Political Ambition And Public Outrage

The interesting thing about political ambition and public outrage is that sometimes they work synergistically to produce positive results. Jason Kenney, whose ambition to become the Conservative Party's next leader have been widely rumoured, announced yesterday that fast food restaurants are being suspended from participation in the Temporary Foreign Workers Program after increasingly bad publicity over its misuse, resulting in higher rates of unemployment among Canadian citizens.

The following short video discusses a report from the CD Howe Institute which uncovered this disturbing fact:

However, how much of this is simply a temporary sop to the masses remains to be seen. Although McDonald's moved just prior to Kenney's announcement to suspend its use of temporary foreign workers, as the video below shows, its Canadian CEO, John Betts, regards the entire imbroglio as 'bullshit.'

Will this ban become permanent? The cynic in me suggests it won't, given that the program as administered by the Harper regime has become yet another way of assisting its corporate friends by distorting the labour market, enabling the industry to avoid paying its employees what the market demands.

However, should both the media and the public continue to be interested in the issue, perhaps a permanent solution will emerge. A big IF.

Sammy Yatim's Accused Killer Back On The Job

While the presumption of innocence is fundamental to our justice system, common sense and public sensibilities are always unspoken elements of the equation. This is clearly seen, for example, in jury selection, a good part of which is designed to ferret out and exclude from participation those with prejudgments that could affect the rights of the accused to a fair trial.

With that preamble and proviso out of the way, what I express in the following is simply my opinion, a perspective informed by news coverage of the accused and the aforementioned common sense and public sensibilities.

I have written several past posts on Sammy Yatim and related matters of police abuse of their authority. Yatim, readers will recall, was the 18-year-old whose death at the hands of police on July 27, 2013, was captured on video. While holding a knife in an empty streetcar, presenting no immediate threat to the many police who were on scene, Yatim was shot to death by Const. James Forcillo, who was later charged with second-degree murder.

Now, incredibly, just a few days after the beginning of his preliminary hearing, word has arrived that Forcillo has been back on the job since February.

The decision to have Const. James Forcillo return to duty — after a seven-month suspension with pay — was made by Chief Bill Blair.

“The chief, using his discretion, made the decision to lift his suspension and since February he has been assigned to administrative duties here at headquarters,” spokesman Meaghan Gray confirmed Wednesday. “He is not in uniform and his job does not require any use-of-force options.”

A close Yatim family friend, Joseph Nazar, was stunned by the news:

This is a betrayal by the police chief,” Nazar said. “This officer is charged with murder and he’s working in a police station?

“If this is true, we’re not going to sit quiet about it,” he added.

Police union head Mike McCormick, “fully” supports the chief’s decision to lift Forcillo’s suspension.

“We encourage management to find meaningful work for suspended officers when possible, as long as any risk has been mitigated,” McCormack said. “And it actually happens quite frequently.”

He said it’s good for the officers, the service and taxpayers.

What McCormick failed to acknowledge is that it's not so good for the pursuit of justice, fosters the perception of a blue brotherhood with more contempt than concern for the public, and betrays an egregious disdain for a still-grieving family that will never again embrace their loved one.

More On The Temporary Foreign Workers Program

As noted yesterday, the Temporary Foreign Workers Program continues to cause both grief and outrage among Canadians. The latest publicly-identified victims, two former employees at a Weyburn Sask. eatery called Brothers Classic Grill and Pizza [previously called El Rancho], are receiving a groundswell of support both locally and across the country.

In an update on their website, CBC Saskatchewan, we learn that Sandy Nelson, a 28-year veteran waitress at the restaurant who lost her job to foreign workers, had tried to bring attention to her plight earlier:

"We tried going [the] government route. Never got a response," Nelson said. "Finally got a response today." That is, after the injustice became public.

Among those who are considered part of the Harper base, this comment was typical:

"I don't think that's fair," Weyburn resident Kyla Broomfield said. "We go there all the time and they treat customers well. I don't know why they would fire them."

"Why should they give foreigners more opportunities?" Jeremiah Broomfield said. "There's willing Canadians here to work. It's just not fair."

One can only assume that had this situation not been made public, Jason Kenney would not now be investigating it.

In today's Star, Tim Harper offers his assessment of the TFWP. Laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Harper regime, under whose auspices these abuses have proliferated, he says:

The Conservatives have now done what seems to be the impossible — cutting hours for Canadian workers, setting the stage for the ill-treatment of temporary workers, further alienating the labour movement in this country and fielding complaints from small businesses who play by the rules who say those rules are too onerous.

Harper suggests strong action is needed: the program either needs a complete overhaul, with caps put on the number of temporary workers in this country, or it should be scrapped and replaced with new immigration rules.

