Canada and the United States unveiled plans Wednesday for an unprecedented joint approach to border protection aimed at developing common practices to screen travellers and cargo, with both governments promising the measures will better guard against terrorism and speed up cross-border traffic. A two-part "action plan" that maps out efforts to harmonize regulations across a spectrum of trade goods while increasing the amount of information shared between the two countries about both legitimate and suspect travellers. The reforms — many of them involving pilot projects that might not see full implementation for years — aim to integrate programs for Canada-U.S. perimeter security and to streamline the flow of goods between the two countries through pre-inspection and pre-clearance. "Put simply, we're going to make it easier to conduct the trade and travel that creates jobs and we're going to make it harder for those who would do us harm and threaten our security," said Obama. While the borders may become somewhat invisible the information sharing won't be as both countries will be sharing information on individuals and companies that is unprecedented. Which is now a financial necessity long term if the Canadian Push is going to work. (Source vancoversun.com)

Canadian small businesses lost $3.2-billion to workplace fraud last year, study finds More than one in four companies in Canada with fewer than 500 employees (26%) suffered at least one instance of occupational fraud last year. While the poll of 802 firms estimated employees cheated their employers out of a collective $3.2-billion in 2010, the author believes this is a conservative figure. I consider those numbers to be conservative,” Rock Lefebvre, vice-president of research for CGA Canada, said in an interview. “The number of businesses actually reporting fraud is very conservative, taken with the fact that most of them do not have [detection] programs in place.” Most respondents (59%) said they do not regularly assess their exposure to fraud, yet 74% said the risk of occupational fraud was low, suggesting to Mr. Lefebvre many “low” answers were just assumptions. Also excluded from the results were other forms of fraud, outright theft and more sophisticated “white-collar crimes.” Most cases resulted from a failure to segregate duties, Mr. Lefebvre said. “You might have one office person handling cash and booking entries into accounts re-ceivable so they could easily be skimming accounts receivable.” Most acts of fraud identified in the study (81%) resulted in a loss of less than $5,000. (Source financialpost.com)

Hudson's Bay closing 26 Ontario Fields stores; company cites market conditions The stores are the discount division of Hudson's Bay Company. A spokeswoman for Hudson's Bay says a Fields store in Mississauga, Ont., will remain operational along with 140 stores in Western Canada. Tiffany Bourre says the Ontario retail market has been extremely competitive and it was decided to close down the stores following careful analysis of many factors. (Source canadianbusiness.com)