Month: January 2016

Unless current trends miraculously reverse themselves, market watchers will remember 2016 as the year Canada went to hell, stranded in No Man’s Land in a war among the world’s biggest central banks. The loonie and crude have yet to find a floor. Unemployment is expected to top 7% but stats will be misleading. As EI benefits run out, the destitute turn to the underground economy. The taxpayer loses any which way.

Meanwhile, Canadian investors are so terrified of losing their nest eggs in a bear market they’re sitting on $75 billion of excess cash. Remember former Bank of Canada head Mark Carney calling out Canadian corporations for sitting on cash reserves rather than investing in productivity? Carney’s ‘dead money’ estimate is thought to be closer to $600 billion than it was when Carney said it. The banks scold us for lacking faith in Canada, but in an economic environment this bleak, who feels like investing?

Besides, not everyone is hurting equally. As NDP leader Tom Mulcair notes in a fundraising plea this week, Canadian banks earned a record $35 billion in profits in 2015 and handed out $12.5 billion in bonuses. According to Disgruntled Tom, those same banks eliminated 4,600 good-paying Canadian jobs last year alone.

We’re looking at a planetary crisis. Earlier this week, an Ottawa symposium on income inequality sponsored by the Hill Times heard that as 2015 drew to a close, 62 people held the same amount of wealth as the world’s poorest 50%.

…the wealth of the one per cent richest people in the world amounts to $110-trillion, which is 65 times the total wealth of the poorest half of humanity. An international network of tax havens allows the world’s elite to hide $7.6-trillion. – Oxfam International’s Ricardo Fuentes-Nueva

…which brings me to why I like Bernie Sanders for president of the United States. I recall the first time I heard Sanders explain his Robin Hood tax. Sanders would tax stock transactions at half a percentage point, less for bond and derivative trades. Bernie estimates it would raise $300 billion a year to cover free tuition at every public college and university in the U.S. His supporters estimate the collective student loan debt is close to $1.3 trillion, much of it at unsustainable interest rates.

A whole lot of ifs stand in the way. If Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, if Michael Bloomberg doesn’t spoil a Sanders/Trump shootout. And of course, if Bernie wins with the  Democratic majority he would need to pilot socially divisive legislation through the House and the Senate.

If it adopted such a measure the U.S. wouldn’t be alone; Britain, Germany, Switzerland and China tax financial transactions. The Trudeau Liberals would put themselves on the right side of history by including a made-in-Canada transaction tax in the upcoming budget. Sooner or later, the world’s central banks will have no option but to agree to measures that will have the effect of reining in wealth flight, corporate extortionists and fiscal tax havens because of the human cost of extreme wealth inequality and injustice. An equality tax is a modest first step.

Unless his lawyer wins a stay of sentence, Toronto cop James Forcillo will spend four years in prison for pumping too many shots into drug-crazed teen Sammy Yatim.

Before you read any further, watch the video (the Globe and Mail has the best edit). I had to watch it half a dozen times to get a clear idea of what happened that July evening in 2013. Stripped to basics, the video shows Yatim clearing out a TTC streetcar with his breast-grabbing, penis-exposing, knife-waving antics, then waiting for the police. Sometimes he’s immobile, other times pacing, but never making a move to leave the vehicle. When they arrive, the cops order the kid to drop the knife. Yatim takes a couple of steps toward the back of the streetcar, then moves into the doorway.

We see two, then three police officers 20-30 feet from the door. One of the cops has already assumed a firing stance. He drops Yatim with a three-shot volley. The shooter fires six more times. We see Yatim’s foot in the frame, jerking as five of the shots strike him.

It was on the basis of this video and weeks of testimony that the jury concluded Forcillo didn’t murder Yatim. They determined that Forcillo’s initial three-shot volley was in self-defence, so they did not find him guilty on the unpremeditated murder charge even though those first three shots killed Yatim.

We’ll never know for sure, but I think we can assume the jurors decided they had to find Forcillo guilty of something. So they got him for the attempted murder of the kid he’d already killed.

