¶ Published Thursday, February 26th In Environment - No Comments »
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about how one should never let a good crisis go to waste. Moving right along, Ontario appears to be following that advice seriously. On Monday the Ontario government released its proposed Green Energy Act, a sweeping bill that would amend 15 existing provincial statutes. The new Act is incentive-based and would, among other things, encourage renewable energy projects, promote energy efficiency programs, and build a smart grid, which in turn would present opportunities to develop new technologies. Through the initiative, the McGuinty government hopes to create some 50,000 jobs. Environmentalists, so far seem happyRead the Rest…
¶ Published Wednesday, February 25th In Environment - No Comments »
Ontario seems to be taking a lead in consultations aimed at designing a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system. In December the province released its discussion paper on the issue. Gowlings gives a good breakdown of the details. A copy of the discussion paper can be found here. Comments will be accepted until March 3, 2009, following which consultations will continue in 2009 on a sector-specific basis with industries likely to be affected, to guide the development of the system. It’s expected that the framework will be announced as early as 2010.
¶ Published Wednesday, February 25th In Environment - No Comments »
At the request of a small association of local residents, the Superior Court of Quebec has ordered the City of Sainte-Agathe to “cease any non-treated discharge to the North River sewage ” (translated), a situation that the court awards to the “persistent laxity of the City and the Ministère des Affaires municipales” (MAM) for their tolerance of the non-compliance with the Environment Quality Act (EQA). The Court gave 30 days to the town to “take all measures necessary to operate its treatment plant in accordance with authorization under the EQA” (translated). Since 2006, the Court concluded that, “the City rejects carelessly treated wastewater intoRead the Rest…
¶ Published Monday, February 23rd In Design & Features, Miscellaneous - No Comments »
We believe lighter, faster and easier is …. better! Despite this common sense approach, too many companies invest in expensive “enterprise” software that they think will solve their problems, they won’t. In fact, these software packages ranging in price from 10 000 $ to over a million dollars usually cause more headaches than they relieve. For one, these large pieces of software try to do too much, making them bad at many things instead of good at one thing. The software salesman, who works on commission, will promise you the moon to get you to sign on the dotted line. TheseRead the Rest…
¶ Published Wednesday, February 18th In Environment - No Comments »
Companies’ scrutiny of their own suppliers is beginning to show signs of improvement. At an event organized by the Conseil patronal de l’environnement du Quebec, held today, a half dozen presenters – representing private industry (Bell, Desjardins, and Walmart) and government (MSDEP, Loto-Quebec, Public Works Canada) — shared the details of their responsible procurement policies with attendees. The purpose, of course, is to achieve real gains in sustainability by purchasing environmentally friendly products and services, selecting appropriate contractors and including environmental requirements in a contract. This can be done by drawing up Codes of conduct, which set out the standardsRead the Rest…
¶ Published Monday, February 16th In Announcements, Environment - No Comments »
The NIMONIK Team will be at Booth 324 at the AMERICANA conference at the Palais de Congrès from March 17th to 19th. We will be demoing the product and would like to meet as many of you as possible. To get a personal tutorial or see how to incorporate your legal register into NIMONIK, schedule an appointment via email info@nimonik.ca. The floorplan is available here. As an extra treat, if you come to our booth for a demo, we will give you a 50$ credit towards a new subscription.
