The thousand-day Access to Information request + MORE Mar 6th

OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has sent a stern message to government institutions: you can’t just make up any old deadline for responding to requests under the Access to Information Act.
And by asserting it has the power to review long access-to-information delays, the court has given the information commissioner an important stick to wield against dawdling departments.
“At least now what we have is a clear assertion of jurisdiction of the Federal Court, which means that it gives us more ammunition when we negotiate stricter timelines with institutions,” commissioner Suzanne Legault said.
The case in question involved the Department of National Defence, which in 2011 told someone seeking records on the sale of military assets that it would take 1,100 days —more than three years — to meet the request.
The information commissioner took the department to court for a review of the time extension. The documents were released a month before the hearing in 2013…

NEW YORK, N.Y. – If craft seller Etsy goes public later this year it will be a test of how well the company can balance an explicit social mission with shareholder expectations for making money.
Founded in 2005, Brooklyn-based Etsy sells everything from a $110,000 antique desk from the 1800s to a $20 handmade antler pendant, and everything in between. In 10 years it’s grown from a scrappy startup offering craftspeople a way to sell necklaces and needlepoint online to a marketplace of 54 million members that generated $1.93 billion in sales in 2014. And on Wednesday, Etsy filed for an initial public offering of stock valued at up to $100 million.
The company is more than a folksy, funky brand. It’s a B Corporation, which is a for-profit company with a stated social mission certified by a non-profit organization called B Lab. In its prospectus filed with the SEC, Etsy says its mission is to build a “human, authentic and community-centric global and local marketplace,” and cites any loss of its B Corp status as a risk factor to its brand…

Lukas Lundin admits there was ‘some luck’ in his ability to sell high and now selectively pick up assets while gold is low

Value investor Irving Kahn is known for shorting the 1929 market crash (New York Daily News Archive / Contributor)
Value investors were saddened last week by news of the passing of Irving Kahn at the ripe old age of 109.
Kahn went to work on Wall Street just before the crash of 1929 where he made money by shorting stocks as the economy sank into the great depression.
But it was another famous investor from the era, Benjamin Graham, who most influenced his approach to investing. Kahn became Graham’s teaching assistant and helped with his book The Intelligent Investor, which can still be found in bookstores today.
Kahn eventually set up his own money management firm and worked there, with his son and grandson, until just before his death this year. While he slowed down a touch in recent times, he was still giving interviews and talking about value stocks last summer.
As a result, I was curious to see what the firm’s portfolio looked like. Its top 10 holdings, from the end of December, are shown below…

Kit and Ace, a Canadian apparel start-up backed by the billionaire founder of Lululemon, will open stores in London, Australia and Japan this year, ahead of schedule, prompted partly by choice real estate, one of its senior executives said.