York experts discuss TD Bank's money-laundering scandal, the Canada Post strike, AI in the workplace and more
Commenting on the TD Bank money-laundering scandal following two shareholder groups calling for an outside review of board governance, Professor Richard Leblanc tells Bloomberg that while shareholder resolutions are valuable, they fall short compared to the robust regulatory measures seen in the U.S., which he says Canada lacks. Leblanc advocates for clearer rules and criticizes outdated and vague guidelines from Canadian regulators for allowing excessive company discretion.
Canada Post has been laying off striking employees as labour action approaches the two-week mark. Canada Post spokeswoman Lisa Liu confirmed the layoffs, saying they are temporary. On its face, Canada Post appears to be violating that section of the labour code, Professor David J. Doorey tells The Canadian Press. "Therefore, if CUPW challenges the layoffs, Canada Post will need strong evidence to persuade the labour board that the layoffs are entirely unrelated to the fact that the workers went on strike. It would be interesting to hear that argument," he says, adding that striking workers have a legal right to return to their jobs when the strike ends "unless those jobs no longer exist." Doorey also spoke to The Globe and Mail earlier this week about the strike as negotiations between the postal service and its workers’ union broke down. "The Liberals' recent interventionist role in ending labour disputes is unusual even by Canadian standards, and the minister has been heavily criticized by the labour movement and their allies for siding with employers to quash the right to strike in airlines, railways and ports," says Doorey. "The minister no doubt wants to avoid intervening again, but he’s under pressure to get the mail moving."
Artificial intelligence can improve productivity and efficiency but project management software at a company-wide level can present problems. Professor Valerio de Stefano says there need to be strict boundaries for the types of decisions AI is allowed to make in a workplace. "Tech could help us be more productive, help us manage our tasks more efficiently. What it cannot do is to replace the judgment of the human supervisor and assess whether what we are doing is productive or not," de Stefano tells the Financial Post.
Tech could help us be more productive, help us manage our tasks more efficiently. What it cannot do is to replace the judgment of the human supervisor and assess whether what we are doing is productive or not.
de Stefano speaking to the Financial Post
Professor Giuseppina D'Agostino talks to CBC Radio about publishers increasingly turning to fan fiction for their next hit, warning that creators could encounter legal challenges if they try to profit from characters they don't own. D'Agostino says there hasn't been an appetite to go after fanfic authors in Canada, yet. "There are exceptions in the Copyright Act also to enable a vibrant culture to create and use work," says D'Agostino. "They're not really doing any damage to the initial original work. If anything, they're paying homage to it and they might even increase sales of the original book."
In April, two NASA scientists surveying the Greenland Ice Sheet found Camp Century, a Cold War U.S. military base abandoned in 1967, while attempting to map the ice sheet. It's not the first time the base has been seen on radar flights. The base housed 85 to 200 soldiers and was powered by a nuclear reactor. Professor William Colgan, who co-authored a study on the Camp Century released in August, tells USA Today that ice core samples taken from the base are still cited in research. "When we looked at the climate simulations, they suggested that rather than perpetual snowfall, it seems that as early as 2090, the site could transition from net snowfall to net melt," Colgan said at the time of the study's publishing. "Once the site transitions from net snowfall to net melt, it's only a matter of time before the wastes melt out; it becomes irreversible."
A team led by Professor Cora Young has been measuring for gaseous fluorine to better understand the extent of previously unaccounted-for PFAS in the atmosphere. The team found 65 to 99 per cent of the fluorine in the air inside the lab was not normally unaccounted for, while outside that number was about 50 per cent. “It's important as missing gaseous fluorine accounts for a huge part of airborne PFAS compared to what we actually measure at the moment, which means a lot of the PFAS aren't being detected,” Young tells Environmental Science and Engineering Magazine.
Now reports on Reddit users discussing tourist destinations outside the downtown core, mentioning the Allan I. Carswell Astronomical Observatory on Keele Campus as a spot worth visiting.
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