He adds that Jason Kenney has to start imposing real penalties, not suspensions. Without that, the abuses will continue and the program’s credibility will continue to crumble.

Ultimately, I guess it requires a careful cost benefit analysis by a government that has consistently shown itself to be so contemptuous of average Canadians and so subservient to the demands of business. Indeed, whose vote is most likely to be lost here?

Happy Earth Day

I truly wish there was something to celebrate. Take a look at my previous post and the commentary from the Mound of Sound that accompanies it; then watch this short video.

Their commonality? A rapacious industry and an economic system that disdains impediments to their profits, and a federal government (a.k.a. the Harper regime) at their compete disposal.

Words Fail Me Here

Unequivocally evil is the only phrase I can think of to describe this ecological and environmental outrage. Read the story and draw your own conclusions:

Ottawa removing North Pacific humpback whales from list of ‘threatened’ species

UPDATED: The Temporary Foreign Workers Program: Yet More Abuse And Heartbreak

Although the Temporary Foreign Workers Program predates the ascension to power of the Harper regime, there is mounting evidence that the abuses occurring under the program, none of which I am aware predate 2006, have been nurtured by the current cabal that consistently elevates the interests of business over the well being of citizens.

The latest example, as reported by CBC, comes from Saskatchewan where, in March, Sandy Nelson, who worked at Brothers Classic Grill and Pizza [previously called El Rancho] in Weyburn, Sask., for 28 years, along with her her co-workers, received the following letter:

"Due to changes in operations we are currently discharging all of our staff".

Some of them were subsequently hired back, including two waitresses who are temporary foreign workers.

But Nelson was permanently dismissed.

And Nelson was not the only victim of a program gone awry. Shaunna Jennison-Yung worked for the restaurant for 14 years before meeting the same fate:

The jobs they have aren't jobs that nobody wanted. We wanted them," Jennison-Yung explained.

She said to make matters worse, as a supervisor, she was unwittingly training her replacements.

"It's hurtful to be put aside and have people that you trained to do your job now doing your job. It's heartbreaking is what it is."

Predictably, the owners of Brothers Classic Grill and Pizza uttered the standard evasions and platitudes in response to CBC inquiries:

"All obligations to any employee are taken seriously. This includes the protection of personal information."

Additionally, they offered that "employees are a valuable asset to any business."

So valuable, apparently, that they are fungible commodities to be disposed of as the owners' agenda sees fit.

UPDATE: As occurred after a recent story emerged of Canadians suffering under the TFWP at three McDonalds's outlets in Victoria, the federal government is reacting with manufactured 'outrage' over the Weyburn misuse of the program:

Employment Minister Jason Kenney has asked his department to investigate Brothers Classic Grill and Pizza in Weyburn, Sask., a spokeswoman for the minister said Monday.

The spokeswoman added:

“Our government will not tolerate any abuse of the temporary foreign worker program. Our message to employers is clear and unequivocal — Canadians must always be first in line for available jobs.”

In an expedient moment of high dudgeon, the government warns of “serious criminal sanctions,” including fines and jail time, if employers lie on their applications about their efforts to hire Canadians.

May I make so bold as to suggest that the Harper regime's interest in this case will last about as long as the media's interest in it does?

P.S. Be sure to check out Montreal Simon's excoriating post on this topic.

Two Sentiments That Will Resonate With Many

Today's Star brings two letters, one on despotic rule and the other on electoral reform, that many would find hard to argue against:

Harper’s on a lonely road to political isolation, April 15

Aristotle once remarked that all forms of government — democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, tyranny — are inherently unstable, all political regimes are inherently transitional and that the stability of all regimes is corrupted by the corrosive power of time.

To prolong the viability of democratic form of government, his advice had been constant turnover of leaderships to renew the political process.
After eight years in power, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is clearly showing the signs of “the corrosive power of time,” as evident from the litany of problems outlined by Chantal Hebert.

He should, therefore, stand down, allowing a new leader to renew the political process. Time for change and renewal has arrived in Canada.

Mahmood Elahi, Ottawa


Why does anybody call Canada a democracy? It has taken nearly eight years for Stephen Harper’s stranglehold on his party and the country to start to loosen – and in all that time he has never enjoyed majority voter support.

We still can’t be sure Harper and Co. will be removed from office in 2015. It’s only a majority faint hope. Canadians will pay many millions to finance the federal election in 2015 — and then watch the pre-democratic voting system deliver, as usual, a House of Commons that bears no predictable relationship to what voters actually said and did. It could re-elect the Harper Conservatives with even less public support than they had last time.

The country needs new leaders who show real respect for citizens and taxpayers – by making a firm commitment to equal effective votes and proportional representation in the House of Commons. Representative democracy in Canada is 100 years overdue.

John Deverell, Pickering