Now Here's An Interesting Idea

At a time when workers' rights are under constant attack, dangerous, Draconian, Orwellian and unconstitutional measures have been passed in Alberta that not only strip away the arbitration rights of public servants, but also limit their freedom of speech.

First, to the 'less contentious' of the two bills recently passed by Alison Redford's Conservative government. In Alberta, strikes by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, who have been without a contract since last March, are forbidden. However, recently passed Bill 46 removes the underpinnings enjoyed by most unions where strikes are prohibited: binding arbitration. With the removal of that right, Redford's government will now be able to impose the following after the negotiation deadline of January 31:

... a legislated four-year deal with no increases over the first two years and one-per-cent increases in each of the next two would come into effect.

However, there are even more grievous measures contained in companion Bill 45, ostensibly legislation to introduce a more comprehensive range of measures that can be applied when there is an illegal strike or threat of an illegal strike that goes much further.

As noted at Rabble.ca, the bill

... denies individuals the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Bill 45 introduces for the first time in Canada, a vague legal concept of "strike threat" which makes it illegal to canvass the opinion of "employees to determine whether they wish to strike" or to freely express a view which calls for or supports strike action.

So Bill 45 essentially attempts to strip away our constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech; it likely will not withstand a Charter challenge, but the bill's intent nonetheless provides a rather frightening look into the minds of legislators today, minds that seem to endorse the attack on essential rights and freedoms as somehow good and just. Even the Calgary Herald and Wild Rose leader Danielle Smith condemn such a worldview. The former describes the bills as marking a dark chapter in Alberta history.

How does one fight such a mentality? Writing in the Edmonton Journal, Lloyd Maybaum, an Alberta physician, draws upon his experience in 2012 during a period of protracted negotiations. He suggests an innovative strategy to combat this assault on basic rights: a virtual strike.

During a virtual strike, unlike an actual strike, there is no cessation or slowdown of work, and everyone earns their regular pay.

The power of the virtual strike lies in the strategic donation of earned income. In the case of a hostile, bullying government, one could follow the adage that the enemy of your enemy becomes your friend and donate income from virtual strike days to opposition parties in the legislature.

Every Wednesday, for instance, union leaders could encourage nurses from across the province to go online and donate $100 to the political party of their choice.

By so doing, the union would be taking its fight directly to the governing party, not allowing patients to become caught in the crossfire of negotiations.

And as Maybaum points out, every $100 donation would only cost $25 after the political donation deduction, and could prove a potent weapon in a jurisdiction that is apparently trying to cripple people's rights.

Should those of us not living in Alberta be concerned? Without question. Both federally and provincially, workers are increasingly seen as impediments to the unfettered profits of business. There is, for example, Tim Hudak in Ontario who wants to make the province a 'right to work' jurisdiction; the Harper cabal seeks to cripple unions through disclosure of expenditures via Bill C-377, legislation that has been weakened, fortunately, by a amendment in the Senate put forward by Hugh Segal.

Constant vigilance is required. Truly, the battle taking place in Alberta is everyone's fight.

Somedays

... I think of Canada's citizenry, in its willingness to take whatever the Harper regime dishes out in the way of mean-spirited, regressive and repressive legislation, as a beaten-down dog.

Chief Bill Blair And Secrecy

Presiding as he does over a very troubled organization, it is perhaps not surprising that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair prefers a cloak of secrecy to cover how he manages his force. But it is difficult to see whose interests, other than those of the good chief, are served by refusing to share with the public how he deals with his officers when they abuse citizens.

One of the first casualties of this refusal to shed light is surely public trust, a fact attested to by letters to The Star, one of which you can read below:

Re: Cops used ‘torture’ to get confession, top court rules, Dec. 13

Thanks to the Star for reporting on the sickening story of police brutality. Torture is a crime; police are not authorized to use force to obtain “confessions.” Charges are supposed to rely on evidence of criminal activity by the suspects, not by the police.

We pay the police to uphold the laws of our society, which include our civil and human rights. When police impunity is such that police believe that brutalizing people (and telling them to lie) is “part of the job”, it’s (past) time for our governments and courts to start to protect Canadian rights.

They might start by giving the SIU real teeth; police should be forced to respond promptly and honestly to SIU requests for information. There were many police who violated police rules and the rights of Canadians at the G20 several years ago, yet only one or two seem to have been called to account. Every one of the police identified as having broken any rules (such as not wearing proper identification) should have been punished appropriately. The courts should make the police fully accountable for violations of people’s rights. The police violations of Canadian human and civil rights should no longer be tolerated.

Karin Brothers, Toronto

The general public is not the only segment harbouring grave misgivings about those who 'serve and protect.' A hard hitting Star editorial in this morning's edition, entitled Toronto police secrecy undermines public trust, makes clear that the chief's evasions and subterfuge have no place in a democracy:

Undue secrecy when police investigate their own only saps public confidence that justice is done when an officer breaks the law. For that reason, if no other, Toronto’s police board should reveal reports that Chief Bill Blair prefers to keep hidden.

The reports refer to a specific offence allegedly committed by Toronto police: failure to co-operate with Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the outside agency summoned whenever police are involved in a fatality or serious injury, or are accused of sexual assault.