Thanks to the Harper government, attempted murder carries a four-year minimum sentence, which is why Forcillo’s lawyer proposes to challenge the constitutionality of mandatory minimums. Given the Supreme Court’s allergy to anything the Harper Tories rammed through Parliament, I’ll be interested to see how they deal with this.

The video I saw showed the execution of a skinny strung-out kid by a burly cop armed with the latest perp-stopping technology. It took me back to the first time I saw a police execution, the ambush of two bank robbers outside a caisse populaire on the south shore by members of the SQ holdup squad. I was a rookie police reporter but I knew what I’d seen was wrong. Since then I’ve chronicled maybe a dozen police executions, beginning with the 1987 murder of Anthony Griffin by a Montreal police officer. I can’t speak for the rest of Canada but most extrajudicial execution victims in Quebec seem to be members of visible minority and cultural communities – or aboriginals.

Before you accuse me of stereotyping all police officers as stone-faced killers, understand this: Canadians have assigned the job of dealing with society’s most disturbed individuals to our police forces. Whether it’s some poor soul off his/her meds having a psychotic episode in public, sex predator, jihadi terrorist or revenge-driven ex, it isn’t you or I who answer the 911 call. I can find sympathy for some cops who kill because they’ve never been taught or equipped to do better. Others should never have been hired, let alone armed. Political complicity is the reason why cops investigate cops, why cops are ready to perjure themselves to protect a colleague. We are moving past this. But we are moving far too slowly.

The Forcillo jury came to a ridiculous verdict. There’s nothing else to call it. But they’re like Canadians everywhere, sick of watching our police departments dealing inappropriately with society’s problems. Are we better off buying our cops better guns and   body armour or forcing elected officials and their top-cop appointees to move past the platitude-ridden bullshit we’ve been eating for far too long? One can only hope Canada’s top court recognizes this verdict for what it is – a call for help in stopping killer cops.

Well, lie. Spout platitudes. Make nice.

The trouble with New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair is that he’s a fighter, not a lover. Canadians, always apt to vote while looking in their rear-view mirrors, dumped the Harper Tories. Quebeckers bitching about having elected a Liberal government have only themselves to blame.

Justin Trudeau and his caucus have four thankless, grinding, troubled years ahead in a world economy that bears no resemblance to what we were seeing 365 days ago. From the messages coming out of Davos, the worst lies ahead. The Liberal agenda has been bushwhacked and it’s highly unlikely next month’s budget will change this let alone what the New Democrats and Conservatives decide at their respective conventions.

My only regret is that Mulcair isn’t leading Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. I’d drive to Ottawa to catch QP if he was.

Hudson residents ask me what’s going on at their town hall, and with reason. For example, sharp-eyed residents consulting the minutes of the Dec. 16 budget meeting on the town’s website will note a significant change from the budget presented to residents.  The bottom line ($12,053,290) is the same as that adopted in December, but the administration has made a few crucial changes, such as adding $592,840 for public transportation. That was left out of the December budget presentation, but unless you took screen shots of the Powerpoint, taped the whole show or finagled a copy, how was anyone to know? Of course my confusion may be a function of my inability at basic math, so I’ll reserve further comment until the town files its budget with the municipal affairs ministry. One assumes this will be posted on the municipal website as in past years.

•••

Then there’s the $2,086.80 the town spent last fall on hotel rooms for the Radio Canada production crew in town to shoot a Petite Séduction episode. I was skeptical taxpayers would be asked to foot the bill to put them up, given Hudson’s proximity to the Maison Mère. So I emailed my questions and got this reply from Ophélie Simoncelli, the show’s researcher.

Nous avons tourné une magnifique émission à Hudson cet automne qui, sans aucun doute, aura de belles retombées sur votre communauté! Cet épisode sera diffusé en avril ou en mai prochain – nos calendriers de diffusion ne sont malheureusement pas encore complétés.

