Great tweet of the day

But if you think an open debate about reasonable limits on abortion is the pro-life end goal, I've got a chocolate teapot to sell you

— Lauren DH (@roseneath_rd) May 10, 2014

Via @fernhilldammit

I am Canadianized!

In other parts of the continent, its called "uppity".
But I like calling it "Canadianized" -- asking for an employer to treat you like a fellow human being instead of an indentured servant.
Deny it all they like, but of course the advice given by a Saskatoon recruiting firm to a restaurant owner was intended to intimidate his temporary foreign workers from asking for better treatment from their employer:

According to the email, which was obtained by CBC's iTeam, the Saskatoon-based recruiter told Houston Pizza in Estevan, Sask., that some employers of temporary foreign workers find that over time, the workers "become 'Canadianized' and increase their demands on the employers.'"
"We believe a simple reminder to the workers will reverse the effects of the Canadian influence," it says. The 2011 email essentially suggested telling such "Canadianized" workers that if things don't work out, they could be sent home.
...Apparently, among the worker demands the company was referring to were requests for time off.
The email reminds the restaurant owners that "time off must meet the employer's schedule NOT the workers."

I think these folks need a union!
Many years ago, I heard a drugstore owner complaining up and down when the minimum wage was raised, because he didn't want to pay his "girls" any more money because they were all such awful employees.   And I thought, No wonder nobody wants to work for you, you old misogynist, when you treat your staff only as a drain on your profits.
I had hoped that attitude was long gone in Canada, but I guess not.
Because it seems like some employers just cannot resist the impulse to act like dirtbags to their employees when they get the chance.  And the TFW Program has given them that chance.
Why can't these employers understand that we are proud of our country and we want it to treat well the people who come here to work?

Lost boys

Stephen Harper has lost Andrew Coyne:

It is one thing to savage a political opponent or beat up on a distinguished civil servant. But to accuse the nation’s highest judge of professional misconduct — for that is what was insinuated, if not quite alleged, an ethical breach serious enough to warrant her resignation — is so ill-considered, so destructive of both the court’s position and his own, that it leaves one wondering whether he is temperamentally suited to the job.

Umm, no, he never has been.
And now even Charles Adler is jumping ship:

PM fighting with Auditor General, Chief Justice SCC & now #PTSD vets.
If Justin was doing this #CPC would say he's in #OverHisHead

— Charles Adler (@charlesadler) May 6, 2014

Now the Harper PMO thinks it can get rid of McLaughlin?

You can see where this is heading.
The Harper Cons have rid themselves of dozens of principled civil servants over the last eight years.
Now they think they've found a way to trash the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and get her to resign too:
Harper alleges Supreme Court Chief Justice broke key rule with phone call - The Globe and Mail

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has accused Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of breaching a basic rule of her office, as a deepening conflict between the government and the country’s highest court breaks out into a public dispute.
The Prime Minister’s Office publicly asserted that the Chief Justice attempted to contact Mr. Harper about a court case, and said that he refused to take her phone call when Justice Minister Peter MacKay told him it would be “inappropriate.”

This smear tactic was refuted openly and strongly by McLaughlin's office:

...in an unusual move, McLachlin's office publicly replied to allegations she may have lobbied against Nadon's appointment.
A statement issued by the Supreme Court's executive legal officer, Owen Rees, explains McLachlin was consulted by the special parliamentary committee that was tasked with studying a short list of names drawn up by MacKay's office....
"The chief justice did not lobby the government against the appointment of Justice Nadon," Rees wrote. He said McLachlin or her office flagged a potential problem to both MacKay and the prime minster's chief of staff, Ray Novak, but "did not express any views on the merits of the issue."...
Françoise Boivin, the NDP's justice critic, said the government tends to trash people who are the bearers of bad news. "When they are stopped by the court, well, it is not them who is wrong, it's everybody else," she said.
MP Sean Casey, speaking for the Liberals, said the government attacks people who offer what he called "contrary" opinions. "That's the way these guys operate — when the only tool in your tool kit is a sledge hammer everything looks like a rock."

These guys also don't know when to shut up.

