Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability
riskybiznews.substack.com
riskybiznews.substack.com
I am not a lawyer, but I would be surprised if this holds water, legally speaking. Imagine going to an amusement park and signing a waiver that the park takes no responsibility for your injuries. If you climb aboard a rollercoaster that hasn't seen any maintenance in 20 years and you get decapitated, I'm pretty sure the park is still legally responsible. Getting someone to sign something that says "we did our due diligence" doesn't make it true.
I don't know Canadian law, just for fun this is my understanding of it under US laws which are likely similar although Canada usually has more consumer protections.
You generally can't waive negligence. Those waivers can be useful for things like a trampoline park - someone lands on their ankle wrong and injurs it, the waiver deals with assumption of the risk - landing incorrectly is a reasonable risk due to the nature of the event. However if a net was missing and you hit the concrete floor - that would be under negligence of the premises owner.
My guess (not a lawyer just guessing) is that if they followed all best practices and someone bruteforced an RSA 2048 key which is currently understood to not be (reasonably) possible - that might be covered? However if they left a S3 bucket open without a password, that would be under negligence?
Not a lawyer either, but to me, since users have no means to protect themselves against a backend breach, it seems like it would inherently be the fault of the business.
My chosen parallel would be owning a dog. Owning a dog has some inherent risk, because even if you take all precautions, there's always a chance it gets off it's leash or breaks out of the yard and bites someone. "I had a fence" shouldn't free you from liability; the fence was insufficient because someone still got bit. The only way to be free of that small risk is to not own a dog.
I view data the same way. Storing sensitive data comes with an inherent risk that it will be compromised. By asking for and keeping that data, companies assume the risk of that data being breached, and any resulting damage. If that risk is unacceptable, don't ask for or keep the data. Or find some way to make it so the data can't cause damage even if it's stolen (e.g. by using some kind of public tax ID).
I suspect the same would be considered for computer security. Hacker News and a Bank have very different bars for what’s reasonable.
Eg if you had a known dangerous dog that had bitten twelve babies before but you didn’t destroy it, you’re up the creek even if it got out because of the meteor.
But if the dog only but because it’s tail got singed by the meteor, you’d probably be ok.
In the same way you may generally be responsible if you rear end someone, but if it was caused by someone rear ending you then that’s not your fault. That may seem obvious, but if someone stoped several car lengths back to lower the risk of someone getting hit if you’re rear ended. Thus the standard is reasonable precautions rather than requiring people to do absolutely anything possible.
Doesn't matter what precautions the person took, if the dog gets out and bites another person, they're liable in most states.
But that 36 state list includes many exceptions. Provocation is an exception in the majority of those 36 states, and trespassing is almost universally an exception. Nebraska excludes harm cases when the dog is being playful etc.
The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance, titling a vehicle and driver licensing, whereas in the US no state handles car insurance, while titling a vehicle and driver licensing are not necessarily the same state organizations.
This state sponsored vertical integration enables abuse of authority in cases like https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/xa9j3x/church_...
Whereas here in the US I know many people that mix and match between different states DOLs and DORs for a variety of reasons, and your not going to get stuck with the same stubborn employee who can control every facet of your ability to identify yourself and also legally drive a vehicle on the road.
The DUI checkpoints up in BC are wild too, I'm glad they are banned in Washington and Oregon. Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/xa9j3x/church_
to get
> Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/nottheonion.
> Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's ICBC pirate hat fight deepens
If you think that about reddit mods, I can only imagine how you feel about HN.
Many drivers are worse alcohol-free than a legally drunk good driver.
Focussing on one cause of bad driving (lots of alcohol) is a weak approach to road safety.
They're also not a solution to road safety, they just address one category. Overall road safety comes from a complete reversal of car-dependance along with improvements to road design.
I was just wondering about these (in the US) the other day. When I was growing up, I seem to remember them being a thing and going through them as a passenger but in 20+ years of driving, including on NYE/July 4 and late at night, I've never come across one.
