kimmy

And that's a reasonable argument to make. There's also a very rational argument to make against having any Western personnel involved in operations against Boko Haram, for exactly that reason. However, if a bunch of top commandos from western countries just happened to go on vacation, and a bunch of Boko Harams just mysteriously vanished from the face of the planet, that wouldn't be a bad thing. -k

I have voluntarily stepped back from this to avoid taking things further off course, and to allow people to vent if that's what they wish to do. However, I object to the charge of being a hit-and-run type. I've shown immense patience over the years trying to explain things to people like Betsy or Pliny when most people would have just given up and moved on. -k

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch at a family restaurant mid-week, and got seated near a table full of old-people. They have the answer to preventing such tragedies in the future: "You know what the problem is, is that nowadays the pilots don't know how to fly the planes anymore. They have these automatic pilots, and if the automatic pilot goes haywire, they don't know what to do! What they need to do is put a switch in so that they can turn off the automatic pilot, and that way if the automatic pilot goes haywire, then they can turn off the automatic pilot and fly the plane the old fashioned way. But they don't want to do that, because if they had that, they would have to hire pilots who know how to fly the planes and they don't want to spend any money. It's all about saving a few bucks nowadays. Everythings about money." "Oh, that is so true." I'm so grateful that we have access to the wisdom of our seniors to enlighten us. -k

US marines have located the girls, apparently. Now it's just a matter of freeing them, and dealing with the Boko Harams in an appropriate manner. I think a wood-chipper and manure-spreader would be suitable. -k

"Labor Market Opinion", the process through which the TFW program is supposed to go through to assess whether there's a real need for employers to bring in foreign workers to fill their vacancies. The employer makes an application to the program, Human Resources Canada does whatever research it is that they do, and approve or deny the request based on their findings. In recent years the Conservatives have accelerated the process by allowing employers to bypass the LMO process in some cases. -k

The statistics indicate that the majority of TFW requests now bypass the LMO process to go through the new "streamlined" process, which suggests that there's not exactly a team of crack analysts looking at these decisions. The emails that have been read in the Commons over the past week suggests that the "business buddies" theory is more likely. ... ... ... ... It seems like business-people expect their MPs to act as advocates on their behalf to the TFW program. -k

I can only assume they have been exploiting this because they can get away with it. I assume that means that either the monitoring is lax, or the punishments are inconsequential, or most likely both. Kenney assures us they're going to crack down, but until we see what punishments are handed out, and what steps will be taken to monitor employees, I think a "believe it when we see it" approach is warranted. -k

I agree that making it more expensive to hire TFWs would reduce the temptation to abuse it. But some of the stories I've been reading suggest that saving money is only the part of the appeal. They also seem to like having employees who either don't know they have any rights, or are too afraid of their employers to exercise their rights. The email from the agency advising an employer to remind the employees that they can get deported if they start acting too "Canadianized" is a case in point. As well there was a couple of cases about the housing conditions provided for TFWs. In one case, a group of 6 TFWs were being housed in an apartment in Edmonton. The employer was deducting $250 each, bi-weekly, from their paycheques, for a total of just over $3000 per month... but when the CBC checked with Boardwalk Properties, they found that the apartment actually costs $2400/month. Or the case involving the employee who claimed his employer threatened to kill him. Obviously the death threats grabbed the headlines, but among the details of that case that got less press: the employer was arbitrarily deducting penalties from the employees' pay. Take your phone out of your pocket? That's a $50 deduction from your pay. The report showed one pay statement where the employee worked 112 hours and got 0 dollars in wages. If you can charge your TFWs inflated rent and utilities, and if you can arbitrarily deduct from their wages, and if they're too uninformed or too afraid to complain about it, then it really wouldn't matter much if they're earning $11/hr instead of $10, would it? -k

The new, improved Derek?! -k

Her MO is to post a bunch of Bible and creationist stuff in the Religion section, and complain bitterly when people treat it with the seriousness it deserves. -k

I agree with what you're getting at. After reading some of these stories that have been coming out, though, I have to wonder if some of these employers would say "yep, still worth it." -k

I think he's saying it's a motherhood issue that nobody would say they're against. Like, who's going to say "no, transparency is no good. Let's have more secrecy." Kind of like "democratic reform" or "accountability" and so on. Everybody supports the general principle, but when you get down to the brass tacks it's easier said than done. -k

