Category Archives: Politics

Canadian Federal Politics

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Pierre Poilievre wants to subvert democracy by invoking the notwithstanding clause of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms  in order to advance a draconian, unconstitutional, law-and-order agenda. I know that the Liberals aren’t perfect and that the vastly-increased capital gains tax will affect a lot of people, including people who think they’re a lot further away from the top 1% than they are. However, there’s no way this joker’s party is better. Despite protestations of speaking and acting for “the people,” the Conservatives will probably get a majority in 2025 with only around 38% of the popular vote. The people want dental care, pharmacare, affordable housing, and a lower cost of living, but Poilievre has no useful plans whatsoever and won’t be able to deliver anything that most people actually want.

The Canadian Federal Budget

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CBC News Network is constantly interrupted by ads telling me that my government health insurance doesn’t cover enough and Kurt Browning telling me that as a homeowner 55 or older (only one of those things is true for me) I should get a reverse mortgage to help pay for things.

A federal budget is always going to be a compromise, but increasing funding for the CBC, keeping on track with moves towards universal dental care and pharmacare, improving the situation of affordable housing, and paying for various things by increasing taxes on the wealthiest 1% seem perfectly sensible to me.

I’m not completely happy with the Liberal government, and it is the NDP that has helped get certain things done. Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are being totally disingenuous about addressing affordability. Yes, the carbon tax is a challenging scenario, but please do not let them make that the only election issue. We’ll be very sick of hearing about it long before the fall of 2025.

Sports vs. Academia

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I like the PWHL, and I also like that its player salaries are in a reasonable range for what is, after all, just a game: from $35,000 to $80,000 US (averaging $55,000, or lower middle-class). On the other hand, if it’s going to sell out Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, perhaps it could try to double that, so all professional women hockey players would be at least solidly middle class and only some of them above that. If the NHL’s salaries didn’t range from $750,000 to $12.6 million US (averaging $3.5 million), I might also take it seriously. Not to mention football, baseball, basketball, etc.

It’s too bad other professions, also with highly-credentialed/experienced/talented people, can’t be bothered to guarantee an annual income of at least $35,000. Instead, organizations such as academic societies give amounts on the order of $500 a year to a handful of unaffiliated scholars. That doesn’t even cover the cost to attend a national or international scholarly meeting, let alone pay anyone anything like a month’s rent. Academic publishers also continue to expect people to write book chapters and journal articles without paying them anything. They should at least find money to pay people who don’t have any related income coming in.

The Canada Revenue Agency and Canada Post

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The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) won’t accept my additional employment expenses for a used vehicle I purchased in 2021 to work as a Rural and Suburban Mail Carrier (RSMC) for Canada Post for about fifteen months. I kept meticulous records about my purchase and my fuel, maintenance, and repair expenses beyond what Canada Post gave me, but the CRA claims I owe them $2,857.27. Given the number of days I worked 8, 10, or even 12 hours while only being paid for 4, 5, or 6 hours, the federal government should be paying me that amount. I’ve re-sent my paperwork both electronically and in printed form, but they’ve so far ignored my attempts to make them look at my file again. Canada Post relies on a patch-work of 8,000 mainly part-time RSMCs (70% of whom are women) who generally use their own vehicles, and I honestly don’t know how they get away with it.

Happy Canada Day

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Happy Canada Day! I see numerous Canadian flags every day I’m on my rural Ontario FedEx route. However, almost all of them are on the property, including vehicles, of freedom-convoy, anti-mandate people. The flag was established in 1965 (so was I!), the same year as universal health care and around the time that multiculturalism was starting to emerge as official policy. In 2023, there is still much to be done, especially reconciliation for indigenous peoples and addressing climate change. So, let’s celebrate openness, helping each other, and so on. The US continues to move backwards on things like abortion and LGBTQ rights, and the Canadian “freedom” enthusiasts undoubtedly wish that Canada would do the same. Let’s not do that, okay?

