… has been contacted by several entities to advise that, like P.S. Knight Co., they are being targeted by the Canadian Standards Association (“CSA”) for the furnishment of what we consider protection payments.
As with P.S. Knight Co., a number of entities have been approached by CSA for payment of money in exchange for assurances that CSA will not impede their operations. These demands for payment are typically referred to as royalty payments, licensing fees, or certification or insurance fees. Regarding the instances that RestoreCSA has been advised of, the basis for CSA payment demand is CSA’s claimed ownership of portions of Canadian law.
The RestoreCSA campaign is working with the federal Government to clarify the status of CSA as being either a federal regulatory entity or a private company and, if the former, whether CSA is permitted to commercially compete within the market that it is regulating and, if the latter, whether a private company can own public law.
The Canadian Standards Association owns 35 offices “worldwide”? More detail in this interview with Ezra Levant.
“…to clarify the status of CSA as being either a federal regulatory entity or a private company and, if the former, whether CSA is permitted to commercially compete within the market that it is regulating and, if the latter, whether a private company can own public law…”
Oh, CSA won’t have to worry either way. It’s not as though Canada lacks precedent. We have many instances of both regulatory entities and private companies ‘competing’ within a market where they enjoy a legislated monoploly position…in other words, there is no competition.
The lists are long: milk-marketing boards and beer stores; liquour control commissions and hydro-electric companies; etc., etc….
The Canadian Wheat Board…???
Welcome to the new social/commerce/governing order. Things are progressing as expected and we are on schedule to meet the ultimate target of a complete kleptocratic dystopia. It starts with expanding government into our lives, commerce and industry. Next government-connected regulatory regimes dominate virtually every aspect of life. As this martinet system becomes entrenched, and as true public/legal accountability evaporates as government-protected regulatory regimes become unassailable fortresses, corruption becomes rampant.
In this singular case, using government connected power to destroy private competitors. But we shouldn’t be surprised at a government mandated monopoly acting this way. CSA is also a mandated product safety standards regime which is,in essence, shaking down industry for “protection” payments (certification) in order to have them escape a regulatory purge of their product/business (if I’m not mistaken many products require CSA approval to be marketed and approval must be renewed to continue marketing) – kind of like a mafia protection racket but with government/legal legitimacy. You can probably name other government and quasi-government organs which engage in the same regulatory intimidation – tax collection agencies, marketing boards and construction regulation come to mind but there are many more.
Taken as a whole, this escalating misuse/abuse of authority and its overreach in government,commerce and policing constitute a new venal way of running the nation. We all are guilty of allowing corruption to dominate our lives with our silence.
It never fails to amaze me that any company can actually make an honest buck in Canada. The impediments to legitimacy and profit are limitless.
Dayyam, and I thought our IRS scandal was bad.
I can’t speak to the specifics of this incident, but CSA has worldwide offices because CSA standards are the defacto global standard – this includes products that never enter Canada.
Occam you nail it, thats standard operating practise from the kleptocracy.
Safety is the cover, they operate just like a religious cult, if one questions their asinine proclamations, one is “anti safety”.(blasphemy)
You can add Workers Compensation to that list.
But the parasites will never voluntarily stop their parasitic ways.
We are living the bizarre, where the Voluntarily Non Productive (parasite), insist that they are the authority when it comes to the behaviour of the productive (host).
Sort of like ticks insisting cattle need salsa for lunch.
Interesting a friend in Saskatchewan was telling me of a moose dying in his yard apparently form a massive tick infection.
The regulation shakedown is catch 22, you must meet the codes, you can only access these codes through us, you must pay to access each code, only we can “interpret” these codes.
Or for the non trades,
You must obey the law, to know what the law is you must pay the regulator for access, failure to pay will result in charges for violating not yet existing laws.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, the law is what ever the authority wants it to be.
You must respect our authority.
Or in real terms, there is no law.
I still think the most reprehensible and shadowy of these regulatory / commercial entities is Stewardship Ontario.
I did not experience CSA as being a world standard, defacto or otherwise. They have a bunch of people copying the European standards a few years after they are out, then they change the words and publish a CSA standard Then they charge Canadian companies for a copy, and finally – profit.