Les municipalités qui posent leur candidature pour recevoir La Petite Séduction le font en toute connaissance de cause. Le conseil municipal doit d’ailleurs adopter une résolution en ce sens, sachant qu’il doit réserver un budget pour la réalisation des activités et pour l’hébergement de l’équipe. L’équipe est sur le terrain 12 heures par jour et doit profiter de chaque minute de lumière pour faire la plus belle et la meilleure émission possible, voilà pourquoi nous sommes logés sur place, même si la municipalité est à une heure de route de Montréal.

Grâce au comité de citoyens qui a piloté cette Petite Séduction avec la complicité de notre équipe, Hudson profitera d’une visibilité enviable sur les ondes de Radio-Canada. Nous sommes regardés par une moyenne d’un million de téléspectateurs, d’un océan à un autre du pays.

Cet épisode sera à l’image de votre communauté : une émission colorée, aussi touchante qu’amusante, qui laisse une belle place à vos magnifiques paysages et au divers talents de vos concitoyens.

En espérant que vous apprécierez cette Petite Séduction à Hudson!

The council indeed adopted a resolution approving a maximum expenditure of $10,000.

I’ve since been told other expenses were incurred in staging the shoot but have so far been unable to quantify them. As for les rétombées economiques hinted at in Mme. Simoncelli’s email, residents will have to find the patience to await results. As Justin Trudeau pointed out in Davos, gladhanding and a lower Canadian dollar will take time to work their magic.

I bring this up because the shitstorm from the Petite Séduction episode appears have been behind the suspension  of Parks and Recreation Director Julia Schroeder for 15 days. The suspension, approved Jan. 15 by a council majority with only District 1’s Rob Spencer voting against, is based in part on an alleged violation of the town’s spanking new anti-harassment bylaw adopted at that very same confused Dec. 15 special meeting. Schroeder’s transgression was to have gone public with her concerns about Hudson’s indifference to the Petite Séduction shoot. A competent administration would have done a better sales job, like when Schroeder’s predecessors Mike Klaiman and Jean Chevalier recruited Hudsonites by the hundreds to vote their downtown core as one of the Seven Wonders of Vaudreuil-Soulanges.

People familiar with the file believe Schroeder is being set up for dismissal because she’s not seen by the current administration as a team player. I hope this isn’t the case. My own experiences have taught me the wisdom of seeking a more positive, proactive solution to human relations. Successful managers realize it’s easier to get things done by selling the mission at hand – and ultimately their global vision – to the people assigned to deliver the results. Willing hands mean lighter work for everyone.

Grumbling and dissent are symptoms of a deeper malaise. Firing or suing one’s critics may silence dissent in the short term but does not cure the underlying condition.

The Trudeau cabinet’s inexperience will end up costing Canadians dearly. Not because they’ll inevitably make the wrong decisions, but because of their vacillation before coming to them. Case in point: Bombardier Aerospace. The issue is whether the federal government should follow the Couillard government’s lead in propping up what analysts agree is a troubled investment. The NDP and the Bloc both favour a cash injection although neither has a clue of how much might be needed. Sad.

Theoretically the bailout money is there. Earlier this month United Technologies repaid more than $1B CDN in government loans made to subsidiary Pratt & Whitney to develop the geared turbofan engines used to power Bombardier’s C series. Although the loans were not due until 2030, they’ll be off the books by 2020. While UT never drew a direct connection, the inference was that Ottawa would have less of an excuse to say no to a Bombardier bailout.

We learned this week the Harper Tories had all but decided against staking the planebuilder to $1.3B CDN in bailout loans. Harper knew Canadians had been badly burned by the GM precedent. After the feds and Ontario propped up GM’s Canadian operation with $13.7B CDN in 2009, the automaker last August dumped a thousand jobs in its Oshawa plant. GM’s decision cost us an estimated $3.5B. Bombardier is Quebec’s GM, having moved production offshore to Mexico, Ireland and China. Despite that, the provincial Liberals pumped $1.3B CDN into a family-controlled company with no strings attached – a far cry from the restrictions and demands the Caisse de dêpot imposed on its investment in Bombardier Rail. Québec Inc., the closely entwined, incestuous circle of directorships heading this province’s largest corporations, was once its fortress. Now it’s Quebec’s economic prison.

