at previous CSIS management, telling Rogers he had “inherited a mess” when he took over the agency in Oct. 2024.

“Messages like that help set the tone that it’s time to clean up our act,” they wrote of the memo.

Others seized the opportunity to tell Rogers about the issues that plague their work at the spy agency.

One individual wrote that their biggest issue was a lack of decision making among managers while suggesting their directorate had too many projects tagged at the top priority level.

“To me it seems that senior management is unable/unwilling to make decisions and just marks everything as priority 1, and then goes with the flow,” they wrote. “Our attention is being too thinly spread out so it seems nothing is progressing, at least from my point of view.”

The employee with nearly 18 years of service told Rogers that “management-level denial” of systemic workplace issues has led to the departure of an “unprecedented number” of seasoned employees over the last eight years.

The 2024 survey suggested only half (51 per cent) of CSIS respondents believe senior managers “lead by example in ethical behaviour” and 57 per cent said that the agency does well at promoting values and ethics in the workplace.

Far fewer respondents (40 per cent) said they have confidence in top management, whereas barely 29 per cent believed senior management makes “effective and timely decisions.”

In a statement, CSIS spokesperson Magali Hébert said the agency has made multiple changes in response to either direct employee feedback or the PSES results.

“Recent examples include a renewed executive talent management framework, revised appointment authorities for executive staffing decisions, and renewal of senior official champions roles in the areas of values and ethics, employee recognition and health, and executive leadership engagement,” Hébert noted.

National Post

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OTTAWA — Next week’s federal budget will include a broad plan to reduce the size of the federal public service that will include layoffs, government sources say, part of Ottawa’s effort to deal with a massive deficit and a host of other priority spending areas.

Federal sources told National Post that the cuts to reduce the federal workforce would go beyond the attrition plan that had been announced earlier this year, as the Carney government has since attempted to wrestle its costs under control. One source said the “right-sizing” plan will emphasize attrition, early retirement packages and moving employees to departments and agencies with the most needs, before layoffs.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne seemed to confirm the plan Wednesday at a public event when he said that Ottawa would implement “workforce adjustments” in a “fair and smart way.”

Speaking at a funding announcement to advance equality at the National Gallery of Canada, Champagne implied strongly that the government’s moves would go beyond simply not replacing employees who leave through voluntary retirement and other forms of attrition.

“Yes, we need to bring back the civil service to a sustainable level,” he told the gathering. “We’ll be very transparent with people but we’re going to be very compassionate in how we do it as well.”

Champagne said the size of the civil service has increased in recent years at a pace that isn’t sustainable and that it needs to be “aligned” with needs. “We need to get back to something more sustainable.”

Beyond eliminating jobs, Champagne also said the government could find efficiencies through greater use of technology.

When asked for confirmation that Champagne’s comments should be interpreted as cuts beyond attrition, John Fragos, the minister’s press secretary, pointed to the government’s efforts to cut unnecessary spending so that it can invest in priority areas. “This approach speaks to the steps that we are undertaking to modernize, streamline and recalibrate government spending,” Fragos said in a statement. “This is part and parcel of how we’re going to spend less so we can invest more. That means finding more efficiencies, rightsizing and better integrating tech into our processes.”

A representative from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the largest union of federal public sector workers, couldn’t be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Earlier this year, Carney said the government would put a ceiling on the size of the federal public service, instead of widespread cuts, and implied that the reductions would be accomplished through attrition. Champagne’s comments ON Wednesday strongly suggested that the government has since decided that those reductions won’t be enough to achieve the necessary savings.

Between 2024 and 2025, the size of the federal public service decreased by about 9,807 employees, down to 357,965 from 367,772. But between 2018 and 2023, the public service increased by between 4.1 and 6.4 per cent, despite the increased use of digital technologies designed to boost efficiency. Employee figures vary depending on whether crown corporations and other affiliated organizations are included.

In recent months, however, the Canadian economy has been cooled by trade disputes with the United States and China, and other factors. The Carney government has decided that attrition won’t be enough to trim costs, thereby allowing spending in other areas.

Carney has said that the government’s priority spending areas involve investments such as infrastructure projects to support exports, defence spending, and tax cuts, each designed to make the Canadian economy stronger and more attractive to investors in the long term.

