Category: Canada

Ottawa Short-Changed More Than 270,000 Veterans On Pensions, Disability Payments | CBC News

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More than 270,000 ex-soldiers were short-changed by Veterans Affairs Canada for over eight years because of an accounting error worth at least $165 million, CBC News has learned. The mistake was uncovered by the veterans ombudsman’s office, which has worked with the federal department for over a year to get it to confirm the mistake and make amends. A written statement from Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan confirmed a retroactive compensation program is in the works — but the affected veterans will have to wait up to two years to get their money. Read full…

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Hidden Camera Reveals How Bank Employees Mislead And Upsell On Pricey Credit Card Insurance | CBC News

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A Marketplace hidden camera investigation is raising questions about how bank employees are selling a pricey and controversial product marketed to help with credit card payments if you lose your job or get sick. It’s called credit card balance insurance, or balance protection insurance — and if you’ve signed up for a credit card, chances are you’ve been asked to buy it. But many experts say the insurance comes with high fees — typically a percentage of a cardholder’s outstanding balance — and so many exclusions it can be hard…

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New Privacy Rules Will Force Canadian Companies To Disclose Data Breaches | CBC News

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New privacy rules designed to better safeguard the personal data of Canadians and let them know when it has been breached kick in Thursday, but even security experts say they are far from perfect. The legislation, known as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (or PIPEDA) does a lot of things, but most importantly from a consumer’s perspective, it requires Canadian companies to alert their customers any time their personal information may have fallen into the wrong hands. Much of the law is aimed at preventing breaches in the first place, but…

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StatCan Scooped Up 15 Years Of Personal Financial Data From Canadian Credit Bureau – National | Globalnews.ca

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As Statistics Canada plans to build a massive new personal information bank with the real-time financial transaction data of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, Global News has learned the agency has scooped up 15 years’ worth of credit rating information from a major international credit bureau which could include millions of Canadians. The data harvest was done without the consent or knowledge of those Canadians whose credit history was passed on Statistics Canada. The requests occurred in October 2017 and more recently in January 2018. Read full story here: StatCan Scooped Up…

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Bell And Rogers Defend Sales Practices At CRTC Hearing | CBC News

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Canada’s two biggest telecommunications companies got their turn to speak on Friday in a five-day probe by Canada’s telecom regulator into sales practices in the industry. Officials from BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. addressed a panel at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Friday, their first chance to participate in the five-day public probe by the regulator. The probe was prompted by CBC reporting that uncovered evidence of misleading and aggressive tactics being employed at those companies and others, in an attempt to get customers to sign up for new services, or more services…

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U.S. On Guard Against Rise In Illegal Border Crossings As Canada Rejects Asylum Claims | CBC News

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American border agents are increasingly concerned about the northern boundary with Canada, saying the number of people entering the U.S. through back roads, forests and even across rivers is surging. “We’ve seen an increase coming into the United States from Canada,” U.S. Border Patrol Houlton Division chief Dennis Harmon says. He is responsible for the north-eastern frontier, through the Maine-New Brunswick line and the shared waters along the Atlantic. Read full story here: U.S. On Guard Against Rise In Illegal Border Crossings As Canada Rejects Asylum Claims | CBC News  

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83 Percent Of Routers Are Open To A High-Risk Vulnerability | Digital Trends

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A new study out by the American Consumer Institute shows that 83 percent of routers in the United States are vulnerable to cyberattacks.  The group finds that a majority of those routers have critical security vulnerabilities, primarily due to the lack of firmware updates. In testing a total of 186 routers from leading manufacturers like Netgear and Linksys, the study found that over 155 were vulnerable to potential cyberattacks. Individually, there were 172 vulnerabilities per router, and 32,003 vulnerabilities in total. Read full story here: 83 Percent Of Routers Are Open To…

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How Roadside Speed Signs In The U.S. Could Be Tracking You Using Canadian-Made Tech | National Post

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Canadian drivers who venture south of the border can soon expect to have their licence plate logged surreptitiously by the United States’ newest public surveillance tool: roadside speed signs. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency plans to expand its efforts to track licence plates around the country by embedding recognition technology inside digital displays that indicate the speed at which a vehicle is travelling, the news website Quartz reported this week. In addition to fulfilling their chief purpose — warning people who drive faster than the limit to slow down —…

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New Free Trade Deal With U.S. Will See Canada’s Duty-Free Limit Raised To $150 From $20 | CBC News

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Retailers say they are OK with new trade rules that will allow Canadians to buy more from the United States duty free — because dire alternatives that would have been worse never came to pass. One aspect of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement announced over the weekend is an increase in the so-called de minimis threshold for duty-free shopping — the amount that Canadians can buy from a store in the U.S. and import to Canada without having to pay a duty. Under the old rules, Canada’s limit was $20. That’s much less than…

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Loonie Soars In The Wake Of The New Trade Deal With The U.S. And Mexico | CTV News

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The loonie traded higher at 78.13 cents US compared with an average of 77.25 cents US on Friday. While most economists have been expecting the Bank of Canada to raise its key interest rate target later this month, the trade negotiations have been a key uncertainty. The central bank had made a point of saying it was closely watching the NAFTA talks and other trade policy developments, which could hurt the economy. Read full story here: Loonie Soars In The Wake Of The New Trade Deal With The U.S. And Mexico…

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