Uncommon Wisdom From The 'Common' People

That is the best way to assess the fact that last night, despite all of his gerrymandering, Dalton NcGuinty was decisively thwarted in his ruthless drive for the majority government he had been denied in the last general provincial election.

Thanks to the people of Kitchener-Waterloo, both he and the leader of the Official Opposition, young Tim Hudak of the Conservatives, are looking decidedly vulnerable today. A good analysis of that vulnerability can be found in Martin Regg Cohn's column in this morning's Star.

And just before I leave the topic of politicians who forget who they are elected to serve, I am reproducing a letter I came across yesterday in The Spectator. The observations made by the writer, Mark Kikot of Burlington, are ones that our arrogant political 'masters' would be wise to bear in mind the next time they contemplate the bald pursuit of power at the expense of the electorate.

McGuinty scapegoats public-sector workers

Premier Dalton McGuinty is demonstrating through his current strategy for dealing with the deficit that behaving like a conservative government is easier than being a liberal government, and that behaving like a corporation is easier than being a government.

Those Ontarians who have accepted the corporate mindset as the controlling metaphor in their lives, and the corporate structure as an inescapable reality, would argue that any responsible government should function like a business. Costs that cannot be sustained must be offset by cuts in order to produce a supposedly more efficient, hopefully more effective, and clearly more profit-driven organization; in other words, the ideal model for governance is the lean mean machine.

While any sensible person should acknowledge that we cannot continue to live beyond our means, any sensible person should also recognize that the debt incurred by a government must be shared by all the sectors of the society that that government represents.

By targeting primarily the public sector, and the educational sector in particular, in its attempt to balance the books, the McGuinty government has made scapegoats of those public sector workers who provide social services that improve the quality of life for all Ontarians. In adopting this politically convenient strategy, McGuinty has created the impression that the deficit is entirely an in-house problem, instead of a problem for which the private sector is also responsible. It is unreasonable and unjust to expect the deficit to be reduced almost exclusively at the expense of public sector employees who make on average much less than $100,000 a year, while private sector employees who make between $100,000 and $500,000 a year pay taxes at pre-deficit rates, and corporations continue to be granted privileged tax status in the hope that they will create jobs.

The McGuinty government in its bull-headed idiocy is moving forward with legislation that ignores the collective bargaining process and imposes working conditions, not negotiated contracts, on teachers and other educational workers. There can be no social contract without contractual agreements.

Mark Kikot, Burlington

McGuinty's Gambit Fails

At least I can sleep well tonight.

The Latest on Lucene Charles

While I have written about her a couple of time in the past, the ordeal of Lucene Charles is not yet over.

Because she failed to complete the paperwork to achieve permanent residency status when she married a Canadian 15 years ago, the St. Vincent native, the mother of four children, three of whom were born in Canada, still faces deportation.

Charles is the kind of person we would hope to have in the neighborhood, a productive person who works for the betterment of her community. Employed full time as an assistant to an administrator at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, she was recently honoured as a YWCA Woman of Distinction in May for her extensive volunteer work.

Despite the fact that she would be an obvious asset to Canada, because of an oversight in paperwork, she faces being sent back to St. Vincent, an impoverished Caribbean island where three of her children, born in Canada, will go to for the first time if she cannot find adequate placement for them.

You can read the complete story here, and I will only offer the following observation:

I have come to the point in my life where I strongly believe that so many of the so-called rules (immigration-refugee rules, for example) should only be treated as broad guidelines, and that each situation has to be judged on its own merits, and by that I mean excluding considerations like whether a decision may set an undesirable precedent.

Decency and humanity, two of the surest criteria one can embrace, should and must be the only criteria.

Advice From the World's Richest Woman

Wow! Sounds like this Australian lady really made it 'the hard way'.

Dalton McGuinty: A Man Running Or On The Run?

I have to admit, I find the imagery extraordinarily pleasing.

Like a man on trial for criminal offences entering the courthouse via an underground passage to avoid the media glare, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty stole through the back door during a Wednesday evening stop at the campaign headquarters of Liberal lawyer Eric Davis, who is vying to give McGuinty his majority as he runs in the Kitchener-Waterloo byelection today.

Davis is trailing the NDP candidate badly, but that was not the reason for the premier's covert entrance. It was to avoid protesters out front angry at plans to privatize the Ontario Northland Transportation Corporation.

A photo showing an agitated electorate would not be consistent with the image the unflappable McGuinty likes to project of competent and trusted leadership.

It kind of reminds me of his school photo-op the other day, when he toured École élémentaire Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau, whose teachers belong to a union that has settled its contract. The potential for unwanted publicity would have been too great had he made an appearance at a school whose teachers are members of either the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario or the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, given that their collective bargaining rights are being stripped away by McGuinty's government.

It is a fact, among many others, I suspect the voters of Kitchener-Waterloo will keep in mind as they cast their ballots today.

And Yet Another Threat To Beleaguered America

Folks, I merely report these things, as bizarre a commentary they are about our beleaguered American 'friends.' I do not make them up.

H/t Salon

Heather Mallick On The Insidious Nature Of Poverty

The older I get, the less patience I have with government that preaches an austerity that has a disproportionate impact on the poor. Of the right-wing rhetoric and mythology that all one has to do is to work hard to succeed, so evident in last week's Republican convention, I have absolutely no tolerance.

Our government and corporate leaders largely mouth a propaganda that results in a commodification of people as they go about insidiously destroying the sense of community that makes society tolerable, worthwhile, and at times noble.

This is why I was pleased to read Heather Mallick's column in this morning's Star, that is a poignant commentary on both the vulnerability of the poor and the fact that none of us is immune from the vicissitudes of life, no matter how we may think we have fortified ourselves against misfortune.