National Post also reported Wednesday that the upcoming budget will also feature a broad new strategy to boost the performance of Canadian business, including measures that will allow companies to write off their new machinery and other capital costs more aggressively.

The government also announced at the Ottawa event that the budget will include $382.5 million over the next five years for the Women’s Program that supports a variety of equality projects.

National Post

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An American man, named as a member of a whites-only group and twice turned away from Canada, complained border agents were aggressive and mean to him after finding “Nazi memorabilia” in his truck as well as animal skins painted with symbols authorities believed were rooted in European paganism.

Cormag Jaime Alainn took Canada’s Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree to Federal Court asking for a judicial review of the way the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) handled his complaint about officers who refused him entry at the New Brunswick border when he attempted to enter Canada from the United States last year with his pregnant Canadian wife.

“The complaint alleges that (CBSA officers) verbally abused and physically assaulted him, mistreated his wife and his pets and damaged his property,” Justice Whyte Nowak wrote in a recent decision.

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The court heard that when Alainn tried to drive into New Brunswick, the U.S. citizen “declared that he was staying in Canada for two months and his pregnant wife (a Canadian citizen) advised that she had been outside Canada for the past five months. The couple were referred to secondary inspection.”

There Alainn “advised that he was newly married and intended to return to Maine to stay with friends after the birth of their first child,” said the Federal Court decision, dated Oct. 27.

Alainn told border guards “that he was unemployed and had no United States residence or significant family ties in the United States,” it said.

When border guards found a slide lock cable for firearms inside the box of the couple’s truck they “became concerned about the possibility” that Alainn might have a gun, which led border guards to conduct pat-down searches on the pair.

Border guards questioned Alainn about the contents of his truck, which included what they “considered to be ‘Nazi memorabilia’ as well as animal skins with spray painted symbols which the (CBSA agents) believed were rooted in European paganism,” said the court.

After Googling Alainn’s name, border guards confronted him “regarding his association with the Asatru Folk Assembly, which (they) believed to be a recognized hate group who advocate for white supremacy. According to a (border agent, Alainn) claimed that the items had no special meaning and he was simply interested in Nordic culture.”

The Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) says its members must be “traditionally-minded” and of “Ethnic European” stock. “Let us be clear: by Ethnic European Folk, we mean white people,” their website says.

The AFA is registered as a religion in the United States but has also been branded “the largest neo-Völkisch hate organization in the United States” by extremism monitoring group Southern Poverty Law Center. The centre says the AFA has almost two dozen groups in the United States as well as affiliates in Canada.

The AFA espouse Ásatrú, described as a pre-Christian religion of Europe, and evoke the Norse imagery of Vikings. Their “religious imperative” is to ensure “the survival and welfare” of white people, their website says. Many of their public messages use a speaking style popularized in movies and TV as the way Vikings might talk: “Victory never sleeps”; “Hail Ragnvald”; “the gathered Folk spoke to personal victories before Honour was given to the Allfather with resounding energy.”

In a 2021 AFA newsletter, Cormag Àlainn was introduced to the organization’s membership: “Please welcome Christopher Taylor (Now named Cormag Àlainn) of North Dakota as our newest Apprentice Folkbuilder in the Baldrshof District. Chris has been very active in his District thus far.” The post ends: “Hail Chris Taylor! Hail the AFA! Hail Baldr!”

A Facebook page for a man with the same name and similar photographs shows a smiling man in a jacket and tie with two lapel pins; one is the three interlocking horns logo of the AFA and the other appears to be the symbol of Baldrshof, the AFA division that includes North Dakota. A LinkedIn profile gives his most recent employment status as a career break for full-time parenting — based in Nova Scotia — after leaving a job in North Dakota as an industrial machinery operator.

A CBSA officer issued a report denying Alainn entry to Canada “based on a finding that he was unlikely to depart Canada, and his circumstances were not indicative of a temporary stay.” He was allowed to voluntarily turn around and leave Canada.

Two months later, he again tried to come to Canada, to visit his wife. He was again refused entry. He then filed a formal complaint saying that “the reason given by the CBSA for his previous refusal was that he is the leader of a white nationalist group, which (Alainn) states is both untrue and not the reason that he was denied entry,” the court decision says.