Are there still states doing these?
I think there are demographics that have different experiences than mine, especially when there's a dog involved (who can provide any excuse necessary:)
In Australia I've been stopped many dozens of times for a "random breath test" where they stop every car and make you blow into the device to check blood alcohol.
I've never had one take more than 30 seconds.
America's a big place, there's a very wide range of things that law enforcement do in it.
I’m pretty sure Canadian DUI checkpoints are limited to interrogations about alcohol/drug intoxication (edit: and a few matters regarding the vehicle itself) unless something else is offered/observed.
Supreme Court basically agreed that they are warrantless and detainments without reasonable suspicion, but considered them acceptable for the purposes of preventing drunk driving so that’s all the carve out it for. See R vs Mellenthin here: https://torontodui.com/knowledge-centre/everything-you-need-...
(Worth noting that Canada’s constitution is basically toilet paper for a lot of things because a judge (or politician!) can override a lot of it)
Which in effect means that they are unlimited. They make wide use of drug detecting dogs. If a drug dog indicates you might have contraband, that allows further intervention. It is widely known that drug dogs can , worst case, be trained to hit when a hit is not present. Best case they have a bond with their handlers that tells them that the handler wants there to be a hit, whether the handler consciously conveys that or not. This increases the odds that there will be a hit.
Drug dogs are basically a override-the-law get you into jail free card, and any system that allows them as evidence of probable cause basically does not require probable cause.
I don’t know about K9 units, but I’ve never seen one anywhere in Canada, except maybe at an airport once.
I saw the principal come into the class I was in and point out a specific kid that she wanted searched.
The distrust of authority that I learned from that experience is without a doubt the greatest lesson I ever got in high school.
Police dogs manufacturing search warrants is more of an American problem than a Canadian problem.
You might have more rights on paper in the US, but in many respects, you have more of them in practice in Canada. The letter of the law matters way less than how the law is implemented in practice. Public culture, legal culture, political culture, and policing culture all play into this.
The right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution, yet there's no shortage of people who have been executed for 'reaching for an (often imaginary) gun' during a 'routine traffic stop' that, oddly enough, predominantly targets minorities...
And speaking as someone who has lived or worked in a couple of those countries: it ain't all rainbows and cupcakes.
Denmark ain't exactly crazy about foreigners, plus there was just an article here about how ruthless they are with data surveillance. There isn't a huge market, jobs are tight, and "tall poppy syndrome" is a thing -- which is a problem for the HN wannabe-tech-mogul crowd. They're not the most open people -- kind, nice, polite -- but also closed off; its not easy to make friends. They're not crazy about immigrants, and there is very much a "for us, by us" mentality; high immigration in Sweden is, like in much of Europe, not popular with large segments of the population.
Outside of some cultural artifacts like Rugbrod or the Copenhagen obsession with fermenting every kind of food, there isn't much you can't get in Canada. Slightly less fat, slightly better dressed, and the English was often better.
7.5% of people in Denmark are foreign born, which isn’t as high as Canada’s 23%, but isn’t that far from the USA’s 13%.
In Canada the government unilaterally suspended the constitution (because that's a thing over there?) in the 70's for mailbox bombings. It was later revealed that the feds were behind these [0]. They did it again to shut down peaceful demonstrations against covid restrictions, where the protesters setup a bouncy castle close to the parliament. So I'm not sure about having more rights "in practice".
> The right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution, yet there's no shortage of people who have been executed for 'reaching for an (often imaginary) gun' during a 'routine traffic stop' that, oddly enough, predominantly targets minorities...
Well, in Canada minorities found out the hard way what happens when only the cops (and criminals) have guns [1]. Not sure either of those are better.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...
It didn't seem like anyone needed to suspend the constitution to firebomb a neighbourhood in Philadelphia in 1985, either. 250 completely uninvolved people were left homeless by that. Go back a bit further in time, and discover that both countries were perfectly fine with running internment camps.
