Moonbox

Oh god guys. You're making me laugh out loud.

This guy is a nut job. Found his profile on Linkedin. Absolutely crazy.

Wow that was really well said. I couldn't agree more.

Our public servants, particularly the ones doing low-skill work (ie. bus drivers, clerks etc) are way overpaid and have been for a long time. Successive governments' short-term policies of appeasement have led to the problem, and now the only solution is layoffs and service reductions. It's a pretty sad when getting a government job (municipal, provincial or federal) is widely considered/known to be a golden ticket to early retirement with a fat pension.

In Topaz carnival-world, putting an end to a scam (ie. long-standing and widespread E.I. abuses) appears to be a scam itself.

If the fishing industry is viable, the canneries or packaging plants should pay more for the raw fish and consumers could pay more for the end product. Let the market decide if it's viable, not you.As for looking at the numbers, I got a good little chuckle out of that. If I were you, I'd try to avoid discussions involving numbers, particularly those involving economics, because you clearly don't have a clue. The suggestion that perpetually subsidizing a failing industry actually benefits the economy as a whole is a hippie/burnout fantasy that's been debunked a thousand times over by economists of every stripe throughout history. I suggest you do a little research into that. Cases can be made for subsidies where the government wants to hasten development of a new/growing industry, or to prop up an industry in the short term suffering from a shock to the economy (ie a massive recession), but never as a long term solution. Perpetual subsidies aren't good for the economy. They never have been, and they never will be. I understand that this isn't good news for the community of tree planters, landscapers etc., as their snowboarding holidays or trips to Vietnam won't be paid for by the taxpayers as easily, but alas, that's the way things have to be.

and it didn't include anything even as close to as bad as the USA's Indian Removal Act.

I think any violence on the First Nations' part will be met with in kind, and not by the military or police. If anything, it would take the police to keep the First Nations safe, and they know this. If there is violence, it will be the odd fringe yahoo, just like it is in any other culture or group, but certainly not matching a frothing jihadist.

I'm more concered with the deliberate and sometimes explicit policies for the genocide of the American Indians in the 1800's and before. Also, Smallpox had no more trouble spreading through Canada (particularly Ontario/Quebec) than it did through New England or the American mid-west.Really, this is all irrelevant to the actual thread topic. I was merely responding to bush_cheney's usual trolling.

uh huh.... http://history.state.../IndianTreaties Like this right? It only took 10 years for the US to solve their Indian problem in the American south. Just put guns in their faces and move them!

Well murdering/relocating the natives is certainly a good way to makes sure they don't cause any problems later. Nobody is arguing against that!

There are about 1.2M Indians or whatever you want to call them in Canada. Considering Canada's population is about 1/10th the size of the United States', it seems that Andrew Jackson and pals were rather efficient in eliminating aboriginals in their territories. Let's ask the ones the American Army 'looked after' in the 1800's to get a fair comparison, okay?

Yeah systematic relocation and genocide are much better. Get it over quick and don't worry about it anymore, right?

Oh okay. What do you think the victims of the Indian Removal Act would have thought about this?

and what you fail to realize is for seasonal work to be economically viable, it should pay enough to get the worker through the year. The fact that it needs to be perenially subsidized by the government suggests that it's either not a viable industry, or the workers aren't being paid enough. If it's the former, too bad. If it's the latter, then seasonal jobs being left open should lead the boat operators to pay better wages which might get the workers through the year. A 2,3 or 4 month holiday is something most Canadians can only dream of, and we don't relish the idea of our taxes dollars subsidizing idleness.

If only Canada had followed the USA's example in dealing with aboriginals, right? Thanks for stopping by again bush. As always, your input is invaluable.

So get Theresa Spence out of the picture and get a spokesperson with some credibility and common sense.

Any violence would be instigated by the First Nations, and it would be an extremely regrettable decision on their part and wouldn't get them anywhere. That would galvanize popular support against them AND set the Courts against them as well. What were really want here are honest, good faith dialogue and intentions. Theresa Spence has proven that she's not trustworthy . Her track record as well as recent behaviour have pretty much proven she's not acting in good faith nor is she willing to cooperate or compromise. For positive results, both sides need to have good faith and good intentions. If you want positive results from dialogue, don't throw your support behind a duplicitous idiot like her, who's moronic escapades have made the situation far worse than it needs to be, and expect the other side to have any measure of comfort/trust, or to listen fairly and seriously.

