Pat Coghlan

Jobs disappear and re-appear, true. But only since the 1960s? Do you know anyone with the family name Wright? Do you know what a wheelwright is? Do you know why wheelwrights no longer exist? Have you noticed how most full-service gas stations have turned into self-serve, with a small grocery store? And have you noticed how many corner garage gas stations have turned into coffee shops, or simply don't exist anymore? How many people lost their jobs with such changes? Would you prefer a world in which we still had gas jockeys cleaning your windshield and checking your oil? A world in which car engines needed an oil check every 2000 miles? How much would such service people earn now, if they still existed? We could return to a world of typewriters and paper and duplicated memos and long-distance telephone calls. Or, we can live better in a world of Skype and e-mail. (If you don't like this VoIP world, you can go back to the previous system. It still exists.) ----- The purpose of life is to eliminate jobs. When you eliminate your job, it means that someone gets your salary for the job that you used to do. The trick is to be that someone. Then, you'll get one salary and you'll earn another salary too with the free time you'll have. No society became rich by protecting jobs. If the Chinese can produce cars more cheaply than we can, then that means we don't have to do the work of producing cars. If lasers could remodel your old car, would this be a bad thing? It's like finding a new energy source, or a faster computer. We'll eliminate jobs, and we'll be richer. What the hell are you smokin'? The process works, in general, when 2% of the workforce is affected each year. It falls apart when suddenly 40% of the workforce finds that their job has been moved to China. When you take the automotive job away from the high-school educated worker in Oshawa...and you close the plant - possibly others - what happens to those thousands of people who suddenly "have a lot more time on their hands"? I suggest you read "War On The Middle Class".

BS. New grads start at 40K. See http://salarywizard.monster.ca if you don't believe me. Okay, how about this fact. I started my career in the 80's at a salary of $18K. Within 2 years I was making over $30K and bought my first new house (Ottawa) for $70K - or just over 2x my salary. What does a high tech grad make after 2 years these days? $65K? Can you buy that same house for $140K? In fact, that same house costs about $270K now (I shoulda kept it and paid it off 10 years ago, but that's another story). Can you see how buying power is being eaten away and that salaries are not keeping up? That's why you need 2 incomes to get by today.

Well put. When a country no longer has a vibrant middle-class, how can it have a bright future? While it's very easy to say that, it isn't borne out by the facts. The growth in tax revenue for the Federal Government appears to be coming, in part, from higher earnings on the part of Canadians. That doesn't jibe with the contention that the work force is shifting down overall. Any support for that assertion? The unemployment rate in Toronto is something like 4 pts higher than that in St. John's Nfld. Never happened before. If there is growth in tax revenue, it's not coming from the middle class. Have you read Lou Dobb's "War On The Middle Class". Good insight into what's going on. Also, I work in high tech, as do most of the 8 guys I regularly play poker with. About 3/4 of them have been laid off from different companies over the past 4 years. Does that tell you anything.

Well put. When a country no longer has a vibrant middle-class, how can it have a bright future?

Not that long ago, the post office was central to the payment of bills, receiving cheques etc. - and there were constant strikes. There's still a post office, but people can opt for electronic bill payment, e-mail etc. Seen any mail strikes lately? When clients have some choice, service improves. This is the trend that needs to be sustained in education.

Universities have been here for a long time. Apparently, if we penalise plagarism, over half of our students will fail or be expelled. We can't have that, so... The ones who depend entirely on cheating should be expelled. I used to be a visiting lecturer for 1st year engineering students at a local university. Some students "cooperate" on some assignments, while some outright copy answers word-for-word on tests. Even when you're making 100 exams, you remember patterns. When I found a true copy, I kept the two parties after class and gave them the choice to tell me who did the copying, else they would each receive 1/2 the result. The one who copied usually fessed up and dropped the course. If the public board was to start tolerating the latter type of copying, this would be quite tragic. Another reason to register your kids in the Catholic board.

Why, so 100% of school boards will have their hands tied re: dealing with students who cheat on exams/assignments, as announced today by the public board?

