We have not received your response to our letter of 04 December 2013 regarding the above noted matter. Likewise, we have not received your response to our letter of 21 January, 2014 reminding you of our December letter. Neither have we received your response from our letter of 15 April, 2014 reminding you of our previous two letters. In the twenty-eight weeks since our first correspondence we have received no answers to any of the six questions that we have submitted to your Department on the above noted matter.
You can contact him here. I just did.
So did I copy and paste is a wonderful thing. I copied the entire page and sent it to each of his e-mail addresses.
Gone…in me own words. CC’d local MP too.
I would not expect much of a response from this particular CBC loving Red Tory.
Are you asking if ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials, AISI (American Iron and still institute), The ASME Code (American Society for Mechanical Engineers), BOCA Code, ASNT Code, ISO, and a few others are Laws of the land, even if they are consensus standards? The answer generally is yes, Because the states have adopted them as law. In particular, the ASME Code is law and has been for about a hundred years. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lives have been saved by this law alone. Steam locomotives, pressure vessels, Steam turbines, nuclear power plants, pipeline derivatives, propane tanks are all made to this code. If you ever decide to make something that belongs under the “code” but dont use the code to do that, you better have a better law or code to reference when you get to the judge.
These codes and documents are all CONSENSUS standards directly or referenced by other laws. If you want a copy, you have to pay for the printing and distribution, because the financial backing is provided by the companies, and organizations that participate. If you are so cheap that you don’t want to participate, or just want to look these “voluntary” standards over, go to your local library. You can view them without charge. If you are not a paid member of the participating organizations, you can pay the fee for a subscription of generally quarterly updates to make sure you have the latest version.
I was going to end it here, but I think I must explain the advantage of consensus standards also. Ya see, these standards are arrived at with the direct face-to-face input of engineers and marketers in private industry, the insurance companies who are going to put their money where their mouths are, and government representatives of the concerned disciplines. The final standards are arrived at by approval voting. They are consensus standards because even one negative can kill the effort. Negatives have to be defended, and if they do not have substance (other than restraint of trade of Voodoo magic) then they can be negated by the appropriate committee. Now, doesn’t this sound better than the way the government bureaucrats make law without using Congress? You know, everybody has a say, not some librul hack bureaucrat ruling by ukase?
The issue isn’t really whether or not consensus standards are a good idea. They are, having an electrical code, complying to the electrical code, all of that, it’s all a good idea.
The issue is that it is not good if the standards are made by a government agency which then decides that only they can print materials then uses the force of law to eliminate all competitors.
Alternately, it is not good if the standards are made by a private corporation who then decides that they own the law and sue anyone who quotes from the law.
But mostly it is not good if the government decides that it isn’t their problem because its a private corporation, but also that they have it the other way and the private corporations standards have the force of a copyrighted law; everyone is avoiding the question because they are hoping that the question will go away, but the question exists because there is a problem with the setup.
The problem is that there are sections of the law that are inaccessible to normal individuals unless they are willing to pay significant amounts of cash to purchase standards referenced in legislation. This makes a mockery of open and transparent laws .
The very idea that you would be forced to pay to know whether or not something your actions are legal is absurd.
I see that some of you are having a problem conflating FOI and like concepts with anything the government touches belongs to you. You do grasp the idea about consensus. You somewhat seem to grasp the idea of the standards organization being somewhat outside of the government (the government is just one of three legs). You don’t seem to grasp that YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY FOR THE STANDARD if you get it from the library! If your local Podunk library doesn’t have it (in this modern day of electronic access) then bestir yourself to go to your state or province repository library. Do not expect the corporation or insurance company that is on the standards committee to pay for your copy, cheapskate! The only part of this that uses government money is the salaries of the technical bureaucrats that work on the committee and the fee the government pays (like everybody else) to participate.
The standards organization does not restrict your use of the standard, but you are liable if you don’t meet the standard and say you do. You must have a third party of some kind to inspect and vouch for your attention to detail. Third parties may include ECU (Commercial Union), The Hartford, Lloyds, UL, ISO, etc. Today, you have to pay even for FOI (normally so much a page). You have to pay for the GPO. You people are like the freeloader suing the doctor for saving your life when he came upon your an automobile accident. These standards are in place so that you don’t have to wonder every time you cross a highway bridge if it was properly designed and and built and if all the materials were as called out and made according to best practices Your paranoia and free loading astound me. The standards make sure the dentist’s drill doesn’t break apart in your mouth, your hair dryer doesn’t electrocute your or catch your house on fire.
If you want to know the discussions and people involved int he consensus, then either join up and pay your dues, or get a judge to ask for the meeting notes and comments. They are there.
Sure some reasonable standards are needed, but is that the question here?
We have a corrupt government agency, being overseen by no one.
The Federal Minister is misinformed and dismissive, evading his responsibility.
We have an extortion racket masquerading as a safety standards agency.
And “Private Law” now exists and is accepted at the provincial level.