Okay fair enough. Those quotations were directly from the aadnc website. I pulled them right off the PDF of Deloitte's Letter to Management, which I read in its entirety along with a few other documents posted there. I did not, however, review the full audit line by line because I understand what an audit is, the terminology they use and I read financial statements for a living. If you have specific criticisms or points to note from the actual audit that change how we should be perceiving things, then I'll take a look at it, but I know that the summary of the file presents almost literally a worst-case scenario in terms of audit results. When an auditor says there's no documentation, that's what it means, and they have a professional responsibility to be accurate and impartial in their findings.

I'm not asking you to pass judgement. The evidence is there and it's damning. What I'm trying to do is point out how silly some of the defenses/excuses have been for Theresa Spence's behaviour, and how she's the absolute worst spokesperson the First Nations could find to start a productive dialogue with the government. Well the auditor general went through the books. This was a boondoggle, no doubt, but no-bid contracts aren't the same thing as money disappearing altogether. Why do you keep bringing this up? I hope that you can understand the different between between a bungled/mismanaged project involving a vast bureaucracy (eHealth), and money actually going missing altogether amongst a tiny handful of people. Regardless, Sarah Kramer was forced to resign and David Caplan's political career ended over this. A better comparison would be the Liberal's Adscam, and we don't have to go over the consequences there. Regardless, one scandal does not excuse another, nor provide any framework on how to deal with another, especially when they're this unrelated. The changes the government was allowed to impose were limited. Regardless, the situation has improved now and that's largely because of these changes and because the band is receiving far more scrutiny and has been publicly embarrassed. They didn't change their practises because they wanted to cooperate. From start to finish? No. There was no reason to. Quotations like the following tell us everything we need to know: An average of 81% of files did not have adequate supporting documents and over 60% had no documentation for reason of payment. and There is no evidence of due diligence in the use of public funds. Michael this is literally the worst possible outcome of an audit. The language of an audit does not get any more negative than that.

Michael, come on. It's not a matter of things being run differently on a reserve, or on Attawapiskat specifically. There is zero possibility that the band didn't know they were doing something wrong, and not just because record keeping for spending public money is common sense on the most fundamental, virtually cave-man level . We know they knew better because the issue was brought up numerous times on different occasions over a period of years, and they ignored the warnings. You're at least touching on the issue in the part I've highlighted, but you need to go a bit further. They understood the rules, they disregarded them and they did so knowing that nobody would have a clue how the money was spent. Would you not agree that this is really, really unbelievably basic common-sense stuff?? I'm sorry, but questions like that are fluffy. What I mean by that is they're directing us into unnecessarily vague territory in which we can't really have a meaningful discussion. I'm not going to prepare a specific metric for Theresa Spence's job performance, nor is Stephen Harper. It realistically can't be done. What we can do, however, is judge her based on very obvious criteria for things like due-diligence and care for the responsibilities and vast sums of money entrusted to her and her band. In that she's failed miserably. Without this basic first-step, how is anyone supposed to judge her performance on anything else? How do we know if she squandered money on stupid projects that went nowhere, or if she spent money wisely? A red-herring. We're not talking about government transparency. That's another topic altogether. If you know of vast sums of money disappearing without record in the government, please let me know. I'll be equally outraged, and at least there I have the option to do something about it. Well first of all, going forward, the goal is for 100% of spending to be documented, immediately, because that's an easily achievable goal. If they can go backwards and put together earlier ones, that's great too. That's not what I was talking about though. What I meant by goal setting is how can the federal government have a realistic idea of the needs of the Attawapiskat reserve when we have such terrible accounting for the money already spent? How do we know if more should be sent, or less? As far as we know, as much as 50% of that could have been completely wasted/hidden/stolen. That's the situation Theresa Spence and her band put Attawapiskat in, and that's what the federal government is left dealing with. The change was forced on the band. It wasn't voluntary. It took co-management and third-party management to force them to wise up. That's how little they were willing to cooperate.

*Yawn* Let's add the environment into the debate over pension reform too, or education, crime prevention and the military while we're at it too.

