Last time I checked....

....Parliamentary committees did not call glorified clerks to testify about anything.  What Katie Telford was doing in front of the Ethics Committee talking about WE was completely wrong.  You might as well have the PM's driver or his nanny testify.

 Whatever happened to Ministerial Accountability?  Ministers are accountable, not clerks or public servants.  In this case, the Prime Minister is "Primus inter pares", first among equals, and he should never have had a clerk like Telford in front of the committee.  The most shocking thing that emerged from the media coverage today was that Telford does not get along with the lackeys in Morneau's office because she didn't like his choice for Governor of the Bank of Canada.

Whaaaaat!?

Telford wanted Carolyn Wilkes, but Morneau chose Bay Street crony Tiff Macklin.  What the F is a clerk in the PMO doing interfering with the Finance Minister's choice for Governor?!  And what the F is she doing fighting with Finance staff because she didn't get her way?!  Obviously, Telford wanted a woman because she's such a "feminist".  Gawd.  It's all so insane and contrary to the Constitution and Parliamentary procedure.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Trudeau continuously blamed the public service for choosing WE.  Again, where was ministerial accountability?  It's not public servants who make appointments, it's the government.  Why no one on the committee, or in the press, picked up on this crucial fact is beyond me?

My uncle was Deputy Minister of Defence when Doug Harkness was minister and that was the first time a politician stood up in the House and fingered a public servant for a political mess.  It was about the aircraft carrier 'Bonaventure' and the costs to overhaul it.  Harkness actually mentioned my uncle in the House of Commons and dumped the whole mess on him.  Outrageous.  That was when ministerial accountability went out the window.

My uncle, a dedicated public servant and deputy minister, was never the same after that.  He was doing the government's bidding, but was shuffled out and became DM of Taxation.  I remember sitting in the Minister's board room years later and seeing Uncle Elgin's picture on the wall of DMs.  I purposely sat under it.  He was a true professional and never said a word about the entire affair.  I still miss him.

Polticians must never blame public servants, but this is their new MO.

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Just want to say a few words about my Lake Windermere Open Water Swim.  This would have been my eighth, but I am not doing it this year.  Last year, you will recall, it was held three weeks earlier and the water was so cold I got hypothermia.  My legs felt like concrete and I almost could not finish.  I did and crawled out of the water, but I spooked myself.  Bruce Stroud, the original owner of the swim, sold it last year to some guy who now holds it three to four weeks too early, when the water is freezing.  I found that out the hard way.  But Bruce is such a sweet guy, he has organized an informal swim for this Sunday and called me to see if I would enter.  "The water's now really warm, Nancy," he told me.  "Please come and stay with us.  I'd love you to do the swim."  Sadly, I declined, but maybe next year!  Here I am with Bruce, getting a certificate for being the oldest swimmer in the 2K:

This year, in the pool, I did the calculation and I figure I've forgone more than 100 Ks in the pool.  My fat ass shows it! 

Let's get this straight....

A woman who owned a roofing company was awarded $100,000 and had her huge arrears in GST waived because she was, according to her, sexually harassed by sub-contractors.  That is outrageous.  This was in 'The Globe and Mail' the other day and I was astounded.  I had to read the article several times to try and figure out what GST arrears and sexual harassment had to do with each other?!

In the end, I failed.  Sadly, it was a female judge -- who should be removed from the bench -- who said that with her trauma, the owner should not have to pay her arrears.  Sadly again, the roofer was a person of colour, so racism and prejudice influence her attitudes, in my view.  They have to.

The GST and sexual harassment are two separate issues and should never have been combined.  I feel sorry for the CRA and the Tax Court who will now be faced with all sorts of nonsequiters and personal issues put forth as reasons they will now pocket GST, instead of remitting it, as the law demands.

When I ran a national program with CRA, I used to have to deal with Members of Parliament who would call complaining that we were intimidating their constituent merchants who owed GST.  "You'll be putting them out of business," an MP would bemoan.  "So, what you are saying is that these merchants kept money Canadians paid to them in good faith as GST.  That is basically theft," I would reply.  "Well, if you put it like that," I would hear.

What other way is there to put it?  They are stealing money that should have been remitted to the Receiver General.  It's the same with this roofer crook.   

A panel?

Why is there only to be an in-camera panel looking into the mass shooting in Nova Scotia?  Why not a public inquiry?  That's wrong.  Frankly, the reason must be to protect the incompetent Lucki from being scrutinized.  Trudeau keeps making these bad, token appointments and then having to hide their ineptness. 

That tragic Snow Bird crash in BC was also disasterously handled by the RCMP.  In fact, they were completely absent during the whole thing, which meant a local fire chief had to face the cameras and fumble his way through while one pilot lay dead in a front yard and another was badly injured and trapped on a roof.  Along with the invisible Lucki,  I am also talking about Theresa Tam and Catherine Tait, as well as Julie Payette.  These women set our gender back 50 years. 

