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I'm not at all surprised that you'll find my site if you Google big four Canada overtime - I already pointed out that three of the big four are paying out overtime to their non-CA staff and seniors . n.b. provincial laws treat CA, CGA, CMA and CPA and students registered to study for those designations as "professionals" ineligible for overtime pay, regardless of rank. Well now it turns out that all of the big four are doing it - Deloitte & Touche has joined the party . A kind reader who worked for Deloitte pointed this out to me - Deloitte's non-CA staff's overtime hours are about to stop being "unpaid". The news isn't that fresh, but this isn't the sort of thing you see on the front page of the newspaper - unless you Googled "deloitte Canada overtime" you might not be aware of it. All the facts for Deloitte are available at the website they setup otplan.ca - a URL which redirects straight to a deloitte.com page . The general details...
Before I continue - there's been enough misreporting on various other sites that I have to make this very clear: Chartered Accountants in Canada do NOT get paid overtime at CA firms and are NOT going to be paid overtime. More on that in a moment, but basically CAs are exempt under most labour laws - and that's the way the system works. With that in mind, don't forget that not everyone at CA firms is a CA, or even a CA student. Much has been written about KPMG not having paid overtime to people who, it turns out, were supposed to receive it after all. KPMG's story was especially bad because, from what I've read, they had people who you might commonly refer to as a "technician" or "administrative support staff" doing work that is normally done by "client serving" staff, as reported by the Star and other media outlets. As reported in the Globe, KPMG will pay out the overtime it figures it owes in an attempt to avoid getting hit with punitive...
Way back in university I developed an intense dislike for psycho activists. You know the kind. You say something innocuous. Say, for example, that they should buy the green bike instead the blue one, and they start screaming "HATE CRIME!!!!!!" in your face. Above: Alternate Strike Vehicle #1 The news from Steve Munro's blog is worth reading, especially the comment by an operator - click here - who explains that it looks like another conspiracy by the psycho activists . As a T.T.C. Operator, let me give you my take on this situation. I was shocked when I found out from Bob’s phone call that the members voted against the contract. 3/3/3 increases, upgrades to benefits, and most importantly, no concessions. However, this wasn’t good enough for the maintenance department. They want guaranteed lifetime jobs. The commission is buying new vehicles and like all new vehicles they have warranties. The maintenance people don’t like this as they think they will be laid off because the...
It's been a good three weeks. Returned to British Columbia, saw an old friend in Seattle, meet new friends in Portland, then spent time in California, Las Vegas, New Mexico and Colorado before heading home. And now that it's time to work, I found myself at the streetcar yard, with someone who I surmise was Ashley Hutcheson, taking photos at the TTC streetcar yard . She was doing it for the Globe & Mail , while I was doing it for ACS . In the culture of the TTC, removing your uniform shirt while operating a vehicle is considered beyond gauche . This operator was roundly mocked for his faux pas by the small crowd of operators milling about the Roncesvalles streetcar yard. If I had trouble paying the bills with my day job I'd give freelance photographer a serious shot. I'm not yet an artist or a photojournalist - yet, but I seem to have a knack for showing up at the right time in the right place with my camera in situations where "something" is happening. But...
You no doubt already heard about the big KPMG overtime lawsuit . But if you haven't, and you used to work for KPMG in Canada in the past few years, then you do now! That's because you recently received a letter disclosing what your share of the settlement is going to be. If you were an administrative staff person supposed to work 40 hours a week, no more, no less, the letter will indicate some dollar figure, your share of the almost $10 million settlement . Intriguingly, you'll get that letter even if you weren't an administrative person - that is, a young CA student or similar 'overtime exempt' professional employee. And what will the letter will tell you? It will say that your share of the settlement is zero dollars. Wow. Thanks for your service, this doesn't apply to you, have a nice day. I wavered between thinking "well, that makes sense", and "that's completely insane, why would you rub salt in the wounds of someone who presumably left...
Wow, the federal government is doing a budget "consultation" (which is "not a poll", they say). Interesting . Thanks to Nancy Z for the link. It's a 1-7 scale. I assume 1 means top priority. Interestingly the government insists on knowing your income level when you complete the survey. No, "I prefer not to say" option. I guess they think we can trust them - or else we'll lie and make up a fake answer?
Toronto is besieged by waves of idiots. People are driving their cars into the city and parking them on the snowy streets, blissfully unaware that their car is up to a METRE away from the curb, and therefore jutting out into the path of passing streetcars. Every single trip I took this week was delayed as TTC operators carefully edged their streetcars past parked cars. And tonight their luck ran out on Roncesvalles: 504 streetcar service was disrupted for an hour due to, as you can see above, the careless Jaguar driver's horrible parking job. Sometimes a car is carelessly parked by someone running inside a store to retrieve their wallet or other lost item. Fine. It happens to everyone - emergencies happen. This was not one of those situations. The car's owner disappeared, and was nowhere to be found. The delay stretched on interminably - three streetcars ended up getting backed up. Most people living nearby disembarked and walked home. Others had longer trips home and couldn't...
It's sad to see people pass away. Or to read something they prepared in case of their death. Major Andrew Olmsted wrote online since last May and died alongside Capt. Thomas J. Casey - both shot by a sniper.
