IS THE FOCUS GOING TO SHIFT FROM LIBERAL CORRUPTION TO JUDICIAL CORRUPTION?

Yesterday's Waterloo Region Record carried the following story titled "Liberals acquitted in bribery case". Upon reading the story it appears somewhat credible until I started thinking back. Had I ever in my life seen corruption in a courtroom? Well in fact I have. That started me thinking. The corruption I had seen was in regards to a school board and their employee relations. At the time I realized that the form of corruption was maybe up for discussion. In other words could it possibly have been simply gross bias and gross incompetence versus the fix is in, someone owns the judge type of corruption? Depending upon your interpretation of corruption both of these behaviours likely fall under the umbrella of corruption.

Then a friend called and he was livid. Now his knowledge and understanding of politics is far greater than the average. He just out and out called a spade a spade. He suggested that indeed the fix was in. Whether it had to do with who appointed the judge in the first place, for example Dalton McGuinty, or whomever, he was adamant that justice was not served. He reminded me of some very strong evidence that surprisingly was not mentioned in the Record article. That evidence was the tape recording of an alleged bribe offered to the one candidate not to proceed with his nomination to become the candidate for the Liberal Party in that riding.

The proof of course is in the pudding. If that tape recording is as clear as apparently the spurned candidate and possibly the prosecution believe then maybe we could have an appeal filed. Appeals are quite standard when either a jury or judge alone hears a case and the losing party (usually) believes that there has been some breech of rights or process. Whether an appeal is even possible in the case of a directed verdict I simply don't know. I expect that the Crown introduced the tape recording and had the persons on it identified by the potential candidate who claimed to have been bribed. Surely the Judge would have wanted to hear the defendants either confirm or deny that it was indeed them on the tape. Throwing the whole case out without any rebuttal from the defence is incredible. Was the Crown's case really that weak or is there more to this? I expect that we will hear more.

ONTARIO LABOUR REFORMS LONG OVERDUE

Last Friday's Waterloo Region Record carried this article titled "Minister Flynn says labour reforms have broad support". Firstly part time workers, after Bill 148 is passed, must be paid at the same rate as full time staff including benefits. Colleges and universities have long been relying on contract or session workers who are paid significantly less and without benefits as full time employees with similar skills and experience. Universities have about 50% of their teaching staff as part time whereas colleges are made up of 70 to 85 percent part time staff. This has been a bonus for these institutions while essentially exploiting part time employees by paying them less than the full timers.

Other changes will include the right for part timers to refuse shifts when less than four days notice is given. The minimum wage will rise to $14 per hour this January and to $15 per hour by the following January. Lastly three hours pay will be given to employees on call whether or not they are called in to work and if their shift is cancelled with less than two days notice they will also receive three hours pay. It almost sounds as if Ontario and the Liberals want to bring the province into the 21st century. While Canada and the U.S. are essentially regressive labour wise, Europe have long recognized the inherent fairness of progressive labour laws. My working experience in this province leads me to believe that the Progressive Conservative Party are the mouthpiece for entitled, ignorant and regressive employers. Indeed they are the only party in the Ontario legislature who voted against Bill 148.

EQUAL PAY FOR WORK OF EQUAL VALUE - WHAT A JOKE IN ONTARIO

Even decades ago when women were legitimately complaining that they were getting paid less than men and or being pigeon holed into different jobs than men thus enabling the employers to claim that the men's jobs were more difficult or responsible etc. it was all a crock. A red herring. Back then the argument was how do you objectively determine which job is of equal value to another? Again a crock. I say this because then and now there are jobs that are identical ie. the same duties and responsibilities yet they pay vastly differently even by the same employer. The "difference" if you will is solely determined by the employer. They call one job full time permanent and the other part time or casual. Even if the duties are identical and the hours similar. It's was and is simply a way of getting cheaper labour by employers.

Two examples come to mind. Both were unionized! Shameful! Brinks guards and drivers did exactly the same job whether part time or full time. You carried the same guns, the same bags of cash and drove the same armoured trucks. The full time unionized guards in those days were receiving $20-25 per hour and the part timers $9 per hour. I never did see what the route to full time actually was.

