2016: In Memoriam

2016 was a terrible year on many, many fronts. Compounding those tragedies in which human beings played major contributing roles was the one over which we have no influence: death. It may be my imagination, but it seems to me that this was a year in which we said goodbye to an unusual number of giants who walked among us in fields as disparate as politics, sports and entertainment.

If I had to pick two that saddened me the most it would probably be the departure of Mohammad Ali and David Bowie. If you know anything about him beyond his public persona, you will know that Ali was a man of deep conviction, principle and integrity, qualities for which he paid a very heavy price. Bowie, of course, was a remarkably versatile artist whose career spanned several decades, and who seemed to have been taken from us far too soon, with work still undone.

As you will see in the following tributes, each of the many who died in 2016 lived fully during their time, exploiting their talents to the maximum, using their gifts to uplift all of us. Not a bad legacy, and one we would all do well to emulate in the time remaining to each of us.

The Shape Of Ideological Purges To Come?

History teaches us that when political ideologies mutate into forms of state religion, those who stand in opposition or refuse to 'get with the program' are targeted. Nazism, with its elevation of the Aryan race at the expense of all others, is one prime example. Those who didn't conform were swept away. Another, more recent manifestation, is China. Even while expressing a willingness to have a constructive dialogue with the Vatican, it insists that Chinese Catholics “hold up high the flag of patriotism” and adapt Catholicism to Chinese society.

Ideology must have its way.

And now it would seem that, with a president-elect endorsed by white supremacists and a myriad of other misfits, that much beset-upon minority, white people, will have the opportunity to stamp out wrong-thinking when they are under critical scrutiny. That is, if events unfolding in Wisconsin are any indication of things to come.

Damon Sajnani, a professor in the African Cultural Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is offering a course in the new semester entitled “The Problem of Whiteness.”

“Have you ever wondered what it really means to be white? If you’re like most people, the answer is probably ‘no.’ But here is your chance!” the description reads.

“Critical Whiteness Studies aims to understand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy.”

The course explores “how race is experienced by white people.” But it also looks at how white people “consciously and unconsciously perpetuate institutional racism.”

A criticism of the white race? That has proven too much for David Murphy, a Wisconsin state assemblyman,

who expressed outrage last week that taxpayers “are expected to pay for this garbage.”

Using the time-honoured cudgel of funding, the assemblyman is expressing his aversion to what used to be one of the main missions of universities, the exploration, discussion and exchange of ideas:

“UW-Madison must discontinue this class. If UW-Madison stands with this professor, I don’t know how the University can expect the taxpayers to stand with UW-Madison.”

Within his fiscal gun sights is not just the 'offending' professor, but also the university's administration for allowing this 'outrage' to occur:

In a statement emailed to The Washington Post, Murphy (R) said the decision to approve the class makes him question the judgment of university leaders.

“I support academic freedom and free speech,” he said. “Free speech also means the public has the right to be critical of their public university. The university’s handling of controversies like this appears to the public as a lack of balance in intellectual openness and diversity of political thought on campus.”

All of the above, by the way, was delivered without a hint of irony, suggesting that the good assemblyman's own intellectual reach is lamentably limited.

For the time being, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has not expressed interest in tying funding to ideological purity, but does offer the following as a possible basis for backtracking, should Murphy's call for academic jihad find favour with the public:

“I could certainly as a citizen or as a father who pays part of my kids’ tuition roll my eyes and raise concerns about some of the classes,” Walker told the newspaper. “But our focus in the budget should be on overall performance and not individual classes.”

No one can heave a sigh of relief at this anemic response, especially given the governor's own rather sordid record.

One of those noteworthy aspects of the rabid right is that, even when they achieve victory, as they have in electing an egregiously unqualified and unfit president, happiness and satisfaction elude them. I suspect it always will until they have wiped out the last dissenting thought, the last contrary opinion, the last remnant of resistance which, of course, is impossible.

Yet I have no doubt that they will do their damnedest to try.

Almost Too Grim To Contemplate

While the Pope is imploring world leaders to act with dispatch to mitigate climate change, it is hard to remain optimistic about the prospects of American engagement under incoming president Donald Trump:

Meanwhile, As The World Fades Away

I have never seen the magnificent cheetah, and new research suggests I never will.

Read, watch, and weep at our collective folly.

