Counting The Ways

 

How much does Doug Ford covet Ontarian's votes? Let me count the ways.

In the run-up to this June's provincial election, the premier is sparing no expense (while at the same time eliminating huge amounts of revenue) to buy at least enough votes to ensure a return of his government. 

Democracy, for all of its vaunted benefits, can be ugly.

As I noted in a post last month, Mr. Ford is already spending over $1 billion in forgone revenue in his avid pursuit of our support. He assumes that the surrendering of these funds by eliminating licence plate sticker renewals and toll road fees will be pleasing to many; of course, no one has explained how that treasury gap will be filled, but my guess is, post-election, through 'fiscal discipline,' i.e., cuts.

But the blandishments don't end there. Through Monte McNaughton, Minister of  Labour, Training and Skills Development, the Ford government has become the friend of the worker. Many of the measures announced thus far have been long overdue, such as the January minimum wage raise to $15 dollars an hour, a previous Liberal government measure Ford scrapped after coming to office in 2018. Another is the Digital Platform Workers' Rights Act which, on the surface, looks progressive. The Act says it

will guarantee a regular minimum wage for individuals employed by app-based services, such as ride-share drivers and couriers, which they will receive on top of their tips. It also makes it mandatory for workers to receive a recurring pay period and pay day while prohibiting tips from being withheld by platform operators.

“Every worker in the province deserves to earn at least minimum wage, and these companies have a responsibility—and they're going to be forced by law—to clearly tell workers on digital platforms how and when they're going to be paid.”

But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details, and Armine Yalnizyan smells sulphur, concluding it  

is actually anti-worker legislation. It denies basic worker protections to gig workers by creating a second tier of labour rights for the people whose employer says they are independent contractors, regardless of what employees say. That ensures these workers are unlikely to be paid minimum wage, get overtime, vacation or severance pay, be covered by occupational health and safety rules, or be able to organize for better.

The reason this legislation is actually regressive and will hurt gig workers lies in the fact that a decision recently handed down stated that 

an Uber Eats driver is already an “employee” under the Ontario Employment Standards Act.

Law professor David Dorey says that 

the finding of “employee” status led to an order for Uber to pay the courier close to $1000 for various violations of the ESA, including a failure to pay the minimum wage for all hours that the courier was “waiting or holding himself ready to work”. 

As I understand the proposed new Ontario law, only “engaged” time is counted as working, meaning the time that a driver is actively completing an order. As a result, an Uber Eats driver … would be entitled to less wages under the government’s new law than they are already entitled to under the existing ESA. 

Lest health-care providers feel left out of this 'largesse', Mr. Ford has something for them as well, not an increase in salary, but $5000 retention bonuses for nurses. An obvious bribe, it will be paid in two installments, one before and one after the election.

As well, and no doubt important for all those who "love freedom," is the pending elimination of all Covid-19 restrictions in Ontario. But at least our chief Medical officer, Dr. Kieran Moore, is asking people to be kind to those who still want to wear masks.

And I suspect that the final tier on the 'inducement' cake Ford is baking for his voters will come soon: the announcement of a deal with the federal government for $10-a-day daycare funding. Up to this point, the province has insisted it needs more than the $10.2 billion on offer, but I rather think that will not be an obstacle for too much longer, given the proximity of our election.

As always, a healthy democracy depends upon an informed electorate and viable choices; Ford is likely (and probably rightly) counting on a high level of ignorance, something that is increasingly becoming the norm. And given the unpalatable and largely unprincipled nature of the two main opposition parties in our province, we are effectively offered little to whet either our imaginations or our enthusiasms.

 

The Next Time We Complain About High Gas Prices

While I have no doubt that a great deal of oil-company profiteering is taking place these days, we really do need to put our complaints into perspective:

Heartbreaking photo by

@lynseyaddario @nytimes

all the world should see. 'Ukrainian soldiers trying to save the father of a family of four — the only one at that moment who still had a pulse — moments after being hit by a mortar while trying to flee Irpin'

Change-Of-Pace Friday: A Teachable Moment

Given all of the strife and anguished suffering of today's world, it really is necessary for our health just to sit back and have an occasional good laugh. I hope the following proves therapeutic for you.

Be sure to watch till the end:

Where The Truth Lies

Yesterday, a friend forwarded to me a video that is shocking in content, showing a tank running over and crushing a car. There was no accompanying information, so I did a search and found out that it is authentic. Fortunately and incredibly, it appears that the driver of the vehicle survived, as the video indicates. The event took place in Kyiv.

My immediate conclusion upon seeing this was it was a Russian armoured vehicle. The truth, however, is somewhat cloudy, as revealed by Snopes.

Although some of the videos that spread on social media early in the invasion were not real, this one has been vetted as authentic based on multiple sources who witnessed the incident. We do not have the name of the victim, and therefore don’t know how badly that person was injured.

France24 analyzed the videos taken of the incident and concluded that the tank appeared to be Ukrainian, although and [sic] cause of the collision was unclear. Ukrainian government officials accused Russian saboteurs of taking Ukrainian military gear and posing as Ukrainians. French TV news station TF1 Info hypothesized that the driver was Ukrainian and that the collision was an accident caused by the fighting.

None of this, of course, minimizes the horrific invasion and war currently going on in Ukraine. It does, however, serve as a reminder that in the fog of war, facts and critical thinking are more important than ever. 

Leadership Under The Microscope

 

I need ammunition, not a ride - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

With those six words, the Ukrainian President has put leadership under the microscope. His is the kind of courageous example that most people would long for in their politicians, but have likely long ago dismissed as a fond notion best confined to fantasy.

