Tag Archive for 'Canada'

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Canadian Charities

Published on May 7, 2009 in Canada, Methods, Private Investigator and Sources. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

Researching Canadian charities is a difficult and frustrating undertaking. Here is the short course in starting an investigation of a Canadian charity.

To determine if a charity is registered by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), go to the Charities Listings page. The most useful filing of a charity is the T3010 form. This is the annual information filing that must be completed each year.

I wish that a quick read of a charity’s financial statements or its T3010 annual return or a calculation of its disbursement quota would tell one about the real administration and fund-raising costs and the real effectiveness and importance of a charity’s work. Usually, some research is in order – read the charity’s annual report, review its website, review its T3010 and search on director, donor, and recipient names, it may be enlightening to see the relationships exposed by this type of search. Then, if you have any concerns, call the charity and see what they have to say.

The Globe and Mail each week provides a short profile of a major donor and the charity that received the donation as well as discusses the donor’s motivation in making the donation. This makes searching the charity name in the Globe and Mail worthwhile. Searching The Toronto Star is also a good idea as their reporter, Kevin Donovan, writes about the worst examples of misdeeds by charities in Canada.

Canadian Telephone Area Codes & Central Office Codes

Published on April 22, 2009 in Canada and Telephone Resources. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Canada is part of Country Code 1 and participates in the North American Number Plan (NANP) with the USA and 17 Caribbean nations. The NANP structure consists of a single digit Country Code followed by a 10 digit number containing a 3 digit Number Plan Area (called an NPA or Area code), a 3 digit Central Office (CO) Code, and a 4 digit Line Number.

Canada has been adding area codes and Central Office codes. It is not unusual for me to come across an unfamiliar area code. To keep-up with these changes, I regularly download a CSV file (requires ZIP decompression utility) containing information for all NPAs in Canada.

If you don’t want to download the file you can go to the the CNA website (Canadian Number Administrator) to search out an area code or identify the carrier associated with a CO code which will identify those used by cell phones.

Court of Appeal for Ontario RSS Feed

Published on February 18, 2009 in Canada and Courts. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The Court of Appeal for Ontario launched an RSS feed for when:

  • Decisions are added to the decisions page
  • Case lists are available
  • Leave to appeal notifications are posted
  • Non-publication orders and in-camera hearings are announced

Additional feeds are under development and in the future you will be able to subscribe to separate feeds for each service.

Check out this new service at http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/coa/en/rss/index.htm.

Competitive Intelligence for the Small Guy

Published on January 29, 2009 in Canada and Competitive Intelligence. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The following is an excellent article about Competitive Intelligence that appeared in yetserday’s Globe and Mail.

Keeping an eye on your rivals

Even the smallest of operations can scout out the competition, and the results can be vital

This is competitive intelligence, and Jonathan Calof, a professor at University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management and a leading CI expert, says it’s widely misunderstood.

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that competitive intelligence is too complex and expensive for small businesses to undertake. In fact, most CI techniques cost nothing but time, and the findings are vital to small business success, especially in tough times.

 

Google Street View

Published on January 28, 2009 in Canada, Methods, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

During a recent research project, I wanted a picture of a commercial property in downtown San Francisco. It’s always good to take a look at the premises from which a business operates to avoid dealing with a phantom business.

I requested that our agent in San Francisco go there and take a picture. He said it would be less bother to get it from Google Street View. He does that all the time.  As you can see on the map, (Google Street View) this isn’t offered for any Canadian city right now, and if the privacy fanatics have their way it never will. However, in San Francisco, this got me two excellent pictures of the building.

The street addresses served-up by Google are only approximations, so you have to move up and down the street looking for street numbers to get the correct building. To get the pictures into a report use print screen as the images themselves can’t be copied.  Pressing print screen key in MSWindows will capture the entire screen, while pressing the alt key in combination with print screen will capture the currently selected window. Paste the image into the report using the ctl-V combination.

Information on Legislation Before the Canadian Parliament

Published on December 12, 2008 in Canada, Legislation and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The Library of Parliament announced enhancements to LEGISINFO, a research site containing information on legislation currently before Parliament.

Effective immediately, users may:

  • consult short summaries of 500 words or less for Government bills from the current Parliament onwards. These summaries are placed under the Legislative Summary link within 48-72 hours of first reading;
  • and access “Royal Recommendations” and “Major Speaker’s Rulings and Statements” for all bills from the 40th Parliament onwards, where applicable, through the links to the Senate Debates or House of Commons Journals. These links are found just below “Text of the Bill”.

