Restore CSA;

What follows is the record of how CSA inserted itself as a new regulatory layer in Canadian real estate transactions.
First, the target, in this case; home inspections.

“They started barking about oil spills and tank corrosion and about the environment and helping us solve it.” Of course, there was no problem, it didn’t exist, but CSA wanted money so they conjured a problem that only CSA could solve. Specifically, they started a committee to amend fuel oil tank regulations (B-139 regs).
Committee members paid CSA to be on the fuel oil tank regulations committee and, of course, these committee members were the manufacturers of fuel oil tanks, pumps, piping, etc. So CSA was already rolling in money before amending anything.
“The bastards ruled that everything we’d installed in the last fifty years was unacceptable. Everything to be replaced [with] all new equipment.” That is, all of the existing infrastructure, safe and reliable for decades, was to be replaced at horrific costs, all born by the homeowner, and all to profit the manufacturers who’d paid CSA to change the regulations in the first place.

Restore CSA;

Steve Jobs used to talk about a phenomenon called a ‘bozo explosion,’ by which a company’s mediocre early hires rise up through the ranks and end up running departments. The bozos now must hire other people, and of course they prefer to hire bozos. As Guy Kawasaki, who worked with Jobs at Apple, puts it; ‘B players hire C players, so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players’.”

According to CSA; “We contribute to driving and promoting social good on behalf of our stakeholders and the communities we service through our use of sustainable environmental and business practices, and the values we live each and every day.”
Yet the CSA spends a massive mound of money jet-setting their management around the world, every day. Actually, its ninety-thousand dollars per business day.

The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) is seriously serious about the environment. Seriously. In fact, they’ve proudly announced their intention to insert climate change things and stuff into their standards.

Seriously.

“We can help you achieve your goals”, said the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). Which goals?
“I want to jerk off for money.”
Ah, said CSA, right this way.

Renegades.

We received an email a few months ago; “The fiscal year begins (appropriately) on April Fool’s Day. Expect a fresh batch of contributors in a few weeks.”
In time, they arrived, a new series of communications from CSA’s employees.

“Doesn’t recommend”

The Plagiarism Test.

Here come da judge!

Well, we researched. We found that prior to his appointment to the Federal Court, Michael Manson spent his career at the law firm of Smart & Biggar, eventually presiding over the place as Managing Partner. He arrived there in 1982 and left for the Bench in 2012. That’s thirty years, folks. And that’s important, because Smart & Biggar has a longstanding relationship with CSA.

Don’t miss this one. But take a gravol.

Renegade Judiciary.

It turns out that Justice Odida Quamina isn’t actually a Judge, he’s a Justice of the Peace (JP). In Ontario, a JP can preside over certain trials. In Quamina’s case, it gets even more interesting. Odida Quamina isn’t even a lawyer. In fact, he has no legal training whatsoever. Prior to his appointment in 2006, Quamina had been a part-time faculty at a community college and a sometime ombudsperson at another community college.
Quamina’s antics have made the news before…

Grab a coffee first.

Private law in the energy sector.

The CSA charges $180, per person, to access electrical law. Trade schools teaching electrical compliance are likewise charged because the subject matter is now CSA’s property. The CSA charges royalties to contractors who post jobsite safety information because CSA drafted some of those laws. Never mind that contractors are required to post that info, in complying with law the contractor is now obligated to pay whatever CSA wishes to charge. It’s a blank cheque. And it gets worse.
It’s not merely the sale of access to legislation, but the drafting of that legislation is for sale too. In 2014, CSA was outed for selling votes at set prices on legislative committees, selling seats at legislative committee to the highest bidder, and selling “custom” legislation at floating prices of a few hundred thousand dollars each. The CSA has been monetizing the legislative process.
The CSA has also started positioning itself as a new regulatory layer in the energy sector. They’ve opened an office in Calgary and are specifically targeting oil sands and pipeline entities. As their CEO admitted in 2013, “We have been trying to get in there and say, ‘we can help you develop standards,’ [and] we are starting to make some progress” at getting established in the sector.
The CSA has a long history of entering new market sectors promising to help coordinate environmental or safety standards of a purely voluntary nature. Once established however, the standards they develop are referenced as “regulations,” parties voluntarily not participating are deemed materially non-compliant. These regulations are then incorporated by CSA into legislation and are enacted as laws. Thus, voluntary standards today become laws tomorrow, industry agreeing to the one are not consulted on transition to the other.
The issue isn’t so much an increase in project cost as a financial veto over project development. That is, having legislative authority over the sector, combined with private ownership of regulations, means that CSA or their committee members have the power to force royalty payments at extortionate rates in exchange for regulatory compliance or, worse, to deny regulatory approval entirely to the preferences of their members. The CSA committees in the sector are assembled at CSA’s discretion on a “balanced matrix,” comprised of industry, interest groups, environmentalists, and other CSA members. The energy sector does not control the composition on the committees and does not have most votes thereon.
In practical terms, then, the energy sector is facing a new layer of regulatory authority, this time run by committees comprised in the main of opponents of the energy sector. That’s dangerous, given that under the Court ruling energy companies now have no right to read or otherwise access the regulations that apply to them, no right to comply with regulations without payment or penalty, and no right to government inspection, permitting, or approval without CSA permission. And all that comes at CSA’s pleasure, and at whatever cost they wish to charge.

Is the Saskatchewan government paying attention yet?

On November 25, 2016, in a small office of Provincial Court in Toronto, and before a Justice of the Peace, a series of criminal proceedings were commenced against certain of the leadership of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).
RestoreCSA was there, it was our submission.

“these people are scumbags.”

Restore CSA: Regular readers will recall that the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) filed a series of motions with the Federal Court of Appeals to bankrupt PS Knight Co, the owner of RestoreCSA. The Motions Hearing was on January 12th and since then we have been waiting for the Ruling.

It begins with a trickle…

“First we chased out their President of Standards, Bonnie Rose, who left CSA quite quickly, and right after nine-hours of negotiating with PS Knight.
Then, in late 2014, we forced out their CEO, Ash Sahi.

Restore CSA;

In the nearly five years since CSA launched their attacks on PS Knight Co, the owner of this newsfeed, we have endured repeated and very aggressive legal moves by CSA to try to force us to divulge the names of whistleblowers testifying against them. There have been hours of questioning in legal Discovery on who our sources are, who inside CSA is “speaking up” and which end users inside CSA’s various monopolies have been talking off script. The CSA has spent a lot of money to enable reprisals against the whistleblowers who speak to us.
For our part, we have spent a lot of money to protect our sources because we know -and it’s been made very clear to us- what CSA wants to do to them.

Restore CSA;

We filed with the Law Society in early October. As of October 27th, the Society has opened a review of Falconi’s conduct, first to verify that it “raises issues of professional conduct,” and, if confirmed, the Society will then direct the matter to the Professional Regulation Division, probably in November.