Oh sorry, according to the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade, Religious Freedom, Mining, and Gay Rights, it's not the biggest sellout ever, it's the Biggest Trade Deal Ever!
Whoopee!!!
If you have a look at what was announced last October, you'll see that for the first time European companies will have the right to bid on Canadian infrastructure projects.
And not only that, but they'll be able to bring their own workers with them!
Not even Lyin' Brian gave that away in NAFTA.
Yup, this biggest trade deal ever is going to create jobs alright; for Italians, Spaniards, and Irishmen.
Right here in Canada!
Monday, December 16, 2013
Where to find $6.5 billions to save Syrian refugees
The UN is embarking on its biggest fund-raiser ever in order to save millions of displaced Syrian refugees who are at risk of freezing to death this winter.
Six and a half billion is a small fraction of what the financiers of the Syrian crisis have spent on funding the war. Since they are the ones who have created the crisis, should they not be the ones to pay for the consequences?
Spare me the hands-out nonsense, Mr. Ban Ki-moon. Embargo the assets of the Saudi and Qatari sovereign wealth funds. It's no secret that those are the folks funding the "rebels" in Syria.
The Saudi's have over 600 billions in their piggy bank; the Qataris at least 100 billions.
If they can afford the war, they can afford to cough up this 6.5 billion.
Six and a half billion is a small fraction of what the financiers of the Syrian crisis have spent on funding the war. Since they are the ones who have created the crisis, should they not be the ones to pay for the consequences?
Spare me the hands-out nonsense, Mr. Ban Ki-moon. Embargo the assets of the Saudi and Qatari sovereign wealth funds. It's no secret that those are the folks funding the "rebels" in Syria.
The Saudi's have over 600 billions in their piggy bank; the Qataris at least 100 billions.
If they can afford the war, they can afford to cough up this 6.5 billion.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Crawford and me
Crawford was a hard luck guy who almost made it in the world of road construction. Coulda been up there with Cox and that obnoxious guy who ran Atlantic Paving.
By the way, that obnoxious guy who ran Atlantic Paving still owes me a steak dinner, on account of a bet we made way back in the 80's. He'd bought a farm way out the country end of Paisley Road, thinking he'd be growing subdivisions within a year or two.
I knew enough about the business that I knew he was full of shit, so I told him he was full of shit.
So he gets all huffy and says to me, "Neumann, mark my words, I'll bet you a steak dinner that in two years we couldn't stand here because the cars will be running us over."
At the time, we were standing in a corn field at the corner of Paisley Road and County Rd. 32.
It's still a corn field 35 years later, so where's my steak dinner?
Real estate speculation isn't always the slam dunk you think it's gonna be.
But back to Crawford.
Way before he and me crossed paths he had a major gravel operation going on up Durham way. Used to supply gravel to road-building projects all over south Ontario. Then one day disaster struck.
According to Crawford, and he told me this story many times, the very day that his insurance agent had come round and assured him he was insured for everything, one of his drivers backed into the support pillar for one of his gravel hoppers, causing a chain reaction that took out about a million dollars worth of equipment.
This would have been back in the 1950's, when a million dollars was a million dollars.
I saw enough family photos from Crawford's wife Jean that I knew they'd been real close to grabbing the brass ring before that happened. Had the nice house and the new Cadillac and the whole nine yards.
Long story short, Crawford turned up in my world twenty years later. My dear daddy had bought a Supertest gas station on the edge of Guelph, purportedly so that I could get a part-time job, as I was in high school at the time.
Obviously his thinking at the time was that I was too retarded to find my own part-time job.
In hindsight, he was right.
So Pop buys this Supertest station from this old Polish guy, hires Crawford to run it, but makes him hire me as his gas-pump guy. At least after school and weekends.
Crawford had by then midwifed several unsuccessful careers in the lee of the great gravel pit tragedy. The irony of that episode was that the one calamity that neither Crawford or his insurance agent had foreseen was one of Crawford's own trucks taking out his own operation on his own property.
He was covered for everything, but he wasn't covered for that.
