Coping with Christmas chaos

(December 30) - It is great to be Canadian at Christmas. No matter how we celebrate, there is a common thread of community and family, of sharing and generosity.

We love to go home for Christmas. Sometimes that means staying right where you are. Sometimes home is thousands of kilometres away. This year, getting families together in Canada was more of a challenge than usual.

It took our son 26 hours, door to door, to get from Whistler to Guelph. It could have been longer, and for some people it was. His flight was scheduled to arrive in Toronto at about midnight on the 23rd. It didn’t. It was two hours late getting out of Vancouver. When we saw the delay, we asked Red Car to get him.

Given the weather and short notice they couldn’t make any promises. They weren’t sure when the plane would arrive, nor that there would be a van in the airport when it did. So off we went to get him ourselves.

The roads were awful, and top speed on the 401 was about 50 kilometres per hour. I spent about 10 years commuting up and down that highway. It was about as bad as I’ve seen it, but still passable. We found ourselves behind a truck whose driver didn’t seem to harbour fantasies about running the Indy 500. We stayed comfortably behind it for most of the trip.

At about 1:45 a. m. we pulled into the parking garage at Terminal 3 and found our way to arrivals area B. Flights were landing. People came out of the baggage gathering area and into the arms of waiting friends and relatives. It was hard to say who looked the most tired, those who were waiting or those who were waited for. There’s not an awful lot to do in a situation like that. You make pleasant small talk while standing and staring at the monitors.

We concentrated on WestJet flight 626 which was listed as delayed, arriving at 2:13 a. m. We began to suspect things were going wrong when it still said this at 2:45. About five minutes later a change flashed onto the screen. The flight had been diverted. Mild oaths rumbled through the crowd. We didn’t know where it had been sent. In a moment of wild optimism we thought maybe it went to Breslau.

At that time of night there was no one from WestJet to be found. There was nothing to be done but head back home. We were still in the parking garage when our son called. The plane had circled over Toronto a few times, then peeled off and went to Montreal. It was landing there by the time the airport monitor message changed.

All the WestJet "customer service" agents must have been comfortably tucked away in their beds, because there were none on the job in either Toronto or Montreal.

We made it home a little after four, and Red Car dropped him in our driveway 12 hours later. About 24 hours later we had 19 people for Christmas dinner. One from Scotland, one from Prince George, one from Whistler, one from Vancouver, one from Stratford, four from London and the rest from Guelph.

All’s well that ends well, and our Christmas did. A lot of other Canadians weren’t so fortunate.

One thing still rankles, though. The people who run the airports and airlines like to hide behind a mask of helplessness, saying they are unable to control the weather. That’s all well and good, but they can control service levels.

They have cut back to the point where service is barely adequate in good times, when everything is running smoothly. Throw in the uncertainties of a good old-fashioned Canadian winter and they can’t cope with the chaos. Three planes, from Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, were diverted to Montreal in the wee hours of the morning and no one was around to explain anything to anyone.

When this all catches up to them and people stop paying good money for poor service, you can bet what will happen. The airline will rush to Ottawa, cap in hand, begging for bail-out money.

They’ll probably get it.

Handing out Christmas gifts

(December 22) - It is Christmas and I have something good to say about the Prime Minister. Not a tongue-in-cheek thing, and not a back-handed compliment disguising a thinly veiled insult. Nope. It is an honest-to-goodness point of agreement: an elected Senate. An idea whose time has come.

The one we have now was constructed to mirror the British House of Lords. They have lifetime appointed peerages; we have lifetime appointed senators. Or close to lifetime. They get pushed out at age 75.

Unelected men and women uphold or overturn decisions made by elected men and women. They act on behalf of the person who heads the family that rules the Commonwealth. This person got there not by merit but by selective breeding.

I have something for the PM’s Christmas stocking: a poultice to cleanse the carbuncle of monarchy from the buttock of our body politic. We need to rid ourselves of appointed senators and governors-general. There is a lot wrong with politics south of the border, but two elected houses isn’t part of it. Because it’s Christmas, I’ll pledge to help Harper get this done if he asks me to.

