Monthly Archives: February 2012

Hot off the online version of the Toronto Star comes an admission from Liberal Interim leader Bob Rae that it was one of his party’s staffers who posted all those delicious vikileaks tweets about Vic Toews. Presumably in an untelevised ceremony the staffer has been made to the walk the plank with hands tied behind his/her back and blindfolded. Kind of a shame really, they were doing so well with their scrubbed and shiny new image up til now. I’d imagined the perpetrator would be some guy living in his parents’ basement, a failed law student angry about something the tories did to him. A member of the Occupy movement maybe.

Bet this is going to add a new layer of hysteria to the already atmospherically high level we are facing over the election vote suppression scandal. Nobody could accuse us Canadians of having a boring political scene, not anymore.  It’s going to be a lively spring session, that’s for sure. Hope the tories can find the time away from defending their dubious honour to prepare the federal budget.

So the ‘boomers’ have used all the money? Bollocks all the boomers are guilty of is being in the wrong demographic at the wrong time in history. If you want to talk about a favoured generation take it up with the boomers parents. They are the ones who benefitted from a roaring postwar economy, a raging middle class, union membership, state benefits and so on. So Diane Finlay in trying to start a generational war between present seniors (who are taking all the money) and their kids (who will have pay more money for Seniors) should lay the blame at her grandparents, bet she doesn’t. In fact the guilty people are the lower boomers – the fifty year old neo-con politicians who have slashed State supports to people and given that money to corporatioins who don’t need the money. In fact the complete OAS budget can be paid for by the last two corporate tax cuts that removed those revenues from the budget. So don’t tell us we cannot afford to keep paying pensions for older workers. As usual it’s a conservative lie. “We cannot be backed into a choice between the country’s financial security and the commitment to aging Canadians”, she said at a recent High School speech.

Finlay and her corporate bosses have the luxury of time and using the perpetual lie to create facts, if it is repeated often enough, she may be able to get away with it. But the fundamental question remains – why can’t the State support older adults with pensions? It is only the wrong priorities that spend the overall budgets in the wrong places – unnecessary wars, ill-advised plane purchases and silly crime policies and giving the money away to corporations (all genXers should look around and ask themselves if they have benefitted from the corporate giveaways) and diverting much needed money to prisons for non-existent criminals (the unreported ones). There is more than enough money in the system to provide adequate pensions, all the experts agree on this one, it’s only the present goverment that persists in the big lie that it isn’t. The one big success story of the war on poverty is its success in fighting the poverty of older adults with the universal OAS and it GIS topup. Take away that money and millions will slip into the image of granny eating catfood and in real life the State will still be supporting them but from Welfare rolls.

So if Finlay wants to scare one segment of Canadians into believing that the only way to financial security is by saying that the only way to ensure the income maintenance system of older adults is to destroy it (and make no bones about it that’s what they want to do) bring it on. I am sure that the supersized sense of entitlement that our younger people have will not allow much tinkering with a system that they have paid into. We at the BR look forward to being able to make the case to our children that the government is wrong when they say we cannot afford it. After all why wouldn’t Finlay be happy in her retirement, she with her MP’s pension and her hubby with his Senate pension, these people have never worked a real job for many years and will be in hog heaven when they move onto pension life. However the real world goes far beyond Parliament Hill. Let’s see Harper pull this argument in the local Timmies next time he goes there.

Every day online is an exciting adventure, sampling different ideas and assumptions from people near and far. In the last week or so I’ve found a couple of local tidbits that left me shaking my head in wonder, convinced we have finally entered Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone of reality, at least in these hills of Northumberland.

First, coyotes. A woman from Hamilton Township went to County Council to plead for the County, or the Ministry, anybody, to do something about coyotes coming too close to our homes and dining on our family pets at will. The Mayor of Cobourg commented they’re in the big city too, and since my handsome spouse encountered a very sick looking specimen in our urban backyard last summer, I can’t argue with His Worship this time.

Where it got weird was when, after all agreed it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Natural Resources to round up wild animals on the loose, the woman standing before them advised that when she called the MNR, she was told to just shoot them. Really. Just strap on her holster with the six-guns like we used to when we played Cowboys and fire away. Alrighty then. Sounds to me like the MNR guy hasn’t quite caught on that most of the citizenry don’t own guns, and the problem animals are in town where the people and pets are too. Not exactly the right place for hunting, and if people started, it just might kill more family pets than any coyote could.

