Bad morning to be Canadian

I woke up about 6:00 this morning, still a little sleepy but, as much as I can be, ready for the new day.  I dressed, put out the garbage, had breakfast and settled down with the newspaper to inform myself about the wonders that are my life.  That was when everything changed.

David Pugliese is one of my favourite writers.  He specializes in stories about DND.  So what was it about our wonderful men and women in Blue, White and Green that set off my day?  Well it wasn't necessarily the ones in uniform... it was the bureaucrats and the politicians that pissed me off.

It is a bit of a conundrum that thousands of Canadians died around the globe in two world wars and recently 160 died to bring democracy to Afghanistan - but here at home - we have what is fast becoming a fascist state.

The information censors at DND and in the Minister's office (and you can be very sure that the PMO had a hand in this) decided that the sensitive minds of Canadians should not be burdened with the news that $600,000,000 of their tax dollars was being spent to upgrade the newly-acquired Nortel building in west Ottawa.  Why suppress the information?  "There is no context for the expenditure and the Minster will get asked question that we do not want to answer," says the minster's office.  Why hide the information.  They bought a building that was built for a purpose different from their own - certainly it will cost to retrofit it.  The fact that they want to suppress the information leads us to wonder what else is going on?

This follows on the heals of the $470,000,000 expenditure on an American satellite program that the minister's office deemed not to be of interest not only to Canadians but to parliamentarians... the ones that should be approving the funds.

So that is over $1 billion already.  Combine that with the past revelations and stories that have not yet emerged and this government makes the Sponsorship Scandal look like chump change.  Oh, I know what you are thinking - that Sponsorship Scandal included funneling money to party hacks.  Well stay tuned because that shoe has yet to fall on these DND follies.

Next up?  The F-35 contract and maybe something on the CH-146 maintenance program?

Enough is enough

At what point in time do Canadians rise up on their two hind feet and yell at the top of their lungs. "Enough Is Enough"?

Since the beginning of Canada we have been seen and used as a source of raw material.  Beaver pelts, trees, coal, oil, fish... you know the list.  It is a rare occasion that we call upon ourselves to demand that we refine our resources into products - a process that creates jobs and raises the value of the resources.  But every time we do rise to the occasion we are pounded back down by either our competition or OURSELVES!

Case in point?  The Oil Sands.  Here we have a natural resource that we dig out of the ground and extra the oil from the bitumen.  We then sell the oil at a price that is higher than the bitumen.  Good deal.  But what happens now?  Welcome the Keystone XL pipeline, promoted by Canadian industry and our government.  The goal of the Keystone pipeline is to take the bitumen and ship it to the US where they will extract the oil, refine it into fuels and ship some of it back to Canada.  Some of what, you may ask?

If you know any of your history, you will recall that a few years ago there was a push to get countries who supply raw uranium for nuclear reactors to repatriate the spend fuel back to their own countries for disposal.  The jury is still out on that issue.  But assuming that logic, can we extrapolate that the US can extract the oil from the bitumen and then ship the refuse back to Canada?  Now wouldn't that just be good thing?

So let's see what we have here.  We mine bitumen and extract the oil in Canada.  Now our government wants to help build a pipeline to ship the unrefined bitumen to Texas.

Sounds about right! 

The legal profession gets a slap-down

I am not a fan of the legal profession.  That is not to say that I do not like lawyers, I have a brother-in-law who is a lawyer, and I like him.  I am also not too fond of accountants... but that is another story.

There is a case currently winding its way through the tortures of the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) which I am watching in awe.  A certain Ontario Paralegal was disbarred in 1989 by the LSUC  for allegedly over-billing of the legal aid system.  Legal Aid investigated the allegations and found that the Paralegal was not guilty of the charges of over-billing.  They sent a cheque for $150,000 as payment for services to the Paralegal.

Not satisfied that their allegations were found bogus, the LSUC decided to pursue the Paralegal through an internal LSUC procedure to expell the Paralegal from his profession.  The LSUC is failing miserably because they have no case.

So why is the LSUC pursuing this Paralegal?  It is simple.  They want to control paralegals to the point where paralegals cannot act without the consent of a lawyer... a lawyer who will also bill the client for the overseeing - even if they do no work.   It is GREED.  Simple GREED.

That is what the Occupy movement is all about.

You can read more on this case at: http://harrykopyto.ca/2011/11/18/law-societys-case-of-kopyto-as-fraudster-falters

Companies the world over.