New Job for FedEx

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I’m now working full-time as a delivery agent for a FedEx Ground contractor. It’s for a largely rural route about 1.5 hours south/southwest of Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, but including very scenic stretches along Lake Erie. I get to drive a fancy, almost-new Mercedes Benz Sprinter cargo van and use an excellent package route phone app. I also get benefits (including retirement savings) and a raise after a three-month probationary period. Thanks to Ryan and to Gerry (who put me in touch).

After over a year of getting nowhere, I got tired of working for Canada Post as an on-call relief (OCRE) rural and suburban mail carrier (RSMC). I had only occasional full-time work, no guarantee of continuing part-time work (which they told me I’d have until the end of August), no benefits, no pension, and no way to pay off the used mini-van I needed to do the job much of the time. Other times, I had to drive 20-30 year old, corporate-provided right-hand drive vehicles: Grumman LLV step-vans (which I called “ice-cream trucks”) and a rusty old Honda CRV. That FedEx can be run so much better makes me seriously question a bunch of socio-economic and political issues.

A Reflective Canada Day

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Nigel Fox, “Our Home and Native Land,” 2012

I’m glad that many Canadians are finding Canada Day to be a reflective moment about truth and reconciliation for Indigenous peoples. Mass graves of what will probably end up being thousands of residential school children have been discovered. These children were not only stolen from their families, but considered savages and allowed to die (possibly sometimes even directly killed) by members of the Christian denominations running these schools. These things were done with the knowledge and support of various Canadian governments, and the last such school closed in 1996.

The Catholic Church was the worst offender, and it should own up to it and use its considerable financial resources to do something about it. Meanwhile, Canada should at least immediately make sure that every indigenous community has access to clean drinking water and to other things that the rest of us take for granted.

My own Swiss-American ancestors settled about two hundred years ago on part of the Haldimand Tract, land that was granted to the Haudenosaunee of the Six Nations of the Grand River, within the territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples. 60,000 acres of Block 2 in what is now the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario area was purchased in 1805 by Mennonite settlers who had moved there from Pennsylvania, but the area was supposed to be granted in perpetuity to the Anishinaabe people. So, these issues have been around for a very long time.

Vaccines and Politicians

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People with certain pre-existing medical conditions are three or more times as likely as the general public to die from COVID-19 once infected. (Don’t worry: I’m not infected.) All levels of government in Canada are doing terribly at dealing with the vaccines.

I get that seniors need to be the priority after frontline health-care workers and long-term care residents. However, Pfizer and Moderna have flagrantly reneged on signed agreements for delivery schedules, and things are now being delayed by weeks or months, especially for the rest of us.

So, politicians need to do something about the unexpected changes to the vaccine roll-out. I’ve been led to believe that some of them were even trained as lawyers, but I’m now guessing they became politicians because they were actually pretty bad at it.

Follow-up: It took until April 20, 2021 to get a vaccine, which was dose 1 of AstraZeneca.

Is It Time for a Guaranteed Annual Income?

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With millions of people applying for government support and millions more (like me) still earning non-living wages to provide “essential” services, it is time for Canada to have a guaranteed annual income. Give every adult $2000 a month from now on. Make it taxable, so people who already earn a lot don’t get to keep much of it. Cut the red tape. Cut the bureaucracy. Easily cover the cost by cutting the costs of having to run so many different government programs (EI, CPP, OAS, GIS, CERB, CESB, provincial welfare and disability systems, etc.).

Replacing Phoenix

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I’m glad that the Canadian government is finally replacing the Phoenix pay system. On my eight-month Master of Library & Information Science co-op placement at the Parks Canada National Library in 2017, it seriously messed up my pay. They’re replacing it with something from Germany-based company SAP. However, as someone who now uses SAP’s incredibly complex main product every day at work, I have to wonder if they can really build a system that will make sense. Part of the problem with Phoenix is that the necessary training by IBM to use it correctly was simply never done. Hopefully, SAP can build something that won’t require much training and that will just work.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-system-replacement-sap-1.5488435