USA pushed Ukraine into a suicidal war and facilitates genocide in Gaza, so why do we think we're the good guys?

Putin and Xi had a love-in today in China. The Globe spun it as an increasingly isolated and desperate Putin sucking up to China. What I saw of the red carpet treatment the isolated Putin received in Beijing looked more like China sucking up to Putin. Russia isolated? Then how is there a Wikipedia page devoted to World leaders who have visited Moscow since Ukraine invasion? There’s about 40 world leaders on the list, including some from our NATO allies. NATO is more united and powerful (thanks to the addition of military heavyweights Finland and Sweden) than ever before, CBC and Globe &Mail incessantly remind us. So why are some heads of state of NATO allies making kissy-face with the evil dictator Putin? Seems to me, looking from a global perspective, the USA and its pathetic gang of camp followers are isolated way more than Bad Vlad is isolated. And how about that Gaza genocide that is by the day becoming more impossible to sweep under the rug? The CBC and the Globe are doing yeoman’s work trying to keep the focus on Jewish students feeling uncomfortable on university campuses where anti-genocide protests are ongoing. Most of the world seems to think ending a genocide-in-progress trumps the feelings of some Jewish students. And how about Ukraine!? Keep on rockin’ in the Free World, Blinky! Sorry we couldn’t follow through on all that “whatever it takes blah blah blah” shit Zelly, but what the hey, we gave you the tools and you fucked it up. But we’re still the good guys. Yes we, meaning Uncle Sam and his merry band of feckless acolytes, pushed Ukraine into a suicidal war with Russia, and continue to facilitate Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. But we’re the good guys.

This blog just cracked a million views!

That only took thirteen years and over seven thousand posts. And with a mere three followers! How does that work? I've heard there's no "follow" button when you go to this blog, so I don't know how there's even three. I'd guess it has something to do with the time Doublewide walked all over the keyboard and fucked up all my settings. To fix that, I'd have to retrace her steps. That would totally mess up the zen space I'm creating through mindful living. Be that as it may, it still feels like a decent accomplishment.

Finally! A glimmer of hope for Ukraine!

Some Ukrainian observers have grudgingly concluded over the past two plus years that America is incapable of delivering on the “whatever it takes for as long as it takes” mantra that’s been repeated ad nauseum since February of 2022. On the face of it, they seem to have a point. After all, when it comes to matters such as artillery shells, HIMARs, Patriot air defense systems, tanks, howitzers, and F-16s, the Americans have obviously failed to deliver whatever it takes. But there’s one thing more important than all of the above. Hope! Without hope, all the Patriots and F-16s in the world won’t make a difference, and yesterday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered the greatest morale boost the lucky Ukrainians could ever have hoped for. Taking to the stage in front of several dozen spectators in an obscure Kyiv nightclub, Blinken unleashed an electrifying cover of Neil Young's "Keep on rockin' in the free world." The world is fortunate that Mr. Blinken’s diplomacy is every bit as impressive as his musicianship. A true renaissance man if ever there was one! And such a poignant reminder that Ukraine is fighting not only for itself, but for the entirety of the free world! So there you go, people of Ukraine. America has delivered hope in your darkest hour. The rest is up to you.

Doug Ford gets tough on car thieves

I see where Preem Douggie has dropped the gloves re: the stolen car epidemic that's overtaken Toronto these past few years. Yup, Doug is getting tough on the scawflaws... he's proposing to suspend their driving privileges! That's right! Get busted for car theft and lose your driver's license for ten years! Let's think this through. It's been a very long time since I stole a car, so I'm no expert, but it seems to me there are basically two types of car theft. Type one: the crime of convenience. You're walking home from a night of excess at your favorite bar. It's 4 a.m. and you've got another 12 blocks to go. As you're wobbling by the 7-11 you notice a Dodge minivan idling in front with nobody in it... and holy shit, next thing you know, you're a car thief! Frankly, under those circumstances, would the threat of a license suspension prevent this crime? I think not! Type two: the professional car thief. Those have always been with us. They thrive in the underground chop shops, autobody shops, wrecking yards, etc. It's the pros who have driven up the car theft stats that have got Mr. Ford so revved up. But the growth hasn't come from the traditional professional auto theft community. No, it's mainly driven by foreign-based crime gangs who steal high-end vehicles for export. Apparently the Nigerians are big in this racket, finding it even more lucrative than the tried and true "my uncle was the deputy finance minister and if you help me launder the $50 million he looted I'll cut you in for 10%" scam. My understanding is that the big dogs stay home in Nigeria, but send emissaries to Toronto. These guys mix in with local gangs where it's easy to find a kid happy to take a $100k Audi out of someone's driveway for a couple of hundred bucks. If anybody gets busted it'll be the kid, not the emissary and surely not the boss in Lagos. That kid doesn't need a driver's license in the first place, so where's the deterent? So why bother? Because there's just too many folks in neighbourhoods just like Doug's who are fretting about losing their high-end rides. That's Doug Ford's base! He's obviously gotta be seen as doing something!