Brewers Retail were just as bad. They had identical work within Brewer's Retail stores selling beer by the case to the public. Full timers again made more than double the part timers working right beside them doing the exact same work. The route to the full time, union protected jobs was through the A and the B lists. If a part timer somehow offended either a union guy or a store manager he would never be promoted onto the A or B list. Note the key word is offended. It could be a joke, a look, a failure to jump high enough when requested/ordered; it could literally be anything. And you never knew until after a few years when the updated A and B lists came out and you still weren't on them. Of course your manager still wanted your services and why not when you worked just as relaibly and hard as the full timers (or harder) but for half the money. What a deal for the company.

City of Waterloo summer public works department employees were the same thing. Only there you soon learned what it took to get hired on full time with a union protected job. Organized sports in high school were key. If you played baseball or hockey then you were one of the good old boys and you were on your way. Otherwise forget it, you were going nowhere. What a system.

Yesterday's Waterloo Region Record carried a story titled "Precarious work at Ontario colleges". It's all about the current strike at the community colleges. A big issue is the issue of Sessional or Contract faculty at Ontario's Colleges and Universities. Once again it's a blatant case of underpaying hired help to do the exact same jobs as your full time employees. These are often highly educated individuals, including Doctorates at the University level, who for some reason have been hired on a part time or Contract basis to teach courses. To date these workers are part of the huge exceptions permitted under Ontario legislation allowing employers to discriminate on whatever basis they choose. It is reprehensible and grossly unfair. And it continues on. Perhaps the colleges exploitation will diminish after the next contract is signed. Perhaps not. Shame on the decision makers at both the College and University level who were and are responsible for this blatant discrimination.

PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY PROFITS WHILE CITIZENS PERISH

Today's Woolwich Observer has quite an Opinion piece by Steve Kannon. Essentially Steve is suggesting as per his title that "A drug crisis unlike others, but pharmaceutical cash means nothing will change". The drug crisis is opiods and it includes prescription drugs that are being abused. Pain killers such as oxycodone are front and centre with illegal synthetics such as fentanyl being a result of the initial over prescription of the legal drugs. Canada has the second highest per capita consumption of opioids in the world with the U.S. being number one. Charming isn't that?

The real kicker is Steve's claims that much of this abuse is driven by pharmaceutical marketing to doctors and health professionals. Then Steve goes further by suggesting that the pharmacuetical manufacturers and distributors have even been lobbying the U.S. government for legislation to weaken the Drug Enforcement Agency's enforcement efforts. They lobbied successfully according to Steve by donating "...more than a million dollars into their (Congress) election campaigns.". Doesn't that give you a warm feeling knowing how legal it is to buy political influence south of the border. I would suggest that while influence can still be bought here, north of the border, generally it's done in more subtle, less blatant ways.

Steve's final paragraph is "But there's money to be made, and the corporate gaenda tops all. The crisis, deaths and all, is our political economy in microcosm. Expect hand-wringing and nothing else.".

OUR RIDICULOUSLY SLOW JUSTICE SYSTEM

A lawsuit was filed last June against the Waterloo Regional Police Service. Unsurprisingly both the Waterloo Regional Police Services Board and the Waterloo Regional Police Association have put forth documents to the courts suggesting that the courts have no jurisdiction in the case. If either of these groups had behaved properly and followed their mandates in the first place this problem would not have been allowed to grow and fester for so many decades. They claim that the issues arising in the lawsuit, namely sexual harassment and discrimination, are governed by the collective agreement. Justice Deena Baltman will hear jurisdictional matters as well as the issue of whether the suit should be certified as a class-action suit.

Unfortunately after the court date of last September 25 in a Brampton Courthouse, the next date is not until June 2018. The lawyer for the Plaintiffs expects that Justice Baltman will reserve her decision and release thereof until the fall. This is far too long especially for female officers whose sympathies and leanings will likely be scrutinized carefully in the interim by both their superiors and their fellow officers. The title of today's Waterloo Region Record article by Liz Monteiro is "Constables start group for female officers".

THE SHAME OF ONTARIO'S ENVIRONMENTAL NON-PROTECTION

Grassy Narrows, Elmira and Sarnia's Chemical Valley are all examples of neglect and negligence by our Ontario Ministry of the Environment. That they can delay, ignore and pretend that all is well in these communities is beyond all reasonableness. Basically it's politics first and the environment last. Only if the two on a rare occasion become aligned in their interests will progress be made environmentally.