Maxime Bernier, the Conservatives’ industry critic, has it exactly right when he says it’s a question of fairness. “Small business doesn’t have the means of paying lobbyists, so it’s always the big well-connected businesses that get [the bailouts], supposedly to create wealth.”

More proof of the Trudeau government’s incoherence: the pre-emptive announcement by Transport Minister Marc Garneau that Ottawa would not grant regional carrier Porter Airlines landing rights for commercial jets at its downtown Billy Bishop terminal. Despite polls showing Torontonians evenly split on the question, Garneau put a fork in any interest Porter may have had in buying the CSeries. If Ottawa can’t bring itself to believe in Bombardier, why should taxpayers? Garneau’s motivation appears to have been purely political — the Trudeau Grits had promised during the election campaign to ensure jets were not allowed at Billy Bishop. If so, it’s one of a diminishing number of election promises the Trudeau team has kept or will keep.

I believe the Canadian economy is in the early stages of a tectonic shift. There’s little doubt oil prices will recover — eventually and somewhat. The world consumes 97 billion barrels daily. Canadian oilsands production accounts for roughly two million — the estimated world overproduction cited as the reason we’re awash in cheap oil. Once the major Mexican, North Sea, North African and Middle Eastern producers have driven the U.S. shale and Canadian oilsands producers out of the market, prices will be allowed to recover, but not so much the sun starts to shine on capital-intensive fracking, deepwater drilling and oilsands expansion.

What’s this mean to Canadians?  Federal deficits and provincial austerity measures. A 65-cent loonie. Higher prices for almost everything, coupled with a pathological fear on the part of the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates because of the indebtedness of the average Canadian household. Unemployment is guaranteed to increase as gun-shy corporations hunker down. We don’t know the full extent of the exposure of Canada’s major banks and financial sector to resource extraction debt but you can bet the Seven Sisters will survive by cutting services and firing their little people. The Liberals will come under enormous pressure to counter that and I don’t think they have the balls to stare down the financial establishment. I hope I will be proven wrong but pharma has yet to develop a vacillation vaccine.

My advice to the PM and Finance Minister Bill Morneau: it’s either jump or be pushed, so pick your target and make the leap.

Projected against the backdrop of the faltering Canadian economy, a federal refusal to pump more cash into aerospace would not be out of line. The problem lies in this government’s inability to make those important linkages that demonstrate an overall understanding of how the Canadian economy works. Trudeau and company can get by on blaming their predecessors for betting the ranch on oil, but sooner or later they’ll have to present Canadians with a coherent, comprehensive plan that moves this nation past that. The Bombardier bailout — or refusal — should be a part of that bigger picture.

Th

Back when, Hudson mayors were notoriously cheap. The late Taylor Bradbury kept a shovel in the trunk of his Caddy and legend has it he would stop to dig out a blocked culvert instead of calling public works. I wonder what Bradbury would make of $7 for a litre jug of windshield washer juice.

The pennypinching former Sun Life CEO must be spinning in his grave at the profligacy evidenced in the list of payments released at the Jan. 11 council meeting.

Some ratepayers might be okay with the town cutting a cheque for $1,200 to the Montreal Pipes and Drums Band or $500 to les Zouaves de Je Ne Sais Pas Ou for their appearances at the Santa Claus parade. I have an issue with spending money for the sake of spending money, like $2,086 to the Holiday Inn in Vaudreuil-Dorion for the 15-person production team here last fall to shoot an episode of La Petite Séduction. To what purpose? The RadCan production’s Xmas show featured celebrity chef Ricardo in St. Sauveur, where there are things to do. But Hudson? The dilapidated downtown core, replete with shipping containers and other blatant zoning violations? Potholed streets? Pine Flats? A guided tour of Hudson’s scandalously overpriced infrastructure projects and the homes of the key players? The Hudson episode is scheduled to air sometime this spring. Any bets on the net effect on tourism?

