Workers of the World Unite- You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Union Shackles!

That perhaps might have been the call in Michigan yesterday, as it joined 23 other states in enacting so called 'right-to-work-legislation' that 'liberates' workers from mandatory union membership and union dues.

Passed by a Republican-dominated House of Representatives, the new law was proudly proclaimed by Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger in the following terms:

“This is about freedom, fairness and equality” ... “These are basic American rights — rights that should unite us.”

Ah yes, those famous rights that allow workers to sell themselves to the lowest corporate bidder, a foregone conclusion in Michigan and the other 'liberated' states, a fact tacitly acknowledged with a wink and a nudge by supporters of the legislation, who say it will boost the economy by creating jobs, attract new companies to Michigan and give workers more choices for employment.

But then again, perhaps I am wrong, and that surge of expected new employment will result from corporations being attracted to states where the workers are revelling in their newly-acquired 'freedom.' After all, a happy and contented worker is a productive worker.

Lest Canadian workers feel left out, our federal overlords are laying the groundwork for similar serf-like satisfaction in this country. As reported in today's Star, Bill C-377, an alleged private member's bill about which I have previously written on this blog, is to receive the full backing of the Harper regime and is expected to be passed today in the House.

Says Labour Minister Lisa Raitt:

“Our government is going to support (the bill), with the amendments that have been brought in. It makes a lot of sense” ... “Workers want to know how their union dues are being spent.”

Of course, there are always naysayers when it comes to such liberating legislation:

Liberal interim leader Bob Rae said Bill C-377 “is an exercise in bureaucratic overkill that has nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with simply trying to punish trade union organizations.”

Rae said the bill, if passed, could be part of “the pattern in the United States” of limiting union rights. The next step, he warned, could by an attempt by the Harper government to eliminate the so-called Rand formula, under which workers in a bargaining unit must pay mandatory union dues.

Such carping criticism aside, can it be long before we are all living in a worker's paradise?

Robocalls and Fingerpointing

If crimes were committed in misdirecting voters in the last federal election, who cares who the complainants that have brought this matter before the courts are?

Apparently the Harper regime does.

Unions Under Attack: A Star Reader Writes

In two recent posts, I discussed Bill C-377, a Harper-driven anti-union measure disguised as a private member's bill. Introduced by Conservative MPP Russ Hiebert, it is designed to require full disclosure of all union expenditures, including monies allotted for various causes; while its ostensible purpose, according to government propaganda, is to provide full transparency, a concept Mr. Harper seems only peripherally acquainted with, its real purpose is to stoke the resentments and jealousies some feel toward unions and their members. If that resentment reaches a critical mass, making union dues optional, a favorite Trojan Horse tactic of the extreme right to weaken and ultimately destroy unions, will be that much easier.

In this morning's Star, letter-writer Jenny Carter offers her insights on the bill:

Thomas Walkom talks of Russ Hiebert's private member's bill, which is, he says, ostensibly a plea for openness but actually an attack on the automatic check-off of union dues, or Rand formula.

It's a funny thing, but I, and everybody with a taxable income, also pay automatic dues, also supposed to provide services and benefits to those who pay.

Bill C-377 says the public has the right to know how unions spend their money. But the government refuses to tell the public how their tax money is spent. Even Members of Parliament seem no longer to have a right to this information, which is very strange because one of the main functions of an elected parliament has always been to oversee the way in which tax money is spent.

REAL Women may not like expenditure on “left-wing causes,” but many taxpayers may feel that it is not in their best interests to have government money spent, for example, on subsidizing fossil fuel companies, building unnecessary jails and buying attack fighter jets, while starving provincial governments of funds for health-care and essential social spending, and failing to provide public housing.

We need trade unions as a counterbalance to business. If the Rand formula is abolished, I really don't see why I, or anybody who objects to the government's lack of financial transparency and the way it spends our money, should be expected to pay taxes, especially since the tax system in this country is extremely unfair.

The proposed bill is undemocratic and unjust, and another indication that Big Brother is trying to take us over.