Sarnia's Chemical Valley and Elmira's mini Chemical Valley have been infamous for a very long time. In Sarnia there are usually newspaper exposes every decade or so in the Toronto papers. The same thing has happened again with an investigation by the Toronto Star, Global News and two journalism schools. Benzene has been being discharged into the atmosphere in and around Sarnia, three to ten times above the annual criteria for some time now. Benzene is carcinogenic and is a cause of leukemia or blood cancer.

A health study of the nearby communities has been called for and ignored by Liberal politicians for at least a decade. It is being called for again after the release of the latest data. Of course all the usual suspects, in other words opposition politicians from the Conservatives and NDP are jumping on board the Health Study train. Similarly if the Progressive Conservatives win the next provincial election you can say goodbye to a health study anytime in the upcoming decade. Nobody really wants to disturb the chemical industry gravy train in the area.

IS DEMOCRACY A JOKE?

Well it certainly is in the workplace. I spent roughly fourty years in the Ontario workplace and it's much worse than a joke. I have to assume that most provincial Ministry of Labour's are just about as ineffective and pro employer biased as the Ontario one is. Just like our provincial Ministry of the Environment, the proof is in the pudding. Our air stinks, our water requires more and more treatment in order to be allegedly safe to drink and our Great lakes as well as rivers and streams running into them are all polluted. Fish are contaminated and fish advisories barely cover the worst contaminants in the fish.

For the Ministry of Labour just look at the never ending deaths and injuries on the job here in Ontario. We are a disgrace and until or unless workers decide to shut down offending companies it will only get worse. The Ministry of Labour barely give wrist slaps to repeat offenders. Corporate convictions and fines nicely insulate the guilty human beings who make choices favouring production and profits over human suffering.

Unionized plants likely have better safety records simply because the union are under some pressure from their members to protect them and their legal rights enshrined in various provincial labour laws. Of course these laws are meaningless unless they are vigourously enforced as well as observed by companies. Without vigourous enforcement however they are a joke. Good companies hardly need these laws and bad companies ignore them if they think they can get away with it. Generally they can.

Old time attitudes among those in charge are barely swayed by legislation and public attitudes for some. Those attitudes are why employees can not sue negligent employers for millions of dollars. Employers lobbied hard for Workmen's Compensation laws which removed the right to sue in favour of the government handing out compensation to employees injured on the job.

When individual decisions are covered by government insurance it becomes much cheaper to ignore costly health and safety laws in favour of short term financial gain.

Never in all my years working in the non-union environment did I see anything even remotely approaching democratic decision making in workplaces. It mattered not that employees generally speaking were the ones risking life and limb. It mattered not that employees were putting their future earning potential at risk on a regular basis by performing dangerous work. Work that was unnecessarily dangerous simply to save time and money for the employer.

Then think of workplaces that have psuedo military styles and attitudes. Yes police work is inherently dangerous but when the chain of command allows quasi criminal Police Act charges to be laid for disobedience then it becomes ridiculous. Worse yet is when full criminal charges can be laid essentially for internal disciplinary matters that have gotten out of control, courtesy of police management demanding blind, unthinking obedience to the old boys network. As per yesterday's posting Police management have long abused their authority and it is decades past time for honest and real change. Fair hearings by unbiased persons without conflicts of interest would be a pleasant change.

ALL IS QUIET ON THE POLICE/MEDIA FRONT

How can this be? After this past summer of lawsuits, revelations of misconduct and misfeasance combined with court decisions hammering various police services how can the media not be still covering these issues? Certainly there must be some news as to what is going on? While the lawsuit filed against the Waterloo Regional Police Service was a barnburner so was the 93 page "Report Of Systemic Misfeasance In Ontario Policing and the Coordinated Supprression of Whistleblowers". That Report by Kelly Donovan was shocking even to those of us who have long ago lost whatever naivete we had left. I knew there were problems locally but her report certainly makes it clear that the problems are systemic throughout Ontario and Canada. Amazing isn't it in this time and place that human beings continue to set up public institutions to fail. Human beings unchecked, unaccountable and non-transparent can sucessfully pervert just about any institution whatsoever. Poor political appointees by unethical, corrupt politicians guarantee poor organizational ethics and conduct. When the culture becomes more about maintaining the appearance versus the reality of decency and honesty and furthermore promoting the status quo when change is needed; then a housecleaning is needed from the top down. Show me an honest and courageous politician willing to attempt this and I'll show you a politician not long for this world. The rot is at the very top namely provincial and federal politicians. How can any institution subservient to them and dependent upon them not be so?

