by J. R. R. Tolkien
The fat cat on the matmay seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.
The giant lion with iron
claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred,
fleet upon feet,
that oft soft from aloft
leaps upon his meat
where woods loom in gloom –
far now they be,
fierce and free,
and tamed is he;
but fat cat on the mat
kept as a pet
he does not forget.
Bye, Pickle
We’re going to miss you.
= = =
This next note comes with the qualifier that, as a shellfish allergy sufferer I am not without some sympathy. That being said, my biggest reaction when this message arrived in my work in-box recently was “Oh come ON!”
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From: (Deputy Minister)\
To: (Every Director on Floor 10 of our office tower, as well as Directors of teams some of whose members are located on the floor)
Subject: 10th Floor Severe Shellfish Allergy
I write to you today to seek your cooperation to protect the life of one of my employees. This employee has a life-threatening allergy to shellfish. On February 3rd, she went into anaphylaxic (sic) shock after someone brought food containing shellfish onto the 10th Floor. She was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance and had to receive six (6) doses of Epinephrine to stabilize her.
She has a very severe allergy to shellfish which can be fatal. It is so sensitive that even exposure to the vapours (smell) from cooked or heated shellfish products can trigger a reaction. This includes vegetarian Asian food, as they often contain fish oil.
Signs, e-mails, information sessions with managers and directors have taken place, but food that clearly put this employee in danger continue to be brought onto the floor.
Attached you will find a Notice to Employees and information on Shellfish Allergy and Anaphylaxis that describes the severe consequences of this allergy. This information will be distributed to all 10th floor employees.
I ask that you reinforce these messages with your employees and ensure that new employees are informed of the situation.
Thank you for your cooperation in ensuring a safe work environment.
= = =
As the Deputy noted in the body of the message, there were also several thoughtfully appended attachments, including (i) essentially a copy of the message done up like a handbill and presumably meant to be posted all over the place; (ii) a two-page information sheet summarizing what anaphylaxsis is and listing no fewer than 13 separate food items in which shellfish might commonly be found, including those Government of Canada office building lunch hour staples bouillabaisse and jambalaya (no doubt wiping out several planned Mardi Gras potlucks at a single blow); and (iii) a pdf of a four-page Government of Canada information bulletin, complete with colour photos of dead fish and shellfish, that defined shellfish allergy as only a written-by-government-committee document can ("What is the difference between crustaceans and shellfish? Crustaceans are aquatic animals that have jointed legs, a hard shell and no backbone, such as crab, crayfish, lobster, prawns and shrimp. Shellfish (also known as molluscs) have a hinged two-part shell and include clams, mussels, oysters and scallops, and various types of octopus, snails and squid.") and also included advice on where cross contamination might occur. (“Cross contamination can happen during food manufacturing through shared production and packaging equipment; at retail through shared equipment, e.g. cheese and deli meats sliced on the same slicer; and through bulk display of food products, e.g. bins of baked goods, bulk nuts; and during food preparation at home or in restaurants through equipment, utensils and hands.”)
Taken together, the floor blanketed by this message includes a workforce of probably a couple hundred employees.(!) So my question to our Deputy is this: if you thought about it for a few more minutes, could you maybe consider moving Mohammed away from the mountain, instead of the entire friggin’ mountain away from Mohammed?
In this day and age (and here I speak from first-hand experience) linking an employee to a government office from a remote location can be accomplished with not only relative electronic ease, but also with remarkable thoroughness. In my case, I have a separately secured computer that is linked directly to my unit’s shared file drive and the department’s massive e-mail server. Throw a telephone into the mix and I’m essentially “at work” from the moment I turn on my computer each day. So it seems to me that no matter how essential this person’s work is, the means exist to link her as completely to the clam chowder lovers as if she were actually physically at the office – without endangering her life!
But no, our department would rather make a couple hundred people borderline paranoid about the simple act of showing up for work the morning after their weekend book club held a seafood and bloody Caesar fiesta in honour of this month’s “Moby Dick” selection.
= =
And finally, a diatribe. Recently I read that Macleans Magazine columnist, author and journalist / blogger Paul Wells had abandoned an ongoing pursuit of trying to get to the bottom of what the hell is going on at the uppermost levels of an organization called Rights and Democracy. It’s a large and complicated issue, but at its heart is a very well-documented effort by the federal Conservative government to take control of an agency that is supposed to be above politics. Along the way, you have Board members resigning en masse and in disgust, and a Board Chairman dying of a heart attack shortly after receiving a negative performance appraisal, the appraisal also being suggested by Wells as part of the take-control government agenda.
In a February 24 blog post, Mr Wells summed up his reason for abandoning the pursuit of this story’s truth this way:
“I am going to very substantially scale back my writing about this issue. I have reached the point where I am wasting my breath. My consolation is that many tens of thousands of Canadians now see this charade for what it is; that this has turned into a very, very bad day at the office for all concerned, including a few strategic geniuses who thought they could narrow-cast their way to electoral gain while the rest of the country missed this story; and that I have managed to shine a bit of a light on some of the most squalid behaviour I have ever witnessed in 20 years as a reporter. I am so grateful to Maclean’s readers for following the details of this often-complex story.”
