Can We, In Good Conscience, Allow This To Continue?

There are, without doubt, many justifications and rationalizations that people have for being willfully ignorant of the larger world around them: work pressures, home stresses, lack of time, lack of sleep, etc., etc. I will readily admit that one of the luxuries of retirement is the gift of time and the concomitant freedom to pursue issues and interests as fully as I care to. Yet even in my teaching days, which made relentless demands on my time, I always carved out a bloc during which I read the paper and followed the news. For me, ignorance has never been an option.

It is probably the main reason that I am intolerant of those who bury their heads in the metaphorical sands which, not to be too clever, in the topic of this post. As reported by the CBC, Canada has very quietly, some would say secretly, withdrawn from a United Nations convention that fights droughts in Africa and elsewhere. Known as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, in those Countries Experiencing Severe Drought and/or Desertification, particularly in Africa, its goal, as explained in Wikipedia, is to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought through national action programs that incorporate long-term strategies supported by international cooperation and partnership arrangements.

All members of the United Nations are currently a part of the convention, and Canada, increasingly the renegade outlier in so many international pacts, is the first and only member to withdraw from it. The stated reason? This terse response from the government is supposed to explain it:

International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino said in an emailed statement that "membership in this convention was costly for Canadians and showed few results, if any for the environment."

For those interested, the oppressive costs that have been such a 'burden' to Canadian taxpayers amount to a $283,000 grant to support the convention from 2010 to 2012.

Part of the reason it is so important to keep apprised of developments in the larger world is the fact that knowledge facilitates the detection of patterns. This latest affront to environmental concerns by the Harper regime is not, of course, an isolated one, but part of a much larger pattern that includes withdrawal from the Kyoto Accord, the muzzling of scientists, and the dismantling of environmental oversight through Omnibus Bill C-38.

I suppose that the question each of us ultimately has to ask and answer is this one: Do we live only for ourselves, or do we have greater obligations, not just to our children and grandchildren, but also to the much larger world around us?

Porter Air, Pension Funds, and Invisible Strikers

Many years ago, in the midst of my teaching career, there was a movement by a group of us to try to get the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan to divest itself from Maple Leaf Foods when it was in the process of reducing its workers' wages in Burlington by about one-third, the threat being that if they didn't get their way, they would close the facility, as they had earlier done in Edmonton.

In addition to boycotting Maple Leaf products, many of us felt that it was unseemly, contradictory and hypocritical for our pension plan to be supporting a company with such egregiously offensive labour practices. Alas, we were told by the Pension Board that there would be no divestment, as the plan had a 'fiduciary responsibility to earn as much as possible for its members.'

Reading Thomas Walkom's column today about the Porter Air fuel handlers' strike in Toronto reminded me of that time, as the columnist writes about how, despite the fact that it is a unionized environment,

one of the key investors in privately-held Porter Aviation Holdings Inc. is the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), the pension fund for unionized public sector workers.

In fact,

OMERS handles the pension funds of 1,189 members of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, which represents Porter fuel handlers.

Walkom goes on to observe the irony of pension funds:

Employees struggle to win pensions. But once won, the pension funds that are established invariably follow the profit-maximizing rules of the financial marketplace.

Which in many case means these funds are used against unions.

Walkom makes two other disturbing points worth noting: the starting salary for the fuel handlers is a mere $12 per hour, the company having 'sweetened' the deal by offering a 25 cent hourly increase, which led to the strike and helps to explain the rapid turnover of its staff, something one perhaps might not want to dwell upon if one is navigating the friendly skies with Porter.

The second point is that, much to my incredulity, airline strikers have been charged with trespass for leafleting on the sidewalk outside the publicly owned terminal and are now consigned to picketing sight-unseen in a parking lot hidden from public view. I'm certainly no expert on the labour law, but to interdict demonstrations on public property strikes me as a gross violation of our freedom of expression and association.

But then, why am I so astounded? After all, the past seven years, which have seen a toxic social environment aggressively promoted by the Harper regime, have amply demonstrated how easy it is to turn people against people, the result being the steady unraveling of social cohesion and the steady exaltation of the corporate agenda.

The Deteriorating Conditions at Walmart

Perhaps the land of low prices and deteriorating conditions could learn something from Costco, which believes in paying its employees a living wage.

It Certainly Took Him Long Enough

His Mad Face?

Seasoned cynic that I am, I can't help but think that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair's denunciation of police misbehaviour is little more than a public relations exercise. Almost three years after the G20 debacle, in which over 1000 people were arrested and a mere handful of police hit with the most modest of sanctions for their egregious abuse of authority, the Chief has deemed it prudent to speak to both the public and his own troops on where he stands when 'good' cops go bad.

As reported in today's Star,

An angry Chief Bill Blair is slamming his own officers for “totally unacceptable behaviour,” including turning off dashboard cameras, being untruthful in court and racist remarks.