Nice. So... isn't it true that the Muslims in Western countries who've adopted modern ideas about equality and fairness actually constitute a small minority of the world's Muslim population?. Isn't it true that among the world's Muslim countries, Turkey is the sole bright-spot, and even at that, the best that can be said of Turkey is that it sucks less than the rest of the Muslim world? -k

I'm surprised that Justin Trudeau thought that any such proclamation was necessary. Abortion isn't a hot-button issue in Canada. It's a dead issue. The Conservatives have been in charge for 8 years and there has been not been any action at all on abortion. That alone should say all that need be said about where abortion sits as a political issue. -k

Before I watched the video, I was predisposed to assume it was another case of some self-styled alpha-male having a temper-tantrum because he wasn't getting his way. Like, the world is supposed to grind to a halt if some "alpha-male" doesn't get his way. But after seeing the video, the guy didn't really seem out of control or anything. Obviously he was angry, but he wasn't out of control or threatening. I felt like the school people-- who later admitted to being in the wrong-- were hiding behind the "2 minute rule" to stifle discussion about the situation. Maybe instead of trying to shut down that discussion, they should have just had it out. Personally I think the idea of trying to shield high-school students from controversial ideas is stupid. If they are going to require parental consent to teach students anything beyond mathematics and grammar, then they might as well just shut the whole thing down. -k

I have been thinking about something like this since this controversy broke. I mean, it's great that this person (he's a recent immigrant himself, interestingly enough) has compiled this data and made it available to the public, but it shouldn't be up to a private citizen relying on Access To Information requests to police this cluster of a program. Big thumbs up to Mr Rezel for creating this website, but why doesn't the government have this? To borrow a plank from Michael Hardner's platform, I think that transparency would really help here. This information should be provided by Human Resources Canada. That should be part of the deal in hiring TFWs. HRC displays your business name and address, the number of TFWs you have on hire, and the wage they are being paid, date of hire, date of expiry, and a link to the "Labor Market Opinion" that allowed them to hire the TFWs. Obviously the names of the workers would be redacted to protect their privacy, but other than that, there's no reason for this information to be held secret. If there's a legitimate need, and a legitimate LMO to support the decision, there should be no reason for secrecy. Suppose you or your son or daughter say you've applied at this business and that business and nobody is giving you calls. You could go to the HRC website and look up the employers you applied at, and if you find out "hey, my son applied at this business on this date and they hired TFWs instead" then there could be hell to pay. Anyway, with McDonalds and the other employers who've been embarrassed the past few weeks, as with RBC last year, it's clear that the companies who abuse this program fear public exposure. They're not sorry for what they've done, they're just sorry that they got caught doing it. -k

I agree with your point of view. However, it's England and their laws are not ours. In Canada, we had laws on the books to enforce "community standards" (I think they have been struck down by the courts) and it seems likely that such laws, if they still existed, could be deemed to apply to the sort of stuff this guy wrote. If such laws remain on the books in England, he was probably in breech of them. I think the guy is a turd, but I don't agree with jail time for this sort of thing. -k

More ridiculous stories of abuse of this program came out yesterday. The allegations from employees are no longer surprising. What was interesting to me was the email from the recruitment agency to the employer, warning that TFWs start getting "Canadianized" and becoming more demanding, and advising them to threaten to send them back home to keep them in line. It makes it clear what the recruiters are really selling. Jason Kenney can keep getting up in the House of Commons and saying the same thing over and over. "Isolated cases, blah blah blah, we take allegations seriously, blah blah, investigations, blah blah, potential criminal charges blah blah". But what I'm really curious about is what the McDonalds guy meant when he said that Jason Kenney "gets it". -k

When Bundy's cattle hit the auction block, do you think the buyers pay less because Bundy's costs were lower? The price for cattle is the price for cattle. Lower costs for Bundy translates to more money in Bundy's pocket, not lower prices for food. And once again, why should Bundy get to graze for free when other ranchers pay to graze their herds? Maybe other ranchers who graze on public land shouldn't have to pay either? And then maybe ranchers who own their own land should receive a subsidy equal to the money their freeloader counterparts will be saving? Maybe if we don't charge oil companies royalties, we can get cheap gas? What's next, allowing fast food restaurants to import foreigners so we can get cheaper hamburgers? To be clear, the play-pretend commandos in the video I posted aren't Oathkeepers, nor was the guy in the video who talked about putting the women in front. I think the video puts the mentality of these people in perspective... particularly the persistent talk about "the battlefield" and shooting "deserters" in the back. "Protesters". ha. -k