After retiring, I used to have lunch with my former Customs and Excise deputy minister and we would often talk about the whole "affirmative action" mess.  During our get togethers, he revealed opinions he couldn't when DM.  We both agreed it didn't work.  "You never bought into all that did you," he said at one point, paying me a huge compliment.  "I promoted you to DG because of your competence, not your gender."  I used to have a weekly meeting with him and he never cancelled because I kept them short.  They amounted to one minute an item.  I'd walk in and say, "Hi L, five items, five minutes."  He'd give me a one or two word answer and I was out the door.
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My question of the day is, are there no competent Canadian female journalists the CBC could hire?  Listening this morning, there is one on TV with a very heavy Australian accent.  Why is that?  It's the CBC and we should have Canadian journalists on there.  The public Australian broadcaster would not, I am sure, hire a Canadian over an Aussie.  Oh wait, I forgot, Catherine Tait is in charge. 

I told you so.........again

What did I say about Julie Payette?  Yep, I was right. (see "I told you so", 22/09/2018).  Finally, her abusive treatment of staff is about to be investigated -- although what that will reveal will probably be so watered down as to be useless.  At the moment, the Privy Council Office is working on "terms of reference" for the review -- double speak for redacting the entire mess.

She needs to be removed, but won't be because Trudeau is a "feminist".  The Grim Groper, as I call him, will never remove a woman he has appointed -- and that includes the hapless and inept Brenda Lucki, the bungling and incapable Catherine Tait and the incompetent Theresa Tam, the latter of whom has blood on her hands for having sat on them too long while Canadians were dying.

Marie Antoinette, a.k.a. the current Governor General, is a disaster and a disgrace to both the office and her gender.  Anyone remember the likes of Vincent Massey, Gen. Georges Vanier or Jules Leger?  Now, there were two GGs with enormous dignity, deserving of the role as representative of Her Majesty in Canada.  With the appointment of Jeanne Sauve, it's all been downhill from there.  We had the ultimate snob, Adrienne Clarkson and then Michaelle Jean -- both vacuous "celebrity" appointments.  Harper tried to reverse that trend when he appointed the well-respected David Johnston, but Trudeau -- true to his "feminist" zeal -- got us back on the wrong track with Payette. 

I'd like to think the chickens will come home to roost.  But they won't.  The Globe and Mail skewered Payette today with a perfect cartoon:

Calgarian grammar

"I haven't swam in ages," said a woman in the locker room this morning.  "You haven't swum?!" I said in correction, disguising it as a question.  But I doubt she got it, probably thought I was illiterate for using such a weird, unheard of word.  "I haven't came here in a while," tragically commented one of the young lifeguards on the pool deck.  "You haven't come here for a while?" I again said.  Thomas didn't get it either.

This is the state of grammar in Calgary.  Also read in 'The Globe and Mail' a column in which the writer wrote, "....a new sapling sprung up....."  It's just painful to me, but I must learn to admit defeat.  When our kids were young, we used to play a very catchy and popular game in the car.  I'd say a verb, such as "spring" and they'd have to tell me the other past tenses of that word, i.e., "sprang, sprung," in this case.  I highly recommend this exercise!

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As per my blog about no face masks yesterday, I wrote a letter to 'The Herald' and it went in today:

I must be the most didactic person I know because I seem to love telling people what's what.     

Really?!

The front page of 'The Calgary Herald' featured a bizarre photo today.  Here were a bunch of natives from the Tsuu T'ina reserve frolicking around on skateboards without masks.  This, at a time when Calgary and Alberta are experiencing big jumps in cases.  WTF?!

Why do they wear masks around their necks??!!  It's insane.  There was another picture inside with the same bunch of kids sitting in a circle either wearing no masks, or masks pulled down around their necks.  Duh?!  And the newspaper puts this photo on its front page?!

Here we have another bunch of idiots waiting in a queue for entrance to an Ottawa restaurant.  Could they be any more closely packed?!  The COVID jump in cases is because young people are fed up and gathering en masse with no regard to the dangers they pose.

Dumb.  Watch the cases soar.

At last!

I was in a swim lane at the Y and doing my set!  Managed my 50 laps, but a tad slower.  Felt great!  Saw a few of my swim buddies -- much younger -- who actually had to quit before I.  Wow! 

Dear Diary:  Went to a plastic surgeon today and have to have a lump on my forehead removed.  It had been cancerous and removed a few years ago, but it's growing again.  Happily, she doesn't think it is cancer now, just a cyst.  Here's hoping!   

