TriumphAnt

“With all the horseshit in this room, surely there’s a pony in here somewhere.”

In this country, there have been forests of trees and oceans of ink sacrificed on the altar of explaining the political topic of “fiscal imbalance”. In a nutshell, it refers to our provincial governments’ lifelong complaints about the difference between the amount of money that flows from their people, in the form of taxation, into the federal treasury vs the provinces’ perceived shortfall in value of the federal services those same people receive from the nation’s government in Ottawa. Some provinces simply bleat “It’s never enough!” Others bleat, “You’re spending it in the wrong places,” or “You expect us to ACCOUNT for how we spend the money you give us??!” And Québec routinely bleats all three, PLUS “Just give us all of the money we demand and trust us to spend it on the right programs.”

Well, for all the paper forests and ink oceans expended in an effort to make people understand, Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells, in a recent entry on his blog, nicely sums the whole danged thing up, accomplishing with crystal clarity in eight little sentences what generations of federal Prime Ministers must wish they could have said out loud to generations of ten times the number of provincial Premiers:

“Apparently the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is upset about the booty the recent budget delivers to his province. Here's what nobody seems to have explained to him.

Danny Williams made Paul Martin's life a screaming blue hell for most of a year and a half. Martin turned his government, his most senior staffers and bureaucratic helpers, and the entire tortured logic of Canadian fiscal federalism into pretzels to please Williams. Paul Martin wore himself into a sobbing heap to please Danny Williams.

And his reward was one fewer seat in Newfoundland & Labrador than he had before he went to the trouble.

Why would any prime minister ever again lift a finger to appease Danny Williams?

Somebody should explain this to the premier.”

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Come again????

Watching TV recently… commercial comes on. Photo-love montage of majestically lit new black Cadillac sedan rolling by. Then I caught the music behind it.

I have the distinct feeling that the Cadillac advertising agency must have begun and ended their music search with song titles, selected what they thought was a little Tin Pan Alley gem, and then paid so much for the rights to the song they ordered, that when they actually found out what song they had acquired the rights to, they all crossed their fingers and hoped to hell no one would notice.*

Well, people have noticed.

Cause, sure, the song is “Sunny Side of the Street”. But no, it isn’t the “Grab your coat and get your hat; leave your worries on the doorstep. Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street” “Sunny Side of the Street”. It’s The Pogues’ “Sunnyside of the Street”.

That’d be this one:

“SUNNYSIDE OF THE STREET

Seen the carnival at Rome
Had the women I had the booze
All I can remember now
Is little kids without no shoes
So I saw that train
And I got on it
With a heartful of hate
And a lust for vomit
Now I'm walking on the sunnyside of the street

Stepped over bodies in Bombay
Tried to make it to the U.S.A.
Ended up in Nepal
Up on the roof with nothing at all
And I knew that day
I was going to stay
Right where I am, on the sunnyside of the street

Been in a palace, been in a jail
I just don't want to be reborn a snail
Just want to spend eternity
Right where I am, on the sunnyside of the street

As my mother wept it was then I swore
To take my life as I would a whore
I know I'm better than before
I will not be reconstructed
Just wanna stay right here
On the sunnyside of the street”

* When you’ve got a minute, Google “Cadillac. The Pogues”. Lots of people noticed, and a lot of them are really ticked-off Pogues fans. I for one fully understand. I still recall the exact moment about four years ago as I stood in the grocery store reading some labels on boxes of Uncle Ben’s seasoned rice when the realization sank in that the song thumping over the Muzak speakers was the original Barry McGuire “Eve of Destruction”. (Before reading the following, to get a sense of Mr McGuire’s voice throw a half pound of gravel in your spin dryer and tumble it for three minutes. Imagine that – singing this – in your ears in the “Pasta, Rice and Side Dishes” aisle of Loblaws):

“The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say?
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbour, but don’t forget to say grace

And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.”

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And what the hell, while we’re into a stream that includes some Canadian politics, let’s keep that old ball rolling, shall we?

I work for a department whose Minister announced, many months ago, that it would be home to a new “initiative”, the Canadian Foreign Credential Recognition Agency. Its announced purpose was to “streamline” (haw haw) the process by which foreign-trained professionals, after immigrating to Canada, would be able to find work that matched their training / certification and their experience.

Prior to putting on a public service hat, I worked for 25 years for a national health care Association and based on that experience, when I heard this government’s announcement that it will create the Canadian Foreign Credential Recognition Agency, I can confess to everyone here and now that my very first thought was, “Oh no you won’t.”

Well, in the squeaky-new federal budget, the government didn’t make a whole lot of fuss about including a line item for a “Foreign Credential Recognition Office”. Because between the lines, one could read that, by funding the “Office” the feds have kissed good-bye to the “Agency”. Essentially, they have now shucked themselves of any responsibility for “streamlining” the integration of foreign credentialed professionals beyond creating a centralized referral source that will direct them to the places they need to be in order to determine what relevant value their credentials have in Canada and, if any, where their skills and training might be most needed.

Holy cow, a broken Conservative promise? What are the odds?

