Quotulatiousness

February 21, 2012

First it was the “he-cession”: now it’s the “she-cession” in Ontario

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:47

Frances Woolley in the Globe & Mail Economy Lab says that the next phase of Ontario’s recovery from the 2008 recession will disproportionally fall on women:

Men were hit hard by the 2008-9 economic downturn, with losses of construction jobs (98 per cent male), transport jobs (90 per cent male), and manufacturing jobs (70 per cent male). Male unemployment rose so quickly that people began to talk about a “he-cession.”

Three years on, a tenuous “he-covery” seems to be under way – male unemployment rates fell last year, and the percentage of men with jobs rose.

Now it’s the ladies’ turn. Ontario’s Drummond Report calls for deep cuts to financial, administrative and secretarial jobs throughout the public service. Strictly speaking, the report recommends cutting costs; automating, streamlining and consolidating the delivery of services. Yet administrative costs equal administrative jobs — jobs that are, 8 times out of 10, held by women.

The bulk of Ontario government spending goes to MUSH — Municipalities, Universities, Schools and Hospitals. Overall spending cannot be reduced substantially without making cuts in these areas. There are about 280,000 teachers and professors in Ontario, and 65 per cent of them are female. The Drummond report recommends larger class sizes for elementary and secondary school teachers, and “flexible” teaching loads for university professors. Yet more students per teacher mean fewer teaching jobs. Just as a downturn in the construction sector leads to male unemployment, a downturn in the teaching sector leads to female unemployment.

February 19, 2012

Tim Worstall on the dilemma facing the social housing authorities

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:45

I don’t know what the actual situation is in Britain, but here in Ontario the responsibility for public housing is a regional or municipal responsibility. There’s no automatic mechanism for planners in one area to anticipate the need for additional housing, so apartments, townhouses and other subsidized accommodations are informally “swapped” between city, town, and regional governments. Would-be tenants are able to refuse being moved from one municipality to another (if you’re in Oakville, but the offered housing is in Pickering, for example).

I suspect, based on Tim Worstall’s thought experiment here, that the British system does not work quite the same way:

What’s the first thing that rational planner is going to do? Note that there’s a number of people living in London without the means to afford housing in London. And no particular economic reason for living in London either. She’s also going to note that’s there’s great swathes of housing up North which is indeed affordable. And given that there’s no particular economic reason for those in London to be in London why shouldn’t they be on benefits up North in the much cheaper housing?

This will be, after all, greatly to the benefit of society even if a bit tough on the personal liberty side. But then that’s what planning of all these things is about, doing what is best for society, yes?

So you can see the amusement: the Statists, the planners, those who insist that society is more important than the desires of any mere individual, are in something of a bind. The current reforms to the housing market are producing exactly what a rational planner would produce. The poor are sent off to be poor in cheap housing, individual desires be damned.

February 18, 2012

Rex Murphy: The Drummond report should have been released before the Ontario election

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:48

In the National Post, Rex Murphy expresses his displeasure that the Drummond report was not available for discussion during the last Ontario election campaign:

With the exception of the writings of the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah at their bleakest, flavoured with a touch of H.P. Lovecraft on the days when that lightless mind was wrestling with a migraine, the recent meditations of Don Drummond on Ontario’s fiscal situation set the standard for prose that vibrates with gloom and foreboding.

The prophet Drummond is aware of this. He tried to prepare Ontario for the grim messages he was sending. At the press conference announcing his 529-page diagnosis of Ontario’s fiscal morbidity, he produced a remarkable understatement about his report and the 320 recommendations of cuts, freezes and cancellations that so enliven its bristling pages. Said Mr. Drummond (perhaps hiding a bitter smile): “This will strike many as a profoundly gloomy message.” Those listening to Mr. Drummond recalled P.G. Wodehouse: “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

The Drummond report is scathing, frightening, a grim portrait, an indictment of Ontario’s fiscal management during the last eight years of McGuinty government. It is everything columnists in this paper have said and more. The Drummond analysis offers what we may call a spectrograph of Ontario’s perilous financial situation. It is also a devastatingly chilly portrait of imminent decline, should the government of this once dynamic, productive and industrious province fail to follow the prescription — 320 deep, demanding and painful recommendations that Mr. Drummond so vigorously recommends.