I have done a lot of work all across the world.  I have worked with British companies and Canadian companies and Japanese companies and American companies, and I have found that they are all different.  Generally, British companies are innovative and fun to work with.  Canadian companies are timid and Japanese companies are overly regimented.  American companies are arrogant to the point of becoming their own worst competitor.

Truth be told... there is a recession

I have been in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for the last week.  If you look around this place, with boarded up businesses and foreclosure sales of homes, you understand that the recession in the US is real.  Government is out of money and people know it.  Contrast that to the Republican candidates debates where every debater blames one man for everything.  Obama, of course.  Congress, the Senate, state and local governments are out of control... and that is Obama's fault?

And what happened to American patriotism?  They crap on their president like he is a middle-eastern oil sheik with an AK-47.

The US is a dying empire.  They just haven't come to grips with it yet.

The death of our Health system... one study at a time

There have been a rash of studies recently that attempt to tell us why healthcare is out of control in Canada and what measures are needed to reform the system.  But these studies are not done by medical persons, they are the work of accountants and economists.  In their world everything boils down to money.  Social conscience and logistics be damned... their only metric is cash.  So sad.

A recent study was from the MacDonald Laurier Institute.  Their Director of Research, Jason Clemens, a well written author of studies on everything from banking to entrepreneurship and former Fellow at the Fraser Institute, reaches back to the welfare reforms of the 1990s to come up with three gems that will "fix" our healthcare system.  The basis of his argument is in the statistics he presents.  He tells us that of the top countries who provide universal healthcare, Canada ranks number five.  (How many countries are there?  He does not say.)  He then tells us that in the 34 OECD counties (not just those providing universal healthcare) Canada ranks 26th in access to physicians, 16th in nurses, 24th in hospitals beds, and 16th in access in to MRI and CT scanners.  An interesting statistic would have been to include the per capita cost of all healthcare spending per country, but I guess that is not important?

His fixes?  Let's discuss them in order.

1. The Canada Health Transfer should be stabilized or even reduced, and certainly not increased, in order to bring more direct accountability to the provincial level for the raising of resources used in healthcare while containing cost increases to the federal government.

In this fix, Clemens is saying that Healthcare is a provincial responsibility so the feds should get out of the picture.   I agree with him, as I stated in my book, The Provinces Must Go, a tome much hated by the political class cause it does them out of jobs.  But knowing that the feds will not give up the revenue they use for the CHT, this can only mean more taxes on Canadians.

2.  The federal government should allow the provinces the maximum amount of flexibility to design, regulate, and provide healthcare to citizens within a universal and portable framework.

Anyone who reads the newspaper at least once per week knows that the healthcare changes that are being sought in Alberta are privatization without regulation.  Since that is not within the universal and portable framework, I cannot see what Clemens is suggesting here.  Privatization without regulation within the framework is a fancy way of saying, we own and you pay.

3.  The Canada Health Act will have to be amended with respect to cost-sharing and extra billing in order to provide the provinces the requisite amount of flexibility while maintaining and safeguarding the principles of universality, portability, and accessibility. Indeed, the federal government could facilitate provincial innovation and experimentation by clarifying the meaning and intent of the five principles of the Canada Health Act.

Since Clemens is using the 1990s welfare reform model as his base, let's look at them to discuss this fix.  Ontario's Premier Mike Harris introduced Workfare as his reform measure.  The idea was that if you wanted welfare, you had to work for it.  Seemed a bit odd at the time.  If you could work for your welfare, it meant that you could work... and there was work for you to do.  So why be on welfare?  But then the fecal material hit the rotating device.  What about disabled persons?  What about single mothers with kids not in schools?  What about... What about...?  And on it went.  Turns out it was more difficult to carry out the program than the accountants and economists thought.  Too bad they had not discussed the program with social workers or the welfare recipients before hand.  It that what Clemens is suggesting?

At the end of his study Clemens makes the following statements: "Canada’s national finances are in a precarious state. We face immediate challenges in the form of deficits and rising debt, as well as longer-term problems emanating from ever-increasing healthcare spending. We need to confront these problems with specific solutions. Using the lessons of welfare reform from the 1990s is the key."

The nation's finances are in bad shape so let's screw up the healthcare system to fix it?  The $50 million that was spend on gazebos in Tony Clements riding could have been used to raise the nurse/Canadian ratio.  The $9-15 billion that is to be squandered on F35 jets, with no compelling need for them, could buy more MRIs and CT scanners and still have money left over to certify more doctors.