Update on our weather

Here comes the sun

What to do if you are attacked by a banana

Throwing a banana a Barcelona soccer player has a familiar ring, doesn't it.
He ate the banana, thus disarming his attacker!

Its snowing. Again.

Here's this morning's U of S webcam screenshot.
Will it never end?
Last Thursday, as I got my morning coffee, I saw a duck perched on the peak of the snow-covered roof of the house next door, turning around and obviously saying "What the f**k is this?  I come back here to build a nest and THIS is what I get?"
(Yes, I know I should have snapped a "duckie" on my celphone and posted it to my tens of twitter followers but I never thought of it, sorry.)
Anyway that day's snow went away later that day.
Now this morning its BAAACK!, heavier than ever -- the snow, not the duck.
I think the duck has likely given up in despair.

Obama calls out racism without trashing the racists

Obama is truly one of the greatests Presidents the United States has ever had.
Racism is such a deep part of the American character and experience, I have sometimes despaired that it will ever be eradicated.  It has dominated America's civic life for the last two centuries -- where Americans live, how they school their children, how they organize their health care and welfare systems, how they design their cities, how they vote, their political parties -- to the point that racism has become one of the most basic distinctions between American society and Canadian society.
But if there is any one person who can lead America toward a better future, it is Barak Obama.
Here he is talking about LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling.  While calling Sterling's comments "incredibly offensive racist statements", he also provided, in just a few words, a perspective for Americans to adopt toward this controversy:

Obama cast the comments through a broader prism of racism in America, adding that “we constantly have to be on guard on racial attitudes that divide us rather than embracing our diversity as a strength.”
“The United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation, that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination,” Obama said during a news conference in Malaysia, where he was travelling.
“We’ve made enormous strides, but you’re going to continue to see this percolate up every so often,” he added. “And I think that we just have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, teaching our children differently, but also remaining hopeful that part of why statements like this stand out some much is because there has been this shift in how we view ourselves.”

Its more than "vestiges" of course, as Obama knows very well. This description acknowledges the reality of racism while also marginalizing it, assuring America that the better angels of their nature will prevail, that the future will be better than the past.  That's what leadership looks like.

John Betts is not going to like Jason Kenney anymore

Kenney calls upon fast-food employers to raise wages, employ more Canadians:

Federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney called a new moratorium on the fast-food industry's use of the temporary foreign worker program a "wake-up call" to employers that they should be taking a long, hard look across the country for Canadians to fill vacant jobs.

I wonder if MacDonalds CEO John Betts still thinks that Kenney "knows his stuff from a business person’s perspective."  

What Kenney is telling employers is, smarten up!

Because I'm afraid that one of the "perspectives" that employers unfortunately like about Temporary Foreign Workers is that they have no life here in Canada.

They have no kids taking hockey lessons, no daycare centre to get to before it closes, no spouse doing shift-work, no parents to drive to doctor appointments, no mortgage to pay, no lawn to mow, no "take your child to work" day.  So the TFWs can work bizarre split shifts, they can come into work at a moment's notice, they're willing to work whatever overtime they can get, and they don't worry about whether their job has any kind of future.  

Canadian employees, on the other hand -- and immigrants, too -- have a life outside of work.  They quite reasonably expect their workplace will recognize this, and will occasionally accommodate its demands. They expect their employer to respect their families, and their communities. They say "no" to oddball shifts and excessive overtime.

Every now and then they even leave work to vote!

CFIB president Dan Kelley thinks Canadians don't have a work ethic.  But what we do have is a life!

Immigrants, too, are trying to have careers here, wanting to bring their families with them and grow with their communities.  In making it more difficult for immigrants to come here, the Harper Cons have let down Canada.  More TFWs, nice people that they are, are not a substitute for citizens or prospective citizens who want to build their lives here.

Good help is easy to find, if you pay for it

The whining from Canadian restaurants over the TFW cancellation is both offensive and insulting to Canada.

Any restaurant anywhere in the country that has to close down because it cannot find enough local teenagers or university students or unemployed people willing to work for them just isn't offering high enough pay.

That's basically the problem, isn't it? The restaurateurs don't want to have to pay a living wage to their staff, they'd rather use desperate immigrants who will work cheap and not demand better.