[. . .]

Politicians worry about cynicism and apathy among the electorate. Bringing out this report after sending the voters to the polls will reinforce the cynicism and bake the apathy. And why not? I have no doubt that Tory leader Tim Hudak or the NDP’s Andrea Horwath would have found a way, or been only too obliging, to see the report after the election, as well.

There should be an election do-over. Of course there will not be. Because to call an election now, and contest one on the real state of the economy, would be an unparalleled action of real candour and public valour. It would be asking Ontarians to vote on the reality of their government, not the spin of the parties. What politician would dare set so dangerous a precedent as that?

Of course, given how badly Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives fought the last election, they’d still manage to fumble, flail, and falter just enough to let Mr. McGuinty keep his job. One can only imagine that the gods (along with the rest of Canada) hate Ontario and want to see more suffering.

“Somewhere in the near-eternal labyrinth of the Drummond report there must be evidence that the McGuinty’s Liberal government did something right over the last decade. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Terence Corcoran brings the gloom on the Ontario government’s most likely response to the Drummond report:

Ontario, get ready for The Big McGuinty. The 562-page report from the government-appointed Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, chaired by economist Don Drummond, has all the makings of a diversionary shell game in which everybody is directed to follow the pea of spending cuts while the real game is something else.

With attention now focused on carving Mr. Drummond’s 362 recommended slices off the great Ontario spending bologna, the real bait-and-switch objective, The Big McGuinty of this giant exercise in fiscal self-flagellation, is something else altogether: tax increases.

Does anybody seriously think the Liberal government of the Rev. Dalton McGuinty, after a decade of installing feel-good spending increases and extravagant policy schemes, is suddenly going to roll it all back and reverse a decade of ideological commitment to government intervention and liberal spending programs?

The Drummond report would require policy-backtracking on a vast scale. Somewhere in the near-eternal labyrinth of the Drummond report there must be evidence that the McGuinty’s Liberal government did something right over the last decade. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

February 16, 2012

How long will it take for McGuinty to “lose” the Drummond report?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:24

Yesterday, the Drummond report was released, containing literally hundreds of recommendations for getting Ontario’s government back on the fiscal straight-and-narrow. Perhaps half a dozen of the recommendations will be welcomed by Dalton McGuinty and his ministers. The rest will be anywhere from mildly unwelcome to outright anathema. In the National Post, Linda Nguyen has an overview:

The Ontario government needs to “swiftly and boldly” implement all of the hundreds of recommendations in a massive report released Wednesday if it wants to eliminate a projected $30.2 billion deficit by 2017, warns economist Don Drummond.

“Unfortunately, we’re dealing with a harsh reality in identity here,” said Mr. Drummond, author of the 543-page report and former chief economist with TD Bank.

The audit, which could be an example to other jurisdictions struggling to control spending, offered 362 recommendations in various sectors including health care, education, social programs, justice and labour relations.

[. . .]

In its 2011 budget, the Ontario government had projected its deficit to climb to $16-billion, but Mr. Drummond says his projects peg it at more than double that if the province continues its current spending.

To reach the target, Ontario must decrease its total program spending to 0.8% for the next seven years.

It’s been an item of faith among Liberals and NDPers that former Premier Mike Harris carpet-bombed the provincial economy during his two terms in office. As Scott Stinson points out, however, “Ontario’s projected spending needs a 17% cut. Mike Harris only cut 3.9%”:

“Avoid across-the-board cuts. Such a blunt tool treats equally a valuable efficiently run program and one that is outdated and sloppily managed. This is dumb.”
Dumb? Such plain speaking! We are used to government reports that prefer to say a measure “fails to properly realize efficiencies by ensuring its actions are in line with forward-looking goals and objectives.”