Jenny Carter, Peterborough

Updated: Another Reason To Despise Harper And His Minions

Or maybe I just don't understand the nuances of business and a right-wing mentality that will consign millions to early and unnecessary deaths.

H/t Andre Picard

Even that bastion of Harper support, the Globe and Mail, has written about how reprehensible this action is.

Resistance Is NOT Futile

In the various incarnations that the series Star Trek has enjoyed, The Next Generation was my favorite. Starring the well-known Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart, whose regal commands propelled The Enterprise into inter-stellar adventures each week, the series was both imaginative and in many ways prescient.

One of its most original creations was the Federation's ultimate nemesis, The Borg, defined in Wikipedia as

...a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones of the collective or the hive ... [who] take other species by force into the collective and connect them to "the hive mind"; the act is called assimilation and entails violence, abductions, and injections of cybernetic implants. The Borg's ultimate goal is "achieving perfection".

The catchphrase of The Borg was, 'Resistance is futile.' It is a message that, in my deep political cynicism, I strongly believe is an integral agenda item of both the extreme right-wing in general, and the Harper regime in particular. By relentlessly promulgating such a message they are, amongst other things, discouraging democratic participation so as to achieve an unobstructed field for their polices of low levels of taxation, low levels of government regulation, and low, some would say non-existent, aspirations for a better society and world.

Every so often, however, something occurs to remind all of us of the things that are possible when we rise above those forces of manipulation. As outlined in today's Star, one such development occurred yesterday. In what is described as a David over Goliath victory, the people of Melancthon Township are celebrating the triumph of their activism over Highland Companies, which has now abandoned its efforts to build a mega-quarry that would have been the second-largest in North America and would have obliterated hundreds of acres of some of Ontario’s richest farmland.

To read how a coalition of citizens from various backgrounds accomplished this feat, click here.

Oh, and for your viewing pleasure, The Borg credo:

A New Warning About CETA

While much has already been written about the economic threats to Canada inherent in the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement currently being negotiated in secret by the Harper regime, a new development in those negotiations has come to light that will cost all of us dearly.

In a piece entitled Harper government caves in to Big Pharma, Michael McBane reports the following:

Ottawa is prepared to give the Europeans, and the pharmaceutical industry, at least part of what they asked for on drug patents – a move that could cost Canadians up to $1 billion a year.

As McBane points out, thanks to a deal brokered by Brian Mulroney in the 1980's, Canada already pays 15 to 20 per cent more than the international average for new brand name drugs; at the time, the justification was the promise by the pharmaceuticals to invest 10 per cent of R&D (Research and Development)-to-sales in Canada, a figure that has never been realized. In fact, it currently stands at only 5.6 per cent of R&D-to-sales.

Yet despite pharma's betrayal of its undertaking, Canada is once more preparing to give away more of the shop through CETA; reports indicate

Canada will extend monopoly drug patents from 20 to 21 years. This patent extension will come without any conditions. In other words, we get nothing in return for this major concession. No jobs, no research, no innovation, no benefits whatsoever – only higher drug bills.

Prime Minister Harper is found of promoting the message that Canada is open for business. What he doesn't tell us is that it is the business of plundering and pillaging, hardly the basis for a domestic economic revival.

Foreign Investment Rights Versus Canadian Provinces

That the corporate world is ruled by only one imperative, to maximize profits, is self-evident. That it almost always gets its way, no matter what the environmental and social costs, is another truth that our current right-wing political 'leaders' would have us believe is a fiction that exists only in the fevered imaginations of paranoid left-wingers. Fortunately, certain facts are undeniable, no matter how much political spin is administered.

A story appearing in today's Star is quite instructive in this reality. Entitled Ottawa faces $250-million suit over Quebec environmental stance, it discusses how Lone Star Resources Ltd is suing under NAFTA:

Lone Pine contends it deserves $250 million in compensation by Ottawa for the Quebec government’s expropriation of its drilling permit, which it says violates Canada’s obligations to treat foreign investors from other NAFTA countries fairly.