Why *all*? Okay, if there is only one salesperson in the store, he/she should probably be bilingual, but what if we're talking about a GAP store that has 8 staff members in the store? As long as a bilingual staff member is available, not every employee needs to be bilingual, wouldn't you agree?

Which, to the best of its abilities, it does, when it comes to offering services in both official languages, requiring bilingual packaging etc. In reality, though, Canada is not a bilingual country. It is a country with one predominantly French-speaking region (Quebec/NB), and the rest of the country in which one can live and work their entire lives using only English. No legislation is going to change that. The only remaining battleground is the workplace...and then only in Ottawa/Gatineau, thus the impetus for this thread. At the end of the day, it's just too inefficient for the private sector to do everything in both languages. Lately, if you visit any store or mall in Ottawa, you will find that the signs are almost exclusively English-only. In Gatineau, it's hard to find an English sign.

R U a "Dark Shadows" fan? Funniest post I've seen on this site :-)

Four premiers disagree. Let's have a referendum and see how many Canadians disagree with this change. If it's less than 75%, I'll eat my hat. Do more than 75% of Canadians know anything about Parliamentary mechanics or constitutional law? Only 5% can identify our head of state, 69% thought it was the Prime Minister... so I doubt they're really experts on Senate reform. You don't need to be an expert to know that Senate reform has been talked about for over a decade and that it is wrong to give a guaranteed (appointed, without any competition) job to age 75 to these guys when most people will be bumped out of their jobs without a pension by age 60 in Canada.

Four premiers disagree. Let's have a referendum and see how many Canadians disagree with this change. If it's less than 75%, I'll eat my hat.

I've just run into so many former tech workers who, at 50+ have to take jobs driving buses, working at Home Depot, selling insurance etc. that it drives me crazy that anyone would defend the practice of guaranteeing a job until age 75 to someone who never had to compete for their post.

Why? Is YOUR job guaranteed for 15-20 years? What percentage of senators do ANYTHING after leaving the senate? At least with most public service jobs there is a competition so that the best (?) candidate gets hired. If senators want similar job security, shouldn't they at least have to compete for their jobs as well?

Whenever I meet someone who either personally has been on language training, or had their manager/director etc. go on language training, I make it a point to ask them how much they use their newly-acquired second language skills. The answer is pretty much universally, never. This is no surprise. In Ottawa, this is the language that is used on the job, unless providing a service to the public or employees. In Montreal, it's French. Again, no surprise. The only surprising thing is that we continue to pretend that by training anglophones in Ottawa to speak French, and francophones in Montreal to speak English, that the minority language will somehow be used as the language of work...or even that it somehow makes sense that we should. My 80% number might even be low, plus I haven't included all those who retire immediately after language training or those who were sent on language training mostly because they were malcontents and their manager didn't know what to do with them.

I think you will agree that to use a language effectively one needs to speak it at least a certain number of minutes per day. For the nth time, I will point out to you that 80% of language school grads never even use it again after returning to work. If 80% of the positions that are classified bilingual in Ottawa rarely if ever require the employee to use French in the performance of his/her job, how can you ever expect the employee to make use of it? Please explain why we're bothering to classify positions as bilingual AT ALL if the second language isn't going to be used at least, say 10% of the time. Why is it that you're so in favour of a practice that in effect serves only to keep most anglophones out of a number of positions? You, like the current language policy, are idealogically driven. Your attitude towards this wasteful program is simply to hire employees which are already bilingual, which 80% of the time means hiring a francophone. At the end of the day, that is what this program (and you) are all about, IMHO.

Are you aware that all EX-1 level positions, and above, are priority 1 bilingual, thanks to Chretien? That means that if you don't already have official language results, you can't even apply. This is true everywhere in Canada. Well, you and every other taxpayer are paying lots of taxes to train employees in a second language, even though 80% of them eventually go back to work and never use the second language. If you acknowledge the above, and it's still not an issue for you, then I presume you expect to benefit from this artificial language requirement somehow. Well, billions spent every year on language training, 80% of which is wasted. BTW, Canada is a country of two official languages, but many other languages. The last time I got on a plane in Vancouver they did the boarding call in English and Cantonese; no French.