“This is not a smorgasbord from which the government can choose only the tastiest morsels and ignore the less palatable.”
Eat your brussels sprouts, Dalton McGuinty! But despite the pleasant analogy — who doesn’t enjoy a good buffet? — this is one of the more stark lines in the whole report. Implement it all, or it won’t work, the Commission says. Yikes.

“In budget planning, do not count chickens before they are hatched.”
We’ll say this for Mr. Drummond: he’s not afraid to use the folksy language.

“Kicking the can down the road is no solution.”
See?

“Do not hang onto public assets or public service delivery when better options exist. Consider privatizing assets and moving to the private delivery of services wherever feasible.”
Also, when preparing discussions with public-service unions, bring a helmet.

[. . .]

“The province should, in future discussions with the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, reject further employer rate increases to [pension plans] beyond the current rate.”
Another one sure to be a hit with the unions. Did you know that on average a teacher retires at 59, having worked 26 years, and collects a pension for 30 years? Me neither.

“The government should work to discuss, in particular, the overproduction of teachers with Ontario’s 13 universities offering teacher education programs.”
The term “overproduction” of teachers makes them sound kind of like widgets.

“Reshape student financial assistance, including the newly announced 30% Off Ontario Tuition grant, to target more of the assistance to low-income students.”
Say, remember that key plank of your election platform? Yeah, you need to totally rethink that.

February 13, 2012

Ontario’s other alcohol sales monopoly

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:25

I guess it’s technically part of an oligopoly (?duopoly?), but along with the KGBO LCBO, the other entity that is legally allowed to sell beer is the mostly foreign-owned Beer Store:

… the experience highlights one of the many absurdities of a system where more than 80 per cent of beer sales are controlled by three multinationals — Labatt Brewing Co. Ltd. (owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA), Molson Coors Brewing Co. and Sleeman Breweries Ltd. (owned by Japan’s Sapporo Breweries Ltd.).

“The way the system is set up unfairly limits access to customers,” Mr. Beauchesne complained. “Molson, Labatt and Sleeman are completely in control of how beer stores look and feel, what products are promoted. They get to control the whole shopping experience and I get none of that control.”

The McGuinty government is pledging to review outdated liquor laws early in the legislative session that begins this week. MPP Grant Crack, parliamentary assistant to the Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Minister, said the Beer Store’s monopoly will no doubt come up.

[. . .]

After 85 years, the Beer Store is an anachronism.

It’s often hard to reconcile the ad world of beer — the snow-capped mountains, parties and hockey — with the utilitarian factory-like outlets where most Ontarians actually buy the stuff.

There are noisy conveyor belts, bottle crushers and cases of beer stacked on metal shelves in dank warehouses. In many stores, patrons still make their selection by picking from a row of dusty empties on a shelf.

Behind the counter, harried clerks juggle bottle returns and running the cash register.

Forget about tastings, attention-grabbing displays of new offerings or expert advice to help you choose from hundreds of selections. At the 437 Beer Stores, it’s get in line, pay the clerk, get out.

February 10, 2012

Lorne Gunter: Toronto Star imagines oil just “bubbles up out of the ground and we Westerners just run out with buckets to collect it?”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Lorne Gunter in the National Post:

As I read the Toronto Star’s editorial about Statistics Canada’s recently released 2011 census population data, it was hard for me not to imagine a plump, aging diva reclining on a brocade-covered chaise wailing, “I’m still beautiful! Really, I am.”

Entitled, “Census shows a fading Ontario? Don’t count on it,” the editorial makes the argument that it is “too simplistic” to claim “Ontario’s day is over.”

No one is making the case that Ontario can be dismissed as an afterthought. That is a concern without a cause.

[. . .]