It frankly doesn't matter what the law says. What matters is how it is applied in practice.
PS. The constitution was suspended not for the mailbox bombings, but during the October crisis, when a cabinet minister was kidnapped and murdered by a secessionist terrorist group. You did a sleight of hand on unaware readers by portmanteauing the two events together.
Also, the CORAF (the 'constitution') was only adopted in '82, a decade after the crisis.
They should certainly not be able to avoid prosecutions because "woops we decided that, on that particular day we'll just ignore the constitution". You can't build a truly free country without the rule of law.
The War Measures Act was invoked in October 1970, replaced with the Public Order act in November 1970, which expired in April 1971.
The fed-created bombing attempt was in 1974. Unless the RCMP has a time machine, I don't think the invocation of the WMA or the POA can be blamed on Robert Samson.
> They should certainly not be able to avoid prosecutions because "woops we decided that, on that particular day we'll just ignore the constitution".
The US has invoked martial law 68 times in its history, 29 of them for a labour[1] dispute (The WMA has only been invoked three times, and the Emergencies act, which references the trucker case has only been involved once).
The mechanism for just deciding to ignore the constitution is very similar in both countries[2], but one of them has invoked it a lot more frequently. And, as mentioned a few posts above, government repression doesn't even need any invocation of such acts.
[1] With that frequency, it should be pretty clear as to who the government sees as its real enemy.
[2] In the US, the 2007 National Defense Authorization act even gave this power directly, and unilaterally, to the President, but it did get overturned in 2008. Now, it's largely in the unilateral hands of state governors.
They were caught in 1974. That doesn't mean (and Samson's testimony corroborated that) they didn't plant bombs or fake threats before. Ted Bundy wasn't caught the first time he murdered someone.
> but it did get overturned in 2008.
Thankfully, some still read the constitution.
> Thankfully, some still read the constitution.
Did you miss the second part of this equation, where martial law is still a thing, it can still be declared by state governors, and will happily suspend your rights?
The only thing that happened in the lead-up to 2007 and again in 2008 was a change to who can declare it.
That's the other problem with 'reading the US constitution'. It's not exactly clear on the subject of when it can be set aside. The 68 invocations of martial law make it crystal-clear that it can be set aside, and does get set aside whenever someone feels like it [1]. But you're not going to find a single word in the constitution that explains why, who, and in what circumstances it can be set aside.
At least the CORAF is clear as on the subject of what it takes to set it aside - an Act of Parliament, and which parts of it can be set aside (Sections 2, 7-15 - pretty much all the important bits, aside from elections, and language rights).
They apparently got a confession from the alleged murderer (of course, one might question a confession obtained while the suspect's constitutional rights were suspended) but couldn't even place him at the scene of the murder.
And let's be honest, once you admit to planting evidence, there's not a lot of credibility left...
> How far down does this conspiracy theory go, exactly?
People said the same thing about the lab leak hypothesis back in 2020.
> The only thing that happened in 2007 and 2008 was a change to who can declare it.
As with any law, let's see if it stands the test of courts.
> And let's be honest, once you admit to planting evidence, there's not a lot of credibility left...
The most likely and obvious conclusion of this is that they got the wrong guy for the murder, not that they killed him.
> People said the same thing about the lab leak hypothesis back in 2020.
'People' also say smoking doesn't cause cancer, marijuana causes reefer madness, and that Bigfoot is real. 'People' believe and say all sorts of stupid things. You're going to need a better argument.
> As with any law, let's see if it stands the test of courts.
The application of martial law in the US has already stood the test of 68 invocations. How many more invocations are you going to need before you are convinced of the basic fact that the US constitution can and has been suspended during states of emergency?
And you're pointing fingers at Canada for invoking the WMA three times, and the Emergencies act once? [1]
This is a completely ridiculous double standard. Please open your eyes.
