Welcome back, Mr. Togneri

BC Premier Christie Clark's government ran into a spot of bother of late over the triple-deleting of emails and the BC Information and Privacy Commissioner's consequent report into their serious breaches of access-to-information laws. 

Additionally, as noted in May by Laila Yuile , two days before former executive assistant to BC's Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Tim Duncan blew the whistle on what he contends is a widespread practice of email deletion within the Clark government, that same Clark government "removed penalties for staff who improperly destroy documents". 

Clark's deputy chief of staff retains "almost no sent emails" so presumably Christie's personal predilection for governing by post-it note remains unaffected.

Once upon a time in the west, bloggers like Dave at The Galloping Beaver, RossK at the Gazetteer, myself, and others used to track the various FedCons being cycled out of Harper's employ through the BC government and back to the Harper homeland again. Ken Boessenkool, Chuck Strahl, Sara McIntyre, Dimitri Pantazopoulos, and Nina Chiarelli all helped BC Premier Christie Clark form the BC Libs into a west coast subsidiary of whatever-it-is-the-FedCons-want-now.

So it's interesting to note amid all this controversy around breeches of access-to-information laws that former FedCon access-to-information squashing alumnus Sebastien Togneri  joined Christie Clark's government in February this year as Executive Assistant to the BC Minister of Energy and Mines.

Togneri, you will recall :

"...set off a political firestorm when it was revealed by The Canadian Press that he, as a senior aide to then Public Works Minister Christian Paradis, had ordered the "unrelease" of a sensitive document that the department was set to provide to the news agency after a request under the Access to Information Act. 

As a result, he was the subject of a year-long probe by Canada's information commissioner in 2011 in which he was found to have meddled in a number of access-to-information files in 2010. He quit the federal government as a result."

Between these two stints as senior aide in the Harper and Clark governments, Togneri worked for two years as the caucus whip for the Alberta Wildrose Party and did a stint as an election observer in 2012 for US Republican Senator John McCain's International Republican Institute. 
In May and again last month he monitored elections in the Ukraine for the OSCE.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Dept donated $8M to the International Republican Institute in 2014 "to increase transparency ... and awareness of best practices in local governance" in Ukraine.

Welcome back to the fold, Mr. Togneri
.

Canada single-handedly blocks asbestos from Rotterdam hazards list

"Yes, I can confirm they intervened in the chemicals contact group meeting this afternoon and opposed listing,'' Michael Stanley-Jones of the UN Environment Program said.

Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan also initially opposed the listing. However, Stanley-Jones said one-by-one they switched positions after India announced it would support the listing.

That left Canada as the lone voice against the listing.

"All had consented when Canada announced its position opposing listing,'' Stanley-Jones said.

Dangers in the Dust : Canada's Controversial Role

"No country has defended chrysotile as vigorously, and for as long, as Canada. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule banning asbestos in 1989, the government of Canada participated in an industry lawsuit that overturned the rule. When France banned asbestos a decade later, Canada teamed up with Brazil in an unsuccessful World Trade Organization challenge. And when a United Nations chemical review committee recommended in 2008 that chrysotile be listed under Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention — a treaty that requires exporters of hazardous substances to use clear labeling and warn importers of any restrictions or bans — Canada, India, and a few other nations kept the recommendation from winning the unanimous support it needed to pass."

Not even an outright ban on chrysotile asbestos, just a treaty requiring safety labelling.

Toronto Star : Canada's booming asbestos market (2009)

"Last June, CBC-TV filmed the interior of an Eagle plant [in India] in which asbestos was exposed to the open air, everything the officially condoned “wet” process is meant to avoid. Pandya isn’t particularly fussed by the revelations that the operation does not comply with safety norms. That facility, run by his son, still uses the dry method, he says, and still purchases asbestos from LAB Chrysotile. The conduit? “I know Mr. Matta very well."

Mr. Matta is the exclusive agent in India for LAB Chrysotile Inc., which operates one of Canada’s two remaining asbestos operations, in Thetford Mines, Que.

Here on Jon Stewart, Bernard Colombe, president of Mine Jeffrey, explains that Indians have a natural immunity to forms of 'pollution' like asbestos.

And I still want to know - why did Sebastien Togneri, aide to Minister of Asbestos Christian Paradis, block access-to-information requests "involving the backgrounds of members of a government panel examining asbestos"?
.