But before anyone jumps to the conclusion that I, an Albertan, am pleased by Ontario’s decline, I’ll add that any trend that bodes ill for Ontario, eventually bodes ill for the country as a whole.

Canada needs a strong, prosperous, confident heartland. The West may be the new engine of the national economy, but that doesn’t mean the country can afford to have the old engine — Ontario — be idle.

The Star insults the West’s ingenuity and determination when it scoffs that “it’s relatively easy to grow based on resource extraction. Ontario does not have the luxury of sitting on gas and oil fields, so the task here is much harder.” Really? Have the paper’s editorial writers ever tried to find, extract, transport and refine oil and natural gas? Do they imagine the stuff bubbles up out of the ground and we Westerners just run out with buckets to collect it?

February 9, 2012

Michael Pinkus: Apathetic Ontario and the LCBO monopoly

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

In the latest issue of his OntarioWineReview.com newsletter, Michael Pinkus again expresses frustration with the government-run monopoly on retail sales of wine and spirits in Ontario:

I have made this point before when talking about the LCBO Food & Drink magazine, which competes directly with other publications in the province for advertising dollars; a magazine that is paid for by the people for the people, which sounds great and a pillar to build a country on, but not when you are competing against the very people who paid the money in the first place (magazine editors, publishers, writers, etc. are taxpayers too). One of the sad realities is that with each bottle a publisher buys they are paying to put themselves out of business.

It’s bad enough that the LCBO are the only game in town to buy booze … it’s bad enough that they waste millions of dollars a year on fancy stores (when they don’t have to) … it’s bad enough that a government run monopoly competes against their own populace and private enterprises for advertising revenue … but now they have to blow dollars on advertising themselves, buying expensive jingles and song rights … is that where you want your tax dollars to go? Could we not find better uses for this money, seriously? And what happened to social responsibility? They are advertising so we’ll buy more — does that seem counter-productive to the social responsibility pact. Heck, I don’t see this many ads for Premier Liquors out of Buffalo, and they have competition.

In the coming weeks we’ll look a little deeper into the LCBO, see what the Auditor General had to say, and read what the pundits are talking about. Find out why our booze prices are being raised mainly because we can’t be trusted as a society to police ourselves when it comes to drinking the devil’s liquid. I just can’t believe that all this is going down and nobody seems to be saying anything on the subject. Over the past few weeks I have been listening to CFRB: John Tory and Jim Richards both made mention, Richards went as far as to speak with Chris Layton (media relations mouthpiece for LCBO) — while both announcers shared their outrage with listeners over various aspects of the LCBO’s conduct (John: advertising; Jim: price raising), the apathetic Ontarians who bothered to call in had very little to say on the matter, many believing the LCBO is doing a bang up job.

A quick search of the blog shows that just about every mention of the LCBO is a negative one. No surprise there: the LCBO is a relic of the post-Prohibition era and is still run in a way that would be familiar to the state-owned “stores” of the old Soviet Union. They are undeniably better both in selection and in service than they used to be, but just about every positive change was wrought by the mere threat that the government of the day was looking at privatization as an option. As soon as the threat went away, the positive changes could be slowed or even stopped: after all, where else are you going to go to buy your wines and spirits?

February 8, 2012

“[C]ourthouses were places where justice was done. Today, people … look at them as places where injustice will be done.”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:43

Karen Selick on the more obvious signs of security in Canadian courtrooms:

I articled in Toronto in 1976-1977, when anyone could freely breeze in and out of the courthouses — including Osgoode Hall, where the Ontario Court of Appeal sits — without ever seeing a police officer, being searched or having to show ID.

So what has changed over the past 35 years to make our courthouses so fearful? The homicide rate has actually fallen significantly over that time, although violent crime in general has risen.

But private businesses still don’t find it necessary to take this level of precaution. I can walk into a Toronto shopping mall as freely today as I walked into Toronto courthouses 35 years ago. Is there something unique about courthouses that makes them more likely scenes of violence?