A belated salute to the mothers of Gaza

Dear Mothers of Gaza, I apologize that this shout-out comes a little late. It’s not that I didn’t think of you yesterday; it’s just that I was trying to focus on the positive. To that end, I spent time with my own mother, now in her 90th year, and sent greetings to the numerous younger moms in my circle. Unlike you, all of them live lives of relative good health and good fortune. Unlike you, they have access to medicine, food, and health care. Unlike you, mothers-to-be can expect access to fully provisioned maternal-care facilities when it’s time to give birth. Unlike you, never have their children died premature deaths due to starvation or the indiscriminate bombing of their homes. You, on the other hand, have buried at least 15,000 of your children over the past seven months. They have died at the hands of a military that bills itself “the most moral army in the world,” in a war financed and facilitated by the richest country on earth, a country that bills itself “the leader of the free world.” UNICEF tells us that 180 of you give birth every day, in an active war zone where every maternal-care facility has been deliberately destroyed, and where starvation is rampant since food and water are being deliberately withheld. If by some miracle a handful of your 180 daily newborns emerge healthy, their life expectancy, in the circumstances your tormentors have imposed, will be measured in weeks, not years. Mothers of Gaza, I salute you. Mothers of Gaza, please know I am deeply ashamed of our complicity in your suffering. The blood of your children is on our hands.

Turn your front stoop into a hunting blind

I gotta admit I hit a patch of particularly creative thinking on this one. I was out for a ramble across the back forty yesterday when I happened across a hunting blind on the south west corner of the woodlot. It resembled a small tent, but fully decked out in cammo, with multiple zip-down windows, and a couple of chairs inside. I’m pretty sure it’s the handiwork of a hunting party of youngsters who’d asked permission to hunt turkeys on my property recently. I’m generally copasetic with those requests, with the quid pro quo being make sure something finds its way into my freezer after hunting season. This arrangement has worked out reasonably well for all concerned. The lads had built their blind in one of the most opportune locations on the property. From the corner of the woodlot they’ve got a view that goes from the Meaford tank range on the other side of Owen Sound bay, all the way round to the marsh at the north end of Bass Lake. Not that they’re gonna see any turkeys at the Meaford tank range, but it’s a nice view, especially if you’re settling into your blind in the pre-dawn hours and Meaford has some night-time live-fire exercises going on. But it’s out of the marsh at the north end of Bass Lake where the hunting action will come from. And there’s only one place on the entire property where you’ve got a better shot at the marsh. My front stoop. All I need to do is drape the stoop in cammo, and I’m good to go! Here’s a partial list of what I had a shot at during a four hour window Saturday afternoon. Instead of just sitting on the stoop with a gluten-free beer and my vape, I could have ducked behind the cammo curtain with my glutten-free beer and my vape and my Benelli side by side, and had a clear shot at: 1 bald eagle 1 blue heron 3 trumpeter swans 2 sandhill cranes half a dozen ducks several dozen geese. one turkey wandering across the lawn which may have been a peahen rather than a turkey. The astute reader will realize not all of the above are considered “table birds,” but here’s the thing. I’m not a hunter, but I have profound respect for the locals who take their teenagers out at deer season and teach them to field-dress a deer right out there in the woods. When the shit hits the fan, and Communist China collapses our power grid, and Loblaws and Foodland and all the rest of them have been shuttered for a month, the local hunters are going to keep me and my clan alive.