[1] When the Canadian CORAF has explicit, clear provisions for when those kinds of acts can be invoked, and by whom?
"No, your honor, we planted evidence on a different black man. No this one we really did find evidence. Just trust us".
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all you have is... Well, not even any circumstantial evidence, it's just conjecture. Just 'they could have done it, so they did it!'.
Just because things may not have turned out one way doesn't mean that you can come in and insist that they actually turned out a different, particular way - without anything to support it. And then base the rest of your argument on that.
(This is also a complete tangent.)
Generally speaking in the US, the rights you have in practice (as opposed to on paper) are determined by how wealthy you are. Much like how we have the best health care in the world if you're wealthy, but the worst (among wealthy nations) if you aren't.
Fun fact: Most police "drug dogs" you see in public are actually normal dogs, because "drug dogs" are quite expensive and can only be put to service for a limited time (and they stress out with lots of noise and people). But if the people think the dog is a drug dog, then their reaction is often telling enough.
(but I don't know, if they do this in canada to get the "allows further intervention", but this is usually a grey area anyway)
Here what matters in court is, have drugs been found. If the cops think someone looks suspicious enough, they can search him. And if drugs were found, than this is all that matters in court, because obviously the cops were right with their suspicion if something was found. I don't see how that evidence could be challenged in court?
(No one said, that the dog is a drug dog. People just assume it and the police uses that assumption)
That is entirely incorrect. German law follows a similar structure to the United States regarding the admissibility of evidence that was collected improperly. Evidence obtained in violation of the law, particularly by infringement of the privacy of the home or person, may be excluded from the trial if the violation is deemed to have a significant impact on the reliability of the evidence. The standard of probable cause in German law is known as "concrete indications of a specific criminal offense" (konkrete Anhaltspunkte für eine bestimmte Straftat). It requires officials to have concrete indications that a specific criminal offense has been committed or is about to be committed before they can conduct a search or seizure.
Still, in case of the dog: it would be interesting, if there was a case about it, as I am very sure of the practice in reality.
Police will do, what works and with what they can get away. Most people will just comply when the police tells them to open their pockets (note that they don't have to articulate it as an order, the same if police comes to your door without a warrant and they ask if they can come in) assuming the police has the right. (and drug addicts usually do not have a lawer).
I don't know if it would hold up in court as a justification for searching, that a person looked nervous because of a police dog as the person just could have fear of dogs in general, so they likely would avoid it.
(Also, if you happen to live within 30 km of a nation border like me, then police (Zoll) can search pockets and cars all the time without concrete indications. So they could use this tactic without problems, but I have never seen the Zoll doing it, but the normal police in the cities)
Not just BC. ON, too.
No, this is only true for the most basic plans (called Autoplan). For anything beyond this, eg third-party liability, collision, comprehensive, etc., you can buy private insurance or go with ICBC for those plans too if you want.
> mitigation of indirect damage caused by drivers
But, private insurance covers that.
> through public services
Examples?
It is a start. But there is one guarantee, driver hate paying for what they use.
I'll grant you that this is anecdata, but if there are any public opinion polls demonstrating that ICBC is doing what it's doing with an actual consent of the governed, I'd love to see them.
(Elections don't satisfy this because people effectively vote on many different issues as a batch, so a few hot-button issues can dominate everything else in practice, making it impossible to interpret the outcome as a mandate for a particular policy unless it was one of those hot-button issues.)
Anyway, you can pretty sure simply analyse this with the business data.
If you make a poll you'll just poll for the public sentiment. And frankly "the tax is too damn high" can be heard everywhere pretty much regardless of the taxes.
When I moved to BC, my rate didn't change by much. But the rest of the experience got worse. For starters you had to go into an office for everything. In my case, it took a few times to get it right. They screwed up my license and insurance twice - things like name, address, etc. (In one case a field in their database was blank that a future agent said shouldn't have been possible not to populate... go figure).