My hypothesis is that people were more willing to accept the notion 35 years ago that courthouses were places where justice was done. Today, people are more likely to look at them as places where injustice will be done.

Many more people are compelled to interact with “the law” these days, simply because there is so much more of it. Regulation over citizens’ lives has exploded, and much of what happens in court cannot be described as having anything to do with justice.

February 7, 2012

Terrorist training camp just north of Toronto!

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:58

According to former Toronto Star editor and Ryerson professor John Miller, we’ll be in the grip of terror later in February:

Here is an extended quote from his rant to show that I’m not taking this out of context one bit:

    “Makes you wonder when was the last time a group of ideological warriors went north to train in the backwoods and plot to storm Parliament, blow up the CBC, seize the airwaves and spread terror across the land. Oh yeah, the Toronto 18 did that. Didn’t police arrest the lot of them and call them the gravest threat to our democracy?

    “I think a weekend with Ezra and friends could be something just like that.

    “The only thing that sets them apart from the Muslim extremists is that Sun Media will be charging you admission.”

Sorry, we’re not planning to storm Parliament. Maybe we’ll talk about writing some letters to our MPs. We’re not planning to blow up the CBC. We just want to privatize it. And we don’t believe in spreading terror across the land. In fact, we support our Canadian troops in the war against terror, and don’t want that little terrorist Omar Khadr let back in from Guantanamo Bay.

Miller ended by saying “the only thing” that makes us different from those terrorists is that we charge admission.

What a disgusting man.

Why did he liken me, my fellow Sun personalities and Sun readers to terrorists? For one reason only: We’re conservative, and we refuse to go along with him and the rest of the consensus media.

The fact that someone as vile as Miller has held senior posts at journalism schools and the largest newspaper in Canada is not surprising. Because both the Star and every j-school in the country believe in a uniform, official left-wing view.

They believe in every type of diversity — racial, sexual, ethnic — except for intellectual diversity.

February 3, 2012

The end of London’s diesel locomotive plant

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

I’ve updated my earlier post on the labour dispute at London’s EMC plant now that the current owners have announced the closure of the facility.

Update, 5 February: Mike P. Moffatt at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative debunks some of the media coverage of the closure:

After the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, GM Diesel closed their La Grange, Illinois plant and consolidated their production to the London plant, though kept the head office, research, design, and manufacturing of some components in La Grange. EMD London was a direct beneficiary of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade agreement, something I have yet to hear in the media. The domestic locomotive market, by itself, would not have supported the level of production we have seen over the last two decades.

In 2005, GM Diesel sold the Electro-Motive Division (including the GM Diesel plant in London and the head office in La Grange) to a couple of U.S. private equity firms, who re-named it Electro-Motive Diesel. In 2010, those firms sold EMD to Caterpillar.

[. . .]

We need to keep in mind that:

  1. EMD has always been a U.S. corporation.
  2. The intellectual property from research and design, etc. was from the head office in La Grange, Illinois.

So that leaves “know-how” which Cohn mentions in a follow-up paragraph. On Twitter, Colby Cosh asked: “Cohn talks about “know-how” but (a) know-how isn’t IP and (b) Cat doesn’t seem to have much use for the workers who have it, do they?” Caterpillar, however, did send a number of employees from London to their new plant in Muncie, IN, to train newly hired workers. I am Facebook friends with an EMD worker and I remember him objecting loudly to this last fall. But did Caterpillar really buy EMD so that it could obtain the talents of a dozen guys to teach advanced welding techniques?

There are a lot of narratives to this story, many of them unpleasant. A narrative about a U.S. company buying Canadian IP at 15 cents on the dollar does not pass the sniff test, however.

Update the second, 7 February: Andrew Coyne gets his inconvenient, yucky facts in our lovely flag-waving, anti-capitalist nationalistic fantasy:

EMD never received any subsidies from the federal government; certainly not since Caterpillar bought it. Indeed, looking through the hundreds of pages of “grants and contribution” in the Public Accounts, it may be the only company in the country that didn’t. The Harper visit to which Olive refers was to promote a tax break for the purchasers of locomotives, not the manufacturers. The visit occurred in 2008, two years before the Caterpillar purchase.