That's an interesting point. We also got Ghost back. I wonder if Arya will get her wolf back one of these days. (Sansa's wolf is gone forever, but lives on in our hearts... and in Sophie Turner's back yard. ) Arya's death list was also kind of a trip down memory lane. I was surprised the Hound was on her list, and had to think about their history. I recall now that way back early in season 1 in the episode where Sansa's wolf was killed, he killed her friend (or at least brought his corpse back to camp). I was also surprised that he was so hard on her. The scenes at the Aerie were creepy. Sansa seems doomed to be trapped at the whim of crazy-people. Once again we get a rare glimpse of Cersei's human side. Her scenes with Margaery and with Oberyn showed the softer, vulnerable side that she keeps hidden. I assume that her suddenly conciliatory tone with Margaery is because she knows that despite what she thinks of Margaery, the Lannisters need the Tyrells as an ally. Despite her grief she seems almost relieved that Joffrey's psychotic antics are at an end. Hodor! Tywin's admission that the Lannister gold mines have run dry puts even more importance on the growing issue involving the Iron Bank. "A Lannister always pays his debts" may end up being their epitaph. Road-trips involving unlikely pals seems like an ongoing thing. Earlier we had Tyrion and Bronn, then Jaime and Brienne, then Arya and the Hound and now Brienne and Podrick. I was relieved by the resolution to the Craster's Keep mess. I had a growing sense of dread that Bran would end up captured by Bolton's henchman. -k

Taxpayers don't "pay into" public lands. Taxpayers receive revenue from public lands. Revenue from public lands helps pay for healthcare and schools and take care of old-people and poor-people. Public land is a resource, and if some business operator wants to exploit that resource for his own profit, he has to reimburse the public for profiting from our land. That principle holds whether it is an oil company paying royalties, or a timber company paying for the trees they cut down, or ranchers paying grazing fees. Why should Cliven Bundy get to graze for free? Why should he have a leg up on ranchers who own or rent the land they graze on? I'm not sure that putting out a call for armed mooks to come to your aid qualifies as "outsmarted", exactly. And if you think that the federal authorities are scared of the morons we saw in the videos, you're crazy. The federal authorities are scared of creating another Waco incident where they end looking bad for massacring a bunch of idiots. Your buddies should be very grateful that the authorities have learned from Waco. The guy in that video wasn't an Oathkeeper. Here's the "sit-rep", men: the Oathkeepers received "intel" (probably a 14 year old on Twitter or something) about an incoming Obama Drone Strike and decided to "evac" the "battlefield" "ASAP". The remaining faction of the militia suspect the Oathkeepers were complicit in a government plot to undermine the entire "op". These Super-Patriots will explain it for you in their own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPM5znJruKg&feature=youtu.be -k

He is on record as being strongly opposed to safe injection sites. I suspect he thinks it's a terrible waste of taxpayers money, when people could just head over to his sister's basement. -k

You apparently live in a black and white world. You don't seem to see any difference between marijuana and crack, and you don't seem to see any difference between supporting legalization of marijuana and supporting a raging substance abuser as a major of Canada's biggest city. There's no hypocrisy among those who don't want the government to spend its money and resources harrassing people for using marijuana but don't think a crack addict should be mayor. Also, mandatory minimum sentences "keep people safe"? Are you being sarcastic? I don't think anybody here is opposed to rehabilitation instead of incarceration. I don't think anybody here is saying that Rob Ford should go to jail for smoking crack. It looks to me like everybody here is in agreement that he needs to get help. If you're arguing that other drug addicts won't seek help because of the way the media treats Rob Ford, I think that's a silly idea. If Rob Ford was not the mayor of Canada's largest city, the media would not care what he smokes. Aside from Ford, the only other people whose drug problems are in the news are other celebrities. -k

I don't think workers who came here should be evicted. This isn't their fault. Some of them have been saddled with debt to the recruitment agencies that lured them here. They should be allowed to finish the terms they signed up for. Attrition will take care of the problem, provided that they stop allowing new TFWs in. After reading some of the articles about how the TFWs are treated, maybe unionizing TFWs is a good idea. From what I've read, the common practice for housing TFWs is that the employer rents accommodations for the TFWs and pays their utilities, and deducts the cost from the workers' pay and they don't get itemized breakdown of costs. The potential for abuses is obvious. I read an article about agroup of TFWs in Edmonton who were being charged, collectively, $3000 for an apartment that rents for $2400. In Labrador, 26 TFWs were being housed in a rented house, crammed in so tightly that some of them were sleeping in closets or on the couch outside. Sounds kind of like the "company town" system from the old west. -k