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March 21, 2013 - No. 37 Anti-Social Agenda of the Harper Government Muzzling Dissent by Civil Service Professionals
Anti-Social
Agenda
of
the
Harper
Government Anti-Social Agenda of the Harper Government Muzzling Dissent by Civil Service ProfessionalsThe Harper government is continuing its efforts to prevent civil service professionals in scientific, technical and other cultural fields from speaking out against the anti-social direction in which the Harperites are dragging the country. The latest reports about the government imposing gag orders on civil service professionals involve Library and Archives Canada (LAC), a federal cultural institution operated by the Ministry of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages. Management of LAC is currently holding information sessions to inform its archivists and librarians about the terms of the gag order being imposed on them under a new code of conduct which came into effect January 2013. Employees are being warned that management has given itself the right to take punitive actions against employees over any public revelations about LAC's operations and policies. LAC professionals are banned from making comments to the media. Even revelations about LAC arising from personal emails or social media could result in disciplinary measures.
The use of a code of conduct by the Harper government to gag the LAC professionals is part of a series of similar measures being put in place across the federal civil services. In April 2012 the government issued a ministerial decree requiring all federal departments to establish codes of conduct for employees like the one imposed by LAC. This decree was issued at the same time that the
government announced measures in the 2012 budget to cut 19,200
jobs across the civil service which is hollowing out the functioning of
many
government departments and leading to the elimination or privatization
of many
important government services. The government's order for
new codes of conduct across the civil service with stiffer gag orders
and punitive measures is to suppress civil service workers
from speaking out against its aggressive, nation-wrecking and
anti-social
agenda. By declaring their right to act as the professionals they are a
matter of national security and declaring the exercise of their right
to conscience illegal, Harper is making sure the intellectual and
professional strata are rendered a disorganized powerless force. It is
a very dangerous situation for Canada.
In the case of LAC, there is a lot for the Harper government to hide. This important cultural institution is one of the areas of the civil service where devastating job cuts and wrecking by the Harper government are underway. On April 30, LAC presented 450 workers with notices that their jobs would be affected by cuts and 215 positions were eliminated. These cuts were part of the first wave of more than 3,500 civil service job cuts that were made shortly after the 2012 budget. The cuts to LAC announced last April included: - the elimination of 21 of the 61 archivists and archival assistants that deal with non-governmental records; - the reduction of digitization and circulation staff by
50 per cent; - a significant reduction in the number of staff that deal with preservation and conservation of documents; - the closure of the interlibrary loans unit; - supports for provincial, regional and university archives across Canada; - LAC will no longer manage archives for other ministries such as the Citizenship and Immigration Canada and Transport Canada archives which will result in their destruction.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared he will turn
the Museum of Civilization into the Museum of History. What kind of
history does he have in mind when he is destroying Canada's collective
memory and its custodians? It is a very serious question.
Doctors Speak Out Against For-Profit Blood ClinicsDoctors and other health care professionals are again speaking out against the anti-social agenda of the Harper government in health care and against its anti-scientific politics. Medical professionals are denouncing the government for allowing for-profit health clinics to be set up in Ontario to collect blood plasma from paid donors. On March 12, the organization Canadian Doctors for Medicare issued a press release which opposed "[a] controversial and secretive new move by the federal government to approve for-profit blood plasma donation services that pays donors." The press release was in response to the private, for-profit corporation Canadian Plasma Services setting up two clinics in Toronto and one in Hamilton to collect blood plasma from paid donors. Paying donors for blood, as is done in the United States, is a serious threat to public health. The World Health Organization opposes paying blood donors since this creates financial incentives that subvert safety screening procedures. Paying donors also goes against the recommendations of the Krever Inquiry in 1997. That inquiry found that the infection of 20,000 Canadians with hepatitis and HIV was the result of blood products supplied by U.S. drug monopolies which use blood from paid blood donors. Dr. Danielle Martin, chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, said to the media, "Moving towards a paid-donation system could compromise one of the safest blood donation systems in the world, and it moves donated blood into the private sector. The federal government has made no effort to justify its support of a shift to private paid-donor blood plasma clinics, or communicate its intentions with the provinces." "The critical issue here is opening up our blood services sector to for-profit companies who have an interest in providing a profit to their shareholders that at times could conflict with the imperative to maintain high quality health standards for Canadians," said Dr. Martin. When asked in Parliament on March 6 about revelations that for-profit clinics that pay blood donors are to be set up in Ontario, federal Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq said that it is perfectly legal for companies to buy blood plasma, subject to federal licensing and regulation. Health Canada said in a statement to the media that its mandate for regulation of blood services and blood products, "does not extend to corporate or operational decisions such as compensation to donors." This is standard Harperite politics, putting monopoly right ahead of public right. The Harper government's refusal to restrict monopoly right on this important matter of public health is a stubborn rejection of informed medical opinion and of the horrific experience reported by Canadians during the Krever Inquiry. While permitting for-profit blood clinics using paid donors to set up shop in Canada, the government is at the same time allowing publicly funded and governed Canadian Blood Services (CBS) to cut back its services. In May 2012, CBS closed a blood collection clinic in Thunder Bay and sacked the 28 health workers employed there. The CBS workers protested against the closing of the
clinic, pointing out that not only would good jobs be lost but the
closing of the clinic would make Canada more dependent on blood
products produced by U.S. drug companies which use paid blood donors.