In his complaint, Alainn alleged that during his March border stop the officers: “verbally abused him; physically assaulted him in conducting the pat-down search; denied him and his wife food and water for six hours; refused to allow the couple to care for their special needs dog and cat; and damaged his belongings in carrying out their search of his truck.”

During the agency’s investigation of his complaint, CBSA officials viewed video of the border interaction and spoke with Alainn’s lawyer, said the judge, and “when this informal attempt to resolve the complaint did not succeed” the CBSA issued a “final disposition letter” dismissing the complaint.

In a final disposition letter dated June 14, 2024, Dominic Mallette, the CBSA’s acting regional director general for the Atlantic Region, “concluded that (Alainn’s) complaint was unfounded.”

Nowak sided with Mallette.

Alainn “has not shown that the final disposition letter is unreasonable,” said the judge. “There is no merit to the applicant’s argument.” The letter “is intelligible and justified based on the facts and the law,” Nowak said.

She dismissed Alainn’s case, saying he “has not met his onus of demonstrating that the final disposition letter is unreasonable or that it was arrived at in a manner that was procedurally unfair to him.”

Requests for comment from Alainn, through his email address with the AFA, as well as from his lawyer in Canada, and from the AFA leadership in the United States were not answered prior to publication deadline.

National Post

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The story of a former Vice Canada journalist who led an international drug smuggling ring made headlines a number of years ago, in part due to the notoriety of the person charged.

But we’re now learning more about another key figure in the case, another former Vice staffer who is alleged to have taken part.

National Post reporter Adrian Humphreys joins Dave Breakneridge to discuss how new information in the case came to light, what we know about the alleged “deputy”, and where his court case is at.

Background reading:
He grew up rich and joined the hottest media empire. Then came the cocaine mules

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It’s long been known that darkness improves the length and quality of sleep. Studies have shown that even the

phase of the moon

can affect our sleeping patterns.

Now a new study has revealed a link between nighttime exposure to light and cardiovascular health. The research, posted last week in the journal

JAMA Network Open

, studied close to 90,000 people aged 40 and older to look for links between light and various cardiovascular conditions: coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction (heart attacks), heart failure, atrial fibrillation and stroke.

The long-term study followed participants in the U.K. over a period of 9.5 years, from June 2013 to November 2022. Scientists gathered some 13 million hours of light exposure data tracked by wrist-worn sensors worn for a week at a time by participants.

The participants, 88,905 in total, were 57 per cent female and 43 per cent male, with a mean age of 62. Most (97 per cent) were white. Anyone with pre-existing cardiovascular health conditions was removed from the study.

The results found that, across all the conditions being studied, the risks were greater for those who slept in brighter conditions.

For instance, those sleeping in the brightest conditions — equivalent to having an overhead light on in the room — had a 56 per cent greater risk of developing heart failure or having a heart attack compared to those who slept in the darkest places.

Bright light also led to a 32 per cent higher risk of coronary artery disease, a 32 per cent higher risk of atrial fibrillation (irregular and often rapid heartbeat), and a 30 per cent higher risk of stroke than in the dark-sleeping group.

“These associations were robust after adjusting for established cardiovascular risk factors, including physical activity, smoking, alcohol, diet, sleep duration, socioeconomic status, and polygenic risk,” the study found.

It also noted that females were more susceptible than males for risks of heart failure and coronary artery disease after sleeping under bright light. Similarly, younger individuals were found to have a higher risk of heart failure and atrial fibrillation than older participants.

“Our findings are consistent with higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in people with brighter nights, observed in smaller cohorts with objective light data,” researchers wrote. They also found results consistent with higher cardiovascular risks observed in rotating shift workers, “a population that experiences frequent exposure to bright light during the biological night.”

Several drawbacks to the study were noted, despite its size and timescale. Researchers pointed out that participants tended to have higher education levels and income than the general populace, and that the study did not identify the source of the light, “meaning we could not adjust for behavioural correlates of night light exposure (e.g., light from stimulating digital content).”

The study also did not capture the causal relationship of night light with cardiovascular disease risk. “Long-term circadian-informed lighting interventions for reducing cardiovascular disease risk are needed,” they wrote.

However, they concluded: “Night light exposure was a significant risk factor for developing cardiovascular diseases among adults older than 40 years. These findings suggest that, in addition to current preventive measures, avoiding light at night may be a useful strategy for reducing risks of cardiovascular diseases.”

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