A Special Understanding

Under successive neoliberal administrations in both Canada and the U.S., it has long been demonstrated that those occupying the upper echelons of our fractured societies are granted a myriad of benefits, not the least of which seems to be a virtual moratorium on prosecutions when wrongdoing is uncovered and proven. The fact that no one went to jail over the 2008 financial meltdown is but the most egregious example. Indeed, such is their power and arrogance that corporate executives were given bonuses from the very bail-out money that taxpayers funded for those institutions and enterprises deemed "too big to fail." When there is punishment of any kind for malfeasance, it is usually just fines which the errant entity can then use as tax write-offs.

Although the strongest examples of special treatment can be found stateside, Canada has its own way of dealing with financial malfeasance that should anger all of us, reflective as it is of the neoliberalism that pervades our land.

Thanks to a joint investigation by The Toronto Star and The National Obsserver {a fine online newspaper that offers subscriptions and solicits donations to support its journalism), we have yet another example in the deeply offensive special treatment by Fintrac, Canada’s money laundering and terrorist financing enforcement agency, of a major Canadian bank.

Canada’s money-laundering agency is refusing to name the bank hit with an unprecedented penalty for failing to report a suspicious transaction and committing hundreds of other violations in its dealings with a controversial client. Details of the failures — including one the agency described as “very serious”...

For nearly two years, the bank failed to report a series of unusual transactions in its client’s account, despite news reports at the time revealing he was under criminal investigation in the U.S. The transactions included dozens of large cash deposits and hundreds of international transfers worth more than $12 million, reveal the newly-released documents.

Despite the fact that the law requires reporting of transaction amounting to 10,000 or more, from

early 2012 to the end of 2013, the unnamed bank processed 1,179 international electronic transfers of $10,000 or more from the mystery client, who used a “potential shell company” and operated out of an unnamed country associated with money laundering. It also accepted 45 cash deposits of $10,000 or more, all without ever reporting the transactions to Fintrac, Canada’s money laundering and terrorist financing enforcement agency, as required by law.

With some deductive sleuthing, the newspapers were able to determine that the individual involved in these transactions was

Manitoba online pharmacy entrepreneur Andrew Strempler, 42, who pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges in the U.S. after his shipments were found to contain counterfeit medication.

While Strembler served his time and was released in October of 2015, Fintrac has treated the bank, which, under existing law, it could name, to anonymity after levying a $1.15 million fine, certainly a modest penalty given what the law allows:

Anyone who knowingly fails to report a suspicious transaction to FINTRAC can face a $2 million fine and up to five years in prison, under Canadian legislation on money laundering and terrorism financing. The maximum administrative monetary penalty for the bank's hundreds of violations would have been $1.8 million, the documents said.

The original penalty was $1.5 million, but Fintrac reduced it after 'negotiating' with the bank, which argued that the harm done was minimal.

I beg to differ with its decision to protect a major bank's reputation. Flagrantly violating the law 1,225 times in this case is damaging both to confidence in our banking system annd deeply demoralizing to the average person's sense of fair play. As Christine Duhaime, a lawyer who specializes in anti-moneylaundering law says,

“Joe Average who is fined for any administrative infraction is not afforded secrecy in this way and the rules should apply to all Canadians, legal and natural personals, equally, from banks to Joe Average.”

Yet Fintrac somehow seems to feel that they have really brought down the hammer in this case:

Fintrac said Tuesday’s announcement is meant to deter others from failing to report.

But the bank’s name was not added to a list of violators published on the agency’s website. The home page shows the name of many smaller companies, such as jewelry stores, independent securities dealers and real estate brokerages.

Quite unapologetic, Fintrac, according to The Observer report, feels it has done exemplary work in this case:

FINTRAC said it was trying to be discreet.

“The process has concluded and FINTRAC exercised its discretion not to name the entity so that we could send a timely message of deterrence to the 31,000 businesses that are subject to the Proceeds of Crime, Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Act”.

I'm afraid that the only message Fintrac has managed to convey is confirmation that there is indeed one law for the 'giants' who walk among us, and quite another for the rest of us. It is far past time that this special understanding (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) between certain societal segments and the massive insult to the rest of us ended.

Merry Christmas - A Gift For You

During most of the year, the topics and issues I deal with on this blog are often dark and depressing. Such is the way of the world. However, I'd like to share with readers a series of good news stories that show human kindness, compassion and resilience are far from dead. Taken from NBC News, these are best viewed, not at once, but when you feel the need. As counterpoint to the usual news fare, they almost always leave me feeling touched, and serve as potent reminders that not everything in this world is bleak.