But on this one, it actually is a promise best broken, because it could never be kept. In my pre-public-servant incarnation, I also watched one single Canadian health care profession as it struggled, literally for years, with the process of trying to enable a graduate of either of two Canadian schools for that profession, one in Ontario at the University of Waterloo and one in Montreal at the University of Montreal, to be immediately eligible to practice in any jurisdiction in Canada. And these are Canadian schools!

If you’re still wondering why this process is so damnably complicated and bureaucratic, well (Surprise!) this is one you can’t hang on the federal government. It’s because there are two enormous hurdles such a federal entity has to clear. First, the (BUZZWORD ALERT!) over-arching responsibility for regulating professions in Canada is provincial turf, and it is fiercely guarded as such by the provincial governments. But adding even more thickener to the soup is the fact that a great many professions (and the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials website lists almost 200 at last count) are themselves self-regulating, usually through a separate licensing and disciplinary authority that is most often labeled the profession’s “College” (the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, for example).

So for a late-comer like a federal government to just waltz into that crowded ballroom and expect everyone on the dance floor to begin jitterbugging to its music… well the odds of even finding a partner, much less convincing the entire dance hall to endorse your song selection, began at slim and slid down the scale from there.

First you have to crack the Colleges, guys. Then you have to crack the provinces. And only then will you be able to allow foreign-trained professionals to hang out their shingles.

The problem with the feds was that they thought the shingle thing was step 1.

So now they’re back to where they should have been all along. Cataloguing what’s available and matching it to what comes through Canada’s border door in the resumés of would-be new Canadian professionals. $6 million should be able to build a really fine referral service. But to all those hopeful, foreign-trained professionals I would pass along this caution: given that the office created solely to register Canada’s long guns has now run up a bill of over a billion dollars – and climbing – don’t hold your breath.

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Eyes Wide Shut

Canada’s Supreme Court ruled on March 23 that VIA Rail has to retrofit some 30 of the 149 rail cars it bought from France in order to make them wheelchair accessible.

Not long ago – in the year 2000, in fact – in one of those uniquely Canadian bursts of brilliance VIA Rail went shopping for passenger cars to upgrade its aging fleet. And lo and behold, they found this great deal – “bargain-basement” great, in fact – on 149 used rail cars built by a French firm who deliberately built them much narrower in order that they could fit into the Channel tunnel.

But a funny thing about “narrower”. It requires a small aisle. Smaller than the average North American wheelchair. The new cars had washrooms that a rider with a wheelchair disability could not get to. And although they had wheelchair safety tie-down points, not one North American wheelchair could fit into the tie-down space. So today’s Supreme Court decision means that VIA Rail is now on the hook for several million dollars. (48 “several”, to be exact, as of the date of this story’s being reported). You might have expected at the very least that someone in VIA Rail’s purchasing department might have phoned a friend in National Defence and asked, “Hi Fred... So how did that bargain buy of used British submarines work out?”

But on the other hand, if ever they get around to digging a new transatlantic rail tunnel, we’re already 119 cars ahead of the game!

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Oh… and a chocolate sundae. Don’t forget the chocolate sundae.

“Mongol General: "What is best in life?"
Conan: "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

(Ahnold, as Conan, cribbing Genghis Khan, if the Internet is to be believed.)

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March: International Month of the quadruped, apparently. First, a baby polar bear named Knut (pronounced with a hard “K” – kuh-NOOT') still a roly-poly living teddy bear and still, obviously, a long way from the 1,500 or so pounds he’ll eventually hit. This level of cuteness should probably be illegal.

And now, 15 cats and 1 dog.

That’s the North American “death toll” so far in the pet food “SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY!!!” (tm, Pat.Pend.) So far (at this writing), some $40 million worth of possibly-tainted pet food has been yanked from the continent’s store shelves as the story continues to place very high in both the electronic and print media coverage.

Here’s what I think:

If you are one of the (so far) 800-plus people who have joined a class-action lawsuit “because I need to know what happened”, then my sympathies, because you are illiterate, deaf and blind, possibly even a bed-ridden paralytic, obviously – because you are completely incapable of reading a newspaper, listening to a radio or turning on a TV.

If you are a lawyer who is leading the class-action lawsuit, then you are an opportunistic, utterly shameless leech, possessed of the pools of bile required to exploit a pet owner’s real but short-term grief, yet still possessed of sufficient balls (or delusion) to go on national Canadian television news and intone, “You bet we’re serious; our clients are serious and we believe we’ll find a judge who is serious. This is just beginning.”

And if you are a pet owner – oops, make that a former pet owner – who goes on that same national Canadian television news and tearfully chokes out not only the above phrase about needing to know what happened, but also, “Because he [the late bulldog in question, in this case] was my very best friend”, then again, my sympathy, but in this case because you are just pathetic.

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And finally, this lovely little illustration showing that the White House just doesn’t get it (from a Washington Post online column called “White House Briefing”):

And here's a priceless soundbite from press secretary Tony Snow's interview on ABC News yesterday morning:

Diane Sawyer: "Why not let Karl Rove go up there and show he has nothing to hide? Testify, under oath, and with a transcript? Let everyone see it?"

Tony Snow: "This is what I love, this Karl Rove obsession. Let's back off. First, the question is: Do you want Karl Rove on TV, or do you want the truth?"

Diane Sawyer: "Why can't you have both?"

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Jusqu’a next time.