Next they gave me incorrect information. They tried to tell me I had to buy an extra add-on for my liability coverage to carry over when driving in the US - which is dead wrong if you actually read the policy. I got into a 40-minute argument that wound up being me vs. every single employee in the office (they all wandered over to see what was going on). In the end we all called ICBC-central together - it took two escalations to finally get someone who knew what they were talking about who could authoritatively confirm I was correct and all the agents in the office were wrong. They were all stunned; the one I was dealing with said "Wow, I've been selling that package to everybody who comes in and nearly none of them need it!"
Years later I tried to make a comprehensive claim for ~$7k worth of damage related to a freak weather event. The ICBC-central agent said "don't even bother to file a claim, it won't be covered". Some time later I was chatting with my old Ontario broker who said it was a no-brainer and would have been 100% covered under my old plan. (In retrospect I should have sent in the claim anyway and put up a fight... but I just didn't have the time - was doing lucrative consulting, and it made more financial sense to spend the time on billable hours than wasting it on that).
Over the years they've made many more mistakes and generally drive me nuts. At least compared to the two different companies I used for insurance during the years I spent in Ontario. Again anecdotally, most of my neighbours haven't any good things to say about them either.
One silver lining of the pandemic is it finally forced ICBC to put a process in place for doing renewals over a combination of phone and email. Still not as convenient as in Ontario, but at least it's an improvement.
I still fail to understand why BC thinks they need their own government-run insurance provider. This is a solved problem in the rest of the world.
Regarding the ICBC add-on for US liability… aren’t all ICBC policies exclusively sold by independent brokers? If true then wouldn’t that have been an independent broker who was mistaken and ICBC proper cleared it up?
It is now:
Hey u/misanthrope2327, thanks for contributing to r/nottheonion. Unfortunately, your post was removed as it violates our rules:
Rule 2 - Sorry, but this story isn't oniony.
There has been a lot of pushback to DUIs. I did a poli-sci BA thesis on it. Essentially its one of the few times they make exception to constitutional rights, and assume guilt without due process.
A fairly deep explanation of what I'm talking about, and why states like WA gave up on it:
As an observer of the process, they definitely have an impact. You can see people spot the checkpoint and then peel off to the nearest onramp / off-street where they then get picked up by the special checkpoint designed to ask some questions of people willing to cross medians to avoid a standard checkpoint.
It's impressive to see how omnipresent the government is everyday life in Canada, often via these state sponsored entities with bizarre ties to the government.
Alcohol sales are handled by government-owned stores (because it takes the government's unique expertise to run a liquor store?). Dairy products are subject to production quotas administered by the government, and excess production has to be destroyed (it is illegal to compete and lower your prices!). Car insurance is done through the state run monopoly so you can't shop around for rates. Health is handled by a single player, so you have no say in which providers you are assigned to (if you get one at all, they can deny coverage with year long wait times but you are still on the hook for the tax bill!). The country's largest broadcaster is state owned and operated, with journalists on government payroll reporting on... the government! Say the right thing and you might even land yourself a cushy government job [0]
Government run car insurance only exists in two or three provinces. It’s the exception, not the rule.
The CBC is not “on government payroll”. It’s run independently but government funded. If you’ve got significant evidence of political parties interfering in the CBC’s reporting I’d love to hear it.
I’m not sure why you singled out Canadas first black, female, Governor General as being a problem. The GG’s role is a ceremonial, public facing, non-political role that perfectly suits someone well known who’s adept at public speaking. She’s not even the first former journalist to get the posting. Others were famous astronauts, military heroes or business leaders.
While there’s some truth in what you say (health care is in a real pickle, the dairy board is just bizarre) the rest is textbook right-wing propaganda.
You will have to prove a lot of "facts" to win that lawsuit. Especially since your social number(s), email, phone, whatsapp, etc are all public info already.