Blood plasma collected in the Thunder Bay clinic
had previously been sent to U.S. fractioning facilities and returned to
CBS as blood products for use in Canada. At the same time as CBS was
closing the Thunder Bay clinic it was sharply increasing the
importation of blood products manufactured by U.S. drug monopolies
using other blood donor sources.  Health workers in Thunder Bay, May 2012, protest the closure of a public blood clinic operated by Canadian Blood Services.
Continued Opposition to
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The code of conduct singles out
various professional
activities as posing a "high risk" of revealing information about LAC
to the public. It imposes a series of restrictive criteria and
requirements for written management approval of these activities
whether
carried out on or off the job. Activities listed as
"high risk" include participation in conferences of archivists,
librarians, historians or other academics, collaborations with other
professional institutions and part-time or voluntary teaching.
The codes of conduct changes
are presumably intended to create a self-censorship chill among
individual
professionals to prevent them from speaking out as people with
expertise in various fields where the government is causing damage to
the public interest. Only the unions of the civil service workers are
left to speak
out in defence of their rights in this situation and when the unions
speak out the government then tries to marginalize them as speaking for
"special
interests." This means that nobody represents the public interest.
"The cuts to jobs at Library and Archives Canada are an
attack on one of Canada's most important cultural institutions. Staff
at our national archives and library are the stewards of our collective
memory. These cuts will further undermine the capacity of Library and
Archives Canada to fulfill its legislated mandate
to acquire, preserve and make accessible Canada's history," said a
spokesperson for the Canadian Association of University Teachers, one
of the unions representing LAC workers.
At a press conference on
March 14 in Montreal, the
Coalition Against the Employment Insurance Reform announced its newest
member organizations -- the Quebec Federation of Municipalities (FQM),
the Union of
Quebec Municipalities (UMQ), the Union of Agricultural Producers (UPA),
Rural Solidarity of Quebec (SRQ)
and the Coalition of the East, which includes a number of entities from
the Gaspésie and Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Bas-Saint-Laurent
and the Côte-Nord. Joliette, March 18, 2013 |
On March 16, 350 demonstrators held a rally against the
anti-social EI reforms in front of the Service Canada offices in
Drummondville. Another picket took place March 18 in Joliette and
an action is scheduled for Saturday, March 23 in Trois-Rivières.
The demonstrations are part of the action plan that has
been developed by the Quebec Coalition Against the Employment Insurance
Reform.
Among the EI reforms that the groups are highlighting at these events is the new Social Security Tribunal, which will replace the Boards of Referees as of April 1. The Coalition believes this new mechanism for challenging rejected EI claims will undermine access to justice for claimants because decisions will now be made by one person. The Boards of Referees were made up of a chairperson, an employer and an employee representative. The Coalition says based on the first partisan appointments announced by the government to the Social Security Tribunal and the expeditious and discretionary power conferred on this body, its members have little confidence in the new process.
