TriumphAnt

Opening with a note from the “Thanks, I really feel better about that” department, early in the week of May 14, Canadian media were alive with rumblings that, hot on the heels of a lockout of CN rail workers a few weeks ago, a strike by Canadian Pacific (CP) Rail maintenance workers seems imminent as talks aimed at producing a new contract have collapsed.

Which led to this re-assuring promise from a spokesman for the railway: “The vast majority of our trains will continue to operate, using regular conductors and engineers. These maintenance employees [That'd be the folks about to go on strike] do not operate trains.” (CPR spokesman Mark Seland, quoted in the Globe and Mail, May 14)

So there I am, sitting in the front seat of my car at a level crossing, watching while a vast chain of rolling boxcars, all emblazoned with the black-and-white CP logo and all filled with heavy steel auto parts, thunders by. And it crosses my mind that I have just been told not to worry because the trains will continue to operate; they just won’t be maintained.



Thanks very much.

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I have an idea for how the manufacturers of blood pressure medication can sell a whole lot more of their product. All they need to do is to arrange for hospital-based cardio specialists to test patients’ blood pressure after they’ve discovered how much it costs to park in the hospital parking lot, instead of testing it before the patient is told the parking lot fee.

Recently, I had to visit the office of a cardio specialist in Ottawa’s Riverside Hospital on a referral from my family physician. That particular hospital is not too far from home and on other days, I might have just walked or bicycled over. But this was a work day and I needed to finish up some stuff at home after the test before getting myself to work. So the most convenient solution was simply to drive over, park, get the test done and get back home. My car was in the parking lot for 65 minutes. When I stopped at the parking lot exit kiosk to pay, the cheerful attendant told me that the 65 minutes’ wear and tear that my car’s all-season radials imposed on their asphalt would cost me $10.50.

Had I been sporting a blood pressure cuff at precisely that moment, I suspect the soaring reading would have prompted my immediate air-ambulancing to the nearest pharmacy to drain their shelves of whatever blood pressure medication they had.

Note to blood pressure medication manufacturers: if this works, I expect a percentage.

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Note to CBC-TV onscreen headline writers…

"HAPPY HIPPOS HIT IT OFF" (May 2) looks rather, uhhhh – not to put too fine a point on it – unfortunate when you cram the text together onscreen to save space.

"HAPPYHIPPOSHITITOFF"

I'm just sayin'.

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Your tax dollars at work (1)

So here’s the thing… At work, I routinely get requests for reports on how well / how badly / or if at all / various programs are treated in media coverage. Now one might think that requesting such a report is a fairly straightforward thing to do. And “one” would be right, for the most part.

But every once in a while, I swear that the person making the request almost makes a conscious effort to be as nebulous as possible. Why be helpful, when you can ask for something so murky it makes the Mississippi Delta look like a sparkling mineral spring?

Recently, I was asked for a “review of quotes by the Minister on Bill C-357 over the past few years”. Period. The language of that request certainly seems simple enough. But consider this. Over the “past few years”, the Department in which I work has seen at least 14 Ministers. (Human Resources and Social Development Canada is a vast federal umbrella that also covers Labour and Special Responsibility for Seniors, a triumvirate that is, at the moment, “Ministered” by, respectively, Monte Solberg, Jean-Pierre Blackburn and Senator Marjory LeBreton.) And consider, too:

In 1999, Bill C-357 was “An Act to Amend the Indian Act regarding the definition of 'Indian child'”;

In 2001, Bill C-357 was “An Act to protect personal privacy by restricting the use of Social Insurance Numbers”;

In 2005, Bill C-357 was “An Act to provide for an improved framework for economic, trade, cultural and other initiatives between the people of Canada and the people of Taiwan”;

In 2007, Bill C-357 is “An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act”.

Now it’s possible I can deduce, simply by virtue of the date of the request, that what the seeker probably means is the current Minister and the current Bill C-357. But then again, the phrase, “over the past few years”, coupled with the fact that my Department’s responsibilities include aboriginal issues, identity theft; foreign credential recognition and Employment Insurance, also provides considerable leeway for guessing incorrectly. But then again – again – maybe the requester knows full well my love of (a) puzzles and (b) Monty Python, and was simply channeling the famous “Cheese Shop” skit for my enjoyment:

MOUSEBENDER (John Cleese):
You do have some cheese, do you?
WENSLEYDALE (Michael Palin):
Of course, sir. It's a cheese shop, sir. We've got .....
MOUSEBENDER:
No, no, don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.
WENSLEYDALE:
Fair enough.

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You tax dollars at work (2)

The bridge that sits in view outside my office window is one of several across the Ottawa River that connect Ottawa, Ontario to what is now Gatineau (and what was once Hull), Quebec.

It has three lanes in either direction, with one lane each way designated for buses, taxis or private cars – in the latter case, only so long as they are carrying three or more people.

Once in a blue moon, one of our friendly neighbourhood police services – the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in this case because the bridge is officially part of the federal government’s jurisdiction – decides it is going to enforce that lane-designation rule. For most of the year’s 365 days, you only ever see police on the bridge if there has been an accident, or if someone in officialdom is in need of a police escort (not an uncommon occurrence in a national capital). Traffic flows remarkably smoothly, but a big part of the reason for that is that hundreds of drivers flout the designated-lane rule and freely drive the lane even if his or her car is occupied solely by the driver.

But two or three times a year, the RCMP stake out the far end of the bridge (“far end” being relative to the traffic flow. Obviously if you’re at the end where the traffic is arriving, the police are sitting at the “near end”. But I digress.). Oh they’re fair about it. They actually have a warning sign mounted on a trailer that they wheel into position at the near end (see preceding note re “far end”) to warn drivers of the lane’s restriction.