Recall a few years ago an uneducated hacker ("script kiddie") got part way into a CRA website and they took the whole website down for a week. (The attacker was caught, and prosecuted iirc.)
Src: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/...
> "any script, robot, spider, Web crawler, screen scraper, automated query program or other automated device or any manual process to monitor or copy the content contained in any online services"
But the CRA already anticipated this and explicitly disallowed headless clients
So, not allowed to use Ctrl+C on their website?
Why does a government want to protect itself from hacking liability via ToS in the first place. Couldn't they, you know, just pass a law saying they're not liable?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken
That being said, My Account is a useful, albeit very flawed online tool.
When I encounter clearly dodgy terms like this I often contact the organization and tell them I do not accept the given clause. Sometimes they say 'stop using our service' (rarely enforced) but most often they simply don't respond.
Someone at CRA with authority to fix this might perk up if thousands of Canadians start emailing them about it, report it to MP's, the Privacy Commissioner and other ombudsmen, etc.
For example let’s look at Ireland.
[0] Ireland tries to exclude itself from GDPR https://www.thejournal.ie/data-protection-bill-2018-3853647-...
[1] Entire health system compromised and possibly majority of PHI data exfiltrated https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/publications/conti-cyber-att...
[2] Irish health service only begins notifications to confirmed affected individuals a year later https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/hse-begi...
[3] selective punishment of companies whose data is breached eg google https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/dpc-sued-google-rtb-compla... vs meta https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/news-media/data-protection-...
Laws unevenly applied make a mockery of justice.
My understanding is that member states (and perhaps all sovereigns) are not required to comply with GDPR unless they explicitly choose to.
> However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations.
They conveniently ignore the fact that HTTPS is pervasive and that you can reasonably carry private conversations on a public network. And why don't they have a disclaimer for the fact that the telephone network is public and the mail network is public?
The maintenance hours thing is unconsiable though. Sometimes i want to know how much tfsa room i have on sunday evening.
Which you wouldn't want to check with the CRA either, because the information is often incomplete and updated annually at best.
The CRA even advises that whatever numbers they give you are essentially fugazi, and you should keep your own records because if you make a mistake they will obliterate you with fines.
One of the mottos of the Canadian government is: if you make a mistake because we gave you the wrong information, it is still your fault and you will give us money.
I think now (and the next year or two) might be a suitable time to pull a similar move.
But if you refuse to have competitive wages, no competent software engineer will want to work in government. Then you get some contractor job from a consulting company and good luck with that: many are happy to send a handful of junior developrts to fill their multi million contracts, with their seniors hopping in just enough time to justify the billing.
Increased comp isn't to motivate current people. It is so you aren't only hiring people at the level of skill and motivation as the current people.
By comparison with the province of BC's web services, anything provided by the federal government looks straight out of science fiction. For example: https://www.corporateonline.gov.bc.ca/ ... have fun!
Excerpts : 1458 Every person has a duty to honour his contractual undertakings. Where he fails in this duty, he is liable for any bodily, moral or material injury he causes to the other contracting party and is bound to make reparation for the injury; neither he nor the other party may in such a case avoid the rules governing contractual liability by opting for rules that would be more favourable to them.
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/CCQ-1991?l...
1474 A person may not exclude or limit his liability for material injury caused to another through an intentional or gross fault; a gross fault is a fault which shows gross recklessness, gross carelessness or gross negligence. He may not in any way exclude or limit his liability for bodily or moral injury caused to another.
1475 A notice, whether posted or not, stipulating the exclusion or limitation of the obligation to make reparation for injury resulting from the nonperformance of a contractual obligation has effect, with respect to the creditor, only if the party who invokes the notice proves that the other party was aware of its existence at the time the contract was formed.
1476 A person may not by way of a notice exclude or limit his obligation to make reparation with respect to third persons; such a notice may, however, constitute disclosure of a danger
1477 The assumption of risk by the victim, although it may be considered imprudent having regard to the circumstances, does not entail renunciation of his remedy against the author of the injury.