LEGISINFO also provides access to information about individual bills, along with links to recent newspaper articles, a reading list, and other related information.

How to Become a Professional Private Investigator II

Published on November 19, 2008 in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator. 0 Comments Tags: , .

In my first article on this topic, I complained that Canadian community colleges don’t properly prepare students to be good entry level Private Investigators. The problem facing students from these programmes is not unique to this field, but it seems magnified in this industry.

What the Colleges Don’t Teach

As in any human endeavor, the devil is in the details. The colleges do a fair job of teaching some useful skills, but they don’t teach about the industry. The colleges teach the skills associated with doing certain tasks within this industry. They don’t teach the skills associated with being successful in this industry.  The two skill sets have very little in common.

This series of articles is about how to come to grips with what they don’t teach in college and how to combine the task knowledge with the business knowledge in the right mix to be successful. Let’s start with definitions that  provide instruction on how one must proceed.

The Autodidact Private Investigator

Autodidact (au·to·di·dact , ȯ-tō-ˈdī-ˌdakt, noun) is a person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education; a self-taught person.

A private investigator, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigations.

The details that you must absorb in order to be successful are many. The sum of these details define your level of professionalism. No school will teach you these details. You must learn them through experimentation, experience, and self-directed study.

Self-directed Study

Gaining the task and business knowledge should be approached as a series of projects. Choose a topic, acquire an overview of the topic, then investigate the specific aspects of the topic that are most useful to you.  Following this pattern you can acquire a great deal of useful knowledge in a relatively short period of time. If you can’t do this, then you will not be a successful Private Investigator.

I will deal with a separate subject area in each of the following articles within this series of articles.

How to Become a Professional Private Investigator I

Published on November 17, 2008 in Canada, How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods and Private Investigator. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Lately, I have noticed that I have become a mentor to several young Private Investigators. The hardest part of this role is conveying that being a good Investigator entails more than secret sources and interrogation techniques.

Where do Private Investigators Come From?

Many people become Private Investigators without a college education, experience, or a clear plan for their new career.  They don’t get any meaningful training from their employers. Often, the employer just wants a warm body to do the work and views them as disposable if they don’t measure-up to some arbitrary standard.

At best, the Private Investigator took a Law Enforcement Administration course or Investigation course at a Canadian community college. These new Investigators usually have unrealistic expectations of remuneration and working conditions. At worst, the new Investigator couldn’t cut it as a pizza delivery driver.

The problem most entry level Investigators face is gaining an understanding of the skills and knowledge that they must progressively acquire to have a profitable career. Few employers or colleges provide this information to illustrate what a progressive career would look like. Fewer still, provide training and career guidance.

I recently spoke to a college instructor of investigation related courses who dismissed this lack of career guidance, saying that it was the employee’s own fault for not understanding the industry and that the employer just had to take what was on offer in the labour market for Investigators. Of course, he had never been a Private Investigator or agency owner. Nevertheless, the callousness and sheer stupidity of his remarks forced me to revisit the topic of training the new Private Investigator.

Now that I have climbed onto this soapbox, a series of articles on this topic will follow.  The next article will outline what the community college programs don’t teach. Then I will move on to how to learn to be a Professional Private Investigator in Canada.

Copyright as an Asset – Canada

Published on October 6, 2008 in Canada, Due Diligence, Intellectual Property Rights and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

In Canada, one does not have to register your copyright to have protection, but when you register with the Copyright Office, you receive a certificate which can be used to your advantage in the event that your work is infringed. Formal registration of a work is not required. An author or the author’s employer usually enjoys copyright protection automatically on creation of the work.

Registration of a copyright is done by completing an application and sending it to the Copyright Office. A copy of the work is not sent along with application. Under the Library and Archives of Canada Act, two copies of every book published in Canada, and one copy of every sound recording manufactured in Canada that has some Canadian content must be sent to the National Library and Archives within one week of publication.

Library and Archives Canada
Legal Deposit
395 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON  K1A 0N4
Tel.: 819-997-9565
Fax: 819-953-8508

When a publication is deposited, a brief description is entered in AMICUS, Library and Archives Canada’s database. They are also catalogued and listed in Canadiana, the national bibliography, which began in 1950 and is widely circulated in Canada.

Canadian MP Voting Records

Published on September 22, 2008 in Canada and Legislation. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to locate the voting records of Members of Parliament who are now candidates in this election. Do this to become better informed Canadian.