It’s not clear how the foreign investment laws could have been invoked to cover a purchase of an American company by another American company, or if they could, why this should be the pretext for “demanding job guarantees.” Presumably if it is wrong for a firm to close a plant or lay off workers, it is just as wrong whether it has recently been the object of a foreign takeover bid or not. Perhaps you will say we should bar all companies from closing a plant. Okay: why would they ever open one? If workers, once hired, cannot ever be laid off, why would they ever be hired?

Of course, there’s always Olive’s suggestion of a punitive tariff, through which the cost of keeping jobs in London locomotive plants could be shared by consumers and businesses across the country. (You’re welcome.) This would recreate the system of foreign branch plants that existed in the days before free trade, small factories producing exclusively for the domestic market. Rather than lament at foreigners stealing our jobs and technology, the nationalists could once again lament at being tenants in our own land.

February 2, 2012

Repost: A tribute (of sorts) to Wiarton Willie

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

John Scalzi, several years ago, wrote a tribute to Wiarton Willie, who was in the news in an unaccustomed way at the time:

To tell you the truth, the most disturbing thing is not that the groundhog died — certainly this animal earned his eternal rest — but that his handlers couldn’t think of anything better to do but tell a festival crowd that he had croaked. Those kids in the crowd will be forever traumatized. Groundhog Day will no longer be a happy time, but a constant reminder of death and mortality in the bleak midwinter. 10 years from now, I expect that Wiarton, Canada will become the new North American epicenter of dark, gothic teenage poetry.

Lying frozen in the snow
The groundhog soul resides far below
Gone to a place of doom and gray
Now winter will always stay.
Die Groundhog Die!
Mommy and Daddy Lied!

But wait, there’s more:

Now, on to the groundhog Wiarton Willie, who, as you know from yesterday’s entry, died before Groundhog Day and whose body was photographed lying in state in a dinky little pine coffin. Or was it? Now news comes from the sordid little burg of Wiarton, Canada, that the rodent corpse in the coffin was not Wiarton Willie at all, but a stuffed stand-in. The real Willie was apparently found so decomposed that the gelatinous remains were unsuitable for public display. So the town elders found a stuffed groundhog that just happened to be lying around (apparently the body of a previous “Wiarton Willie,” who was no doubt poisoned by the current, and now rotting, Willie in an unseemly palace coup), plopped it into that Barbie coffin, and presented the remains to a horrified public. Here’s the groundhog you’ve all been waiting for! And he’s dead! Winter for the next ten years!

The people of Wiarton meant well, I’m sure. But I’m having serious doubts as to their combined mental capacity. First off, the real Willy was found in a state of advanced decomposition, which means he had been dead for weeks. Weeks. How could that happen? This rodent is the cornerstone of Wiarton’s entire tourism economy for the month of February, and no one bothers to check on him from time to time? Did they just stick him in a cage after last Groundhog Day and then forget to feed him? Every kid in the world had a hamster they forgot to feed, but you’re usually, like, five at the time. These were actual adults. They say he was hibernating when he died. Sure he was. I used that excuse about the hamster.

February 1, 2012

Arson victim now being dragged through the courts for defending himself with firearms

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:26

Canadian prosecutors have a strong aversion to the idea that people should be allowed to protect themselves, especially if firearms are involved:

Just when was Ian Thomson guilty of unsafe storage of a firearm? Mr. Thomson is the Port Colborne, Ont., man currently standing trial in a Welland, Ont. courtroom after he and his home were attacked by firebombers in August, 2010. (That’s correct, in the topsy-turvy world of Canadian criminal justice, Mr. Thomson and his home were the ones attacked and yet he is the one on trial.)