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/CCQ-1991?l...
I don't think that the CRA is subject to Quebec law, and believe that the CRA may exercise sovereign immunity, though I'm not sure that it has done so in the past.
3149. Québec authorities also have jurisdiction to hear an action based on a consumer contract or a contract of employment if the consumer or worker has his domicile or residence in Québec; the waiver of such jurisdiction by the consumer or worker may not be set up against him.
3150. Québec authorities also have jurisdiction to hear an action based on a contract of insurance where the holder, the insured or the beneficiary of the contract is domiciled or resident in Québec, the contract covers an insurable interest situated in Québec or the loss took place in Québec.
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/CCQ-1991?l...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramountcy_(Canada)
As GP noted, sovereign immunity might be relevant here.
Here's an interesting case that may enlighten, however it was approached as a consumer contract because it was not onerous. https://www.canlii.org/en/qc/qccs/doc/2011/2011qccs1506/2011...
How onerous is it to be forced to use CRA online services ? Are the taxes you pay considered onerous ? Are the CRA TOS considered an adhesion contract ?
This should really be tested by by the justice system rather than enthusiasts on a discussion forum. However, since we're all governed by such laws, it's never a loss to spend time on learning about them, especially physics.
1378. A contract is an agreement of wills by which one or several persons obligate themselves to one or several other persons to perform a prestation. Contracts may be divided into contracts of adhesion and contracts by mutual agreement, synallagmatic and unilateral contracts, onerous and gratuitous contracts, commutative and aleatory contracts, and contracts of instantaneous performance or of successive performance; they may also be consumer contracts.
1379. A contract of adhesion is a contract in which the essential stipulations were imposed or drawn up by one of the parties, on his behalf or upon his instructions, and were not negotiable. Any contract that is not a contract of adhesion is a contract by mutual agreement.
1384. A consumer contract is a contract whose field of application is delimited by legislation respecting consumer protection whereby one of the parties, being a natural person, the consumer, acquires, leases, borrows or obtains in any other manner, for personal, family or domestic purposes, property or services from the other party, who offers such property or services as part of an enterprise which he carries on.
But forget the CRA, ask me about how mine and many other peoples drivers licenses were suspended for weeks because the SAAQ totally fucked a software migration.
- Provincial: Revenu Quebec
- Federal: CRA
Other boondoggled IT projects brought to you by the Canadian government include the Phoenix federal government paysystem - which coming up on a decade now, some federal employees _still_ aren't getting paid correctly, and the ArriveCan app - which is their hastily created, bug-filled app for pre-entry customs processing checklists that had accessibility problems for the disabled which have likely still been ignored, among other issues.
Between this and the very dodgy reactions from government officials (or lack thereof) to the recent news of foreign influence in our politics and elections processes from China, I would say this country has had its core emptied out and replaced with a nougat center of tasty corporate corruption and money laundering goodness.
The attitude seems to be "Not enough money to create and maintain a system that respects the privacy of our citizens, but we'll just legalese our responsibility away because we can and we're the government so _there_! We're like a silicon valley company, just try to sue us!"
At least we know that tax companies in the states are lobbying to make it harder to file taxes with the US government - the Canadian government just makes it more difficult by themselves!
I for one would like our government to be as responsible as possible when it comes to handling our data - ideally having as little of it as possible, only the required amounts to interact with me as minimally as possible - instead of having it all available in a portal that can be easily compromised and hacked judging from previous leaks/breaches in the linked article.
The specific example was a paid garage that claimed no liability for any break-ins, any issue with the cars, etc etc. but he explained that if you are paying for a private parking, there are some expectations to the law and you cannot notice-board out of those. They are mainly a deterrent for people who are unaware of the law or these things, or made by a hapless manager.