There’s something for Jack’s stocking as well. He’s the only national leader who’s ever set foot inside my house. I put some eggs on to boil and made him a chopped egg sandwich.

I can offer him a copy of Poker For Dummies. If he had this on his bookshelf a month ago, he might be Minister of the Environment today. Instead, he took a look at the cards he’d been dealt, laid them on the table and stood up looking like the cat that ate the canary. He was reaching over to rake in the winnings when he noticed a royal flush in his opponent’s hand. Always keep the cards close to your vest until the other player is forced to fold.

Santa Claus and his reindeer might stop at Liz Sandals’ place on Thursday morning and give her a lift to Mexico and Jamaica. They could drop her off with the families of labourers sent home by Rol-Land Farms. She’ll see first-hand the poverty they endure and the health problems they develop from pesticide exposure and poor working conditions. When she gets home she can return the gift.

Workers on factory farms now have the right to unionize. She could convince her provincial and federal colleagues to stop the quick and easy deportations of men and women who choose to exercise that right.

When the Christmas sleigh gets to Carden Street, Santa could reach into his sack and pull out a team of lawyers. They will help our mayor launch a legal challenge to Murphy’s Law. This is the one that says whatever can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time. It bedevils our city.

The penny wise but pound foolish council we voted out of office two years ago got the new city hall off to a very bad start. To save money, they fired the original architect and hired one whose project costs quickly mushroomed. Then they hired a construction company with very little experience on projects this size. The ground was custom designed for Murphy.

Now he’s at it again. Several years ago, Mike Harris downloaded a pile of social services to municipalities. Most went to Wellington County, but the city picks up three-quarters of the county’s bill. The McGuinty government has begun the process of taking back this responsibility. It should have removed some financial burden from the city’s shoulders.

Last week council adopted next year’s budget. Then they found out the province didn’t just take back the social programs. They also took back an operating grant. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of one and a half million dollars.

All the arithmetic hasn’t been done yet, but it looks as though there will be a net negative savings. That’s the modern way of saying we could lose our shirt. Murphy’s taking it.

To all of you good readers, whatever you celebrate, do it peacefully. Spend some quiet time with the people who are close to you and give a stranger a gift of kindness.

Empower parents to end child poverty

(December 16) - Child poverty is a relative thing. If the kids’ relatives weren’t so broke, they wouldn’t be poor. This is such a simple concept, you’d think any politician could grasp it. They don’t seem to, because poverty endures.

Last week the Ontario government released another poverty reduction strategy. It hopes to reduce child poverty by 25 per cent in five years. It is an ambitious plan with about as much hope for success as every other they’ve trotted out in the last 20 years.

It’s been 19 years since the federal government passed a unanimous resolution to eliminate child poverty by the end of the last century. The kids living in poverty today were not even born then. They will grow up and have their own children, most of whom will also live in poverty. It’s a tough cycle to break out of. Some people will, many won’t. Some willpower and determination is involved, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

Poverty isn’t a behaviour problem or a character flaw. It is a financial black hole that can trap families for several generations. Family poverty is the real issue that politicians must come to grips with. You can’t do a thing about child poverty unless you empower parents to go beyond the basic ability to provide the bare necessities of life.

It’s about to get worse. Most automobile makers, whether North American, European or Asian, are in a mess. General Motors is shutting down for the month of January. Probably into February as well. When assembly lines stop, parts plants grind to a halt. A lot more people will be put out of work before this is over. Losing your job is one of the first steps on the slippery slope to poverty.

Another awful thing happened last week. The Supreme Court ruled that it was unlawful, but allowable, for the Canadian government to use the massive EI surplus for general revenue purposes. The insurance premiums were paid by workers and employers into what you might call a rainy day fund. It is storming out there now, but the $54-billion umbrella is missing. In case anyone wants to help search for it, it was last seen while Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were supposed to be guarding it.