I have used the Knight book many times over the years, and it has been an incredibly valuable resource. It is beautifully written and much easier to follow than the CSA books. The CSA is acting like a typical bunch of bullying bureaucrats, upset because they have been outdone by free enterprise.
People need to think very carefully about who they elect. The larger government gets, the larger still it wants to get. Government breeds more government ad infinitum, never forget that.
Let me add also that in the engineering world there are often shakedowns like this. The professional engineering societies in Canada are largely shakedown rackets, where they extort huge sums from their members so that they can pay the ever growing number of administrators and managers they employ. There is a direct parallel with the union world.
Where proprietary information becomes law or government regulation it should be available online for free or on paper for a nominal fee. Things like building codes or professional standards which are law, as much as any other law, should be freely available.
Just a note: a search on GoDaddy shows that RestoreCSA[dot]com is registered to PS Knight Co. Ltd. in Calgary.
And it follows then, John and Occam, that every citizen is a criminal! Just like Lenin – as Ken Kulak has warned us here at SDA so often – if you have citizens ‘trapped’ by making any ordinary action criminal; then you can jail anyone at any time and you can extort money out of them for their ‘mistakes’ to prevent a jail sentence. If someone or a business displeases the ‘they’ then ‘they’ can find an infraction and bankrupt that company or ‘they’ can do just nothing – as ‘they’ are doing with CSA/Knight. Let Knight bankrupt himself defending himself then CSA will be, by default, the only game in town and another corrupt group of people will be calling the shots on all citizens from the protective armor of a monopoly over rules and regs. With that power the CSA can bankrupt companies and individuals who displease them.
What a sweetheart deal for the Agehendah twenty-one thugs!
Many thanks to Ezra for having the guest from Knight on his show. Thank-you Kate for posting the link – Northwestel in Whitehorse still pretends that they do not know of any channel named Sun News – but they know and broadcast a huge range of other stations from Ontario and Quebec …bias? Hummm… the Northwest cable co is a private company with a monopoly in the NWT, Yukon and N. B.C.
The government colluding with an old style protection racket. Tell me it ain’t so?
Democracy is long dead. Welcome to the Socialist oligarchy.Canada died after 1968.
I can speak to the specifics of this. There are several codes of standards for electrical appliances and applications, one European, one US, one Japanese and the CSA. Of all of them, CSA is most highly respected for demanding the highest product standards before an electrical product can be released to the public. CSA standards are the reason why you don’t get electrocuted by your toaster in the morning.
Standard-setting by definition is a monopoly business, no different than any weights and measures standard.
Far from empire-building, the CSA usually has to be dragged kicking and screaming into setting standards in new areas. The reason is that any new areas of standard-setting invariably costs the CSA money, lots of it, to both establish the standard and keep it up to date. CSA never enters an area of standard setting except by direct invitation from the industries affected.
The only revenues CSA receives is from sale of its publications and its membership fees.
All Knight is is a cheap ripoff artist who takes the standards CSA sets and all the work and consultation that goes into it and republishes it. And he shares NONE of the costs that CSA incurred.
So it’s best that you goombahs take Ezra’s advice and listen to the other side before you jump to a bunch of silly conclusions.
Having spent 30 years dealing with electrical code and CSA standards, I find your argument as logical as a slave owner complaining about the cost of keeping the slaves in chains.
CSA has overreached for the last decade, the idiocy of their collaboration with Electrical Safety has become obvious to all journeymen I know.
We have reached a point where assemblies made entirely of CSA approved parts are rejected for lack of a CSA sticker.
If Canada wants a government mandated standard, the govt had better be honest about it and fund it.
If by industry invitation,then industry pays.
The current situation where standards are govt mandated, but the rules kept behind a paywall, guarantees corruption and defies British Common Law.
Your slander of Knight suggests you are a probably a member of this incestuous bureaucracy. Which is dominated by groupthink,circular reasoning and self congratulating govt nitwits.
Another self perpetuating bureaucracy long outliving the need.
30 million Canadians are so helpless we need special standards, from those that work just fine for 300 million Americans?