Having dropped other more serious charges — such as dangerous use of a firearm — because they concluded there was no reasonable chance of winning a conviction, Crown prosecutors have nonetheless bullied ahead with unsafe storage charges against Mr. Thomson.

One can only speculate on the Crown’s motives, but many prosecutors are so opposed to private citizens owning guns and, especially, using guns to defend themselves, their loved ones or property, that it is easy to believe prosecutors are running Mr. Thomson through the ringer in an attempt to discourage other homeowners from following his lead. They have conceded they cannot get a conviction against the retired crane operator and former firearms instructor for shooting at the three men who were trying to burn down his house with him in it, but perhaps they are hopeful their decision to drag Mr. Thomson through months of emotionally draining and expensive court proceedings will cause other homeowners to conclude armed self-defence isn’t worth the hassle.

Update: An already strange case appears to be getting stranger, as the judge needed to adjourn the court to allow time for the lawyers to figure out just what the law actually says:

Canada’s laws on the storage and handling of guns and ammunition are so complicated that a veteran judge needed to adjourn court to allow two experienced lawyers more time for legal arguments and a search of case law to help parse and dissect them.

It was a dud of an ending after two days of trial in the case of Ian Thomson, a 54-year-old Port Colborne man who fired three shots from a legally owned gun to scare off three masked men who were firebombing his secluded farmhouse while one threatened: “Are you ready to die?”

And the crown displays a remarkable lack of firearms knowledge:

Mr. Mahler said Mr. Thomson was “less than forthcoming” and “secretive” when police arrived. He suggested Mr. Thomson even picked up the spent shell casings from his porch and hid them in his bedside table.

Seeming confused, Mr. Thomson said he didn’t understand.

“Didn’t they fall to the ground?” Mr. Mahler asked, apparently thinking shell casings from a .38-calibre revolver were ejected from the gun with each shot.

“No,” said Mr. Thomson as the crowd of gun advocates watching from the public gallery chuckled and guffawed at Mr. Mahler’s mistake.

Spent shells from a .38 remain in the gun’s cylinder until it is opened and they are removed. Mr. Thomson took the casings out at the same time he opened the gun to reload it, which was at the bedside table, where the casings were when police arrived, he said.

Of course, if he’d had enough time to collect expended brass — in the dark — before police arrived, it doesn’t support the idea that the police were going to be timely in arriving after he first called 911, does it?

January 26, 2012

The fate of London’s diesel locomotive plant

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Politics, Railways — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:38

In the Toronto Star, Martin Regg Cohn (who claims he “is not an anti-globalization crusader”) does his level best to put forward a case for massive government intervention in a labour dispute between Caterpillar and the Canadian Auto Workers:

At the old locomotive plant now owned by U.S.-based multinational Caterpillar Inc., the Canadian Auto Workers union is not even on strike. The CAW has been locked out since New Year’s Day because it refused to sign its own death warrant by agreeing to slash wages in half for most workers from $34 an hour to $16.50.

When a powerful multinational negotiates in bad faith, it becomes a story that governments in Queen’s Park and Ottawa can no longer wash their hands of. To put it in language that resonates with Premier Dalton McGuinty: When a bully tries to humiliate people, you can’t just watch in silence.

When high-paying skilled local jobs can be shredded at the whim of a combative multinational giant, it dramatically undermines all the upbeat rhetoric we hear from McGuinty and Prime Minister Stephen Harper about Canada’s global appeal. It sends a signal that Ontario is not so much open for business as it is closed for unions.

We jump directly from Caterpillar’s demand for wage reductions to an assertion that the company is negotiating in bad faith (I guess, from the union’s point of view, anything other than a wage increase is proof). No indication whether the company’s demand is economically justifed — if sales of the plant’s railway locomotives are as bad as the wage offer implies, then the next step will be closing the plant — just straight over to bad-mouthing the company.