In the US, there are a lot of gravel trucks that say something like
"Stay back 200 feet. Not responsible for broken windshields"
But the truth is: every vehicle on the road is responsible for not dropping stuff on the road. Especially dangerous stuff. Is it difficult in the case of gravel trucks - sure. But that doesn't matter.
The effectivly FORCE you to use this site as they try to cut costs and reduce "call in" support.
Then, they create a ToS which absolves them of all responsibility if they are hacked?
I would be willing to bet that if any Canadian business tried this the government would crack down and state it not permitted.
The government has a tendency of "do as i say not as i do".
Any Canadian can tell you that for the most part government IT is utter garbage.
<cough>arrive-can</cough><cough>Phoenix</cough>
....
Well that’s the value proposition of government, right? A monopoly on violence in exchange for a set of rules leading to a stable society.
They are not at the behest of the Treasury Board because the Treasury Board is a committee, not an administration or agency. The board has no executive authority whatsoever and exists to give advice to Cabinet rather than to perform or execute a duty. However, the individual members of the Treasury Board do have the ability to order the CRA, principally the Minister of National Revenue, who sits on the Treasury Board, is the executive of the CRA.
Perhaps you're thinking of the Bank of Canada, which is an actual corporation and operates in a semi-independent manner from Parliament, although technically Parliament has full oversight and authority over it.
(In some countries/companies this function is called the comptroller or the controller.)
Canada does have government bodies that are corporations, as I said the Bank of Canada is one of them, Canada Post is another. The full list can be found here:
https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services...
The CRA is no where on that list.
Here's a bit of a challenge for you to help you clarify your understanding of this. Find one single semi-authoritative source that refers to the CRA as a corporation or describes the operation of the CRA as being like that of a corporation. I'll even take an informal source.
You won't find any, since no one describes the CRA as a corporation and doing so is just confusing. You made it up, and given that Canada does have bodies that operate as corporations, you shouldn't be surprised that making something up like this will elicit disagreement.
Even the Canadian Coast Guard collective agreement is signed with the TBS.
I think these minor variations in corporate structure (or whatever you want to call it) embolden certain departments to go their own way, and forget their place in the whole of society.
See also the Canadian Mint copyrighting the penny.
(1) http://www.ipbrief.net/2012/09/20/a-cents-of-pride-royal-can...
https://www.canada.ca/fr/agence-revenu/services/formulaires-...
I say this because the My Account service allows a Canadian to check their balance, payments, credits, filing status, etc. It's there for anyone, ready to go, with whatever information the CRA has stocked it with. Your information, even if it started out on paper. It's pretty inconceivable that the CRA could function if the paper filings didn't soon end up in the same database as the e-filings.
Anyways, then at that point, your paper personal data is sitting right there behind the login of that same CRA site we're talking about. For your future convenience. Or leaking. Or hacking. And then we're back to ... "in the event of such occurrences, the Canada Revenue Agency is not responsible for any damages you may experience as a result."
In return for the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) giving you access to My Account, you agree to abide by the following terms and conditions of use for this and all future uses of My Account:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/...
not exactly the same thing, but this is a $500,000 class action lawsuit for losing a USB Key containing patient data:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/05/28/durham_region_he...
The expectation is that the government protect your privacy or pay if they fail to do so.. as with any private data.
If you can show that they didn't have audits, protections against their DB, etc. then I can imagine they'd be as liable as a private entity.
But as is mentioned, this is all but demanded of Canadians to use this service, and yet the government is absolving itself of liability.
Not sure what would be the best way of getting rid of "legal fluff" though. I imagine it costs quite a lot to society to have to sift through pages of meaningless legal text in order to find important (actually valid) legal statements.
Nobody expects to be hacked until it happens.
[1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/progr...
Basically an excuse to have the worst security and not be liable.
I don't know if it would hold if actual negligence was shown.
Feels like a "could the government do that" standard would be a good one to apply to any ToS when figuring out whether it's enforceable. Or maybe this is just more evidence that ToS should be generally and universally ruled unenforceable.