And the result is, inevitably, one horrendous traffic jam as all those drivers who regularly ignore the designated lane rule now try to squeeze themselves out of that lane into the adjacent “anything goes” lane in order to avoid being tagged by the uniformed constabulary at the far end of the bridge.

The other factor to consider is that the bridge offers absolutely no space whatsoever to execute that traditional “Oh s**t I got caught” maneuver known as “pulling over”. So tagged drivers simply stop in the lane, forcing legitimate users such as bus and taxi drivers to jam up behind them while the offender gets a lecture from the officers about leaving that lane for its designated users so as to contribute to the free flow of rush-hour traffic yadda yadda yadda. Ironically, “rush-hour traffic” is all the while piling up for literally blocks behind the stopped drivers. So the RCMP, with infinite illogic, two or three days a year contribute to causing on a very large scale the very problem they are telling drivers not to cause.

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Bug o’ da Week

The environment is pretty well Canadian politicos’ theme of the day. One can’t help but get the feeling that a great many of them have just discovered it because it’s hard to be unanimously criticized for taking a step towards preserving the environment, however tentative that step might be.

But I confess I find myself baffled and not a little angry about the apparently sudden explosion of announcements in various legal jurisdictions that Thomas Edison’s venerable incandescent light bulb is bad for the environment and so it’s going to be – or in some cases already has been – declared illegal. And its replacement is to be that odd looking compact fluorescent light bulb that looks like an oversized piece of Scooby-Doo pasta and, in consequence, is already being called the “twisty” bulb.

I’m all for saving on energy. But is this really the way to go? Not according to some people, who share the thinking of this Alberta blogger:

“Heat Not Light

Well the Federal Government has finally caught up with me, I have been using compact fluorescent lights for over a decade. But you know what, my electricity bill has not gone down, it has gone up! Because of energy deregulation in Alberta and increasing gas costs.

And these bulbs also contain mercury, so you can't just junk them in the garbage. Efforts to recycle industrial fluorescent bulbs for their mercury is in an infant stage and not yet fully developed as an industry in Alberta. With an increase in use of compact fluorescent bulbs, this becomes an important need that has to be met.

Thus another Conservative plan that produces more ecological problems than it fixes. And one aimed not at industrial responsibility but at consumers.”
(La Revue Gauche blog – April 27)

And while they do last longer, there still remains the problem of what to do with them after they have burned out:

“The environmentalists had only good things to say about the efficiency of compact fluorescent light bulbs, which can last up to 15 times longer than regular bulbs and draw between one-fifth and one-quarter of the power. Perks notes, however, that they contain a small amount of mercury and therefore pose a disposal problem. 'Like batteries, they should be on a deposit-return system so the mercury can be reused,' he says. Simmonds says Philips Electronics is working on a mercury-free bulb.” (Toronto Star online, April 21)



But even more than that landfill issue, for me there is an equally unsettling, and related, bug. Because of their upfront cost, these things are sold in large measure in packages of one or two, and usually enveloped in a large plastic blister pack that includes a consumer information card congratulating you on the wisdom of your purchase and telling you just what a wonderful thing you’re doing for the environment. This is not, to my mind, the first choice of description I would apply to packaging whose throw-away volume is as much as, if not more, than the product it packages! (That $77.00 you see in the photo is, I think, an estimate of your energy savings over the life of the bulb, not its price. As a matter of interest, the Canadian website on which I found this photo lists its price at $7.99. These things don’t come cheap!)

So who’s the more environmentally astute consumer -- the would-be room illuminator who buys a box of eight incandescent lightbulbs packaged in flimsy card stock, which goes immediately into paper recycling when the box is emptied of bulbs, or the one who buys eight energy-efficient, longer lasting bulbs, but each of which comes wrapped in its own sea of decades-long-to-degrade, non recyclable plastic?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I have yet to see any evidence that incandescent bulb-banning legislators do either.

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Finally, don’t give up!

After struggling through the foregoing, you’re wondering if I’m ever going to find anything even halfway interesting to write about. Well, have I got good news for you! I’m off for a few days to the Great-Environmentally-Conscious-Presently-Losing-Bazillions-of-Acres-of-Trees-to-Wildfires State of California.

I want to beat Canada’s imposition of its own no-fly list next month. (I have no doubt my Parliament Hill appearance at a demonstration in 1974 to protest US government plans to test-fly its then-still-experimental Cruise missile at a range in Northern Alberta is finally going to catch up with me. I did see myself on the TV news that night, so the Mounties had to have seen me too. So it’s either that, or they finally identified the source of that anonymous query to a local media hotline asking about how long a US President would remain buoyant in the Rideau Canal if he were punched full of holes. Look, I’m not proud of that one, but it was a Friday night, I was with a group of guys who were fully 2/3 of the way through a bottle of Jose Cuervo and it was on the eve of an official visit by the eventually-to-be-disgraced President Richard Nixon. And it was 35 years ago! Is that any reason to deny me permission to fly into the US from 2007 on?)

So in anticipation of providing you with some descriptions of the Big Sur coast, the Nero-esque excess displayed by William Randolph Hearst in building his San Simeon Estate, and the price of drinks in the 19th hole bar at Pebble Beach – no I’m not actually going to play the course, but I do intend to seek out a bar coaster as a souvenir – get ready. I’ve already begun to mine my Roget’s Thesaurus for synonyms for “Holy S**t!!!”

A la prochaine.