Drummondville, March 16, 2013
(Translated from original French by TML. Photos: LML, J. Chevrette)
British Columbia
"Ethnic Vote" Scandal Highlights Necessity for Democratic Renewal
The 2013 "ethnic vote" scandal in BC once again demonstrates the urgent need for democratic renewal. On March 14, before the Legislature concluded its session, BC NDP leader Adrien Dix asked questions in the Legislature about a leaked memo, which discussed a Liberal Party strategy for "outreach" to ethnic communities using "apologies for historic wrongs" to get "quick votes."
According to the Opposition
and media pundits there are
two main
aspects to the scandal: the use of public servants to pursue vote
getting strategies for the Liberal Party on government time, and the
insult over the manipulation of the electorate around the righting of
historic wrongs.
The monopoly media declare another feature of this still unfolding story is the way the Liberal government handled the crisis. After initial denials of wrongdoing, Clark's deputy chief of staff, close friend and confidant, Kim Haackstad, quit over her role in the scandal. On March 4, the Premier asked for and received the resignation of John Yap, MLA Richmond-Steveston, who served as Minister of Advanced Education, Innovation, and Technology and as Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism, although he was not the Minister responsible at the time the memo was written.
Clark appointed John Dyble, Deputy Minister to the Premier and Cabinet Secretary as well as head of the Public Service, the largest employer in BC with 30,000 employees, to investigate the scandal. Dyble submitted his report on March 14. He concluded the government acted inappropriately and demanded $70,000 be paid by the Liberal Party to the government for their misuse of personnel. The $70,000 is said to represent half the salary of one staffer. He noted that confidential information such as contact lists from government events was wrongly sent to personal email accounts and that there were "two serious instances of government resources being misused."
The Globe & Mail reports these two instances in the following manner: Brian Bonney, who served 16 months in the Clark government was found in a breach of conduct, spending almost half his time in government working on Liberal Party business; a second example was a plan initiated outside of government to hire community liaison contractors at public expense.
The blatant corruption of this affair is said to be underlined by a private email from a political aide to Mr. Yap that reads: "It is absolutely critical that we do not leave any evidence in us helping them through this application."
The Dyble Inquiry describes a December 1, 2011 meeting convened by the Chief of Staff, which included public servants, political staff and BC Liberal party reps. Dyble found violations of the Public Service Standards of Conduct and specifically criticized a contract given to a community liaison without a written contract, and that one half of the work of a public servant was admitted to be done on behalf of the Liberal party. Another related aspect of the scandal is reported as the use of private emails, to avoid freedom of information inquiries concerning government emails, which displays classic consciousness of guilt.
Since the Dyble Report was submitted, Premier Clark said the Liberal Party has written a cheque for $70,000 to the government and Mr. Yap will not be re-admitted into cabinet. "This document is not easy reading for people in government," Clark said. Bonney left government in February. Mike Lee, the author of the email to former minister Yap, resigned on March 14. The report does not implicate the Premier directly. This is the second instance of Christy Clark being very close to a major scandal, the prior one being the sale of BC Rail to the CNR by the Campbell government when she served as Minister of Education.
A second inquiry by the head of the BC Liberal Caucus MLA Gordon Hogg completed its report on March 15. This inquiry was done to deal with "morality" and "ethics" concerning the scandal. Hogg announced that the report would not be made public because his lawyers advised him about "privacy" concerns. Hogg did comment on the Dyble Report saying, "Certainly there were parts of that report that turned my stomach." Hogg's only other public comment was that he would welcome an independent review of both caucuses.
British Columbians are
outraged at the cynical
manipulation done
behind closed doors over the question of apologies for racist crimes
committed by the Canadian state such as the Komagata Maru
incident in 1914 when Punjabi immigrants were barred from entry into
Vancouver and deported; the
Chinese Head Tax attack on Chinese immigrants; theft of Japanese
Canadians' property, the splitting of their families and extra-legal
incarceration of children, women and men in concentration camps, not to
mention genocidal crimes against the Indigenous nations. While
justice-loving peoples from all backgrounds
have campaigned for decades for governments to repudiate and apologize
for these racist crimes against the entire people, the manipulation of
these sentiments has exposed once again the utter bankruptcy of party
politics in BC.
