Two Canadian Provinces Issue Hazard Warnings About Fall Foliage Danger

Gatineau Fall Foliage-FNT-smallQUEBEC CITY / TORONTO – In a rare display of bureaucratic unanimity, two Canadian provinces issued public hazard warnings today about the dangers of viewing this year’s fall foliage, without appropriate eyewear. Leaf experts in Ontario and Quebec had alerted the provincial governments that the colours of the foliage this year were exceptionally vivid and a potential health hazard.

“We can’t take chances with public safety when the colours get this bright and laser-sharp,” said Alfred Ottenburg, a spokesperson for the Ontario ministry of moss and foliage in Queen’s Park. “Too many people wound up in the hospital with eye damage three years ago when they viewed the foliage without government-approved leaf goggles.” Ottenburg stressed that the leaves had also been unusually “intense and vivid” in 2014.

Jean-Paul Carboniere, who is with le ministère des feuilles et de la mousse in Quebec City, echoed Ottenburg’s stern caution.  “We’re here to protect people from their worst impulses,” he said. “Here in Quebec, there are massive leaf-watching events every weekend.  Eye damage from looking directly at the fall leaves in their colourful totality, can be dynamite!”

As yet, there are no federal regulations that prevent people from viewing unsafe fall foliage.

Both Carboniere and Ottenburg advised that if leaf peepers were careful to wear protective eyewear, there would be no danger. Speaking for both ministries, Ottenburg emphasized that leaf-peeping goggles were available from their respective provincial organizations for $895.00, plus sales tax.

“Or you could get them at Wal-Mart for $3.49,” he said, but they’re not government approved.”  Source: FNT Staff

Photo credit: Original images at: Ottawa Citizen/Kourtney Derouin

 

 

Canada Revenue Agency to Tax all Contest Winners of Tim Hortons Free Coffee

Tim Hortons-FNT-small.pngOTTAWA – A leaked document from the Canada Revenue Agency shows that a 2017 tax code change will allow for taxing all past and future winners of free coffee in the Tim Hortons RRRoll Up The Rim To Win contest. The document also noted that the CRA will be hiring thirty thousand additional employees before the end of 2017, to enforce the new tax code.

This latest revelation came fast upon the heels of the CRA’s most recent bureaucratic slight-of-hand to separate retail employees from a long-established and financially negligible perquisite, by assessing discounted merchandize as a taxable benefit.

A spokesperson for the national revenue minister, who did not want to go on the record, explained that the reason the government was potentially spending billions of extra tax dollars in costs to extract a pittance in tax revenue from the lowest paid workers in the Canadian business sector was: “because we can.” And when FauxNews Today asked if a discounted purchase of second-hand pajama bottoms by a part-time employee of a goodwill store would count as a taxable benefit, the phone suddenly went to dial tone.

A spokesperson who was reached within the CRA was more forthcoming, although he also declined to give his name for the record, citing “privacy concerns.” He explained the reason why thirty-thousand additional CRA employees were hired to collect taxes from Tim Hortons contest winners.

“We know that Tim Hortons gives out more than thirty-thousand prizes in its RRRoll Up The Rim contest every year. So one CRA employee will be assigned to shadow each contest winner to ensure that anyone who wins a free cup of coffee will be certain to report it on his tax form.”

The CRA spokesperson was candid about why the agency consistently focused on such trivial and inconsequential sources of tax revenue when there was so much more to be gained by applying tax code changes to hugely profitable corporations like the Canadian banks.

“Banks have lawyers,” he said. “They put up a fight, use every loophole in the book and some that are not in the book. That’s costly and it might take decades to collect from them, if ever. The average docile Canadian citizen just lays down with no fuss and lets us empty out their pockets year after year.”

The CRA spokesperson was also asked if there was a specific rationale for the changes to the 2017 tax code.

“It’s simple,” he said. “We want the money. The CRA looks at the Canadian population as an orchard, ripe for the picking. And when we go out to harvest it, the first thing we pluck is the low hanging fruit.”  Source: FNT Staff

Photo credit: Original images at: The30.ca, Tim Hortons