The problem stems from Quebec's moratorium on fracking, a controversial drilling technique for releasing oil and natural gas from underground shale rock formations as it studies its environmental impact,

which some say consumes unacceptable volumes of water and may be contaminating groundwater. Quebec also passed legislation in June banning drilling below the St. Lawrence River.

Indeed, the challenge is yet another reminder of the dangers posed by Stephen Harper's current dalliance with China and the recent signing of the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. Many claim that the pact, which the Prime Minister has refused to allow Parliament to scrutinize, will in fact open Canada up to the same kinds of challenges that have repeatedly occurred under the NAFTA agreement.

Mr, Harper's hollow reassurances notwithstanding, extreme caution before proceeding seems to be more than warranted.

From The Salamander

Lately, I guess as a response to the rhetoric that comes pouring forth every year as Remembrance Day approaches, I have made several critical posts directed against those who find it so easy to don the mantle of patriotism while paying only lip service to the lives lost in war.

In response to one of those posts, the salamander left a poem. With his permission, I am showcasing it here, as I think it very effectively captures some of the motivation behind those who so willingly consign others to the risk of injury or death while fighting wars that hardly serve the purposes their propaganda suggests.

Here it is:

on armchair warriors.. and their ilk ....

--------------------------------- the Theocrats ... assorted aborted Bureaucrats the ethically dead, and marching ants of zombie conservative reform rants

The toxic loutpack ministry of lord Stephan Harper Baird, - Mackay, Oliver and Clement, Kenney, Fantino.. Flattery .. the noisy others

All of them piss-poor pro war hissing cowards sycophant jowly pigmaids in lipstick waiting.. lords of flies, electoral lies and the live and oily robocall

Guided by invisible heavenly white angel noise boot lick back-room - blackberry electro twits and sneery war-room phone call cabin boyz

To their mission-vision calling they must whore.. all wrapped in petro power F-35 bomblet games steeped in wet red dreams of good old fashioned war

And kneeling to their woofing Rapture Beast in Heat in holy Israel.. they inhale their precious time in the trough Wallow Baby.. Wallow.. squeal from your Commons seat

When hobnailed real Canadian boots kick yer stinkin filthy arses high n heavenwards then and only then, will you behold

The filthy Rapture You Deserve.. and Earned

I look forward to hearing much more from the salamander.

And Another Thing ....

When It Comes To Our Veterans

... the Canadian government knows that talk is cheap.

After Cutting Through The Sanctimonious Rhetoric

...it is apparent that, like most governments, the Harper regime has been quite content to recruit, exploit and ultimately abandon those who, in good faith, joined the armed forces to support a 'muscular adventurism' that has both tarnished and diminished Canada's standing in the real (i.e., excluding the U.S.) international community.

Ample evidence of this abandonment is to be found in the words of those veterans and military widows who gathered on Parliament Hill just prior to Remembrance Day, words that paint a stark picture of bureaucratic indifference and red tape that flies in the face of reassurances from the government, which says the care of military families is a top priority.

Retired master corporal Dave Desjardins, who was "proud to serve his country" and is paralyzed from the waist down, had the following to offer:

“What I’m not proud of, however, is how our government officials and senior military leadership can look directly into the camera (and) speak to the Canadian public about honouring our veterans at this time of year with implied conviction when they’ve clearly turned their back on us and continue to demonstrate (that) on a daily basis,” said Desjardins.

He challenged Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney to look him in the eye “and tell me you really care.”

You can read the complete sad story, posted in today's Star, here.

Canadians: Dear Leader Requires Your Uncritical Attention

To absorb and spread this message. Watch, learn, and heed:

Ignore the ugly rumours spread by enemies of the state that Dear Leader advocated this policy in 2008.

Thomas Walkom: Harper's Strategy Behind The Foreign Workers Program

Yesterday, over at Northern Reflections, Owen Gray wrote a post entitled A Lost Generation, a reflection on the discouraging prospects our young people face in establishing themselves in gainful employment, and the fact that their plight does not seem to be a factor in the Harper regime's decision-making.