My next trip into the Twilight Zone occured reading about the transport of contaminated soil in Port Hope, and a question from County Councillor Mark Coombs about how well the stuff was properly contained in the trucks to prevent it blowing around. The response to that, no doubt delivered with a straight face, came from Port Hope Area Initiative Project Manager Glen Case, who explained “it’s only dirt”. That statement was supported promptly by Mayor Linda Thompson. Right. How many millions of dollars is the federal government spending to remove that dirt, and if it’s only dirt, why are they bothering?

Readers of the BR may recall an item I posted a year or so ago recounting complaints from a citizen’s group apointed by the PHAI to monitor the clean up. They reported that tarps were being used to cover the trucks transporting the dirt, secured by bungee cords, and had observed the tarps becoming loose in the wind with dirt blowing everywhere. Furthermore, their report to PHAI had been buried so deep nobody knew about it. Hmmm…  Again we must ask, if it’s only plain old dirt, why so secretive about that document reporting less than adequate containment ?

As old Rod says in the introduction to each episode, his cigarette wafting smoke across the tv screen: “your journey into the Twilight Zone is about to begin”. Cue the creepy music and get ready for the fun.

Although caught up with reading and analysing the Drummond Report like so many others who track politics and the economy, I’ve kept a channel open to try and look at the bigger picture. Swirling around the report is a storm of urgent issues that go beyond simple number crunching, and the report is forcing us to think about them urgently too. The over-riding theme is “The Party’s Over” and while that may come as a shock to many of us spoiled and pampered Ontarians, we need to hear it.

There’s some stuff I like, others not so much, but Mr. Drummond made a serious mis-step with one of his recommendations contained in the section about welfare. With obviously no real understanding of what the rate levels mean on a practical level, he has proposed that more client interaction be conducted by telephone and the internet. I actually laughed when I read that. People on welfare can barely keep a roof over their heads, what makes this guy think they all have phones, let alone computers and internet service. Doesn’t he know how much all that costs every month? Sorry, but Smilin’ Donnie blew a big chunk of  his credibility with me over that one. Now I can’t read his other pronouncements without wondering if his knowledge level is as bad in other areas as it on on welfare issues. To add insult to injury he does not even recommend raising the rates unless and until administrative savings have been realized. In other words, let them continue to waste away slowly, berefit of dignity and any hope. And walking to the welfare office to make use of the computers and telephones there to “interact” with their workers more efficiently. Yeah. Right.

When it comes to axe-wielding in government I put on my welfare mother’s hat and go nuts. To raise a family on the system means budgeting and priority setting skills are keenly honed. I can smell bureaucratic waste and what in lower class circles is called “fucking the dog” activities a mile away. As a supporter of the union movement and its workers, I don’t want to see public sector workers lose their jobs, as long as they are doing necessary work. Most of them are, too, it’s the damn middle managers, the administration level,  whose numbers have grown beyond their usefulness and need to be culled. Sadly, as management, they can always find ways to protect each other, and boy, do they ever do it well.

In that vein, news that the Health Units may be axed made my hard little heart sing. What a colossal waste of cash. They do perform some useful functions but they suck up huge piles of resources too and we could easily transfer the useful work to other genuine community based agencies. If the LHINs are used properly they can assign and co-ordinate those services much more efficiently. And yes, rein in the doctors. Not only are nurse practitioners and other health professionals less costly, they often provide better care because they’re willing to listen to their patients and advise on the mundane matters that doctors can’t be bothered with. I don’t blame the doctors necessarily, who wants to spend all those years in medical school to talk to somebody about their bunions? Let them spend their time using their skills on important medical conditions and leave the rest, like common ailments, nutrition advice, and counselling, to the people who specialize in those areas. With more seniors and more bunions comng down the pike it’s urgent we make changes to primary care. It’s time to do a better job of matching the skills to the needs, and time to take our doctors down from their pedestals so they can learn to work effectively with others as valued partners in health care.

Finally, it seems to me that the Province is using Don Drummond as the bad cop, to shock everybody into seeing just how bad it could be, and then the Premier and Finance Minister will come in at budget time and play the good cop, cherry picking the cuts they think will do the most good: for the citizens, and of course for them politically. This is a wake up call, that’s all. Just the beginning. The revenue side must be reviewed too, fast, and those expensive planned corporate tax cuts have to be stopped. Perhaps our highest income earners could pony up a bit more too. Maybe this is setting the stage for that move, we can only hope.