Juxtapose someone of great moral courage with a cruel dictator heedless of human life; one will inspire, and one will repel. And in the process you might just stir the world to at least a semblance of unity.

While everyone's attention is rightly rivetted by the terrible tragedy underway in Ukraine, one can also be heartened by the collective action much of the world is taking against the monstrous and calloused choices being made by Vladimir Putin. While not perfect by any means, the sanctions are the expression of strong condemnation of the war crimes underway. 

All of which has led to me thinking about the potential of leadership to unite a country. I would say that, especially in the early days of the pandemic, Justin Trudeau provided such leadership, appearing daily outside his cottage for updates, quarantining when necessary, and letting his hair and beard grow somewhat unruly, something many of us could relate to in those times. By these measures, he conveyed a message of shared pain and sacrifice. While obviously of an entirely different magnitude than that shown by Zelensky, it was what we needed at the time.

Then I think about the man who "wants to be your next prime minister," Pierre Poilievre. As described in The Breach, he is an ideologue who wants to replace social programs with a “tiny survival stipend”. It is a small part of his model of leadership that will inspire the mean-spirited and repel the fair-minded.

Althia Raj offers some thoughts on the options open for the Conservative Party as they ponder who should next lead them. Will they continue down the road to Trumpism or attempt to appeal to a wider part of the electorate?

The only declared candidate, Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre, is a polarizing figure with a “take no prisoners” attitude. He recently called Europe’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shockingly “weak,” embraced the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” and called COVID-19 public health measures a purposeful attempt by governments “to try and take away our freedom and give themselves more power.”

In the past, Poilievre has attacked the media, made derogatory comments about Indigenous peoples, left the door open to a niqab ban in the public service, and broken the election law. Elected at age 25, the career MP is a forceful opposition critic who has railed against elites, placed the blame for rising inflation and house prices at the feet of the Liberals, and promised more energy projects. His campaign launch through a social media video on Feb. 5 garnered more than seven million views on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. At least 26 Conservative caucus members have endorsed him.

While the vote-getting allure of the demagogue is tempting to many, others aren't so sure, seriously considering other potential candidate like Jean Charest and Patrick Brown, both moderates and from the progressive wing of the party. 

None of these choices inspire in the way that Zelensky does, but Poilivre's no-holds-barred strategy, which includes courting supporters of The People's Party, does offer some increasingly clear choices: 

In choosing a leader, the Conservatives must ask themselves what their winning formula will be —do they want to take votes from Bernier’s far-right party or from Justin Trudeau’s Liberals?

Short, But Not So Sweet (For Some)

 As always, Mrs. Betty Bowers nails it, quite succinctly.

While The World Is Preoccupied

 

While the invasion of Ukraine is undoubtedly the world-shaking event that the media are reporting it as, it would be unwise as Canadians to feel blasé about our home-grown problems, problems made abundantly clear by the recent occupation of Ottawa by a domestic force known as the trucker convoy.

Peopled by idiots all too eager to subscribe to misinformation propagated both domestically and internationally, it was a worrying indictment of the the health of our own democracy. 

Writer Noelle Allen offers some examples and insights into this scourge.

There’s a tweet making the rounds right now about how if the Governor General receives 958,000 emails saying that the sender is casting a non-confidence vote against Justin Trudeau, she will remove him from office. Of course, it has been quickly debunked. 

 There appeared to have been an absurd belief at the occupation of Ottawa that police could not arrest you if you were singing “O Canada” and a much more dangerous belief that they could not arrest you if children were present. There has also been a lot of discussion about the participants’ First Amendment Rights at the various blockades. In the U.S., this is the protection of freedom of speech, the press and assembly. In Canada it doesn’t exist...

The sentiments behind these absurd contentions are worrying in that they betray a contempt for democracy:

It’s telling that the Ottawa anti-vax group started off stating in their “memorandum of understanding” posted on the Canada Unity website that they expected to “form a committee with the Senate and the Governor General to override all levels of Canadian government.” They wanted to wipe the slate clean of all elected politicians and install their own governing junta. The federal election we had less than six months ago simply wasn’t good enough for them, though instead of trying to pretend the election was stolen as Trump did in the U.S., they went straight to trying to overthrow the government.

Allen laments the fact that discussion and compromise are not in the makeup of these miscreants: 

The hard-right fringe keeps coming up against the uncomfortable truth that there are other people in the country and they get to vote, too. But instead of leaving their bubbles, asking what they need to do to meet the rest of Canada in the middle and doing the hard work of democracy, they’ve turned to looking for ways to make our elected officials vanish. They’re like peevish customers who don’t agree with the approach of the front counter staff and are constantly trying to find a way to get what they want by demanding to speak to the manager, only in this case, they seem to believe the manager is the Governor General of Canada. 

Rather than mock or ignore these people, Allen sees them as dangerous:

... the willingness to press for what they want at any cost, to call our elected politicians traitors and threaten them with violence, to hold a city hostage, to simply expect to override the entire system of democracy to get what they want, makes this group dangerous. That way leads to a dictatorship. We need to prosecute those who participated in the illegal blockades fully and make it clear the cost of trying to break our democracy is high. Too high for them to try this again.

And on that last note, allow me to express my satisfaction that, like Tamara Lich, Pat King has been denied bail, the JP ruling against it due to the seriousness of the charges that will likely entail imprisonment. 

It would seem that Noelle Allen's hopes are being realized.

For further discussion on this topic, please click here.