The challenges of a gluten-free diet

When I went gluten-free a couple of years ago, the first thing I heard was, “get ready to pay four times as much for a loaf of bread.” The second thing I heard was, “good luck finding gluten-free beer.” Those were ominous signals for a guy who’d lived on beer and bread for fifty years and then some. But it hasn’t been the end of the world. Yes, ten bucks for a loaf of bread and twelve dollars for four bagels is a lot. That’s three bucks per bagel. For that kind of money I used to get the bagel with the cream cheese and smoked salmon already on it. Not any more! The beer thing has been hit and miss. Glutenberg makes a passable beer. It’s competitively priced, relatively speaking, but it’s often out of stock. Nevertheless, it’s my first option, especially the yellow cans, which, if I’m not mistaken, is the IPA. The green ones are the lager. I used to favour the lager till I found out it’s got double the calories of the IPA. Tonight I was doing a comparison test of the Boxer gluten-free beer and the Forager brand from Whistler Brewing. Both are available here only in those small cans that always leave you thirsty. The European standard of 500ml for a can of beer should be the global standard as far as I’m concerned. We get close enough with our 473ml tallboys, because who’s gonna notice the missing 27mg? But once you’re down to the 355ml tin, forget about it! It’s impossible not to notice you only had half a beer. As for the comparison test, I definitely prefer the beer out of Whistler to the beer out of Wisconsin. The question is, do I prefer it enough to justify paying an extra $4.50 for a six-pack? Mostly that’s a redundant question, because my experience has been that gluten-free beer inventory is in such short supply you’ll buy whatever’s available. But back to the original point; gluten-free food is prohibitively expensive. I saw a story the other day lamenting the fact that poor people are hardest hit by inflation in food prices, especially fast food prices. Apparently poor people need to eat fast food. Tonight I had a chicken pot-pie that came from Newton’s non-gluten in Guelph. They do awesome work in gluten-free, and you can buy their stuff at the local Foodland. Expensive? Four of those chicken pot-pies came to $55. Each one is a complete meal unto itself, featuring fresh local ingredients and a gluten-free pastry crust that you’d never suspect was gluten free. That works out to $14 per meal. You’ll pay more for a Big Mac meal at the Mickey D drive-through!

Some Jewish students don't feel safe on campus

That’s understandable. Many university campuses are witnessing major protests against the live-streamed genocide ongoing in Gaza. This is the biggest wave of protests to hit elite universities since the Vietnam war era. You can’t very well speak out against this genocide without criticizing Israel. After all, it’s the IDF, at the behest of the government of Israel, carrying out the genocide. That government proclaims Israel as an exclusively Jewish state. It claims to act on behalf of all Jews everywhere. Some people object to the term “genocide.” Would you prefer “crimes against humanity?” How about “premeditated mass murder?” Doesn’t really make you feel any better, does it? While there are some Jewish students who don’t feel safe on campus, there are many others who are shocked, ashamed, and outraged at what the Netanyahu government is doing in their name. That’s why Jewish students are heavily over-represented among the leadership of the very protest camps that make some other Jewish students feel unsafe. The Jewish students who don’t feel safe were given the spotlight on Parliament Hill today. Looks to me like the Jewish students who don’t feel safe are being organized and coached by Chabad House and Hillel. These messianic NGOs, for lack of a better label, are all in with the settler ideology of Jewish supremacy that has brought Israel to the abyss. Their ideological brethren in the Holy Land are the people blocking aid trucks from getting into Gaza today, where children are starving as a result of the genocide that Netanyahu and Gallant announced in advance last October. So, who are you going to support? The Jewish students who don’t feel safe on campus? Or the Jewish students appalled and disgusted by what the government of Netanyahu and his extremist religious fanatic coalition partners are doing in Gaza?

Why Kendrick Lamar believes Drake is a fake

Leave it to CBC to get to the bottom of the Drake - Lamar feud. Matt Galloway had some experts weighing in on the matter this morning. Apparently the famous rapper “straight outta Compton” takes issue with the authenticity of the famous rapper “straight outta Jewish day school” in Toronto. After all, they both got rich in a genre that celebrates, let’s not mince words, some of the more violent and dystopian aspects of Black urban culture. That’s why so many up-and-coming rappers are dead and gone long before they’re rich and famous. Lamar has a point. There’s no comparison whatsoever between coming up poor and Black in Compton, and coming up middle class and Black-white-Jewish in Toronto. None. Might as well be two different planets. That’s why I think it’s time for Drake to take a hiatus from his music career. Once you’re the hate magnet of millions of authentic ghetto thugs who idolize Kendrick Lamar, and they obviously know where you live, take a break. Smell the flowers while you can!

Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud takes deadly turn

When the news came out that uber-famous rapper Drake was building a home base in Canada's most exclusive postal code, the neighbors whispered amongst one another, "there's gonna be trouble." They were right! Check it out from the CBC; Security guard shot outside Drake's mega-mansion. Bridle Path, Drake’s ‘hood, is the toniest, most posh neighborhood in all Toronto, where the median price of a crib, as the rapper’s like to call their place, runs about 8 millions. While I don’t follow matters in the world of rap music much, the CBC itself has informed me Drake has been in an on-going feud with Kendrick Lamar, another big name rapper, but in this case, straight outta Compton. My hunch is that “straight outta Compton” beats “straight outta Jewish day school” in the world of rap cred. Yo Drake, if I was you I’d be watching my back!

Closing the barn door twenty years after the horse got out

My teaching career left port in 1995, when laptops were a novelty and cellphones where seldom seen, except amongst school board admin, who were the earliest of early adapters. That was always a head-scratcher. When some school board wanker was tooling around Grey-Bruce, they were never more than 15 minutes away from a school, where they could use the phone to their hearts content. But what if they had to call head office in between those 15 minutes? After all, as everyone knows, school board superintendents do a lot of really important stuff. Mainly, they are responsible for liaising with other school board superintendents, and also with the Ministry of Education! They are the very foundation of our education system! They obviously have a lot of high-end responsibilities that can’t wait 15 minutes before the Superintendent for Student Achievement or some equally redundant time-waster makes it to the nearest school. Once the top-level school board worthies embraced cellphones, the die was cast. There was no turning back. I began to notice the impact by the late nineties, mainly because teenage girls would erupt, mid-lesson, into sobs of grief because their boyfriend had just terminated their relationship via old-school flip-phone. Then, when smart-phones took over, things really went for a shit. That’s when every research question you ever assigned became Wikipedia copy-and-paste. And as smart-phones got smarter, things only got worse. To be fair, there was resistance to abdicating our responsibilities as educators in favour of big tech. But we were very much in the minority. Every time you brought the matter up at a staff meeting, you’d be drowned out by the kool-aid drinkers who would regale you with the many studies, inevitably funded by big tech, that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that more tech in classrooms was the future of learning. The template was established by the leadership of the school board. Fast forward to today. In the last few years before I retired, I could walk down any hall in my school, and see that many of the teachers and most of the students were on their cellphones. Of course it was all in the name of “learning.” Too bad reading and math scores have been dropping precipitously since we turned education over to big tech. Twenty years after I was calling bullshit on our rush into big tech-enabled imbecility, it’s become an “issue.” The government is going to “crack down” on cellphone use in classrooms. Good luck with that!

Chrystia Freeland's Canada; $13 billions for Ukraine, $200 a month for the most vulnerable Canadians

One of many pie-in-the-sky promises Team Trudeau made during the last election campaign was to lift our fellow citizens, suffering from mental and/or physical disabilities, out of poverty. And what a beautiful promise it was. To be sure, those trying to make ends meet on the strength of a disability pension are inevitably mired in deep poverty, in addition to whatever other challenges they may face. In my province, the Ontario Disability Support Program maxes out at $1,300/ month for a single person. That’s in a province where you can’t find a one-bed flat for that. Thank goodness food banks are plentiful in Canada, otherwise these people would starve to death. Since winning the 2021 election, the Liberals haven’t made a move on that lifting-out-of-poverty thing. Since the next election will roll around in 2025, advocates for the disabled had high hopes something would be announced in this years budget speech. And it was. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced every Canadian living on a disability pension would get a $200/month lift out of poverty… into more poverty, obviously! But let’s not be too hard on Chrystia. She’s got bigger fish to fry than a bunch of whiners in wheelchairs. In the same speech, she set aside an additional $320 million for Ukraine. Whether that’s included in the $13 billion we’ve already sent, or if it’s new money, isn’t made clear in this CBC interview with Ukrainian PM Denys Shmyhal. But what is clear is that, unlike the advocates for Canada’s disabled, Shmyhal is utterly enamored of Chrystia Freeland! According to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Chrystia is the very best friend of Ukraine! I understand Chrystia has a soft spot in her heart for the Ukrainian nationalists, due to her family’s history of collaborating with Nazi Germany during the holocaust, but has she no decency? Shouldn’t she try a little harder to be a better friend to the most vulnerable Canadians?