It is time that the economists took a vacation and left the healthcare system to healthcare professionals.  I wonder if there is room for me at the Occupy camps?

What you throw away is not "lost"

I read in the paper today that a former bank manager in Hawkesbury, Ontario, was found guilty of all sorts of crimes surrounding a rash of home break-ins, robberies (including one at her own bank branch) and assaults that were committed in eastern Ontario and western Quebec... by, mostly, members of her family... against clients of her bank.  Geez.

But what really caught my attention was the criminal's lament that she had lost the respect of her community.  Lost it?  She threw that respect way!  She didn't lose it... she deep-sixed it.

You don't lose something that you throw away!

Unintended consequences

The Harper government has recently made two forees into the labour world at Air Canada to squash the rights of employees.  By arguing that potential strikes at Air Canada would be bad for the economy, they have set themselves up to a declaration that Air Canada is an essential service.  They are saying that under no circumstances can Air Canada stop flying cause it will hurt the economy of Canada.

I do not agree with that assertion but, hey, they are a majority government and can do whatever they want.

But there is a serious downside to this declaration of essential service status and it reared its head in the recent declaration at Transport Canada to threaten the license at Porter Airlines for contravention to the Safety Management System, which "regulated" safety of airlines in Canada.  The SMS, to which it is referred, was the Harper government stab at deregulation of airlines by making safety solely the airlines' responsibility.  As long as the airline filed the right papers on time, the government was happy.  Miss a reporting deadline and, poof, Porter Airline.  Under the SMS, the actual safety "inspections" were the responsibility of the airlines.

But what would happen if Air Canada contravened the SMS to the point that Transport Canada threatened to pull their license?  Would the Government of Canada have to jump in to stop the Government of Canada?  Does this give Air Canada carte blanche to run an airline rife with safety violations?  Think it can't happen?  Remember the Gimli Glider?

Maybe someone should ask PM Harper or Minster Raitt that question?

Unhealthy contradiction on the right

The righteous right has been telling us for some time that smaller government is right-sized government. 

"It's our land... Back off", they cry.  "Kill the Wheat Board monopoly",  they bellow.  "Cut civil servant like useless inspectors (of water and food)", they call out from the grave yards.  "Let the private sector delivery healthcare", they yell from every rooftop.

So why then do they blame the Ontario Liberal government for not watching over a private health clinic and the way they deliver care... a situation created by the cost cutting Ontario Conservative government ten years ago. 

If the government inspected every private clinic to try to catch the bozo actions of the recent one in Ottawa, they would have to hire more inspectors and park them in each and every clinic to watch over the workers.  Random inspections would not have caught what happened there.

So what do you want?  More problems or lesser people?  The private sector is not the panacea that the right builds it up as.

Taube and the Protests

Michael Taube, writer-extraordinaire, at least in his own mind, let loose a thoughtful piece in today's Ottawa Citizen.  His topic was the Occupy Wall Street "movement".  Let's see if we can determine on which side of the political spectrum he resides?

In his piece he says, " Instead of praising the nonsensical ramblings of hippies, outcasts and left-wing radicals, those on my political side should engage the public in finding ways to return to laissez-faire capitalism, personal freedom, trade liberalization and good governance."  He concludes with, "Let the fringe element Occupy Wall Street, if they want. In the meantime, the vast majority of us can Take Back Capitalism and promote the power of the free market for individuals and corporations."

You are right... he is ultra-right.  In fact he used to write speeches for PM Harper.

I do not object to anything Taube says... that is, after all, the essence of free speech.  However I can criticize his musings.

Taube's first mistake is to characterize the protesters as "hippies, outcasts and left-wing radicals".  That's a bit like saying "your people".  It lumps everyone into a group that Taube finds distasteful.  I wonder what my friend, who lost his job at Lehman Brothers because of the criminal acts of others, feels about the characterization.  He is part of the protest.

Taube's second mistake is to say that "The protesters want their slice of the pie, and will simply scream, holler and blather away incoherently to anyone who will listen."  My friend is not protesting to get a slice of the pie, he wants the slice that he had that was stolen from him by criminals.

Taube's third mistake is in the statement, "We've made a mountain out of a molehill with respect to Occupy Wall Street - and some conservatives have aided in the construction."  That is a bit like saying that early anti-segregation protests were molehills and some whites have help make them into mountains.  While the protesters are not a homogenous group, neither are conservatives.

One thing Taube and I can agree upon is that time will tell if the protests fizzle or morph into a movement.  Time will tell.