At the same time as this is going on, we see the demands that accompany any public assistance to the auto industry. On both sides of the border, government loans are conditional on the companies closing plants, laying off workers, and cutting the wages and benefits of those who remain. So on the one hand we have the federal and provincial governments saying they want to end poverty. On the other hand, they advocate public policy that will increase poverty.

So what should they do? For a start, a provincial poverty reduction strategy should stop clawing back a portion of the national child tax benefit from families receiving Ontario Works payments. They should also reinstate the winter clothing allowance. They should raise the minimum wage and the Ontario Child Benefit now, instead of waiting until 2010- 11. The only way to end poverty is to put more spending power into poor people’s pockets.

The feds should immediately put the pilfered EI surplus back where unemployed workers can get at it. If they give the Big Three auto companies the $7 billion they are asking for, it should not be a loan. It should be a purchase. The condition of sale should be that they start designing and building cars that are not reliant on fossil fuel. Put the internal combustion engine into a museum. Get the workers busy assembling buses, trains and rapid transit that will not destroy the planet. Then, a few years from now the government can sell the companies back to the private sector at a tidy profit.

There don’t seem to be many politicians working in Ottawa who have much more than a passing acquaintance with long-range visions. Most can barely plan their way out of the next political mess. We’ll have to wait another election or two before the people in Ottawa and Toronto wake up to reality.

Meanwhile, when you get your layoff notice, don’t think of it as a pink slip. Think of it as a Christmas greeting from Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty.

Such a parcel of rogues

(December 09) - An unusual word found it’s way onto the tip of the public tongue last week. Prorogue. Used effectively in a game of Scrabble, it can earn a skilled player as many as 92 points. The opponent may become demoralized, but can still play.

Used effectively in a game of politics, it can earn a skilled player much more. It brings to mind the familiar Scrabble player’s gambit of knocking the table over and spilling the tiles across the floor. It stops the game while the players argue about who was ahead when the crisis erupted.

Argue is just what the players will do for the next two months. If you think the attack ads during the election campaign were overwhelming, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the man who knocked the table over, has been spreading a blanket of befuddlement over the entire process. When he wasn’t telling half-truths last week, he was telling outright lies. Expect a lot more of the same over the Christmas season.

Sadly, Harper is not our only source of confusion. Frank Valeriote has appeared confused for the past week. In his first major test since the election, he has not looked strong. He was for the Liberal-NDP coalition. Then he was against it. Then he was for it again. Now that Paul Martin is gone, is Frank contending for the Mr. Dithers title? It looks as though he deserves it.

There was a small rally in favour of the coalition in St. George’s Square last Saturday. It wasn’t a huge crowd, and Valeriote’s absence was noted by those who did show up. He should have been there. During the election campaign, he claimed to be in favour of uniting Liberal, NDP and Green voters to stop Harper. That is what the coalition was all about. When it came time to stand and be counted, he was absent.

The opposition continues to circle around Harper. He slipped through their net once and could do it again. He pledged to use every legal means available to prevent the Liberals and NDP from forming the next government.

As I see it, the only thing he has left up his sleeve is to present a budget and then, if the Liberals still have the stomach to oppose him, ask the Governor General for a new election.

She might refuse, but not likely. She is the Queen’s representative, and the Queen is our head of state. Only on very rare occasions does the Queen refuse to do as the Prime Minister tells her. For 800 years our democracy has evolved by taking power away from the palace and putting it into parliament. For the past half century, since the days of Pierre Trudeau, Canadian power has been shifting away from Parliament and into the Prime Minister’s Office.

The coalition government would have been constitutionally and democratically acceptable. It could have brought sound and stable government to Ottawa. It is shameful that Harper and his cabinet members used inflammatory language describing it as an anti-democratic coup, and all the other lies he cooked up.

Last October the Canadian people elected 308 members of Parliament. We did not elect the prime minister. In our parliamentary democracy we don’t do that. The job goes to the leader of the party with the most seats. If the party changes leader, we get a new prime minister. To keep the job in a minority government, he or she needs support from members of other parties.