Pay to access legislated regulations…
There is no rational reason for Canada to have separate standards we are integrated with the USA on Trade. 30 million do not dictate to 300 million.
CSA is just another Libtard agency to ensure jobs for useless bureaucrats, where they hit the jackpot, totally unaccountable with nearly unlimited power.
Hog heaven for a parasite.
Especially those of the regulatory class.
@ Old Country Boy
“These codes and documents are all CONSENSUS standards directly or referenced by other laws. If you want a copy, you have to pay for the printing and distribution, because the financial backing is provided by the companies, and organizations that participate.”
The fees charged are far more than are required to cover printing and distribution. A full set of ASME codes, for example, costs around $1700. The most useful form is an electronic searchable document, which requires near zero cost to post on a website and distribute – yet this electronic form still costs almost as much. Most of the code has not changed in decades and development (which is supposed to be done on a volunteer basis at little or no cost) has long been paid for. (I am an engineer and ASME member, and this still strikes me as wrong.)
Some of what you write has merit, particularly about Canada participating in the USA standards. They have representatives on the committees, along with much of the rest of the world.
Until the rest of the world got its collective noses out of joint because of sovereignty hubris, they all followed the American standards. However, the Italians and Japanese saw a good restraint of trade opportunity and took us and you to the ISO system which is a step backward, but they did make some of the US products unusable for trade.
You are also right in that Canada has a bureaucratic sovereignty problem. To import anything from The US, it often takes weeks – even if it is a spare part for electronic equipment. Over the years, I have worked with National Research people and it was torture getting test pieces back and forth across the border. Even the Canadians could’t understand your bureaucrats. They thought “we were on the same side.” We obviously were not.
You do need an official agency of some sort with the authority to accept a standard for use, or a law that says you will do that. That agency should just refer to the standards organization, not publish the standard itself.
“If you ever decide to make something that belongs under the “code” but dont use the code to do that, you better have a better law or code to reference when you get to the judge.”
That is a misunderstanding of the use of Code!
“NEC NFPA Article 90
Intention: This code is not intended as a design Specification nor an instruction manual for untrained persons”
It is the role of a “Professional” Engineer to design and accept responsibility for code compliance. The Code compliance does not excuse responsibility or liability.
The Code can only hope to provide sufficient information on demonstrated (known) practices that “fail” safety Measures.
Sure worked out real well for those modular home buyers.
In fact it worked so well that Tony Merchannt is about to make his second fortune.
You either are immersed in this bureaucracy or just ignorant.
I have collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in permit fees, demanded by my government, which cites the CSA as their LAW, the Electrical Code is not freely available to the public and has force of law.
Now the CSA is under scrutiny because they attempted to extort an old man, what has been exposed is worse than most of us in the trades expected.
As the whistle-blowers continue to come forward, the picture begins to become clear.
Nice little racket the bandits have there.
Be a real shame for anything to happen to it.
Either the politicians act, or they are identified as complicit in criminal behaviour.
Charging for unperformed work is still criminal in Canada, of course I am sure there is an escape clause, its like stealing and robbery using threat of violence.. not criminal when your government does it.
Remember: Do not steal, your government hates competition.
Exactly, he’s too busy wooing Quebecor and destroying stock values. After government manipulation of the private sector ALWAYS turns out well, right?
Look for the Modular Home Story on line later this week. Will be exposing the entire CSA / Standard Council
Of Canada cover up. Eight Years of CSA not accredited by SCC!!!!!!
Should we be calling for Minister Moore’s impeachment? Or for the RCMP to arrest the CSA executives and board? I would love to see them do the perp walk (like the former Enron executives).
Our Story will Blow the Mind of Canadians.videos,recordings etc!!!! They cost me Millions……Accountability will a BITCH!!!!
Old Country Boy – I suggest you read more at the site about what got them involved in looking closely at the CSA. You can got back in their “history” tab farther, but if you read the 3-4 more recent entries starting with http://www.restorecsa.com/history/you-can-always-trust-the-csa then you’ll see why the CSA is being looked at critically. It’s not about having or applying standards, it’s about whether a crown charter gives a quasi-private company immunity to the normal rules of law and business. Some of the other items exposed by restoreCSA comprise fraud – billing $30,000 for testing and failing a component that was allegedly never removed from its original shipping. By law, CSA cannot be sued, and so cannot be called to account through normal legal means. I don’t know whether CSA can sue for defamation, but I haven’t heard of any warnings to the website about libel after they posted the first of these stories about the CSA.
My reading of the goal of RestoreCSA is that they are trying to determine whether the CSA is a governmental agency (in which case, it shouldn’t have a profit motive or engage in predatory protection and price practices regarding public information – namely, the code) or a private company (in which case they can face legal censor and be sued like any other private company). This is not and never has been about consensus standards or whether safety testing can or should be done by government or private companies. It’s about a protected and allegedly predatory quasi-governmental agency.