The House of Commons’ Compendium of Procedure article on Recorded Votes (also called divisions) is your first stop. Your second stop is the chapter on Debate and Voting which explains when members’ names are recorded during a vote. This also explains when members’ names are not recorded.

Your next stop should be How’d They Vote. This site takes takes the Hansard from the parliament website, and extracts information on bills, members of parliament, votes, and speeches.

LegisInfo lets you peruse votes on bills along with the following:

  • the text of the bill at various stages;
  • government press releases and backgrounders (for government bills);
  • legislative summaries from the Parliamentary Information and Research Service;
  • important speeches at second reading;
  • coming into force data.

For example, choose Bill C2 in the current session under House of Commons, Government Bills. Once you have selected the bill, you may select Selected Recorded Votes and see how the members voted.

Finding Bank Accounts and Storage Lockers

Published on September 5, 2008 in Canada, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines and Search Strategies. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

First, make a list of all addresses linked to the subject, including the Canadian postal code. Then search in Google for bank or storage plus the postal code. Do not include a hyphen or put the postal code in quotations. Search each postal code in order. Now you have a list of banks where the subject may have an account and a list of sites where he may have a storage locker.

Tort of Negligent Investigation

Published on July 29, 2008 in Canada, Courts and Private Investigator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Last year I wrote about the Tort for Negligent Investigations  and how this would reach out and touch a Private Investigation firm in Canada soon.

Private Investigator Sued

The Ontario Court of Appeal has expanded the tort of negligent investigation to allow employees to sue private investigators hired by employers to probe suspected wrongdoing in the workplace. The unanimous ruling by Associate Chief Justice Dennis O’Connor and Justices Marc Rosenberg and Kathryn Feldman extends the newly created tort of negligent investigation to private investigators. This tort was first recognized by the Supreme Court in 2007 as applicable to police.

In Correia v. Canac Kitchens, 2008 ONCA 506 & [2008] O.J. No. 2497, the court has imposed a new duty of care regarding investigators. The plaintiff was an innocent employee mistakenly fired and arrested for theft following a private investigation launched by his employer. His name was confused with that of another employee with a similar name.  The sequence of events that led to erroneous identification of Mr. Correia is summarized in the chronology in paragraph [8].

Every Private Investigator in Canada should pay close attention to this case and the circumstances that gave rise to it.

Finding the Franchise Owner

Published on July 16, 2008 in Canada, Company Research and Competitive Intelligence. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Franchises identify themselves in the marketplace by using a common name and trademark. Each user of the name purchases a franchise which allows the franchisee the right to use the name. This is where the fun begins.

The franchisee will be a company or partnership with rights to use the name. In Canada, the right to use the name will normally be filed as a Business Name Registration. This allows a person, company, or partnership to operate under a name other than his or its proper name.

Now imagine you have a franchise at 123 Main Street in some Ontario town or city. How do you distinguish it from all the other franchises using the same business name?

In Ontario, OnCorp will allow you to view a list of all the business name registrations along with the recorded addresses.

A mouse click in the check-box next to the registration with the correct address will get you the Business Name Registration, and that will tell you the name of the company or partnership that owns that franchise location.

Subjects with Multiple SSN’s

Published on July 9, 2008 in Identity Fraud, Identity Theft and Private Investigator. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In Canada, it is rare to find somebody with two Social Insurance Numbers (SIN).  Where this happens it may be a case of clerical error or a reference to a former SIN appropriated by an identity thief. The former reason is extremely rare. In thirty years I have only encountered this once. The Canadian SIN is used as an identifier less than the SSN is in the USA.

However, in the USA the case is somewhat different. According to Susan Daniels, of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. in Chardon Ohio, when searching through database aggregators such as IRB, it is common to find a subject referenced with two or three Social Security Numbers (SSN). Here are some of the reasons a person may show-up with multiple SSN’s:

  • a wife’s or child’s SSN could end up with father’s name
  • a parent’s SSN could show up with a child
  • the subject bought something with someone else and the SSNs could end up with each other’s name
  • the database producer is relating several SSN’s to one address
  • an error by whoever entered the data

Susan Daniels of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. (9754 Thwing Road Chardon, OH 44024, Tel.:440.286.4072) has been a Private Investigator for 15 years.

Identity-theft Protection for Canadians

Published on July 1, 2008 in Canada, Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

You don’t have to spend $100 to $200 a year to defend yourself from identity theft at the level of protection that a paid service offers. You can do almost everything the services do, for free.

DIY Identity-theft Protection: A 12-step Program