Foraging for fiddleheads to boycott Loblaws

I spent a couple of hours in the marsh across the way foraging for fiddleheads this afternoon. This is the first time in a few years that I managed to get to the fiddleheads before they were three foot tall fern fronds. I can’t remember who turned me on to this delicacy, but I recall harvesting them along the banks of the Speed River south-west of Guelph fifty years ago. Back then, you headed out on May 24 weekend to fill your satchel. We’re a couple of hours north of there, so you’d expect the season to be a week or so later. Instead, fifty years on, the season is first week of May instead of last. Must be part of that “climate change emergency” so many folks are obsessed with. Quite aside from coming home with exceptionally nutritious and totally unprocessed free food that Loblaws didn’t get a cut of, the afternoon was time well spent. Firstly, you get away from the poison of the screen. I don’t know about you, but I generally never walk away from six or eight or ten hours at the computer feeling happier, more contented, or more optimistic than when I logged on. Then there’s all that fresh air and nature. As I made my way along the creek bank, I startled a nesting pair of Canada geese, who promptly paddled downstream with five hatchlings trailing behind, young enough to still have their yellow plumage. Later, a sandhill crane took flight just in front of me. I made my way home with about a pound’s worth of fiddleheads. I’ve got one recipe for all my foraging finds. Fry it in butter and salt lightly. Use salted butter and you can skip the second part. Whether it’s wild leeks, morels, or puffballs; fry in butter and salt lightly. It’s shocking how much food goes to waste simply because we don’t look at it as food. Every autumn, the backroads around here are lined with apple trees groaning under the weight of a perfectly edible crop, destined to fall to the ground and rot while folks pay five bucks for a three-pound bag of apples at the grocery store. Dream globally. Live locally. Forage as much as you can.

It's down the memory-hole for Ukraine and Zelensky

I just did a scroll-through of the home pages of CBC News, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. There was not a single reference to Ukraine or its president, who for the better part of two years was met with rapturous applause as he toured the capitals of the democratic world in a never-ending fundraiser. Likewise, not a single story about the Ukraine war in the news section of today’s Globe & Mail. A passing reference in a story about Xi’s upcoming trip to the EU is as close as we get. Not a peep in the opinion section either. So what happened? Where’s Zelensky? Is the war over and media forgot to mention it? Have the plucky Ukrainians driven the Russians out of their land and secured the future of the Free World? No. Although none of those news platforms seem interested in informing us, the war is going horribly. For Ukraine. This is a monumental humiliation for the US and NATO. Time, therefore, to change the subject. Move along, folks! Nothing to see here! So, what’s the newest existential threat barreling down on us? At CBC it’s the imminent threat of a bird-flu pandemic. At Fox it’s the imminent threat of the antisemitic, Marxist, Israel-hating, terrorist-loving radicals occupying college campuses across America. At CNN, MSNBC, and in the pages of the Globe & Mail, the biggest threat to the future of civilization is a familiar one-Donald Trump! The brain trust at the Globe are so threatened by the possibility of a Trump win in November they’ve reached Rachel Madow levels of hysteria in sounding the alarm! Four full pages in the opinion section devoted to “can-democracy-survive-Trump” gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Ya, they warned us last time too. There’s not a lot of folks convinced the world is better off after three years of Joe Biden as the top prop in America’s billionaire-run Theatre of Democracy. So goodbye, Zelly, your fifteen minutes are up. I’m sure you’ll be very well compensated. It’s a shame about your country…

Is Canada's Deputy PM a foreign agent?

There’s been a lot of noise about the need to have a registry of lobbyists who are working in Canada at the behest of foreign entities. The noise comes mostly from the same choir of American Empire Loyalists behind the current Hogue Inquiry into foreign interference in our democracy. Justice Hogue released her interim report today, confirming former GG David Johnston’s conclusion that we’re basically dealing with a media-driven nothingburger here. Her report did add the caveat that in some vague way the scandal may have undermined Canadians’ “faith in democracy.” Frankly, what undermines my faith in democracy is the quality of the candidates I’m allowed to choose from at election time. I never seem to have any choice outside a narrow range of pro-USA, pro-NATO, pro-Israel, pro-”free trade” options. That of course brings with it certain certitudes about what our foreign policy must look like. To put the matter bluntly, it inevitably looks like whatever Washington wants it to look like. Which brings me to a titillating headline I saw at the CBC a few days ago. Military charges senior officer with making derogatory remarks about commanders, allies. Murray Brewster, the top gun on military affairs at CBC, didn’t give us a whole lot of details, nor did any other Canadian news outlet. Today I ran across this nugget; Canada is losing its war against Russia and is charging senior officers with disloyalty. Holy heck, who could imagine!? I strongly recommend you read John Helmer’s article. Unlike Murry Brewster, he seems to have contacts in the CAF beyond the PR department. According to him, Colonel Robert Kearney committed the cardinal sin of deviating from the official script on our disastrous mission in Ukraine. Official script; with NATO’s commitment for whatever it takes for as long as it takes, Ukraine will eventually prevail and defeat Putin’s Russia. Colonel Kearney’s alleged heresy; Not a hope in hell. Apparently the Colonel was highly regarded as a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy, which is a deviation from the norm amongst the neutered upper ranks of the CAF. When word of this outrage reached Ukraine’s numero uno lobbyist in Canada, Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, his fate was sealed. Which brings us full circle to the question raised in the title. Should Chrystia be considered a “foreign agent?” That’s not as simple a question as you might think at first glance. Technically, a “foreign agent” would need to get some sort of benefit from the foreign entity they were working for. In Chrystia’s case, I’m not seeing that. Oddly enough, it looks to me like the main pro-Ukraine lobby, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, is largely financed by the Government of Canada! How fucked up is that?