Inflammatory but true . Rest in Peace, Mr. Dziekanski. Never have I been more ashamed of the police or Canada . Strange that the cops' names don't seem to have been released. I'm looking for support for this claim - ah, thank you Google, found it - Mr. Pritchard had to sue to get his video back . This doesn't surprise me at all, sadly. I was doing some freelance journalism photographing nearby a crime scene recently and had a cop on his high horse chase me right off, once he finally arrived on the scene and tried to impose control. Police cover-up? Yes. And there's news that there was already a report in 2005 telling them not to go around killing people with tasers . As if you need a report to know that only highly trained officers should be using devices like this! When tasers first came out they pointed out that only the tactical response unit in Toronto - the Emergency Task Force - was equipped with tasers, the devices being too experimental and dangerous for the...
An after-hours melee has sent at least one man to hospital with a stab wound from a broken beer bottle. Shortly after midnight, Toronto police responded to calls from security on Roncesvalles Avenue, who were on site to guard equipment from the weekend street festival. Security explained that a brawl had broken out: a lop-sided “40 versus 25" battle. The melee broke out after one man was stabbed near the corner of Roncesvalles and Fern Avenues. The running battle stretched six blocks across the street, as observed by the spread of police arresting suspects. Participants in the fight grabbed blunt objects, including poles, chairs and flower pots, reported a custodian of the Credit Union facing the site of the stabbing. Police responded quickly, arriving in time to stop and handcuff at least six suspects, including one man with a backpack who was repeatedly told to “stop resisting”. The stabbing victim was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital while the police continued their investigation...
This summer saw a rash of phishing attacks on customers of TD Canada Trust. Opportunistic crackers suckered people unfamiliar with the Internet into giving away their banking information. The gist of the scam is like this: "Someone is attacking your bank account." "Please go to our website to confirm your information." "Then you'll be safe." The scam is as brilliant as it is insidious: Yes, someone is trying to attack you. It's the person who just sent you that e-mail. The website they're sending you to will look identical to your bank's site. They'll take all the money out of your account as soon as they can or they'll extract all the information you give to commit identity theft, opening new credit cards accounts and other financial instruments in your name, ruining your credit card record. There are at least three things anyone going online should know: Your bank will never contact you by e-mail and ask you to share information or...
Neil's been on vacation , which has no doubt given me an additional chance to cry " First! ", as I write about an interesting little feature in Checkmark, the magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accounts of Ontario. The Summer 2007 issue came out and I skipped right to the back for the profession's version of "true crime" stories, although it's not necessarily a matter of "crime", it's definitely more of the kind of thing you'll see Dennis or to a great extent, Francine writing about on a regular basis . The interesting feature I'm referring to is the ICAO's "Disciplinary Notices" page - or section, if it's been a rough period - which functions like a police blotter for Chartered Accountants. One name jumped right out: "Wanda A. Liczyk, North York." She has been "found guilty of three charges under Rule 201 of failing to conduct herself in a manner which will maintain the good reputation of the profession...
From the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot file, comes this story courtesy of Francine - Deloitte is operating in Iraq. The article that mentions Deloitte is about a Marine facing court martial - appealing a conviction actually. It breathlessly discusses all the operations Deloitte is involved in. And it's certainly too weird to believe, but I'll assume the Salem News has its facts right. What would one of the Big Four be doing in Iraq? Auditing the American contractors? Apparently yes - and doing some consulting work too, according to the article. I sped through the article, but the jarring thing that appears in the whole piece is the series of revelations from a former Marine, a friend of the embattled Marine, who discusses Deloitte and makes what I can only describe as really far-out claims. The Marine is part of a group that's investing D&T's operations in Iraq. The article shows that they're alleging a link between the military judicial system and D&T. They believe...
Conrad Black was convicted on four counts ; it's hard to fight video evidence that shows him taking away evidence which a court had ordered. Of course, his expensive lawyers will try anyway. Trying to get him to go to jail seems to be akin to trying to stick a cat in a blender. To pull off a sort of amusing shot at the iPhone and a bizarre online marketing campaign for blenders, anyway. If you think that's disgraceful, you should read what the Star considers a highlight of the trial: The trial was complex and involved arcane points of securities law and corporate finance. The most memorable moments of the trial came when Black, who did not testify, made statements outside the court asserting his innocence and his wife Barbara Amiel Black called reporters “vermin” and referred to one as a “slut.”
It turns out some medics rushing to treat someone at a nightclub noticed a car filling with smoke, Time reports. Savvy bomb-makers know to use cars with tinted windows, I suppose. Seriously - I've seen one photo of the car so far, and you can clearly see from the rear passenger window through the rear window. No tint. It'd be a stretch to think that this stroke of luck would lead government officials to ban all tinted windows in a vain hope for a repeat of this luck. But then again, they banned nail clippers from airplanes. Ridiculous. At least there's a new argument to use on co-workers who believe coming to work in the downtown core is somehow dangerous: some recently arrested plotters were recorded saying that they were justifying their attacks on nightclubs by arguing that they're dens of vice and immorality, therefore they 'deserve it', according to their twisted logic. So clubbing is more dangerous now, terrorism-wise, then going to work. How oddly reassuring...
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