THE BROKEN JUDICIAL SYSTEM

How broken? Well minor marijuana offences for decades have been just dandy for prosecutors and courts to spend their time on. Not too petty at all. Also allegedly in the public interest. ReallY? Especially now that our federal government are getting around to decriminalizing marijuana use and possession. Meanwhile what about all those people will criminal records and or who did jail time over marijuana use or possession? Will they get their lives back? Will they automatically receive pardons? How about apologies for arresting, charging, criminalizing and jailing them? Afterall they paid their price to society for what isn't even deemed to be an offence today. God human beings and laws.

Meanwhile I jump through literally months of hoops and loops trying to wind my way through an incompetent, user unfriendly legal system in regards to the Municipal Election Act. Multiple Woolwich Councillors break the law every which way to Sunday, I collect the evidence, present it on a silver platter to the Crown Attorney and what is the result? Oh thank you but despite a conviction being likely we don't think it's in the public interest to prosecute. What! Then why is it the law of the goddamn province! If it's not in the public interest to prosecute then repeal the goddamn law you asshats. Oh and while you're at it be sure to advise all municipal politicians it's open season and they can lie even more than usual when they fill out their Election Financial Statements.

THE SYSTEM IS BADLY BROKEN

Environmental system, judicial system, political system, educational system, health care; you name it they are all broken. They do not serve the taxpayers who pay the freight. They serve the vested interests who spend their time working there. I am quite confident in regards to the five systems I have listed with the exception of the health care system. That system I simply do not have enough information about. The others I've either been directly involved with or I have done considerable research into them. The health care system upon second thought has given me some data to go on. That would be a new hip nearly four and a half years ago. They also advised me at the time that the second hip was also in need albeit not as badly as the first one. Hmm. Based upon my symptoms now it could be another four and half years before I get it done. Or longer. What if it is longer? What if in ten to fifteen years from now I still don't see the need to get my second hip done? Can I reasonably assume that the whole thing was a scam? That whatever my issues were they certainly weren't my hips? My symptoms thank you are beginning to dissipate. While not perfect, remedial walking seems to be relieving the pain I had in my knees and shins. I was told that the hip surgery would help that pain. It didn't do a goddamn thing. WTF!

I think that I will comment further regarding the other systems in later posts. I've been doing that for the last five years plus and we'll just call today a foray into Ontario's health care system.

"YOUR KIDS ARE SAFE" SAYS LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS

Well that certainly is a relief. After all they would never lie to us now would they? Think about it, this includes the Waterloo Region District School Board. They've never lied to parents before about anything, now have they? An abusive teacher, it's all the parents fault. An abusive teacher, well that teacher has never had a complaint before. An abusive teacher well we'll transfer them to a new school. At the new school the teacher is introduced as having a spectacular teaching record and career at the previous eight schools they've taught at in the past twenty years.

Poor education results, it must be the parents again. They don't speak English at home or they don't help their kids with their homework. Weak or poor teachers, oh no we only employ the best and brightest at this school all with unblemished records.

So now that unsafe levels of lead in drinking water were found in 16 local schools and two local daycares including the worst result in Ontario, why wouldn't be trust our educational authorities? We study history in order to avoid repeating the bad things all over again. I'm sure that it's coincidence that my children and future grandchildren will never rely on the promises of at least one of our local school boards. The article in the Waterloo Region Record is titled ""Your kids are safe", schools say after failed lead tests".

ONTARIO'S CORRECTIONAL SERVICES

Today's Waterloo Region Record carries the following story titled "Adviser recommends overhauling Ontario's jails". Howard Sapers is a well known and respected expert on correctional services, jails and inmates. His report advises that 2/3 of people incarcerated in Ontario are on remand. This means that they have been charged with an offence but not convicted. Therefore 2/3 of our prisoners have not had their day in court and therefore are presumed innocent. It seems ridiculous that they are held in facilities with inmates with long term criminal records and sentences.

Ontario it turns out is one of the only provinces in Canada which does not have a law curbing strip searches in jail. In fact government policy in Ontario is to have strip searches on a bi-weekly basis for all inmates and daily strip searches for inmates in segregation. To say that is punitive, bizarre and unneccessary when compared to all other jurisdictions in Canada is an understatement.

Corrections Minister Marie-France Lalonde has indicated that the Ontario government will act upon Mr. Saper's report and will introduce new corrections legislation this fall. How many decades behind the times is that?