I left the following comment on his blog:

Not only are our overlords ignoring the problem you describe here, Owen, but they are in fact compounding it by recruiting young people from Ireland to come work in Canada.

This inexplicable policy, apparently spearheaded by Jason Kenney, should outrage all of us, after which I provided a link to a story from the Star detailing Jason Kenney's efforts to recruit young people from Ireland to come to Canada for jobs.

Owen replied with the following:

It's all about driving down everyone's wages, Lorne. That was one of the items on the agenda when Mr. Flaherty met with the movers and shakers two summers ago.

Put that together with this government's preemptive moves on unions before a strike starts, and it's clear who this government serves.

It's not we, the people. And it's certainly not the young.

Owen's insight, it seems, is spot on. In his column today, The Star's Thomas Walkom looks at how Canada is using imported labour to do just that, keep everyone's wages down:

... the Vancouver Sun has reported, four brand new coal mines in the province’s northeast are bringing in just under 2,000 temporary Chinese migrants to do most of the work.

The ostensible reason, a spokesman for Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc. is reported as saying, is that not enough Canadians are skilled enough to do underground mining.

Let me repeat that. Not enough underground miners. In Canada.

Those who spent their working lives underground in Northern Ontario, or Quebec or Saskatchewan or Cape Breton would be surprised to hear this.

Walkom goes on to point out that the B.C. situation is hardly an exception, that the number of visas granted to temporary foreign workers is exploding; these workers, ranging from coffee shop staff in Alberta to those employed at XL Foods, hardly meet the criteria under which the foreign workers program was established, i.e. to do jobs for which they are uniquely qualified.

Walkom's conclusion? That they are being permitted entry because they are unlikely to complain of low wages or join a union. Their presence thus sends a strong message to the unemployed in Canada: Work for less, or others will take the jobs from you.

He concludes:

It’s one thing for the Harper Conservatives to return us to the status of a resource economy. It is another for them to insist that we become a low-wage resource economy.

And, of course, while such a policy may be a boon to our corporate masters, it is just one more obstacle that our young people have to face in their efforts to establish their careers.

Assumptions Can Be Dangerous

[Former Ontario Premier Mike] Harris assumed that small Ontario towns like Walkerton would have the good sense to keep their drinking water clean.

[Prime Minister Stephen] Harper assumed that profit-making companies would make sure that their consumers received safe products.

In both cases, they were wrong.

This excerpt from Thomas Walkom's Star column is a sobering reminder of the potentially deadly consequences of the deregulation mentality embraced by the right-wing in conjunction with its credo that business can do things better and more efficiently than government.

The shortcomings of such naive faith in industry self-regulation becomes obvious as more information is revealed about the XL Foods tainted meat scandal that has prompted the biggest recall in Canadian history. As reported earlier, three weeks elapsed between the discovery of E.coli in XL Foods' Lakeside Packers plant in Alberta and the actual meat recall. The responsibility for the time lag appears to rest solely with the company.

As reported by Joanna Smith in today's Star,

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture both discovered E. coli O157:H7 ... on beef products originating from the XL Foods Inc. plant in Brooks, Alta. on Sept. 4.

A request for full documentation of the problem was made on Sept.6 by the frontline staff of CFIA stationed at XL, but the documentation was not forthcoming.

The following statement is probably the most damning evidence of the failings of industry self-regulation:

“There was a delay in getting it . . . We have limited authority to compel immediate documentation,” George Da Pont, president of the food inspection agency, said during a news conference in Calgary on Wednesday.

Now in crisis mode, expect more fatuous assurances by the Harper regime of the safety of our food supply, even as its latest budget reduces the funding required to keep Canadian foods safe by 27 per cent.

But at least Harper Inc. is sending out a clear message to potential investors: Canada is open for business as it continues to reduce red tape and the 'heavy hand' of government 'interference.'