Finally, another Black perspective

Jamil Jivani, a Black, Ivy League lawyer from Ontario, seems to be the lone voice expressing another side of the whole Black Lives Matter movement.  Now working for the Ontario government as an advocate for community opportunities, Jivani travels around the province engaging directly with disadvantaged youth from threatened communities, providing by example the support they need to succeed and reach their true potential.

And he should know.  He came from the same sort of community, but without the support he is giving in his work today.  The author of 'Why Young Men', he boot-strapped his way from borderline poverty to graduating from Yale Law School -- no small feat for a guy who as a teen almost joined a gang.  "I was tempted by a life of crime, but ultimately chose the virtuous path that led me to Yale."

His Black father left when he was in elementary school, but his Scottish-Irish mother prevailed.  Frankly, I think the fact that he had a mother from another culture helped give the balance and insight into a world other than that of a ghetto-raised kid from the "hood".

Adamantly against hip-hop culture and what it does to young Blacks, he says, "We need an investigation into the billion dollar hip-hop industry concerning why so many rappers are killed.  It's an incentive for young dudes to lean into these gangster images in order to make quick money and fame.  Stop making excuses, hold hip-hop to account."
 

Here are a couple of excerpts from the profile in 'The Globe and Mail' today:

This is how the Black community is now turning on him.

Above, we have a professor from the U of T who says that being as successful as he has been "lets governments off the hook".  Huh!!??  In other words, "the government" is responsible for the failure of every Black kid.  How is that progress for Black communities?  It's the blame game over and over again.  Predictably and unfortunately, Black leaders are publically turning against him in droves.   

Jivan's response.  I too agree there is no such thing as "systemic racism".  There's individual racism, but it's not "systemic".

Still a big issue

After I went on maternity leave 43 years ago, child care is still not solved.  This is from an article by John Ibbitson in 'The Globe and Mail' today, in which he talks about world populations being predicted to fall.

Politicians have blabbed on about universal child care for generations, but the minute they get into power, the whole thing is abandoned.  It's not a priority for them because they have wives at home or resources to cover it.  There's a reason so few women run for office.  If they want to have a family, they can't put in the hours.

Thirty years ago, I was tapped to go into the Privy Council Office, but I had to decline because with young children at home -- even though I had a live-in nanny -- I could not put in the hours.  Staff was (or is it "were"? I think it's "was") expected to work from seven to at least seven, otherwise you were regarded as a slacker.  So I took another job where I could work normal hours.  As I keep saying, women are penalized for bearing the biological function of having children. 

A five-minute agenda item

More than 30 years ago, when I was Director of Special Projects at Customs and Excise, my DG asked me to look into computerizing the pay system.  Luckily, my assistant was a seconded pay clerk who knew the system inside and out.  She might have been a lowly CR 4 or 5, but she was smart.

Being the type of manager who didn't want to re-invent the wheel, I came back from that management committee meeting and said, "Lynne, Ken Cox wants to computerize the pay system.  What do you think?"  "Forget about it," said Lynne.  When I asked why, she said because there were too many variables and special situations to allow it to be administered by one computerized program.  Along with regular pay, the system had to manage acting pay, leave without pay, leave with pay, maternity leave, secondments, sick leave, pre-retirement special assignments, vacation pay, extended leave, disability pay......and on and on.  "All this has to be calculated by hand," explained Lynne.

So, next management meeting, Ken asked me to report and I said exactly what Lynne had said and why.  "Do you mean to tell me that pay still has to be calculated by hand?!" said Ken.  "Yep, the inputting all has to be done by hand before being put into the cheque system.  Then the computer can kick out the cheque, but when an employee's status changes, we have to calculate that again by hand.  I consulted the pay clerks and that's what they told me." I explained.

Having come up through the ranks, the late Ken Cox knew a competent pay clerk when he heard one and when he asked me who I had consulted in pay, I told him it was Lynne.  "I, I know Lynne, she's excellent.  If that's what she says, we'll stick with what we have.  Next item?"  And that was that.  Five minutes and we didn't have a Phoenix. 

Not long after that Customs and Excise merged with Taxation -- another dumb idea conjured up by then Taxation DM, P.G., who had not come up through the ranks.  He had been fast-tracked via a spiffy new program that catapulted "promising" young, mostly-men with lightening speed up through the ranks, thus ensuring they knew nothing about anything.  But had we foolishly computerized pay, P.G. was the type of guy who would've stuck with it because he was a first-class smarty pants, thus destroying the pay system of all the Taxation staff too.

Welcome to the disaster that is still going on because another smarty pants at IBM sold the feds a system for millions that didn't work.  It has now cost more than $2 billion over three years and it's still a mess.  Initially there were 260,000 tickets for each mess and wow!  They're now down to only 173,000.  Each ticket has to be fixed guess how?  By a pay clerk by hand with a calculator.