And what is Quebec's example? Adopting French as the language of work throughout the private and public sectors. Much less emphasis on classifying public sector jobs as bilingual, with lower standards and less policing. Many federal jobs that are classified bilingual are staffed by people who've never even been tested. This is from someone I know who used to work for Official Languages in Montreal.

Well, unfortunately Quebec is doing the best that it can re: removing English from just about everywhere except certain parts of the private sector. In RoC, French is pretty much non-existent in the private sector for practical reasons, but it is being imposed on more and more public sector jobs (the same thing is NOT happening with English in public sector jobs in Quebec). You can't have a highly bilingual public sector in RoC, when it's pretty much a unilingual French public sector in Quebec, outside of Gatineau. The whole program needs an overhaul. If Quebec is going to continue down the current road (and they will) then it's idiotic to make bilingualism a criteria for an increasing number of public sector jobs in RoC, especially when 80% of the time the second language is never used. The only thing this achieves is ensuring a healthy supply of jobs for francophones in RoC. I can only assume that you support this program for the same reason.

There are some people that would have no problem if every government job was classified as bilingual, and some the complete opposite (all jobs in a region unilingual). Personally, in view of the fact that 80% of people in bilingual positions rarely use the second language, I'd opt for either much stricter criteria for classifying jobs as bilingual, or quotas. Either would ensure that we don't end up with something like 50%+ of all jobs being declared bilingual. Even better, we should just do what Quebec does at the federal, provincial and municipal level re: language of work and percentage of jobs classified as bilingual. Or, is there a problem with following Quebec's example???

Quotas would place an upper limit on the number of positions that can be designated bilingual. Sure, anybody can apply for a bilingual position if they have the language skills, but how many anglophones living in Ottawa have the (official) language skills for bilingual positions? Ditto for francophones living in Montreal or Quebec City. Keep in mind that 80% of the ones that are designated bilingual don't actually require the employee to use the skills on the job significantly (10%), if at all. Quotas would ensure that 50% or more of the positions aren't classified bilingual over time.

You're talking about a bunch of Liberal party bagmen and failed candidates whose primary loyalty has always been to their meal tickets. Of course they'll hold up any such thing. No Liberal ever cared about anything as much as what he can get out of the trough for himself. Ain't it the truth?

The feds already have bilingual staff throughout the NCR. The question is, at what point is the government saturated with bilingual staff. We already have far too many positions classified as bilingual, judging by the number of people that actually use their second language in the performance of their work. So, we either face facts and stop all this wasteful training and cut back on the bilingual requirement, or you fill the federal government with francophone employees, since the anglophones can easily live and work in Ottawa entirely in English. Of course, the answer is quite relevant to this thread. The same decisions need to be evaluated for the other levels of government. If bilingualism isn't really working in the federal workplace, it would be a big mistake to extend it to the other levels of government.

Apparently this bill, which is 9 lines in length and limits senators to 8 years in office, has been held up in the Liberal-dominated senate for over a year. Wonder why eh? Perhaps they want the government to shorten it to something like 2 lines etc.

Very simple. The (usually francophone) manager changes the classification and sends it off to the classification folks, subject to little - if any - scrutiny. I also mentioned that about 80% of the people I've polled haven't used a word of their second language since going back to work, so clearly there's some basis for questioning the number of jobs being classified as bilingual. Good jobs in the private sector are getting harder and harder to find, which leaves the government as one of the best employers in Ottawa. A large number of jobs are being unnecessarily classified as bilingual. We are sending people 2 years away from retirement on language training for 2 years! Language training is also used as a place to send malcontents that don't get along with anyone. Yes, there is a problem with the way we've implemented bilingualism. Productive means more results with less labour. Clearly, if 80% of candidates aren't making use of the hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in their language training, this isn't being very productive (ditto for sending people on language training right before they retire).