Mr Wells is simply among the most prominent of those who suffer under the Harper government’s thuggery to have said, essentially, “What’s the point?” There has always been the taint of corruption in some corners of government – any government. But never has there been – in this country, anyway – such a concerted and orchestrated effort to hold onto the reins of power by bullying your critics into submission. The Harper government’s approach when challenged is automatic – blast your critics. Never mind the message. It’s “How dare you suggest that we are doing anything that isn’t right! You must be evil.”
The growing litany of examples goes on forever. The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency in Canada raises serious concerns about the safety of a Chalk River Nuclear Reactor. The agency head is fired. Almost incidentally, the investigation into the state of the reactor resulted in its being shut down. Why? Because it was unsafe.
A senior Canadian diplomat with enormous experience in Afghanistan pointedly suggests, backed up by evidence, that a great many Canadian government higher-ups knew that prisoners – “detainees” in the euphemistic whitewashing doubletalk of governmentspeak – were very likely to be tortured after having been turned over to Afghan authorities. The government systematically accuses the man of lying and de facto cowardice because, they say, he’s never even been “outside the wire” (of the heavily guarded Canadian compound in Kandahar). Well not only had he been, he had been so dozens of times. He well knew whereof he wrote. An all-Party Committee investigation into the allegations is shut down, along with the Parliamentary system in this country, by the now-infamous prorogation, ostensibly to allow the government time to “recalibrate”. Oh, except for the mighty engine of announcing and re-announcing large government grants under its so-called “Economic Assistance Plan”. Hundreds of them, in fact – all while Parliament is officially prorogued.
And what of that diplomat? He’s now employed in a highly sensitive diplomatic post in Canada’s embassy in Washington, DC, a post that required him to hold the highest public service security clearance you can hold. Odd position to give to a liar and coward, that.
Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer publishes a report backed up by so many senior economists in the land that his position is irrefutable by anyone with an understanding of the difference between a financial statement “in the black” and one “in the red”. The report argues that government forecasts of a zero deficit for the 2009 fiscal year, perhaps even a small surplus, were not merely wrong, they were so wrong as to beggar the competence of anyone who shared that view. Among those who held it was Mr Harper’s Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty, who vowed there will never be a deficit while he is Finance Minister.
The outcome of the duelling arguments? The government slashed the budget of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, making his future economic research well nigh impossible. This government, in one short year, ran up the single biggest deficit in Canadian fiscal history. Oh, and Mr Flaherty is still Finance Minister
Those are just the ones that leap to mind without even turning to Google.
But what’s the point?
This government operates on the principle that the ends justify the means when the most important end is to continue to hold power in Canada. The Opposition is presently so lame that the Harper minority might as well be a majority because the Opposition will not be voting the government down on a confidence motion anytime soon.
This diatribe, incidentally, is being written shortly after another federal cabinet Minister, Helena Guergis, pretty much suffered a “meltdown” at the Charlottetown airport when, arriving only 15 minutes before departure time, she found she had to undergo the same security clearance procedures as everyone else travelling on the same aircraft. And this despite her “VIP” status. Over the span of about 15 minutes, she verbally tore into the security personnel doing their jobs, and her own assistant for not fetching her shoes fast enough. She condemned either the entire Island province or perhaps only the airport (she hasn’t clarified which) as a “hellhole”. She tried to push the wrong way through a locked security door into the boarding area – four Vancouver RCMP officers tasered an unfortunate Polish immigrant to death for doing not much more than the same thing a couple years ago.
Nothing – and I emphasize that – nothing in a detailed but anonymous after-the-fact report of the episode was disputed by the Minister. Her subsequent apology came only after the report’s content was made public.
Obviously, a fit of airport security rage by a junior minister is not so much an issue as the other examples cited above, but I cite it here simply to tie off the knot on what we can expect from this “recalibrated” government after its two-month long vacation.
More of the same behaviour – reflecting a belief that this government can hold sway by bullying and thuggery. It’s a sense of entitlement – unearned and certainly undeserved – that this very government condemned when it was made famous by a Minister in the previous Liberal government, David Dingwall, who defended both his lavish spending under the heading of “Expenses” and his even more lavish settlement after voluntarily resigning with the now infamous epitaph, “I’m entitled to my entitlements.”
My point? Well, my point is that it seems to be more and more pointless to complain, or whine, or rant about this travesty of elected representatives who insult the word “leader”.
So I’m going to dial it back for a while. The Harper Conservatives are always going to be what they are – thugs, bullies and, at least in their own minds, deserving rivals for the Sun King’s throne. But political expediency equally emasculates their Opposition while we, as a country, tolerate the presence of a uni-purpose one-province Separatist Party in our national House of Commons. So much about it is wrong. And Canadian political historians are going to scratch their academic heads one day wondering how a supposedly modern, rational population could let things sink to the level of the cesspool into which our Parliament has become immersed.
And hopefully, around about that same time, a political discussion can once again be held that allows for contrary views and legitimate criticism without having to suffer the rote mocking parroted outrage of the John Bairds, Peter McKays, Pierre Poilievres and Stephen Harpers of the world.
Until that time – well, there are lots of other things to write about.
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Next time: Chicago. Really.
Beautiful city. Stunning architecture.
A long overdue post.
And maybe some Toronto Tut thrown in on the side.
Until la prochaine.