By the time me and Crawford worked together he was pretty much a hard-core alcoholic. One day I was up on the roof of John's Supertest, fixing up the waterproofing on a skylight, when I saw a hand reach up over the eve...
It waved around a bit, and then started running up and down the eve trough. I was transfixed... and then the hand miraculously pulled a pint of whiskey out of the eve!
That's where Crawford stashed his fix!
In hindsight, I think I should have showed the man a bit more respect. As it was, I made a game of hiding the booze he was hiding. Find his fix, take a snort, and replace it five feet down the eve...
Old Crawford would go into a panic...
I'm about the age now that Crawford was then, and I can finally appreciate how unfunny that funny stuff was.
By the way, that obnoxious guy who ran Atlantic Paving still owes me a steak dinner, on account of a bet we made way back in the 80's. He'd bought a farm way out the country end of Paisley Road, thinking he'd be growing subdivisions within a year or two.
I knew enough about the business that I knew he was full of shit, so I told him he was full of shit.
So he gets all huffy and says to me, "Neumann, mark my words, I'll bet you a steak dinner that in two years we couldn't stand here because the cars will be running us over."
At the time, we were standing in a corn field at the corner of Paisley Road and County Rd. 32.
It's still a corn field 35 years later, so where's my steak dinner?
Real estate speculation isn't always the slam dunk you think it's gonna be.
But back to Crawford.
Way before he and me crossed paths he had a major gravel operation going on up Durham way. Used to supply gravel to road-building projects all over south Ontario. Then one day disaster struck.
According to Crawford, and he told me this story many times, the very day that his insurance agent had come round and assured him he was insured for everything, one of his drivers backed into the support pillar for one of his gravel hoppers, causing a chain reaction that took out about a million dollars worth of equipment.
This would have been back in the 1950's, when a million dollars was a million dollars.
I saw enough family photos from Crawford's wife Jean that I knew they'd been real close to grabbing the brass ring before that happened. Had the nice house and the new Cadillac and the whole nine yards.
Long story short, Crawford turned up in my world twenty years later. My dear daddy had bought a Supertest gas station on the edge of Guelph, purportedly so that I could get a part-time job, as I was in high school at the time.
Obviously his thinking at the time was that I was too retarded to find my own part-time job.
In hindsight, he was right.
So Pop buys this Supertest station from this old Polish guy, hires Crawford to run it, but makes him hire me as his gas-pump guy. At least after school and weekends.
Crawford had by then midwifed several unsuccessful careers in the lee of the great gravel pit tragedy. The irony of that episode was that the one calamity that neither Crawford or his insurance agent had foreseen was one of Crawford's own trucks taking out his own operation on his own property.
He was covered for everything, but he wasn't covered for that.
By the time me and Crawford worked together he was pretty much a hard-core alcoholic. One day I was up on the roof of John's Supertest, fixing up the waterproofing on a skylight, when I saw a hand reach up over the eve...
It waved around a bit, and then started running up and down the eve trough. I was transfixed... and then the hand miraculously pulled a pint of whiskey out of the eve!
That's where Crawford stashed his fix!
In hindsight, I think I should have showed the man a bit more respect. As it was, I made a game of hiding the booze he was hiding. Find his fix, take a snort, and replace it five feet down the eve...
Old Crawford would go into a panic...
I'm about the age now that Crawford was then, and I can finally appreciate how unfunny that funny stuff was.
60 Minutes presents... Christian Towelheads!
 |
OK, there's your Coptic Pope... And here's your top toweller. And what's the difference, other than one's got the white rig and the other got the black rig? It was a remarkably telling episode of 60 Minutes. Seems like they are trying to re-establish their bona fides after some of their recent mishaps. The first two thirds of tonight's show was dedicated to singing the praises of the NSA. Yup, that Snowden chap was one bad dude. Hurt America something terrible. You know; that America of secret prisons and torture etc. Snowden almost wrecked it for those folks. And those Copts, god love 'em, just because their Pope manned up to support the Army after the coup they are suddenly the victims of all sorts of religious persecution. We gotta put a stop to that! |
RIP Jack Munro
Reading the remembrances for former IWA leader Jack Munro I am struck by how widespread the recognition is that he was a labour leader from another era.