Included in his video message — which runs about five minutes and shows Blair in full uniform, set against a dark background and speaking directly to the camera — are two short video clips that make examples of individual officers on the force. It’s the first time the chief has used video in such a fashion.

The first clip was captured on a police dashboard camera three years ago, and shows Const. Christian Dobbs repeatedly striking Toronto cook Raymond Costain, who is face down and hidden from view, in front of the King Edward hotel.

I think I would have found this public condemnation much more credible were it coming from another police chief, given that Chief Blair was such an integral party to the abrogation of Charter rights during the G20, concealing, for example, the fact that the so-called emergency laws about 5-meter perimeters around fences were total fiction. This, of course, led to the unlawful searches, seizures and arrests of lawful protesters during that infamous weekend in June of 2010.

A real leader not only 'talks the talk' but also 'walks the walk.' I have seen no evidence of such ambulatory ability on the part of Bill Blair.

Cancer, E.I., and Government Hypocrisy

The Faces Of Common Humanity

Without doubt, to battle cancer must be a grueling and depleting experience. But to face rebuke and betrayal at the hands of one's government because of the circumstances of that battle must be almost as traumatic.

Such is the almost unbelievable tale of Jane Kittmer, diagnosed with breast cancer while on maternity leave and denied E.I sick benefits. Having fought a 2½-year appeal battle over those benefits, an E.I judge ruled in her favour last December, a month after Parliament voted unanimously to amend the Employment Insurance Act to ensure those on maternity and parental leave are also eligible for sickness benefits. Yet despite that ruling and that legislation, the Harper regime is appealing the decision to give the benefits to Kitmer.

This, despite the fact that the precedent for the legislative change in favour of people like Kitmer was established in 2011, when an E.I. judge ruled in favour of Toronto mother Natalyal Rougas, stating that government officials have been misinterpreting the spirit of the original 2002 law.

Rougas, who was diagnosed with breast cancer during maternity leave in 2010, was awarded the maximum 15 weeks of sickness benefits in addition to her combined 50 weeks of maternal and parental benefits. The award amounted to about $6,000, or $400 a week.

Ottawa did not appeal the Rougas decision and began working on a legislative fix, introduced last summer as Bill C-44.

But of course, one should never underestimate the Orwellian cant at which the Harper government has proven consistently adept:

In response to an inquiry from The Star,

... a spokesperson for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley would say only that the government is helping families “balance work and family responsibilities.”

The government is “offering new support measures to Canadian families at times when they need it most,” Alyson Queen added in an email Friday.

It has been said that a society can be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members. By that standard, the Harper regime is unquestionably beyond denunciation.

The Face of Uncommon Hypocrisy

Dennis Kucinich: US An ‘Orwellian State’

Some refreshing honesty from an American politician - well-worth watching:

H/t Disinformation

Administrative Hypocrisy

I came across this letter in The Hamilton Spectator yesterday. I consider the topic of feckless school administrators, operating without integrity, to be quite appropriate for this blog, given how it is yet another example of corruption and decay that undermines all institutions, perhaps most egregiously our political ones. But just as the latter's landscape is littered with those who crave power and influence to the detriment of the collective good, so too, far too often, is education, again to the ultimate detriment of everyone.

The issue revolves around a disciplinary hearing involving Matthew John Chiarot, a science teacher at Bishop Ryan Catholic Secondary School. You can read the details of the allegations against Chiarot here, but the most salient aspect is the assertion that the teacher inaccurately recorded grades following a final exam in January 2007. Hermon Mayers, the school principal, is reported to have earlier said, “It’s just fundamentally wrong to give a mark that’s not correct to a student.”

Given my own personal experience, before I retired, of young teachers being increasingly pressured by administration to raise students' marks so as not to have a high failure rate, I found this letter of particular note:

Artificially high marks are nothing new

Accused teacher’s performance ‘good’ (March 21) The statement, “It’s just fundamentally wrong to give a mark that’s not correct to a student,” caught my attention. The school administrator is admonishing the teacher for this. We don’t know what this teacher is accused of doing with the marks, but in my high school teaching career, teachers were routinely ordered, by school administrators or their board bosses’ directives, to artificially change students marks.

This practice has steadily increased since the 1990s. I can only speak to a public board’s practice. In the race to lower the bar to feed the positive PR machine, we were told we weren’t to fail more than 20 per cent of a class, even deservedly. Marks would have to be artificially raised. Students achieving a failing mark of 46 to 49 per cent would have marks raised to 50 per cent.

Now teachers face disciplinary action and potential loss of career for something previously accepted by principals and boards. Teachers face further castigation by the more recently created, already bloated and blinkered bureaucratic organization, the College of Teachers. For this principal to come out with such a statement without looking in the mirror first is hypocrisy of the highest order, if the Catholic boards follow similar practices to the public.

Don Harrington, Smithville

Cross Posted at Education and Its Discontents