A Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) sign is seen in downtown Toronto, March 3, 2011. REUTERS/Mark BlinchIt is increasingly apparent that the controversy surrounding the Royal Bank of Canada allegedly replacing Canadian employees with cheaper temporary foreign workers is not a standalone issue, but rather the inevitable outcome of an immigration program that was flawed from the outset.

RBC continues to deny any wrongdoing after 45 IT positions were contracted out to an outsourcing agency, iGate, which employs foreign workers who have received temporary work permits.

Since then, however, several former employees of other financial institutions, including TD Bank, CIBC and the Bank of Montreal, have told CBC News they were similarly replaced by temporary workers in the past year or so.

In fact, controversy stretches back to last year, when a British Columbia mining operation was found to have hired 200 Chinese workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program without taking the necessary steps to attempt to hire qualified Canadians.

[ Debate: Are banks using immigration loopholes to Read More »from Report warned Temporary Foreign Worker Program was poised for misuse

One batch of Alysena-28 birth control pills contained an extra week of placebo sugar pills.If you were the makers of a product that kept women from becoming pregnant, how ferocious would you be in warning those women that your product may not be succeeding in its intended mission?

Would you leave it up to pharmacies and government agencies to tell the women they could be pregnant, or would you roll up your sleeves and get down to business?

Apotex, the makers of Alysena 28, have yet to issue a public statement about a batch of recalled birth control pills that contained too many placebos and not enough active contraceptive tablets.

Health Canada ordered a recall of Alysena 28 in packages marked with the serial number LF01899A last week. It increased the recall to serious on Monday, and warned that women in every province but Alberta and Saskatchewan that used the botched product might be pregnant.

“As per the product monograph, in the case of a missed dose, use a non-hormonal method of contraception as an interim measure until you speak with your physician and obtain medical

Read More »from Drug company quiet on defective Alysena 28 birth control recall

This is Vimy Ridge Day, marking the 96th anniversary of what many see as a battle that helped define Canada as a nation.

Given the Conservative government's fixation on things military, it was surprising to see that commemoration of this watershed event at the National War Memorial was being led not by Prime Minister Stephen Harper but Gordon O'Connor, the Tories' chief whip.

But really, do we need the prime minister to help us mark the day?

Next year marks the centenary of the First World War and John Babcock, Canada's last known soldier to have served in that war died in 2010 at age 109. The living links to that war are gone, so it's up to us to remember what they did and why.

That's why the dozens of local commemorations are probably more critical than the still-important national wreath-laying in Ottawa.

For example, military cadets in Kitchener, Ont., didn't wait until this week, choosing to commemorate the battle last Wednesday at the local armoury, according to The Record.

The

Read More »from Canadians find that the best way to mark Battle of Vimy Ridge is to pass on its significance

Critics say rural and northern B.C. has "third-world" response times for emergency services.Census data has shown for quite some time that most Canadians live in cities and towns, most hugging our border with the United States.

Not surprisingly, governments direct most of their services to those communities, which leaves less taxpayer money for rural and especially northern areas.

The gap in services has yawned wider in recent years as governments look for ways to trim budgets by shuttering rural hospitals, centralizing trauma care in larger cities and cutting back on ambulance services.

A Canadian Press report focusing on emergency response services in British Columbia highlights the problem in the westernmost province but the same is likely true almost everywhere across the country's interior and northern regions.

Critics say rural and northern B.C. has "third-world" response times for emergency services, CP reports.

B.C. Auditor General John Doyle issued a report last month on the B.C. Ambulance Service's air-ambulance service that found it wasn't doing a good job

Read More »from Critics slam ‘third world’ ambulance response times in northern B.C.

The industry is losing millions of dollars in machinery and material.Industrial equipment and material have always been a tempting targets for thieves and Alberta's thriving oil and gas industry is discovering crooks can't resist helping themselves to some of the gear that can't always be put under lock and key.

The industry is losing millions of dollars in machinery and material, the Globe and Mail reports, everything from copper wire to ATVs and whole drilling rigs.

“These are high-ticket items,” Wood Buffalo RCMP S.Sgt. Keith Durance, based in Fort McMurray, told the Globe. “Generally speaking, there is a pretty lucrative market in larger industrial equipment.”

The problem exists anywhere energy companies operate. According to the Texas web site StopOilfieldTheft.com, the U.S. industry estimates it loses almost a $1 billion a year to thieves.

"Criminals will steal whatever they can get their hands on—and they can get their hands on a lot of expensive equipment in the oilfield," the site says. "From $100 tools to $10,000 tongs, it all adds up to a big

Read More »from Alberta energy sector, RCMP struggle to deal with numerous oilfield thefts

MGM's proposal for a huge casino complex in Toronto.

The possibility of a downtown Toronto casino took a more concrete form on Monday when the city’s manager released a report recommending a size limit and profit expectations for the controversial project.

And while Joe Pennachetti’s report wasn’t exactly a rallying call to support a casino, which is being championed by Mayor Rob Ford, his recommendations in many ways echoed a public letter released by the mayor earlier in the day.

"This is a golden opportunity for Toronto and one we probably won’t see again for a generation," Ford wrote about the proposal for a downtown casino, according to the Toronto Star.

The letter in support of the project came just hours before Pennachetti made public his highly-anticipated report. The report did not outright recommend that city council approve the construction of a downtown casino, but it did suggest an outline should city council decide to move forward with the project.

Among other recommendations, the report said the city should receive

Read More »from Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and city manager are close on downtown casino development

Just days after showing off its fancy new headquarters, Vancouver high-tech darling HootSuite has found itself in hot water over its use of unpaid interns.

The row started last Friday when someone named Ryl posted on reddit that the social-media dashboard creator's use of unpaid interns for three months at a time was illegal under B.C. labour legislation.

By Monday, the thread had grown to hundreds of comments and pushed out into other social media and mainstream news outlets.

"Unpaid internships are exploitive," Amanda Soehnlen posted on Hootsuite's Facebook page. "I love that in your statement, you didn't address the fact that unpaid internships are wrong as well as illegal, just saying you'd make sure not to break the law in the future.

Hootsuite, a darling of Vancouver's IT sector and one of the city's most successful startups with some 250 employees, was pushed into damage control.

[ Related: 10 Canadian tech companies to watch in 2013 ]

According to the Vancouver Sun, Hootsuite

Read More »from HootSuite under fire for using unpaid interns after barrage of online criticism

Expect the Conservative government to react quickly to the recent controversy surrounding the Royal Bank of Canada replacing some 45 employees with an agency staffed by temporary foreign workers.

It is a bad time, politically speaking, to be seen lying down when it comes to Canada’s troubled foreign workers program.

News broke over the weekend that RBC was replacing Canadian workers with those with temporary work visas – a program meant to help companies struggling to fill temporary positions. Not banks looking to cut overhead.

The bank released a statement on Sunday claiming that they weren't replacing Canadians with temporary foreign workers. They were just relieving Canadians of their positions of employment and hiring a company, iGATE Corp., to do jobs instead. Is it their fault if iGATE hires temporary foreign workers to fill the positions?

[ Related: Temporary foreign worker program called a failure ]

The Toronto Star further reports that those 45 affected workers are being

Read More »from RBC outsourcing controversy a new low-point for Temporary Foreign Workers Program