Here's one of the better ones.
Munro was IWA President when I joined that union in 1979. Thanks to the IWA I was making a well above average middle class income as a maintenance welder. I worked for a small millwright outfit, but our work took us into sawmills all over southern Vancouver Island.
It was good work, good pay, and thanks to the efforts of old-school guys like Jack Munro, that was an era when you were proud of your union affiliation.
While it's tempting to say those days are over, I'm going to be a glass-half-full guy and predict that there will be another generation of Jack Munros, Jimmy Hoffas, C.S. Jacksons, and Bob Whites coming along.
There's a generation of young folks out there who can't find jobs that will pay off their student loans, let alone make a decent life. Sooner or later this generation is going to take the reins from our current generation of labour leaders. Strike action will make a return. Solidarity will once again mean something. Two-tier contracts will be a thing of a past.
It can't happen soon enough.
Here's one of the better ones.
Munro was IWA President when I joined that union in 1979. Thanks to the IWA I was making a well above average middle class income as a maintenance welder. I worked for a small millwright outfit, but our work took us into sawmills all over southern Vancouver Island.
It was good work, good pay, and thanks to the efforts of old-school guys like Jack Munro, that was an era when you were proud of your union affiliation.
While it's tempting to say those days are over, I'm going to be a glass-half-full guy and predict that there will be another generation of Jack Munros, Jimmy Hoffas, C.S. Jacksons, and Bob Whites coming along.
There's a generation of young folks out there who can't find jobs that will pay off their student loans, let alone make a decent life. Sooner or later this generation is going to take the reins from our current generation of labour leaders. Strike action will make a return. Solidarity will once again mean something. Two-tier contracts will be a thing of a past.
It can't happen soon enough.
Canadian workers f@cked again!
Just happened to be reading about a mid-sized welding shop in North Bay that recently brought in a couple of guys from Tunisia, because apparently there are no qualified welders available in Canada.
Bullshit!
In the first place, there's plenty of folks among the 1.5 million unemployed Canadians who have those skills.
Furthermore, it's a very long way from rocket science to train up welders. If this government had the slightest interest in training unemployed Canadians, they could implement a training program at minimal cost that would have welder-helpers earning their keep within a few weeks, welder apprentices within a few months, and high-end welder-fitters within a couple of years.
We've got the training infrastructure available in high-school shops and community colleges. What we don't have is the political will. That's because political will in our government is shaped by the will of the Canadian Manufacturers Association and the Chamber of Commerce, and believe it or not those folks don't have much in the way of over-lapping interests with unemployed or underemployed Canadian workers.
What they are after is cheap labour. The government connives with them by establishing the incredibly opaque "Labour Market Opinion" as the magic key that opens Canadian jobs to foreign workers. All the employer needs to do is fill out a few forms to prove that they've tried really hard to find skilled welders in Canada for $16 dollars an hour with no luck, and therefore need to hire from outside the country.
Some cubicle lifer with a BA in sociology, toiling away deep in the bowels of Citizenship and Immigration, who doesn't know shit when it comes to skilled work, gives the application a cursory once-over. She has no clue that $16 hasn't been the "prevailing wage" for skilled welders since the mid-eighties.
Bingo! The rubber stamp comes down and the employer has the green light to bring in those keeners from Tunisia.
Sixteen bucks an hour is serious money in Tunisia.
Here's a telling headline from CTV News; Temporary Foreign Workers debate shines light on labour shortage in mining industry.
What's the debate? There's a one sided drone of platitudes from various employer lobby groups about how we've neglected training skilled trades. They've been complaining about it as long as they've been bringing in foreign workers; it's cheaper to complain than to train!
The employers as a whole (I know there are some exceptional employers who invest mightily in Canadians, but they are the exceptions) would prefer to see the foreigners come in, because a trained Canadian is going to want to work for a Canadian standard of living. The Tunisian is going to be happy with $16/hr, and he's already got the skill set! See why this is a win-win for the employers?
It's also a win-win for the government. They save those training funds while at the same time appeasing their corporate backers.
Contrary to what that headline would lead you to believe, there is scarcely a debate, nor is there a shortage of skilled workers in the mining industry. What there is, is a concerted and coordinated push by employers and government to drive down the wages of Canadians.
Here's another headline, this time from Fort Mac a couple of months ago; 300 Canadians replaced by Temporary Foreign Workers. There was no national outrage over this story like there was when the Royal Bank got caught playing the same game. There was no shortage of skilled workers; these Canadian welders and pipe-fitters already had the jobs and have been displaced by foreign workers.
And where is organized labour in all this? We don't hear a lot from them, do we? Sure, go to any union's home page and they'll be flat out against the TFW program, but where are the demonstrations in the streets? Those 300 Fort Mac guys could and should shut down the Husky project. We no longer have principled union leadership like we had in the day of C.S. Jackson and Bob White. What we have now is union bureaucrats who think getting their former members a better severance package when their jobs are off-shored or handed to foreign workers is all that is required of them.
If we continue on the road we're on, in a few short years our "labour market" will be the plaything of international labour brokers, and secure jobs at a decent wage for Canadians will be but a distant memory.
Bullshit!
In the first place, there's plenty of folks among the 1.5 million unemployed Canadians who have those skills.
Furthermore, it's a very long way from rocket science to train up welders. If this government had the slightest interest in training unemployed Canadians, they could implement a training program at minimal cost that would have welder-helpers earning their keep within a few weeks, welder apprentices within a few months, and high-end welder-fitters within a couple of years.
We've got the training infrastructure available in high-school shops and community colleges. What we don't have is the political will. That's because political will in our government is shaped by the will of the Canadian Manufacturers Association and the Chamber of Commerce, and believe it or not those folks don't have much in the way of over-lapping interests with unemployed or underemployed Canadian workers.
What they are after is cheap labour. The government connives with them by establishing the incredibly opaque "Labour Market Opinion" as the magic key that opens Canadian jobs to foreign workers. All the employer needs to do is fill out a few forms to prove that they've tried really hard to find skilled welders in Canada for $16 dollars an hour with no luck, and therefore need to hire from outside the country.
Some cubicle lifer with a BA in sociology, toiling away deep in the bowels of Citizenship and Immigration, who doesn't know shit when it comes to skilled work, gives the application a cursory once-over. She has no clue that $16 hasn't been the "prevailing wage" for skilled welders since the mid-eighties.
Bingo! The rubber stamp comes down and the employer has the green light to bring in those keeners from Tunisia.
Sixteen bucks an hour is serious money in Tunisia.
Here's a telling headline from CTV News; Temporary Foreign Workers debate shines light on labour shortage in mining industry.
What's the debate? There's a one sided drone of platitudes from various employer lobby groups about how we've neglected training skilled trades. They've been complaining about it as long as they've been bringing in foreign workers; it's cheaper to complain than to train!
The employers as a whole (I know there are some exceptional employers who invest mightily in Canadians, but they are the exceptions) would prefer to see the foreigners come in, because a trained Canadian is going to want to work for a Canadian standard of living. The Tunisian is going to be happy with $16/hr, and he's already got the skill set! See why this is a win-win for the employers?
It's also a win-win for the government. They save those training funds while at the same time appeasing their corporate backers.
Contrary to what that headline would lead you to believe, there is scarcely a debate, nor is there a shortage of skilled workers in the mining industry. What there is, is a concerted and coordinated push by employers and government to drive down the wages of Canadians.
Here's another headline, this time from Fort Mac a couple of months ago; 300 Canadians replaced by Temporary Foreign Workers. There was no national outrage over this story like there was when the Royal Bank got caught playing the same game. There was no shortage of skilled workers; these Canadian welders and pipe-fitters already had the jobs and have been displaced by foreign workers.
And where is organized labour in all this? We don't hear a lot from them, do we? Sure, go to any union's home page and they'll be flat out against the TFW program, but where are the demonstrations in the streets? Those 300 Fort Mac guys could and should shut down the Husky project. We no longer have principled union leadership like we had in the day of C.S. Jackson and Bob White. What we have now is union bureaucrats who think getting their former members a better severance package when their jobs are off-shored or handed to foreign workers is all that is required of them.
If we continue on the road we're on, in a few short years our "labour market" will be the plaything of international labour brokers, and secure jobs at a decent wage for Canadians will be but a distant memory.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Why criticism of Ontario's $190 million gift to Cisco is misguided
Premier Kathleen Wynn thought she finally had an all-too-rare good news story the other day. For a mere $190 millions of taxpayer boodle, tech giant Cisco promises to spend four billion dollars in the province over the next ten years.
As a small "c" commie I find it repugnant that capitalists are able to play various jurisdictions off, one against the other, in demanding what are essentially legal kickbacks.
But while my political opinions allow me to cheerfully piss into the prevailing winds, I also live in the real world, and I realize that this is how things work.
It's how they have worked for quite some time. The reason there is a Toyota plant in Cambridge today that employs thousands of people is because thirty years ago different levels of government collaborated in luring the company to Cambridge. That meant providing a package of tax-breaks and incentives that would make Cambridge more competitive than the various other sites the company was considering all over North America. Bear in mind that they already had a plant in Kentucky at the time and could simply have expanded there.
Look at the game Boeing is playing in the US right now. They got a $120 million kickback for a mere billion in spending in South Carolina, which makes it look like Wynn struck a relatively hard bargain with Cisco. But the real eye-opener is that once they let it be known that they are shopping a future plant around for the upcoming 777, they got offers from 54 cities in 22 states.
The reason they are shopping the plant around in the first place is part of their ongoing war with their unions. In fact, that's why they have a plant in SC. The Cisco deal has no hint of that back story. Cisco is making a commitment to a high wage, worker-friendly neighbourhood by choosing to expand their operations in Ontario.
That makes the bleatings of Tory MPP Vic Fedeli somewhat ironic. He wants to take this opportunity to brand the Ontario Conservatives as the party that is "against corporate welfare." Surely Ontario voters are not daft enough to fall for that one.
Hudak and Fedeli are "against" corporate welfare, but want to lower corporate taxes and make Ontario a right-to-work jurisdiction. Maybe he's right; that's not welfare - that's just giving away the store!
As a small "c" commie I find it repugnant that capitalists are able to play various jurisdictions off, one against the other, in demanding what are essentially legal kickbacks.
But while my political opinions allow me to cheerfully piss into the prevailing winds, I also live in the real world, and I realize that this is how things work.
It's how they have worked for quite some time. The reason there is a Toyota plant in Cambridge today that employs thousands of people is because thirty years ago different levels of government collaborated in luring the company to Cambridge. That meant providing a package of tax-breaks and incentives that would make Cambridge more competitive than the various other sites the company was considering all over North America. Bear in mind that they already had a plant in Kentucky at the time and could simply have expanded there.
Look at the game Boeing is playing in the US right now. They got a $120 million kickback for a mere billion in spending in South Carolina, which makes it look like Wynn struck a relatively hard bargain with Cisco. But the real eye-opener is that once they let it be known that they are shopping a future plant around for the upcoming 777, they got offers from 54 cities in 22 states.
The reason they are shopping the plant around in the first place is part of their ongoing war with their unions. In fact, that's why they have a plant in SC. The Cisco deal has no hint of that back story. Cisco is making a commitment to a high wage, worker-friendly neighbourhood by choosing to expand their operations in Ontario.
That makes the bleatings of Tory MPP Vic Fedeli somewhat ironic. He wants to take this opportunity to brand the Ontario Conservatives as the party that is "against corporate welfare." Surely Ontario voters are not daft enough to fall for that one.
Hudak and Fedeli are "against" corporate welfare, but want to lower corporate taxes and make Ontario a right-to-work jurisdiction. Maybe he's right; that's not welfare - that's just giving away the store!
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