Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

Director Found Liable for Transferring Assets

Posted by Ron Davis on Tue, Sep 01, 2015

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Canadian

EEOC’s Latest Word On “Sex” Discrimination

Posted by Jon Elliott on Tue, Aug 25, 2015

Federal laws prohibit employers from basing employment decisions on a variety of factors, including “sex.” This term is not defined, leaving its interpretation to change and expand with social changes and court decisions. The central entity creating and applying these interpretations is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which administers and enforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a variety of subsequent laws. On July 15, EEOC reaffirmed its present interpretation, in an enforcement decision in which the plaintiff claimed he was denied access to a promotion because he’s gay (Baldwin v. Foxx). The EEOC’s order includes a clear summary of the agency’s approach to sex discrimination cases:

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Employee Rights, Workplace violence, EEOC, NLRB

Supreme Court Expands Employers’ Duty To Avoid Religious Discrimination

Posted by Jon Elliott on Thu, Jul 09, 2015

Federal laws protect individuals against job discrimination based on a variety of “protected classes” of characteristics. Most represent physical characteristics, such as race, sex, and disability. In addition, however, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits a prospective employer from refusing to hire an applicant in order to avoid accommodating a religious practice that it could accommodate without undue hardship.

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Employee Rights, EEOC, NLRB

Join the Napping Revolution…at Work!

Posted by STP Editorial Team on Tue, Jun 16, 2015

You’ve likely heard it said that “everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten.” Well, that includes the benefits of taking a nap in the middle of the day, which has been shown to improve attitudes and enhance the ability to learn and manage tasks. Young children and elderly persons tend to nap, and napping is an important aspect of many cultures. However, as a nation, the United States appears to be becoming more and more sleep deprived. General reluctance to take naps may be attributed to a busy lifestyle and the demands of the North American workplace, or to the idea that napping will interfere with our nighttime sleep, or the stigma that napping equals laziness and results in poor productivity.

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, Employee Rights, Training

OSHA: Earthquake Preparedness

Posted by Jon Elliott on Tue, May 05, 2015

Last weekend’s disastrous earthquakes in Nepal are a reminder that natural disasters can strike anywhere. Employers can and should plan for a broad range of events, and can apply guidance from occupational safety and health agencies standards when doing so. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires employers with specified activities to prepare and implement emergency action plans (EAPs), provides guidance for EAPs, and recommends that all employers prepare these plans. Employers can use this structure to prepare for earthquakes.

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Employer Best Practices, OSHA, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS, EPA

B.C. Court Rejects Director’s Plea That Manager Was Responsible For Environmental Damage

Posted by Ron Davis on Mon, Apr 27, 2015

The founder and principal of Northland Properties Corp. (“Northland”), Bob Gaglardi and his son, Tom Gaglardi, the president of Northland were found guilty, along with Northland, of two counts of “unlawfully carrying on a work or undertaking that resulted in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat along the foreshore of Kamloops Lake” contrary to the federal Fisheries Act (R. v. Northland Properties Corp., 2014 BCPC 251 (BC Prov. Ct.). The charges related to land clearing and placing of fill on seven of Northland’s properties. The Crown alleged the work was performed unlawfully by Northland’s servants and under the direction of the Gaglardis. Both Northland and Tom Gaglardi denied they intended to cause the resulting damage to fish habitat, pleading that “the project supervisor for the work, Jim Parks, exceeded the directions he had been given on the project regarding landscaping.” They did admit that they had failed to be duly diligent in supervising the project, resulting in the damage to the fish habitat. Bob Gaglardi pleaded he was only briefly and peripherally involved in the project and thus, was not guilty. The Court held that there was sufficient reasonable doubt to acquit him on the charges.

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Environmental risks, Environmental, Canadian

NIOSH Expands Recommendations for Tobacco-Free Workplaces and e-Cigarettes

Posted by Jon Elliott on Tue, Apr 21, 2015

As most readers know, employers have very broad responsibilities to provide their employees with a workplace that is “free from recognized hazards.” To meet this Employer’s General Duty, employers must do more than just identify and comply with applicable safety standards issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and its equivalent (I discussed this general provision here). Employers also must take other – unspecified – steps to identify and “recognize” unregulated hazards. One important version of these steps is to watch for non-binding recommendations from OSHA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and other credible organizations in industry, government and academia,

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, OSHA, Employee Rights

Finalization of Revised ISO 14001 Standard for EMS

Posted by STP Editorial Team on Mon, Mar 30, 2015

The revision of the ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems Standard is now in its final stages. The Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) will be released soon for the membership to vote for approval or reconsideration—and voting will continue for two months, at which time, the FDIS will be approved as is, or sent back to the ISO Environmental Management Technical Committee 207 (ISO/TC207). Due to the lengthy and deliberate process built into reviewing and updating ISO standards, it is rare for an FDIS not to be approved.

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Environmental risks, Environmental, corporate social responsibility

Hazardous Chemicals: Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Approaches 40, Part 2

Posted by Jon Elliott on Wed, Mar 25, 2015

My most recent blog provided a short summary of chemical evaluation and reporting requirements under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976. These requirements apply when a manufacturer or importer is preparing to introduce a “new chemical substance” into commerce in the U.S., to provide the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with information to evaluate whether chemical hazards require regulatory restrictions (up to and including outright bans) to provide adequate protections to human health and the environment. TSCA does not include any blanket requirement for ongoing studies or updated evaluations of an “existing chemical substance” after it has entered commerceincluding those already in commerce when TSCA took effect, so some chemicals have never undergone a regulatory review of their hazards.

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS, EPA, Hazcom

Tax Court Holds Unsigned Resignation Effective

Posted by Ron Davis on Mon, Mar 23, 2015

The Tax Court of Canada reviewed the requirements for a directors’ resignation to be effective in the context of potential personal liability for the corporation’s failure to remit source deductions under the Income Tax Act in determining that a resignation document prepared by corporate counsel was sufficient, even though the directors never saw the document (Gariepy v. The Queen, 2014 TCC 254). In this case, Donna Gariepy and Sally Chriss agreed to act as directors of 1056922 Ontario Limited (“105”) at the urging of their husbands, Derek Gariepy and George Chriss, the actual managers of 105. The directors’ husbands had been directors of CG Industries (CGI) that had become insolvent and owed significant unremitted source deduction amounts to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

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Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Accounting & Tax, Employee Rights, Canadian