Ernie Nemeth
29th December 2015, 18:06
The Canadian Standards Association of Canada has claimed ownership of the laws it creates. Although mandated by government to compile and amend Canadian Electrical code and practices, CSA insists it is a private company with special powers. For one, it is exempt from the Canadian Access to Information Act. It is exempt from CRA overview - its expenses are secret. And its overseeing body is replete with former high ranking executives of the CSA.
It turns out CSA regularly harasses companies for extra-payments in order for their permits to pass inspection in a timely fashion.
No one in Canada can post safety information on a jobsite without paying CSA for the right to do so, the argument being the CSA helped develop those safety laws and therefore owns it as intellectual property.
Every one of the over 88k electricians in Canada must buy the newest amended Electrical Code every four years, a publication CSA claims it owns. These are the laws an electrician must comply with and the fines and repercussions for non-compliance. But it is not in the public domain, it must be bought by interested and affected parties. Remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse? What about inability to pay to know the law is no excuse?
The CSA has been in many legal battles but has managed to steer clear of trouble for one very important reason: it claims to be either public or private, depending on the circumstance and what best serves its purpose. And since those vested with the power to regulate the out-of-control crown corporation were the captains of that very same company - all their buddies are counting on them to cover it up and make it go away.
Below is an excerpt from a famous person, P.S. Knight, who had a lot to do with setting up the CSA in the first place back in the sixties, and who publishes simplified versions of the CSA manual. CSA is suing claiming breech of copyright - since it claims all the laws it creates are its private property.
This is the behemoth I am up against. I go to court on Monday! Thought I'd read up on them a bit and this is what I found. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Predatory Competitive Practices
The CSA is involved in a variety of commercial activities. As a government entity, the CSA has authority and influence as well as protections from litigation and accountability that no private company enjoys. Moreover, CSA’s government position precludes most competitors, making CSA unavoidable for remaining private firms working in those few areas of open competition. The CSA can behave very unethically toward these firms without incurring legal or financial risk.
Quick Notes:
The CSA fabricated a false set of electrical laws and gave these to P.S. Knight Co. Ltd., a competing publisher of electrical instruction manuals. Profound financial and reputational damage would have occurred had P.S. Knight printed its books with CSA’s false information.
The CSA gained access to P.S. Knight’s financials on the pretext of wanting to buy the company. Given that CSA’s eventual offer was ~20% of the value of P.S. Knight’s inventory in storage, it was clear to the principals of the company that CSA had conducted a data raid on their firm.
On several occasions and with multiple firms, the CSA has arbitrarily and without warning cut their contracted discount rate by up to 50% in one year. This is very damaging financially.
Standard publishers discounts to distributors in Canada are 50-62%; CSA’s max discount is 20%
CSA’s volume discounts start at $250k in spend / yr; P.S. Knight discounts start at less than $14 /yr.
Private companies are obligated to give CSA their entire client database and to give permission to CSA to contact their clients directly on any matter deemed “valuable” to CSA
The CSA has sold contracted publications at an average of $28.68 below retail (1995) in order to establish dominance in these publications, only to raise the price to an average of $176.14 above retail (2013) once the competition has been eliminated.
Certain industry professionals have been expelled from regulatory committees because they hesitated to sign CSA’s licensing agreements
The CSA has targeted small companies that refuse to pay protection money, launching lawsuits against them with the written threat that such action will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and may bankrupt them. P.S. Knight Co. Ltd. is one such targeted company.
Industry Canada’s Competition Bureau and the RCMP Commercial Crimes Unit cannot investigate CSA because CSA claims to be a government entity, and outside the mandate of these bodies.
Industry Canada itself cannot investigate because CSA claims to be a private company and outside the mandate of Industry Canada’s direct investigation.
Consider:
The CSA is commercially competing within the same market that it is regulating. This is a massive conflict of interest.
The CSA’s practice of coercively acquiring their competitor’s client lists and then circumventing that competitor to deal directly with the clients on that list is preposterous in any contract. The CSA’s subsequent manipulation of their competitor’s discount rates to drive them into insolvency thereby affords CSA the opportunity to take over the competitor’s sales to the list of clients that CSA received from their competitor in the first place. This conduct is self evidently exploitive, predatory and totally unacceptable for a government agency.
In contracting, there is an inherent conflict of interest when an inspector who, through CSA, is closely associated with CSA’s electrical publication inspects the work of a contractor who is known to favour a competing publication. We find that our contractor customers are hesitant to have ECS visible at their jobsites for fear of offending their local inspector and thereby incurring inspection delays and increased inspection costs. Electrical inspectors are good and decent people, but the introduction of commercial interests in conflict with their regulatory responsibilities is an intrinsically corrupting influence, necessarily placing unhealthy stresses upon their objectivity.
http://www.restorecsa.com/lawsuit
Anybody have more info or comments? I would love to hear them.