Harper lost that support, so he loses the job. The next chance should go to another leader who commands the support of the majority of MPs. Nothing undemocratic about it. Nothing about the last election would have been overturned.

We might still get the coalition at the end of January. I think we should, but I also think we won’t. Michael Ignatieff, Stéphane Dion’s sudden successor, doesn’t like the idea. It is obvious that Valeriote is not keen on it either.

Last week, the opposition lined up on the platform and watched the train leave the station without them. They are unlikely to get a second chance. It looks now as though many of them don’t even want one.

It all brings us back to the word of the week. In 1791, Rabbie Burns wrote about a "parcel of rogues in a nation ". There’s a bunch of them in Ottawa, and Harper is the pro.

It’s time to spend on infrastructure

(December 2) - The layoffs are still coming at us, fast and furious. Last week Linamar called out another couple of hundred people who used to have jobs. Their work is not going south this time. The economy below the border is in worse shape than ours. Linamar jobs are melting in the same puddle as the automobile industry.

Love it or hate it, this is the industry that brought relative prosperity to hundreds of thousands of families in southern Ontario. Many of them right here in Guelph. From Guelph Products to Linamar, Guelph workers make parts for cars. They make them for Chrysler, for Ford, for GM. They make them for Toyota and Honda. Wherever cars are assembled in Ontario, it’s a good bet that parts made right here go into them.

Linamar is the second largest automobile parts producer in Canada, second only to Magna. They are suffering now because General Motors and its cousins are suffering. There is a general perception that the American car companies are in trouble because they kept building cars no one wanted to buy. This is a simplistic truth that doesn’t reflect a complicated reality. Too many people south of the border couldn’t afford to buy the cars. They were overextended by a financial system that could not sustain itself.

What should the government do about it? Should it provide money to bail out the auto industry? The very idea makes a lot of people howl with rage. Many of them applauded last May when the province gave Linamar $2 million to develop solar powered electric lawn mowers.

Why can we give public money to create new jobs, but not to protect old ones?

Simply giving cash to the corporations is not the answer. What we need is an infrastructure renewal program that will create jobs and bring some purchasing power back to Canadian families.

Spend some money rebuilding concrete bridges and parking garages. They are starting to fall apart after forty years of being splashed with slush and rock salt. Give money to the cities to repair roads, sewer lines and other necessities.

Invest in public transit and new forms of personal transportation. Autoworkers can assemble electric cars if someone will pay them to do it. Federal regulators should end the foolish ban on them.

Co-ops and other non-profit housing projects across the country are in desperate need of repair, but they don’t have the money to do it. Start a program to upgrade existing housing stock and build new homes.

Loosen the EI system to help unemployed workers. Negotiate fair trade agreements that protect Canadian jobs while helping workers in foreign countries. When the economy gets going again, buy the things your neighbour helps to make. Look for the Made in Canada label.

This is the sort of stimulus the economy needs. Barack Obama seems to recognize it and has promised to go big when he takes office. Our government is keeping its head in the sand. It’s not that last week’s economic statement failed to address the crisis. It didn’t even make an attempt. In the face of the worst financial crisis in modern times, the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister are paralyzed. They don’t know what to do, so they do nothing. They hope the future will fix itself. It never does.

Stephen Harper, well known as a control freak, is losing his grip. By this time next week, we might see a government that more accurately reflects the will of the people. Sixty-two per cent voted against the Conservatives, but we still found ourselves under their rule. Most Canadians outside Quebec had either the Liberals or the NDP as their first choice. The two parties might now form a coalition. It could be the best hope we have of surviving this recession with the least possible damage.

One of two possible side effects will come out of these very strange two weeks. Stéphane Dion could escape becoming only the second Liberal leader who failed to become Prime Minister. Or Stephen Harper will be forced to mend his ways. To survive as Prime Minister he will have to negotiate with the opposition parties and stop making every vote an all or nothing vote of confidence. Can he do it?

One way or another, there’s hope for the country after all.