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

Lethal Legacy - Part 2

In Part 1, I wrote about the lethal consequences for many who have worked at GE Peterborough. A toxic workplace that has resulted in crippling disease or death for many is not the kind of legacy these men and women anticipated.

To compound the tragedy of the situation, Ontario's Workplace Insurance and Safety Board has been strangely reluctant to find a relationship between that workplace and the diseases that are killing far too many former employees, accepting only 280 compensation claims from over 660 applications.

Today, I try to understand that reluctance, as well as look at a bill working its way through the Ontario legislature that will potentially make the workplace even more hazardous.

In exploring this issue, the role of the Ontario government must also be considered, given its apparent indifference to workplace health and safety:

A report produced for the WSIB in 2010 determined that the province had “no effective reporting or surveillance of occupational disease or exposures” and no central repository of data on the subject.

Six years later, that status quo remains.

The WSIB itself seems to share that indifference:

The WSIB has a registry for “unplanned exposure incidents,” but it is voluntary, does not record information about the severity of the exposure, does not collect medical information from workers or health-care providers and looks only at individual cases rather than populations at risk. There is no dedicated funding for the program. ... [and] the Ministry of Labour does not receive data from the registry.

Why this strange shared inertia between a government-appointed board and the government itself? Is it possible that the miasma of neoliberalism has infiltrated both? And if so, how can that be, given that the WISB directors themselves, as I pointed out in the previous post, come from diverse backgrounds?

Is there, in fact, an institutional bias at work here?

“There’s a systemic barrier to actually looking at what’s happening to these blue-collar workers behind factory walls,” says Dr. Jim Brophy, an expert in occupational disease whose research into breast cancer in the workplace won him an award from the American Public Health Association in 2013.

“If compensation boards recognize these cases then the onus is on the government to go do something about them. We’re caught in this vicious cycle.”

Are those appointed to the Board, and by extension, those who work for the Board, trying in some measure, even unconsciously, to protect the government from that onus? The fact is that Board approves just over 40% of all claims for compensation, having set standards of proof almost impossibly high for many.

As well, approving too many claims could prove costly for employers.

The Canadian workers’ compensation model is based on an important compromise: employers agree to fund the system through insurance premiums, sharing the liability for workplace injuries.

We all know what happens if we ever make a claim, for example, on our house insurance. Rates rise, sometimes steeply. The same would hold true of employer premiums to the WSIB.

And where is the Ontario government in all of this? While it is demonstrably infected by the virus of neoliberalism (consider, as one example, the sale of 60% of Hydro One in order "to broaden ownership," in the words of Premier Kathleen Wynne), there is further evidence that the disease is progressing:

... new legislation — Bill 70 — is moving ahead and will quietly scale back routine health and safety inspections in favour of employer self-compliance.

UNIFOR is not impressed by the bill:

Health and safety advocates reviewing Bill 70 have serious concerns. The perverse irony this Bill bears the same number as the Bill which birthed Ontario’s original OHSA [Occupational Health & Safety Act] almost 40 years ago is not lost on worker health and safety advocates. Chief among their concerns is the Bill’s intent to allow the government to privatize the processes for setting and approving standards for health and safety training courses...

Equally troubling, in announcing these amendments to OHSA, Ministry of Labour senior staff indicated employers accredited through this possibly self-regulated scheme would be exempt from proactive enforcement by health and safety inspectors and other “routine burdens.”

We have all seen where these efforts at government deregulation to make industry more competitive and self-regulated have led. Walkerton and Maple Leaf Foods are but two examples of what can happen when standards are relaxed.

John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council and himself a survivor of occupational cancer, calls the proposal “a horrific mistake.”

“This is a failed policy practice that has been an absolute ideological cover for deregulation resulting in increased harm to workers,” says Bob DeMatteo, an occupational disease expert and former director of health and safety for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

The tragedies experienced by GE workers are, for the most part, irremediable. We honour their losses by reading about them. But our larger responsibility involves making sure that the horrors they have experienced are not repeated, ad nauseam, in the future.

Special Note: In my two posts on this subject, I have only focused on a small part of the Star report. For much more insight into this sad collusion between industry and government, I strongly recommend that you read the entire report here.