Advertising without a campaign plan is money squandered, like whatever it cost for those impossible-to-decipher Welcome to Hud5on banners. A spelling mistake? A reference to the 150th anniversary, now over? Whoever came up with these oddities should have consulted a graphic designer. One out-of-towner told me she had to stop her car to be able to read them. I preferred the duck.

Hydro: Nearly 20 grand, according to the last list of payments. Hydro bills two months at a time, so I’m assuming the bill doesn’t include December. Lighting up Hudson’s splendid firehall costs almost $4,000, followed by the Community Centre ($3,782) and the sewage plant ($2,800). Is there no one on the payroll capable of turning out the lights?

Then there are disturbing legal bills, beginning with $10,083 to law firm Dunton Rainville to represent an elected Hudson official in hearings before the Quebec Municipal Commission into an alleged breach of Quebec’s code of ethics and behaviour. Dunton Rainville is also representing the town in a civil action instituted by Judy Sheehan, the labour-relations specialist hired by the municipality less than two years ago to negotiate a new collective agreement with municipal employees. Dunton Rainville has also been mandated to pursue a defamation action against an unnamed person.

The town’s new DG told me recently current legal expenses are in the neighbourhood of $200,000. I’m still attempting to learn whether that’s for a year — or for active files.

Now I’m wondering whether that is why administrative expenses have shot through the roof in the 2016 budget.

We turn to the Index des memoires, an itemized list of files discussed in caucus and at working tables which resulted in resolutions the public may or may never see. This document made its first appearance at the last council meeting and like any successful striptease, hints at far more than it reveals. I identified nearly a dozen resolutions hinting at legal action — files about former employees, former DG Louise Villandré’s trial, CSST complaints and the creation of “an operational task force to implement…” something in connection with “Cynthia Maher c. Ville de Hudson Pine Lake”. Like I said, it reveals less than it conceals.

Another item reads “Article 81 recover Haulard’s computer and stolen files, demand damages and interest,” the latest instalment in the legal imbroglio involving Hudson’s former director-general and the current administration. Inquiring citizens might well be asking whether Dunton Rainville is piloting this file as well, and for how much. Prior experience has shown the current administration is fast to institute legal proceedings at considerable cost to taxpayers, then settle on the eve of court proceedings.

Far worse are veiled references to libel actions. “Préjudice personnel — atteinte a la reputation. Citizen.” […] “Valente c elses and Hudson.” Anyone who has criticized any of Hudson’s elected or appointed officials seems to live in fear of the bailiff’s knock. Resident David Vance began the opening question period with a demand that Mayor Ed Prévost confirm or deny that he was planning to sue Vance. My recording has Prévost assuring Vance he has no plans to sue him.

The Charest Liberals adopted a law protecting citizens from libel chill but municipalities across the province (Hudson is no exception) continue to use the threat of legal or economic sanctions to silence dissent.

Journalists are used to libel chill. I’ve been sued repeatedly throughout my journalistic career, including by a former Quebec premier. (We settled out of court.) The right to fair comment is a principle worth fighting for, but sometimes it’s better to apologize and live to fight another day.. In some dictatorships, dissenters have to be prepared to die for what they believe. In Hudson, critics of the current administration don’t have that problem, but this bunch appears to believe it can impose its agenda and quash criticism with the implied threat of libel action.

Canadians need to be aware there is no such animal as freedom of speech in this country, no equivalent of the American First Amendment.  A nuisance lawsuit launched against you with your tax dollars can cost thousands and who needs the aggravation and stress? My advice? Transparency activists can draw more attention to their cause by using humour and wit to make a point and energize the disinterested. Keep it funny and nobody gets hurt. Except the lawyers.