An Ipsos Reid poll on March 15 showed that 74 per cent of British Columbians disapprove of how the government dealt with the present scandal, with 31 per cent saying they blamed the Liberal party alone, and 31 per cent saying the behavior was typical of all parties.
The same poll showed 30 per cent approval of Premier Clark and 65 per cent disapproval compared to 51 per cent approval of NDP opposition leader Dix and 40 per cent disapproval, with smaller numbers for the Conservatives' and Greens' party leaders.
Fatuous self-criticism by Clark that "serious mistakes were made" and her attempt to turn this scandal into an occasion for self-congratulations through apologies have fallen flat. The crisis of the party-dominated system and the need for democratic removal has not been addressed. CPC(M-L) calls on the entire people of BC to join with the Party in the work for democratic renewal.
Canada Suffers a Significant Loss
Stompin' Tom Connors, Poet of the People
 Stompin' Tom Connors February 9, 1936 - March 6, 2013 |
On March 6, well-known Canadian singer-songwriter
Stompin' Tom Connors passed away at the age of 77 in his home in
Ballinafad, Ontario. Tom focused his musical career exclusively on his
native Canada, and is credited with writing more than three hundred
songs and releasing four dozen albums, with total
sales of nearly four million copies. Flags were lowered to half-mast at
the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in his honour and Hockey Night
in Canada
broadcast a special tribute on March 9. At his March 13 memorial in
Ottawa, one long time fan said: "When he died I shed a bit of a tear
because he evoked Canada
in his music like no else. He was like a troubadour, travelling across
the land."
Stompin' Tom Connors had many, many fans across the country, mainly because he wrote songs for and about ordinary working people that were steeped in Canadian lore and history. Examples include Bud the Spud, about a potato hauling trucker from Prince Edward Island; Sudbury Saturday Night, about Sudbury miners off the job; Reesor Crossing Tragedy, about the shooting of eleven striking Ontario lumber workers in 1963; Tillsonburg, about working in the Ontario tobacco fields; The Bridge Came Tumblin' Down, about the 19 men killed in the collapse of Vancouver's Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing bridge in 1958;[1] Fire in the Mine, about the Hollinger Mines fire that killed 39 miners in Timmins in 1928; The Consumer, an ironic ode to bill paying, and The Hockey Song, which has played at hockey games through the National Hockey League.
Stompin' Tom Connors was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and his first home was in the poorest part of the city. He grew up in poverty and even lived for a short time with his mother in a women's penitentiary. He was seized by Children's Aid and then adopted out. He left his adoptive parents at the age of fifteen and spent the next fifteen years of his life travelling across the country, writing and singing songs, and working at various jobs. His first break was a thirteen-month gig at the Maple Leaf Hotel in Timmins, a weekly radio spot, and the production of eight 45 rpm records. These events launched him as a guitar-playing people's poet. In the mid-1970s he had his own television show which played for 26 episodes. He founded three record labels which also recorded other Canadian artists. In the 2004 Greatest Canadian list, he ranked thirteenth, the highest placing for any artist on the list. Tom wrote two autobiographies of his life, Stompin' Tom: Before the Fame and The Connors Tone.
Stompin' Tom Connors was a staunch defender of Canadian culture and artists, a sentiment well-expressed in the title of one of his albums, A Proud Canadian. In 1974, he retired to his Ballinafad farm to protest federal government policies that he felt undermined the development of Canadian artists. He only returned to the studio in 1986 to produce a new album to promote Canadian musical artists. During his protest, he boycotted the annual Juno awards to protest many awards being given to musicians recording mostly outside of Canada, suggesting that they should instead compete with Americans for Grammy Awards. In 1978, he sent back his own six Juno awards, accompanied by a letter which stated, in part: "I feel that the Junos should be for people who are living in Canada, whose main base of business operations is in Canada, who are working toward the recognition of Canadian talent in this country and who are trying to further the export of such talent from this country to the world with a view to proudly showing off what this country can contribute to the world market."
Note
1. Partial lyrics from, The Bridge Came Tumblin' Down:
"It often makes you wonder
In strength who has the edge
The longest steel beam structure
That spans the highest ridge
Or the men that built the bridge
For the bridge came tumblin' down
And nineteen men were drowned
But the other men came back again
To lay the new beams down."
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