And, of course, it’s merely objective reporting to use pejorative descriptors when discussing the eeeeevil multinational firm. Not content merely to malign the company, he then calls on the Premier to support the union to the hilt:

So what can our anti-bullying premier do?

If I were McGuinty, I would ask myself a simple question: What would Bill Davis do?

The former Tory premier of Ontario wasn’t perfect, but he was always plugged in. He took labour seriously, listened closely to business and wooed foreign investors (remember Renault?). He knew how to leverage the power of the premier’s office to stand up for Ontario’s greater interests.

A phone call to Caterpillar’s corporate braintrust would show that Ontario’s premier is no pushover. If that didn’t work, a phone call to Harper — who is still trying to live down the tax breaks he gave the locomotive factory’s former owners a few years ago — might find a receptive ear.

And finally we get to a good point: the foolishness of governments in giving special tax breaks to certain industries or companies. If it’s in the company’s best interests to locate in your jurisdiction, they’ll probably do it. If you have to bribe them with tax breaks, low-interest or interest-free loans, or other special incentives, then once the incentive runs its course, the company has no further requirement to stay in your location.

Update: In the National Post, Kelly McParland has some suggestions for union leaders:

1. A lot of people (the membership figures suggest it’s the vast majority) think unions are concerned solely with their own members and couldn’t give a bird’s turd for anyone or anything else, including other working stiffs, members of other unions, the fortunes of the company they work for or the customers they deal with. When you display a total lack of interest in others, they generally adopt the same attitude towards you.

[. . .]

4. Union politics might consider moving out of the stone age. The world evolves over time, but unions persist in peddling the same trite bromides as if it’s still the dawn of the industrial revolution. The “us against them” mentality; the pretense that all employers exist to exploit workers and can never be trusted; the assumption that every contract must be succeeded by an even richer one no matter the health of the industry, the economy or the company; the fealty to leftwing political parties — all are symptoms of an exhausted, outdated perspective that has barely changed since “modern technology” meant the telephone.

If unions really want to save themselves, they might take a lesson from the market economy. If no one buys what you’re selling, it’s not because they buyers aren’t bright enough. It’s because people see no value in your product.

Update, 3 February: The plant is being closed. Here’s the official announcement:

Progress Rail Services has announced that it will close Electro-Motive Canada’s (EMC) locomotive production operations in London, Ontario.

Assembly of locomotives will be shifted from the London facility to the company’s other assembly plants in North and South America, which will ensure that delivery schedules are not impacted by the closing of the London facility.

All facilities within EMC, EMD and Progress Rail Services must achieve competitive costs, quality and operating flexibility to compete and win in the global marketplace, and expectations at the London plant were no different.

The collective agreement and cost structure of the London operation did not position EMC to be flexible and cost competitive in the global marketplace, placing the plant at a competitive disadvantage. While the company’s final offer addressed those competitive disadvantages, the gulf between the company and the union was too wide to resolve and as such, market conditions dictate that the company take this step.

January 12, 2012

Toronto Hydro takes hostages, threatens eternal darkness if demands not met

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

Ah, it must be the time of year for Toronto Hydro to lose its collective shit and start the crazy talk:

Last week, the Ontario Energy Board denied Toronto Hydro’s request for a rate hike for homes within the city limits. The hike, which would have meant a monthly increase of five dollars for a typical household, was necessary, Toronto Hydro said, to renew the city’s electrical transmission grid. Failure to do so, they warned, could result in more, and longer, blackouts.

Not so, the Energy Board ruled. They said that Toronto Hydro had not demonstrated that Toronto’s power grid needed the kind of urgent repairs that were being proposed, and also chided Toronto Hydro for failing to make necessary productivity gains, implying that the requested money was not so much about urgent repairs as needing more cash. Toronto Hydro’s response has been swift: 700 contractors have been let go, and 20% of its workforce is being told that they’re next — that’s another 350 or so jobs. Oh, and without the cash, the city is probably going to go dark.

Do these guys know how to play hardball or what?

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