The editorial goes on to observe that while Blair asserts that he has investigated all of the concerns brought forward by the SIU, he insists they remain confidential, only to be shared with the Toronto Police Services Board. Not even the SIU is privy to what he claims to have done. This stands in stark contrast to other police services that make the result of investigations public, excising only the most confidential information.

So who is Blair really protecting here?

There are many reasons I am glad not to be a resident of Toronto; the fact that it has a largely unaccountable police force led by a man who seems contemptuous of the public is among my chief ones.

In This Season Of Getting And Spending

... a timely reminder about the practices of the world's biggest retailer:



This article is also worthy of perusal.

A Lion In Winter

Like a bloated, aging and wounded lion who realizes his hold over his pride is at an end, Conrad Black is lashing out. Still licking his wounds from lacerations received at the hands of the CBC's Carol Off, Black used his column in Saturday's National Post (which as a rule I do not read, but more about that later) both to justify his journalistic ineptitude and to strike back at his growing list of adversaries who include Star editor Michael Cooke, Star columnist Rosie DiManno, The Star itself, and well, just about anyone else who finds fault with him.

With false leonine pride, in his column Black maintains the fiction that it was not journalistic ineptitude but rather the show's format that explains his toothless interview with disgraced Toronto pretend-mayor Rob Ford:

As co-host of the Vision Channel television program Zoomer, I invite people to sit down with me in civilized conversation, which often included unwelcome questions. But I do not conduct an antagonistic debate. This is a format that viewers seem to enjoy, and it was on this basis that guests — including Mayor Ford, last week — have agreed to speak with me.

He goes on to dismiss the controversy over Ford implying that Daniel Dale is a pedophile as a sideshow, and then launches into what can only be described as a screed against The Star and its staff, most notably its most prolific and acerbic writer, Rosie DiManno, whom he describes as a feminoid who is so disconcerted by my wife’s timeless appearance that she refers to the frequent praise of her as a form of “necrophilia.”

Which brings me to how I wound up reading Black's piece. This morning, The Star's own lioness, Rosie Dimanno, still apparently in her prime, extrudes her own claws as she responds to the Black attack.

Here is her opening salvo:

Mrs. Conrad Black is the most gorgeous septuagenarian on the planet.

And, while hardly a kitten with a whip any longer, Barbara Amiel remains quite the dominatrix in print, a polished writer who can stick a stiletto heel into any subject’s jugular. A far better wordsmith than her husband, too. Indeed, Black isn’t even the best writer from among her five spouses.

I mention the Baroness only because hubby has specifically accused me of not appreciating her timeless beauty. I do. And maybe at some future date, Amiel can give me the name of her plastic surgeon.

Lest you think her column is simply a catty attack on Mrs. Black, she soon turns her attention to her real target:

We now know also why disgraced newspaper baron and felon Connie (Con, for short) devotes himself to producing remainder-bin biographical doorstoppers about dead people — because he doesn’t have to interview them. His singular lack of skill in this most basic reportorial function was on grotesque display last week whilst “chatting” — Black doesn’t call these puffball exchanges interviews — with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on his Zoomer show, an excruciatingly embarrassing episode that should be shown to J-students as instructive lesson on how not to do it.

There is much more in her piece which, depending upon the exigencies of time and interests, you may wish to check out.

While there are admittedly much bigger issues that need to be addressed and pursued in the world today, sometimes there is an innate satisfaction to be had when bullies, whether of the physical or verbal kind, are soundly and roundly put in their place. And while many may lament the fact that age eventually diminishes all of us, we do no one any service by using that to excuse the effete roaring of a lion in winter.

It Always Seems Like A Good Idea At The Time

...but who can forget the Borg and the Cylons?

Will Google eventually forget its motto, "Don't be evil"?

Pension Reform

More of the white stuff has fallen, and I can ignore the importunate call of the snow shovel no longer, so I will make this brief with two reading recommendations for your Sunday morning discernment.

In today's Star, Martin Regg Cohn writes convincingly on the need for real pension reform, but he predicts that the provinces' finance ministers, who will be meeting today and tomorrow, will get nothing from federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. The latter will trot out the standard 'now is not the time- the economy is too fragile' line, but with more and more people destined to retire in relative poverty, the time for delay is over.

The fragility-of-the-economy-argument is given short shrift in another Star article by C. Scott Clark, a former Federal Deputy Minister of Finance, and Peter Devries, who was Director of Fiscal Policy when CPP was last reformed in 1998. The writers show how that tired argument has been used repeatedly to try to stop past measures:

The last significant structural changes to the CPP (and Quebec Pension Plan) were made in the late 1990s. At that time, CPP contribution rates were doubled, an independent investment board was established and the program was put on a sustainable basis. The arguments now being used by the government are not unlike those made by anti-reformers in 1997. Opponents argued that doubling the CPP premium rates would have a major negative impact on economic growth and job creation. This did not happen.

They go on to cite how the the economy was deemed too fragile when the government replaced the federal manufacturer's sales tax with the GST in 1991, and when the mid-90s saw the Liberals impose tough fiscal measures to deal with the deficit. In neither case did the economic sky fall in.

I'm convinced that we Canadians are far too passive, giving free reign to a government that makes its lack of responsiveness to the needs of Canadians a virtue. Until that changes, all we can likely expect is more of the same blather and inaction on the part of the Harper cabal.