It turns out CSA regularly harasses companies for extra-payments in order for their permits to pass inspection in a timely fashion.
No one in Canada can post safety information on a jobsite without paying CSA for the right to do so, the argument being the CSA helped develop those safety laws and therefore owns it as intellectual property.
Every one of the over 88k electricians in Canada must buy the newest amended Electrical Code every four years, a publication CSA claims it owns. These are the laws an electrician must comply with and the fines and repercussions for non-compliance. But it is not in the public domain, it must be bought by interested and affected parties. Remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse? What about inability to pay to know the law is no excuse?
The CSA has been in many legal battles but has managed to steer clear of trouble for one very important reason: it claims to be either public or private, depending on the circumstance and what best serves its purpose. And since those vested with the power to regulate the out-of-control crown corporation were the captains of that very same company - all their buddies are counting on them to cover it up and make it go away.
Below is an excerpt from a famous person, P.S. Knight, who had a lot to do with setting up the CSA in the first place back in the sixties, and who publishes simplified versions of the CSA manual. CSA is suing claiming breech of copyright - since it claims all the laws it creates are its private property.
This is the behemoth I am up against. I go to court on Monday! Thought I'd read up on them a bit and this is what I found. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Predatory Competitive Practices
The CSA is involved in a variety of commercial activities. As a government entity, the CSA has authority and influence as well as protections from litigation and accountability that no private company enjoys. Moreover, CSA’s government position precludes most competitors, making CSA unavoidable for remaining private firms working in those few areas of open competition. The CSA can behave very unethically toward these firms without incurring legal or financial risk.
Quick Notes:
The CSA fabricated a false set of electrical laws and gave these to P.S. Knight Co. Ltd., a competing publisher of electrical instruction manuals. Profound financial and reputational damage would have occurred had P.S. Knight printed its books with CSA’s false information.
The CSA gained access to P.S. Knight’s financials on the pretext of wanting to buy the company. Given that CSA’s eventual offer was ~20% of the value of P.S. Knight’s inventory in storage, it was clear to the principals of the company that CSA had conducted a data raid on their firm.
On several occasions and with multiple firms, the CSA has arbitrarily and without warning cut their contracted discount rate by up to 50% in one year. This is very damaging financially.
Standard publishers discounts to distributors in Canada are 50-62%; CSA’s max discount is 20%
CSA’s volume discounts start at $250k in spend / yr; P.S. Knight discounts start at less than $14 /yr.
Private companies are obligated to give CSA their entire client database and to give permission to CSA to contact their clients directly on any matter deemed “valuable” to CSA
The CSA has sold contracted publications at an average of $28.68 below retail (1995) in order to establish dominance in these publications, only to raise the price to an average of $176.14 above retail (2013) once the competition has been eliminated.
Certain industry professionals have been expelled from regulatory committees because they hesitated to sign CSA’s licensing agreements
The CSA has targeted small companies that refuse to pay protection money, launching lawsuits against them with the written threat that such action will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and may bankrupt them. P.S. Knight Co. Ltd. is one such targeted company.
Industry Canada’s Competition Bureau and the RCMP Commercial Crimes Unit cannot investigate CSA because CSA claims to be a government entity, and outside the mandate of these bodies.
Industry Canada itself cannot investigate because CSA claims to be a private company and outside the mandate of Industry Canada’s direct investigation.
Consider:
The CSA is commercially competing within the same market that it is regulating. This is a massive conflict of interest.
The CSA’s practice of coercively acquiring their competitor’s client lists and then circumventing that competitor to deal directly with the clients on that list is preposterous in any contract. The CSA’s subsequent manipulation of their competitor’s discount rates to drive them into insolvency thereby affords CSA the opportunity to take over the competitor’s sales to the list of clients that CSA received from their competitor in the first place. This conduct is self evidently exploitive, predatory and totally unacceptable for a government agency.
In contracting, there is an inherent conflict of interest when an inspector who, through CSA, is closely associated with CSA’s electrical publication inspects the work of a contractor who is known to favour a competing publication. We find that our contractor customers are hesitant to have ECS visible at their jobsites for fear of offending their local inspector and thereby incurring inspection delays and increased inspection costs. Electrical inspectors are good and decent people, but the introduction of commercial interests in conflict with their regulatory responsibilities is an intrinsically corrupting influence, necessarily placing unhealthy stresses upon their objectivity.
http://www.restorecsa.com/lawsuit
Anybody have more info or comments? I would love to hear them.