Now I read that all employees -- even those whose pay had not been effed up -- are getting $2,400 each for the trauma and hardship they have suffered thanks to the smarty pants who apparently didn't even consult the pay people when he hired IBM!  So, that's another $350 million wasted.

I know I have blogged about this before, but it still baffles me that people can be so dumb.  I am not a pay clerk and my first job out of university was with IBM, so I know how that company operates.  It wants to sell "its" systems -- not adapt its system to your needs.  All somebody had to have done was give me a quick call and then tell IBM, no thanks.

But, of course, that's not what happened.  Thank God they didn't put superannuation cheques into Phoenix!

Unimaginable

The auditor general has revealed that 50,000 illegal entrants to Canada have not been removed.  Fifty thousand!  These are people who have strolled across the border, or entered in another illegal manner, and have simply disappeared.

Many have gone before the Immigration and Refugee Board and have been turned away.  But they're still here!  The Canada Border Agency has just lost them.  These 50,000 people are using Canadian benefits and health care, or are working illegally, so do not pay tax.  How can this be happening?! 

Another big "fail" for this government and this country and no one in it -- except me -- seems to give a sh-t.   

No surprise there

Cindy Blackstock and Perry Bellegarde are thrilled with the new Native Child Welfare Agreement just announced.

Of course that's not a surprise because it means they get more money.  There are 40,000 native children in care at the moment, but instead of hanging their heads in shame, Cindy and Perry seem completely oblivious as to why that is the case!?  Does it not occur to them that these children have been put in foster care for serious reasons?  It's expensive to have children in care so it is not done lightly.  There have to be good reasons.  But the media daren't point this inconvenient fact out because it would reflect badly on native communities.  Add to this is the fact that the system first tries to find extended family or community care for these children and only places them outside this circle when such care cannot be found.  And there's another reason for that too, by the way.

So, instead of sitting at a press conference and smiling smugly about their "victory", they should ask the basic tough questions of themselves and their people and stop blaming the "system" while taking millions from it.  First in was more money for COVID, now it's more money for child welfare.   

As usual, my thoughts only. 

Incomprehensible

I try, believe me I try, to make sense of  'Globe and Mail' columnist Andrew Coyne's preachings.  But, frankly, he is so obtuse and verbose it is impossible to glean a clue about what he is raving.  Here is a typical sentence:

"Indeed, far from worrying that yielding to China's demands in response to such 'repugnant' tactics might encourage China to make more such demands backed by the same tactics, the 19 fret that, in fact, failing to give China what it wants would invite it to 'escalate' by detaining more than two Canadians."

Talk about a run-on sentence!  Anyone have a clue what he is saying?  I don't.  My editor, the late Jean Portugal at Maclean Hunter, would have had a red-pen field day with Mr. Coyne. 

Ingrates all

"It's a stat holiday, so we'll take it, other than that there is no celebration of Canada Day in our communities.  What exactly is there to celebrate?" complained Byron Louis, chief of the Okanagan Indian Band.

Well, the billions given natives by other ordinary Canadians might be something, wouldn't you think Chief Louis?  I think "take" is the operative word in Chief Louis' statement, by the way.  Hey, I'd think the billions are something to be grateful for, that's what I'd think.  But, as I have blogged many times, natives do not identify as "Canadian".  "I can recall a lot of celebrations here, we're a community that loves to come together and celebrate things, but Canada Day is not one I remember bringing the community together," echoed someone called Jess Housty of the Heilstuk people.  She also said she'd like to see greater recognition of what native communities face.  "I don't think we can say everyone in Canada has grappled with the reality of what systemic racism is in this country."

Firstly, we don't have "systemic" racism in Canada.  We have bias and individual racism, but throwing around the word "systemic" is irresponsible.  It has to stop because it has become a great excuse for natives and other people of colour to sit back, relax, demonstrate and play the blame game.   

Chief Louis says the relationship between the Canadian government and native people has eroded, making it difficult to join in the celebration.  But the money hasn't "eroded" has it.  It just keeps growing and growing.

I am so sick of it.

B is an immigrant.  He was six when he was torn from his lavish, ancestral home in India, had all family possessions stolen on the voyage, shuffled off to remote relatives in England until finally landing in Halifax with his grandparents.  After that, he was raised in a small, walk-up apartment in Montreal.  "Son, you are now a Canadian," said his grandfather.  "Forget all about India, The Raj and England.  Just be 'Canadian'", he said, before buying him a pair of hockey skates and enrolling him in a Montreal boxing gym.  Today, no one is more "Canadian" than B.  Yes, he remembers India, his beloved man servant and England, but he is firmly Canadian and that's that.

As I said, I am so sick of it all.

This is what got me going today, from 'The Globe and Mail'.