P.S. You might want to pack your own lunch.

Not To State The Obvious But ....

Canada’s food safety regime failed us

So goes the title of The Star's editorial this morning as it raises some very pressing questions about how over three weeks elapsed between the discovery of E.coli in the XL Foods' Lakeside Packers plant in Alberta and the meat recall that will likely be the largest in Canadian history.

In a stunning display of ministerial incompetence, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz's claims that Canada’s food inspection system has done a “tremendous job”. To make matters worse, at one point he thought that no potentially tainted beef had made it to store shelves.

As I noted yesterday, we can expect no accountability in the foreseeable future from a government that had largely delegated our food safety to industry self-regulation. However, perhaps a sobering understatement by Bob Kingston, president of the food inspectors’ Agriculture Union, puts things into their needed perspective:

Ottawa has put too much faith in private companies to do their own testing.

Unfortunately, I suspect those words will fork no lightning with the ideologically-driven Harper regime.

Tory Attacks on the Canadian Soul

To suggest that the Harper regime is working relentlessly to diminish the Canadian soul is hardly a remarkable insight. Examples abound of its flinty resolve to undermine traditional Canadian values and virtues, compassion and fairness apparently at the top of its 'hit list'.

But while the Conservatives seek to remake Canada in its own morally impoverished image, it is important for all of us to see the human victims of such a governance model.

A number of such faces come into stark relief if one explores the consequences of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's changes to health care coverage for failed refugee claimants and those from a yet-to-be defined list of "safe" countries [who] will only receive medical care if their condition is deemed a risk to public health or safety.

Here is one example of a woman who, ultimately, did qualify for care but, thanks to the widespread confusion created by the bill, suffered needless stress during a very vulnerable time in her life:

The call came 35 weeks into her pregnancy, right around the time her abdominal cramps began. It was the receptionist from her gynecologist's office saying the government's changes to the Interim Federal Health Program meant her prenatal care was no longer covered.

That's when Tiffany started to panic.

"I asked, `What am I supposed to do?'... I got scared," recalled the 27-year-old originally from the Caribbean.

"She told me that if I come and see the doctor I would have to pay the doctor a fee."

Unfortunately, even sympathetic and compassionate medical personnel are reaching the limits of help they can provide. As reported in today's Star,

Both the Scarborough Community Volunteer Clinic and Muslim Welfare Centre Clinic — the city’s two mainstays for uninsured patients — have reported an influx of refugee patients as a result of the cuts. “Our clinic is at a sustainability crisis point. Everybody is under the gun here and we are swamped. Some nights, it’s being crowd control,” said Dr. Paul Caulford, who operates the Scarborough clinic with seven other family doctors.

The article goes on to detail that many of the patients have chronic conditions, such as hypertension and diabetes, and the clinics are their last hope to receive medications that are covered by donations.

Anna Elumah is another of the human faces of this story. when her two-year-old daughter received stitches after a fall at the shelter where she, her brother and her mother are staying, Elumah was told to go to a community clinic to have them removed.

“We went to a clinic on Morningside. They looked at my paper and said, ‘It’s no good anymore. Go somewhere else,’” recalled Elumah, who also was suffering a nagging headache after she ran out of her medication for high blood pressure.

Her caseworker referred her to the Scarborough clinic, where she receives free drugs for her hypertension and asthma inhalers for her 8-year-old son, Davids.

In answer to all of this, there is the noble lie:

“The changes ensure bona fide refugees continue to receive comprehensive health coverage, while illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers from safe, democratic countries no longer receive health insurance that is superior to what is generally available to taxpaying Canadians,” said Alexis Pavlich, a spokesperson for Jason Kenney.

So, our choice as citizens is clear. We can, as the government wants, turn our backs on the most vulnerable, failed refugee claimants who will eventually be sent back to their own countries, or we can treat them with compassion and care while they are here, something every human being deserves, and something well within even our weakened economic means to provide.