The evolution of "Canadian Values"

I’m an immigrant who landed at Pier 21 in 1956. Immigrants who landed here in 1956 were determined to do whatever they had to do to make a go of things. They had bills to pay in the new country, and since there weren’t any government welfare programs at the time, they took whatever jobs they could. After all, that was always a Canadian tradition. Why did people come here? Opportunity! Often the newcomers saw opportunity where the locals didn’t. That’s why so many successful entrepreneurs can trace their origins to a Jewish or German or Italian or whatever forebear who got off the boat and grabbed whatever job they could, which often meant grabbing a shovel. My father started his life in Canada shoveling coal at Kloepfer Coal in Guelph. The Farm Manager’s grandfather, the guy who brought their clan to Canada, paid the rent in those bleak early years by digging ditches. That was the Canadian way, and it wasn’t just about the immigrants. Historically, Canadians went to where the jobs were; that’s why I’ve encountered Newfies galore in every one of the four provinces I’ve worked in, none of which were Newfoundland. Doing honest work to pay your bills was a Canadian value. It was viewed as a civic duty in my parents’ house to help other newcomers. The first refugee immigrants we sponsored were from Viet Nam. They took whatever jobs were there, worked their butts off, and the extended family are now productive and tax-paying Canadians. Canadian values circa 1975. The next batch were from Afghanistan. We sponsored a Muslim family. Both Mom and Dad had been university professors in Kabul before the US-created Taliban took the country back to the middle ages. Both worked in menial jobs here in Canada for years before getting traction in careers commensurate with their qualifications. Canadian values circa 1995. Over the past few years I’ve been peripherally involved with a refugee family the Canadian immigration system randomly plucked out of a refugee camp in the Middle East. Both parents and two of the kids are on disability pensions. Two other kids are in school and show great promise. The oldest son, physically and psychologically whole, and at age 25 the father of three children, has had difficulty finding his way. He tried fast food for a few months, but that didn’t agree with him. Then he took a shot at construction, but that wasn’t for him either. He hasn’t worked in months, but just came back from his pilgrimage to Mecca, leaving his pregnant wife and three toddlers to fend for themselves. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to find your true authentic self. Canadian values circa 2024.

Outrage as government asks civil servants to show up for work three times a week

They loved Fluffy when he was fluffing up the number of government employees by almost 40% since idiots like me voted him in back in 2015. Ya, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I fell for the “he’s a chip off the old block” narrative. Not that the “old block” didn’t have his flaws, but at least he put some value on retaining a wee sliver of sovereignty vis-a-vis our southern neighbor. Needless to say, I’ve had eight+ years of buyer’s remorse since then. One thing I never saw coming is what a craven crybaby Justin was, compared to Pierre. I’ll never forget Pierre staying in his seat at the 1968 St. Jean Baptiste parade in Montreal as a riot broke out all around him. Justin ran away under protection of his security detail when a protester threw a handful of parking lot gravel in his general direction. Maybe one of the things that fooled me was all the macho posturing Fluffy used to do. Remember the PR stunt boxing match with his good buddy Senator Richard Brazeau? Then when Brazeau got slammed with allegations of drug abuse and sexual harassment you never ever saw them together in a photo again. But it was fun while it lasted; Justin and Patrick posing shirtless for publicity photos. Very Putinesque! So apparently the civil service has expanded by about 100,000 fresh recruits since Team Fluffy took over in 2015. Since the onset of the Covid pandemic (remember that?) those folks have been working from home. Two and a half years ago Elon Musk informed his Tesla workforce that if they didn’t come back to the office, they’d have to pretend they were working for a different employer. Two and a half years later, the government of Canada is gently nudging its 350,000 employees in the same direction.