¶ Published Monday, February 16th In Announcements, Design & Features - No Comments »
The need for speed is in all of us. Last week, we made significant performance improvements. This was done by removing data processing bottlenecks one-by-one, a long process but in pure figures, significant speed improvements were achieved. We hope that this will translate to an improved and smoother experience for our users. Let us know if you like the speed of the site. http://www.nimonikapp.ca
¶ Published Sunday, February 15th In Environment - No Comments »
Even though the global economic downturn has effectively eliminated the market for many recycled materials (paper, plastics and glass), provinces in Canada have been pushing ahead with EPR, or Stewardship, programs. Sure EPR is catchy, but what does it mean? Extended Producer Responsibility makes the producer (manufacturer, distributor, importer) responsible for the life-cycle management of their products, including financing the collection and recycling of discarded products. Programs created to meet these requirements are usually funded by the producer and the consumer, and not the tax-payer. As is the case with everything in Canada, each province has pretty much the sameRead the Rest…
¶ Published Wednesday, February 11th In Design & Features - No Comments »
A major challenge with ISO 14001:2004 and equivalent systems is legal registers. In our experience, we have seen registers in various formats and with different content, but one common thread is their difficulty to update them. When companies undergo ISO 14001 audits, they rush to update their legal registers – often using consultants or lawyers at a heavy cost. With NIMONIK, your register will always be up-to-date and ready to use . With Nimonik, you can create Facilities which allows you to build and host three items: A Legal Register An Impact-Aspect Register Documents related to your facility (permits, certificates of authorization,Read the Rest…
¶ Published Friday, February 6th In Announcements, Design & Features, Legal Issues - No Comments »
In the next few weeks, we will be unveiling a new feature: Municipal Tracking. We will offer bulletins (plain language updates) and links to municipal by-laws. Only Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver will include Topics (detailed guidance text) on municipal by-laws, other municipalities will only have updates. As such, municipalities are priced significantly lower than provinces: only 10$/month/municipality. Some of the municipalities we will track include: Montréal Toronto Vancouver Abbotsford Baie D’urfé Calgary Charlebourg (Arrondissement) Charlottetown Cornwall Edmonton Gander Halifax Hamilton Laurentien (arrondissement) Longeuil-StHubert Mirabel Moncton Ottawa Quebec City Regina Saskatoon St. John’s Valleyfield Winnipeg Lac Brome Mississauga
¶ Published Friday, February 6th In Announcements, Environment - No Comments »
First the good news. Discussions seem to be moving forward between Canada and the US on a cap-and-trade system to put a limit on emissions and allow industry to buy and sell emissions rights. But as the economy continues to slow down, everyone seems to be getting nervous about the negative consequences of cap-and-trade schemes. Understandable, sure. Yet one has to wonder whether there ever will be a good time to consider the positive ones. There are now reports out of Australia this week that its carbon trading plan needs rethinking, because of the burden imposed on businesses. And thereRead the Rest…
¶ Published Tuesday, February 3rd In Environment, Miscellaneous - 2 Comments »
I just came across an amazing car entering production in California. It is called the Aptera and it is beautiful. Powered electrically, a 100 mile range and the upcoming hybrid version gets a mind-boggling 300 mpg. Who says the whole world can’t have cars? It is safe, sleek and damn cool. Though not as fast as a Tesla Roadster, it is much more affordable (28k vs. 100k for the Tesla). Last week, I spoke about how automation can help us break the Malthusian cycle, this is just another example of how we can have our cake and eat it too. One ofRead the Rest…
¶ Published Monday, February 2nd In Environment - No Comments »
Travel back in time to see historical imagery, dive below the surface of the ocean and record a tour of your journeys… Today Google Inc. announced the launch of Google Earth 5.0 which includes a new feature: Ocean in Google Earth which combines sea floor terrain and expert content to provide users with an opportunity to explore some of the most difficult-to-reach parts of the world. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google said: “In discussions about climate change, the world’s oceans are often overlooked despite being an integral part of the issue. About one-third of the carbon dioxide that we emitRead the Rest…
¶ Published Monday, February 2nd In Announcements, Design & Features, Environment, Legal Issues - No Comments »
We are very pleased to offer the world our federal information free, without a any sort of login. Simply visit http://www.nimonikapp.ca Since the new version, we have offered federal content free to those who create an account, but we found many people were turned off by the hassle of creating yet another username and password. We understand. To remove that burden, we have made our Federal information (Bulletins, Legislation and Topics) available without any sort of login. The interface is not as nice as the one you get with an account, but it should give you a taste of theRead the Rest…
