Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Yes, the individual examples are worrisome enough. But the real takeaway from Sarah Schmidt's report on the CFIA's testing of food products for sale in Canada is that more often than not, consumers can't trust what's on the label:

CFIA allows for a variance of up 20 percentage points on nutrition information found on food packages to account for natural variances in ingredients or deviations in testing equipment. Anything beyond that is considered unsatisfactory.
...
CFIA's overall statistics from 2006 and 2010 involving key product categories (breads and baked goods, confectionary items, and snacks) certainly paint a picture of inconsistency. Of 621 products tested, 360 items (58 per cent) did not live up to all the nutrition information on their packaging.

So naturally, the Cons' response is...to stop the testing that's proven Canadians aren't getting what they pay for. And Statistics Canada is also on the receiving end of the Cons' gleeful axe-wielding, particularly when it comes to social data needed to serve the public interest.

- Meanwhile, Mia Rabson takes aim at the Cons for their refusal to allow Environment Canada scientists to discuss even such basic information as research on snow in winter. And Stephen Hume criticizes the Cons' plan to eliminate any meaningful review of the Gateway pipeline as an attack on British Columbia's provincial sovereignty.

- Jim Stanford schools Kevin O'Leary on how auto-sector trade actually works:



- Finally, Anne Jarvis points out that if Ontario ends up in an election campaign, it'll be because the PCs refused to make reasonable requests and the Libs refused to accept the ones already offered by Andrea Horwath and the NDP.