I'll bet more than one of these upstanding citizens has also been pulling the same kind of scam as this Tim Horton franchisee was accused of doing -- charging back to the employees the costs of their work permits and LPO surveys.  I'll bet he didn't think of doing this all by himself;  I'll bet this is common practice in the Canadian restaurant industry.

Because, you know, this industry is made up of those poor, poor corporations that are being so unfairly persecuted by everybody except the Minister, Jason Kenney, who apparently understands how important it is for Canada that restaurants can hire fry cooks cheap so that they can continue to sell burgers for $1.99.

As CBC dryly notes in its story about the infamous MacDonald's conference call:

At no point during the recording does the CEO mention hiring Canadians instead of temporary foreign workers or go over the rules of the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

It's not about racism, nor is it about the workers themselves.

Its about the Canadian restaurant companies who are screwing them.  And us.

Great line of the day

University of Montreal professor Paul Daly on the Supreme Court decision that the Harper Cons cannot unilaterally change the Senate:

Constitutional change is “difficult . . . and why shouldn’t it be difficult?” he added. “These are the fundamental institutions of Canadian democracy. It’s not because some people in the Senate are not up to scratch that sweeping change is necessary and it’s not because the politicians of the day don’t have an appetite for constitutional negotiation that we should make it easier. Maybe we should elect politicians who are more willing to go to the constitutional table.”

Emphasis mine.

CTV News tonight described Harper as having focused on Senate reform since he was first elected Prime Minister.  No, he hasn't done anything at all to reform the Senate.  He has talked about it endlessly since he became PM.  But the only thing he has actually done is to appoint the most cynically partisan group of intellectual lightweights ever called Senators.  

No, its not art. Its garbage

Critics trash environmental artwork

This definitely falls into the "don't piss on me and tell me its raining" category.

What an insult from our Visual Arts Placement Jury to a poorer neighbourhood, to put a couple of bales of plastic garbage on one of their streetcorners and then tell them its "art" and is meant to start "a discussion about waste".

Inner city Saskatoon neighbourhoods have had plenty of opportunity over the years to talk about waste -- the needle cleanup every spring, to start with.  They don't need any more.

I cannot imagine the "discussion" that the residents would have had with their councillors if this had been placed on a corner in the University district, or in Stonebridge -- neighbourhoods which produces volumes more plastic waste annually than Mayfair ever did.

In fact, that's what I support -- let's move this to the corner of University Drive and Clarence Avenue for the next six months, right on the riverbank.

What a beautiful sight!

Shorter

Shorter statement from the Weyburn restaurant at the centre of the Temporary Foreign Worker program controversy:

"It's all the employees' fault!"

Darn it, that "restructuring" will just trip you up sometimes.

Whale of a tale

Now, it could be that the Harper government's move to take humpback whales off the endangered species list  is just a routine change which echoes similar downgrades by environmental organizations like the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
And it could be that it is merely a happy coincidence such a downgrade means no protection of critical whale habitat will be required anymore if the Northern Gateway pipeline and Trans Mountain pipeline expansion just happen to be approved someday soon.
But this is a government that sends out press releases about the number of visitors Canada gets from the Philippines and how it has improved the internet in Ottawa Valley South, to name just two of the 21 press releases it sent out today.
And the whale news was just posted quietly on Easter Saturday in the Canada Gazette?  So who can possibly believe that they didn't intend to sneak this one past us all.
Luckily, the Harper Cons are about as sneaky as humpback whales themselves, so now everybody knows about it:

...if Ottawa approves the pipeline, it must still persuade Canadians that the highest environmental standards have been met. On that count, the Harper government’s recent decision to downgrade the protection of humpback whales off the B.C. coast ranks as an epic fail.
Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq’s recommendation to reclassify the humpbacks from “threatened” to a “species of special concern” removes a major hurdle for Gateway’s approval, just a couple of months before a decision is expected on the pipeline. Which is precisely why it should raise all sorts of red flags.

Kersplash!

Happy Easter!

I'm not sure how the Hallelujah Chorus became a Christmas song -- it's a much more logical as an Easter celebration.
Here is the Hallelujah Chorus by the 5th grade class in Quinhagak, Alaska: