Canadian Politics

[M1ke]

This is vague and ominous

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...tawa-1.6523811

After reading the article, it doesn't seem vauge to me.

Money donated to the convoy goes missing, and suddenly this group that's obviously being run by the same people who organized the convoy buys a building for about $6million dollars, and denies that they're connected. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening.

It'd take years of investigations and likely court battles to get the evidence the prove what is obviously happening here. The white supremecists who created the convoy took the funds donated to it, and have purchased a building and are trying to build their support even further.

I've come to recognize that misogyny and white supremacy will never actually be defeated, and that everyone until the end of human's time on earth will need to remain vigilant to stop it's spread.

[MrLobster]

From COVID care to cancer, there's a pattern to Danielle Smith's 'alternative' medical thoughts

What trash thinking she has....

[mfte]

hahahah...

Doug Ford Swallows Bee

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...-bee-1.6549613

[M1ke]

This is vague and ominous

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...tawa-1.6523811

They're squatting in the church now, the sale fell through.

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/freedom-co...tice-1.6034623

And, as is customary, the right-wing nutjobs are claiming to be the victims.

[MrLobster]

This Ratfucker podcast is wild........ it's gonna get ugly.

[botley]

This Ratfucker podcast is wild........ it's gonna get ugly.

Just binged the entire series, including bonus episodes for subscribers. Billions of dollars in emergency PPE contracts awarded to cult-owned businesses.

[MrLobster]

Billions of dollars in emergency PPE contracts awarded to cult-owned businesses.

...and just look what it's done for us.

[M1ke]

For anyone who's been paying attention to the CUPE strike here in Ontario, this is what I suspect Ford's next move is (and probably the reason he pushed the union the way that he did):

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...e-and-vouchers

The Ford government could have negotiated, but they didn't want to. The second offer they made was worse than the first one. They had no interest in meeting in the middle, they wanted this strike. The only thing that might save us from the voucher system that they're aiming for is other unions joining the fight, just to keep the focus on the fact that the government did this and didn't have to:

https://globalnews.ca/news/9256606/c...arios-bill-28/

[Mister Squishy]

That's exactly what I've been telling people around me here, Botley. I'm a teacher myself and I think that's 100% what's going on here.

I think a lot of people find it hard to imagine that the government's goal is to actually dismantle the public education system as we know it in Ontario (one of the best in the world, according to Ontario teacher's colleges...), but I think it's where we're headed if we don't make a loud enough noise in response.

I'll be there on Saturday.

[M1ke]

He hasn't gone voucher yet, he's trying the lying through his teeth approach first to try and get people to blame CUPE.

I'll be out on Saturday too, though I'm not sure whether I'll stay local or make a trip to Queens Park.

I'm a member of the PSAC, and my union leaders have expressed solidarity, but haven't called for a sympathy strike yet. I've let them know that I'm on board if they call for it, but they haven't done that yet.

[thelastdisciple]

I was in the pharmacy last Friday to pick something up and the two pharmacists and the person ahead of me were chatting about the strike, all three of them were expressing disgust about it and blaming the teachers/union. Basically saying things to the effect of "the children have been through enough and this is going to make things worse, my poor Johnny was in tears today." along with one of the pharmacists saying something like "I wish i made even a fraction of what these teachers are making now, if you ask me they have no grounds to complain"...

I really wanted to say something but I was vastly outnumbered and well unfortunately this is the only gin joint in town for me to grab my shit so.... I just boiled on the inside and left.

[botley]

Pretty sure Ontario pharmacists take home at least $80k+ annually — double what most of CUPE's education support workers are making.

Both important and valuable jobs, but if the shoe was on the other foot......

I hope today Ford realized that he can't just do away with little inconveniences like the collective bargaining rights of workers.

[MrLobster]

[M1ke]

If you live in Ontario, I think it's worth reaching out to your municipal government representatives about Bill 23.

https://archive.ph/muaSb

Almost every municipal government out there is raising alarm bells about this bill, but at the moment the Ford government doesn't seem to care. And it's true that municipal governments exist entirely at the discretion of the province, but I think that they might get something done if they all banded together similar to how all the unions banded together to support CUPE.

Pretty much every municipality is against this, I would love to see them all work together to stand up and say NO. If they work together, this thing might be able to be improved. Probably not stopped entirely, but at least improved upon.

[botley]

Woof, anybody catch Pierre Poilievre promising to murder thousands of people?

[MrLobster]

Fucking UCP.

I think she's going for "Queen of the Sky Palace".

[mfte]

Fucking UCP.

I think she's going for "Queen of the Sky Palace".

Jason Kenney

[MrLobster]

We haven't taken enough time to laugh at PP losing in that Dec. 12 byelection.

[botley]

We haven't taken enough time to laugh at PP losing in that Dec. 12 byelection.

Proud of my idiot neighbours, insofar as they did the bare minimum by not voting for a cop in embarrassingly large numbers.

[M1ke]

https://twitter.com/MattIngramNEWS/s...wRU-OXJKg&s=34

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!


Also, the reporter had to pick THAT beer store to go and interview people from. Anyone who knows St Catharines knows how sketchy that location is, there is zero chance that they picked that one randomly.

[mfte]

Toronto doesn't have a great track record with its Mayors.
At least John Tory wasn't smoking crack.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/02/...-affair-woman/

[M1ke]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cra...date-1.6805148

I don't know if anyone but me (and others who might be on strike soon) is following this, but here I am to talk about it.

Since I started, we've given strike mandates two prior times, and in both cases, we were able to reach agreements without walking off. But every union steward says that things feel different this time. And it certinaly does to me too, there's a lot more strike prep going on than I've ever seen.

When they union announced they were going to take the votes, I thought we'd give the mandate, then get the contract without striking, like we have in the past, but I'm not sure of that anymore. I'm actually starting to think that we'll likely be on strike by the 24th.

[MrLobster]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cra...date-1.6805148

well, I hope it gets resolved favourably...

[MrLobster]

https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/timeline-...ases-1.6349988

[botley]

^ What a shitshow. Thanks for the entertainment, Alberta!

[MrLobster]

^ What a shitshow. Thanks for the entertainment, Alberta!

And we have an election next month...

[MrLobster]

[M1ke]

I think we're actually going to walk out this time. This is definitely different than the last two times we've voted in favour of a strike mandate.

In the past two times, we had contracts that were around 4 years expired, and people had just had enough and gave the mandate, then the agreement was reached almost immediately. There really wasn't a lot of prep work done to get ready for a strike, because it was called off almost immediately.

This time we're only about 1.5 years into an expired contract, and nobody was really doing anything to suggest we wouldn't wait until it hit 4 years for us to take another vote again.

Then in December, this happened: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...ment-1.6687390

And everything exploded. We had plans for a hybrid work environment that were explicitly communicated by management to be decided on a job-by-job basis, based on whether or not the job had functions that actually required a person to be in the office. Most jobs at the CRA don't require a person to be in the office. Less than 24 hours before the announcement, we had another email from the commissioner assuring us that we'd be sticking with our plan and had no plans for mandatory presense. Our bargaining team was pushing to have work-from-home codified into our collective agreement a few days before the announcement, and the push-back we were getting was that it didn't need to be codified because we weren't going back.

And then Mona Fortier announced we were all going back. She's justified it by saying that we're going to be collaborating more, but our teams are spread across the province, so when I do go into the office, I collaborate with my team via MS Teams anyways (of 13 people who report to me, only 2 are in the same office I am). She's repeated that it's the "right of the employer", but the employer has been explicitly dictating that this would not happen right up until the sudden u-turn.

With no notice, no plan, and no explaination that actually makes sense with how we work, it launched all of us into chaos, and had the union immediately up in arms. Everyone in the agency was angry, stressed and confused. It's not that big of a deal for me, I live very close to my office, but I feel bad for some of my team members who are driving 45 minutes each way twice a week for no actual reason. I feel worse for those who have had to scramble to find child-care. One of my employees had sold her car when she was told we'd be working from home permanently, only to have that rug pulled out from under her, forcing her to buy a new one. Another person I know moved to a place that's 2 hours away from their nearest office.

And now we're here. I don't know if the treasury board thought we'd strike over this, but they should have known this was coming. People made life-altering decisions based on the previous direction that was given to us by senior management, and the rug was pulled out from under us with no warning. We had assurances that this wouldn't happen right up until the moment it did.

Add to that the crazy inflation and a big gap in the negotiations on wages, and we're in a strike position much more quickly than anyone would have predicted before Christmas. The thought is that Mona Fortier (who happens to be the MP who represents Ottawa) made this decision at the behest of local politicians who have seen businesses in the downtown core struggling, and want additional customers coming through, without any thought about how it might impact our operations, or any concern for how it would impact the people it was being forced on.

And it's been a disaster, both in terms of government spending and employee relations already.

IT spending went through the roof, as they prepared workstations that were emptied out, so that they could be used again. Bandwidth requirements within the offices skyrocketed, as everyone coming in would now be using MS Teams for video chats, when we weren't before. Accomodation expenses were doubled, as any accomodations that were set-up in an employees home now needed to be recreated at the office. The wasted administration time dealing with new accomodation requests from employees who can't actually work from the office and were hired for jobs that were advertised as exlcusively remote, trying to get exemptions approved has been massive. Many of our buildings are old and provide poor cell phone reception, while all of our employees now use cell phone that they didn't use before. This whole thing has been an massive expensive disaster, even before we got to the point of a potential labour disruption.

If the government says they can't pay us because they can't afford it, that's bullshit. They've already spent more to force us back to the office than they would have on salary increases.

I don't know what's going to happen here, but everyone I work with is angry and ready to fight. I don't know if the government expected this and they're ready, or if they'll back down, but I'm really getting the impression that we're actually walking out this time.

EDIT: Part of what makes me sad about this, was when our comissioner was asked if this was being done because of productivity concerns when working from home, he was explicit that this had nothing to do with productivity, and that productivity was actually up since we switched to working from home. He said that there was some debate about our agency remaining with our hybrid model, but that it wouldn't be fair to do that, as it would make everyone else in the public sector want to move to our workplace instead. He basically admitted that we were making ourselves a worse place to work, so that other places didn't have to measure up.

[MrLobster]

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/ndp-chal...iews-1.6354976

45days until the election....

[M1ke]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...live-1.6812693