We're arguing about this in light of Theresa Spence's protest. I'm not sure if she can be fired, arrested or whatever given the results of the audit. What we do know, however, is that she has zero credibility and as such any dialogue with her will be taken with that in mind. If the reserve actually want positive action and meaningful dialogue, they should dismiss her and find someone with a brain and some integrity. You think they all illustrate a point, and I believe that you feel they're relevant, but raising vague and fluffy or tangential questions only work if the responding poster correctly guesses your implied point. In many cases here, your point isn't clear, nor is your position, so we're left scratching our heads. That's interesting. Maybe you and I have different understandings of the term bad faith. Could you please explain to me then, what the decision process might have been for Theresa Spence's band for not keeping track of how they were spending taxpayer's money? You can call it incompetence, sure, but it wasn't incompetence in the sense that they didn't know any better. They received numerous complaints and warnings over a significant period of time without improvement. I'm fascinated to hear your opinion on this. Another meaningless, fluffy question that yields an obvious answer but misdirects from the topic at hand. Sure, good or bad management is subjective, but that's a term that you brought up and I never suggested that as the standard of measurement. What the Attawapiskat band should be gauged on is what their job responsibilities were and whether or not they performed those job responsibilities. They clearly did not. It's rather difficult to set those standards or to negotiate what needs to be done on a reserve when you have no freaking clue where the money you already sent has gone. As for accounting standards moving forward, I'm certain the Attawapiskat band has been embarrassed and/or forced to fix things, so that shouldn't be a problem moving forward. Is that all we need to consider though? No. There's still Theresa Spence and her protest to resolve, and then where we go from here. Her profound incompetence and/or corruption, however, have royally f'd things up, confused any future negotiations and made the situation way more difficult for both parties, especially considering her most recent behaviour. She's severely damaged the credibility of her band and her reserve, and by extension the First Nations as whole (as many chiefs have pointed out). She's also single-handedly crushed public sympathy for her cause in the average Canadian and outraged many, which matters to the federal government.

It wasn't a real question. It was rhetoric, and a red herring at that. We all know the answer to the question, which is no, the Premier can't force the replacement of the mayor of Toronto, but the implications of your question are based on the fallacal assumption that the City of Toronto is even remotely the same thing as the Attawapiskat reserve. I'm not sure if you're referring to the accusations that your questions are bunk, but a bunch of them are, such as the one above. It's not the audit's job to make those conclusions. The audit's job is ONLY to tell us whether diligent records were kept and if the accounting appears to have been done legitimately. The whole purpose of the audit is to give an opinion on whether or not the money was properly tracked. The conclusions of bad faith are based on the series of events that led up to the audit, mainly being that long-standing deficiencies were discovered with the accounting, numerous complaints and warnings were brought up and the Attawapiskat band still made no little to no effort to remedy the situation. The end result of $50-60M worth of cash unaccounted for was not a surprise or a one-time thing. It was ongoing. There is zero chance that the Attawapiskat band was unaware that their level of record keeping was unacceptable because they were told and warned numerous times that it wasn't. That, my friend, is operating in bad faith. It's because all the accounting firm does is help prepare the books as best as they can. They're not certifying that records are accurate or sufficient because they never had access to the necessary information in the first place, particularly not in this case. Perspective about what constitutes good management? That's a pile of tripe, sorry, as is your fluffy implication that the gross incompetence and bad faith dealings of the Attawapiskat band don't really have any bearing on the current situation. As far as anyone knows, the situation in Attawapiskat is way worse than it needs to be because of Theresa Spence and her band. Make your point explicitly then. The fact that we're having to interpret your vague suggestions, implications and questions is probably why we're getting frustrated with you. It's hard to tell what you're saying, if anything. It's like we're arguing against fog.

Your question was an irrelevant misdirection. Argus said that the province can remove/replace disfunctional school boards. He did not say the premier could fire the mayor of Toronto, nor did he imply it. What unsubstatiated assertions/accusations? I think my criticisms have been pretty clear, and they've definitely been substantiated by the audit. Let's stick with that. Does it appear to you that Theresa Spence and her band have acted in good faith? Honestly? The point of the protest is to get dialogue going with the government, or to embarrass it into doing something (ie abolishing the omnibus bill). An honest, good-faith dialogue with Theresa Spence is not going to happen, because she's proven herself untrustworthy, incompetent and belligerent and shown zero desire to be cooperative. Outside of appealing to her constituents (not hard to appeal to a group of people in poverty when complaining about the government), she's not building any sympathy and, as numerous other First Nation's chiefs have suggested, doing the opposite not just for herself but for the rest of the First Nations. The auditor didn't accept anything. The accountants who had been looking at Attawapiskat's books raised numerous concerns in the past and were summarily ignored. They have no authority over the band and what they say are merely suggestions, generally made diplomatically at that. Ah. Another misdirection. How does this have any bearing on the current conversation?