Stephen Harper's Worldview

For those seeking insight into how Stephen Harper and his regime views the world, The Star's Tim Harper offers some interesting insights.

In New York snubbing the U.N. while accepting his reward award as World Statesman of the Year from the Appeal of Conscience Appeal, the Prime Minister offered the following justification, which is patently emblematic of his Manichean view of the world:

He said Canadians expect their governments to act with international partners for the “wider interests of humanity . . . that is, of course, not the same thing as trying to court every dictator with a vote at the United Nations . . .

... Harper said the world must not shrink from recognizing the evil that is Iran, and called on the international community to do more to further pressure and isolate the regime.

It is this Iranian evil that compels Canada to speak out in support of Israel, Harper said, because those who would target Israel threaten all free and democratic societies.

“We should never consider others evil merely because they disagree with us,’’ he said, “or because they compete with us.’’

But when evil dominates, one will find irreconcilable disagreements with Canada, he said.

And now to the 'good':

It is this Iranian evil that compels Canada to speak out in support of Israel, Harper said, because those who would target Israel threaten all free and democratic societies.

“Our government does refuse to use international (forums) to single out Israel for criticism.”

Sorry for the lengthy excerpts, but I find the repetition of the word evil quite revealing of Harper's unsophisticated and simplistic worldview.

No word on what adjective the Prime Minister would use to describe Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, or the fact that the military attack against Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is advocating would cost countless lives.

Harper's Conservatives: As Classless As Ever

Yesterday I wrote a brief post about the federal government's decision to stop defending the export of asbestos from Quebec, not on the basis of morality, but political expediency, as the newly-elected Parti Quebecois stands opposed to it.

A story in this morning's Star reveals that, as ever, the Harper regime is both as graceless and incapable of admitting error as ever. In reference to newly-elected Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, Federal Industry Minister Christian Paradis had this to say:

“Mrs. Marois’ decision to prohibit chrysotile mining in Quebec will have a negative impact on the future prosperity of the area."

Paradis said he did not want to spend any time debating the issue when his constituents are out of a job, but he made sure to remind everyone that it was Marois who had moved to finally end the dying industry.

“Our region will have to live with the consequences of Mrs. Marois’ decision, but we will continue to work together on the economic development of the community,” Paradis said.

So there we have it. No acknowledgement that maybe there is a greater good to be served than parochial politics in the decision to stop exporting death.

Just a continuation of the politics of division and derision, something the Harperites have repeatedly proven their adeptness at.

So we are left to ponder a crucial question: Is this really the kind of government that best serves the aspirations and ideals and interests of Canadians?

Canada's Export of Death to Cease

The Harper government is throwing in the towel on Quebec’s internationally-maligned asbestos industry now that the Parti Québécois is poised to take power and prohibit extraction of the cancer-causing mineral.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis said Canada will stop defending asbestos mining in international circles and no longer oppose adding chrysotile asbestos to the Rotterdam Convention, a global list of hazardous substances.

This report, carried in the Globe, is yet another searing commentary on the banality of evil infusing our federal 'masters.' Despite numerous past appeals to stop this indefensible export of death, the Harper government was unmoved by moral considerations and now is simply yielding to political expediency.

Definitely not something to be proud of.

More About Our Prime Paragons of 'Virtue'

Just a few reminders about the moral thugs within our midst:

Tides Canada's charity status attacked Pro-oilsands group accuses it of illegal political activity

Thomson: In the end, pipeline is a political decision

Justice minister won't send Del Mastro file to prosecutors Inappropriate to do so: Nicholson

Elections Canada investigating claims workers at company owned by Del Mastro's cousin were reimbursed for donations to MP's campaign

Stephen Harper: Then and now

Ex-Harper adviser Bruce Carson charged with influence peddling Critics dispute Kent’s greenhouse emissions figures

Peter Kent's Office Keeps Quiet About Report Linking Human Activity To Extreme Weather: Document

Conservatives ask court challengers for $250,000 deposit Council of Canadians backs voters who want 7 MPs' election wins overturned